Savage (Wolf Ranch #4) - Renee Rose Page 0,7

imagined Becky’s nimble fingers sewing up my wound. Forget about the damn wound, I’d like to see those nimble fingers wrapped around my dick again, tugging hard, asking for a hard fuck. But that wasn’t going to happen, and there were several good reasons why.

I sighed, wiping my face, then wincing as lifting my arm tugged on the oozing wound.

A male like me couldn’t mate. Not with the role of council enforcer. My job was my life, even if it was a secret. If anyone ever found out, I’d have assholes out for revenge climbing out of the woodwork. I’d heard enough about enforcers and how they were hated for serving justice so ruthlessly. And anonymously. My role was needed—and hated—among all species of shifters. Because of that, any mate of mine would never be safe.

Becky wasn’t mine. She never had been. My wolf didn’t recognize her as my mate. She was just a gorgeous human who’d gotten under my skin just as much as this poison in my side. It was taking a long time to heal from a quick encounter in a storage room.

3

BECKY

I pushed the cart through the produce section and stopped in front of the avocados. I gave one a gentle squeeze, then another, finding some that weren’t too firm or soft. I added a bunch to my cart. I never used to like avocados, even avoiding guacamole at Mexican restaurants as if it were some kind of green slime.

Now? I couldn’t get enough of the things, which wasn’t helping my bank account. November in Montana wasn’t the best time to get them, but my body wanted the dang things, and they stayed down. At least it was healthy, unlike my ridiculous craving for cocktail wieners.

I’d only thrown up once today, which was a miracle in itself. I worked on the labor and delivery floor at the hospital. I knew all about pregnancy. Well, I thought I had, until I was pregnant myself. My OB assured me that while having morning sickness into my second trimester was perfectly normal, it wasn’t fun.

No shit, Sherlock.

It wasn’t too severe that I worried about nourishment or being dehydrated. My little peanut gave me a reprieve for most of the day to get food down. And keep it down. The rest of the time? People needed to watch out.

It just seemed like a long time since the nausea began. Since I found out. Even longer since that night. That night.

The night that Clint the Hot Cowboy and his super sperm got past a condom and knocked me up. Not only had the wild ride he’d given me in the storage room been a surprise—I’d never had a quickie before in my life—so were the two blue stripes on the pregnancy test I took a few weeks later.

I’d worked at a clinic telling people the importance of using condoms, that they weren’t a foolproof method of birth control.

Again, no shit, Sherlock.

The fateful July party was supposed to have been fun. A little wild. Something for Audrey to remember as a crazy bachelorette party before she tied the knot with her hot rodeo champ, Boyd. She wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t forget it.

I knew Boyd and Audrey went at it like rabbits. Even back then. Especially back then. But they hadn’t been the ones to get all hot and heavy in the storage room.

I had. With Clint Tucker. While I’d never met him face-to-face before that night, I’d seen him in passing, and I’d liked what I’d seen a whole hell of a lot. I’d been friends with Audrey since she first moved to town, and we began working together at the hospital. After she met Boyd, I’d gone to the ranch and seen Clint in the corral with the horses. That was when I realized I had a thing for cowboys.

He looked like the Marlboro man without the cigarette. Dark hair, muscular. Big. Well, over a foot taller than me. He had the square jawline and rugged appearance of a manly-man, but there were smile lines around his eyes that made him seem trustworthy.

There had been other guys around, but I’d been snared watching him. Only him. There’d been a calmness about him that was a draw, as if he knew who he was and didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought. At the ranch and at the bar that night.

It was a complete one-eighty from my ex.

If there was a photo of a dick in the dictionary, it