“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you nervous.” He looked genuinely apologetic. He began to smooth my hair as if that were supposed to calm me. The weird thing was that it sort of worked. The way he stared at me made me feel as though I was supposed to do something, but I had no idea what.
He inhaled again. “You smell wonderful.”
“Thank you,” I said, very carefully trying to remove myself from his grasp. He didn’t budge. “Can I go, please?”
“Why?” He brought his head down to my neck again. “You should stay here with me.” His lips brushed over my skin and a bizarre mix of excitement and alarm rolled through me. If this were any other situation, he’d be sexy as hell. Too bad this wasn’t any other situation. “You can feel it, can’t you?” He pressed my hand to his chest more firmly.
“Um,” was all I got out.
He suddenly pulled back. “You’re not with that girl, are you?” Annoyance crossed his features. “I’m tired of chasing her.”
Once again I had no clue what he was talking about.
He made a dismissive motion. “Forget about her.” Then he smiled and I found myself staring at his canines again.
“I realize this is probably quite unexpected for you as a human, but you can trust me. A wolf knows.” He paused. “I’m not explaining this very well, am I? Again, my apologies. It’s just…I never thought I’d be lucky enough to find you.”
He’d begun to slide his hand up my freshly shaven leg, quickly reaching my khaki shorts and slipping his fingers underneath the edge. He’d shifted his stance in doing so, and I saw a clear opening for escape.
“I very much look forward to getting to know you, my heart.”
I slammed my knee into his groin, yelling and pushing him off me as he buckled. I scrabbled at the table, climbing over it and trying to get my bearings. Where the hell did the door go? Or better yet, where was the knife?
“I suppose I deserved that,” he groaned from the ground. “Awful of me to forget how skittish humans are around wolves. I thought you might be different, not being from the Kingdom.”
He was too close to the front door and already getting up. I didn’t see the knife anywhere. I bolted for the back rooms of the cottage.
“I admit,” he called from the front, “I shouldn’t have pushed you, but if you would just be willing to come back here and talk with me, we can sort all this out.”
No way buddy. All that the rooms had to offer were the old, circle windows. Dust coated the glass, and they looked barely big enough for me to… I snatched up an old chair just as he strode into the room. He held himself up, smoothing his coat with his hands.
“Now, if you’ll just allow me to introduce myself, we can begin our courtship properly.”
I smashed the chair into his chest, knocking him out of the room and breaking the chair into pieces. I held onto one of the legs and made for the window. It only took a single swing to shatter the glass. I pulled the small wooden cross pieces out of the hole and began squashing my way through the opening. A few small glass shards still in the frame scratched at me, tearing through my clothes. Pain bloomed where they cut my arms and legs.
“Will you stop? You’re writhing around on glass for goodness sakes.”
I screamed as his fingertips touched my ankle. I kicked back as hard as I could, felt my heel connect with something, and then I was free. I crashed onto the leaf-laden ground. In a moment I was up again, running as fast as I’d ever run through the forest, not paying attention to the direction or the cuts on my body. Thank God for tread machines and motivation. I could at least get a mile or two away from the cottage before the demented wolfy guy got his bearings again. That last kick had been pretty damned hard.
But I’d only gone half a mile when I slid to a stop in a gully. What about the girl? He was trying to kill her, too. Where had she gone? I couldn’t just let him find her and kill her. I tried to slow down my breathing, running a hand through my damp hair. Finally I doubled over to rest my hands on my knees, trying to