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“Dayax, wherever you are, I will find you!” He sent the question telepathically in English and Somali, hoping the wolfling would receive the message and understand that Lincoln would not give up on him.
“Last one, Linc. Then we gotta scram.” Lila stopped in front of the last door to the right of the stairs.
“All right, kid. Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she said, turning the doorknob. “Hmm. Must be stuck.”
Lincoln’s stomach knotted and a horrible foreboding drove an icy knife into his gut. “Lila, wait!”
Unable to hear Lincoln’s telepathic warning in her human form, she shoved her shoulder against the door. It swung innocently open and she darted into the room.
The breath stalled in Lincoln’s chest continued on its path, though his heart still thundered.
“Vámonos!” Damien shouted, stomping up the stairs two at a time. “Vámonos!”
A flash of light accompanied a resounding boom. The percussive force slammed Lincoln against the window. Deafened from the explosion, he never heard the glass break. But the air swooshed around him and his stomach looped as he plunged downward.
He would be okay; his team would be okay. Dayax would be okay. The beautiful angel inside the thin silver case tucked in the pocket of his protective vest would make sure they were. She always did.
Nine weeks later
“I’m gonna wring his freaking neck!”
Angeline O’Brien glared at the man passed out on her brand-new leather couch, thrashing and yelling in his sleep.
She slammed the apartment door, envisioning her long fingers curling around Tristan Durrance’s throat for giving his subletter the wrong key.
Friends since they were tweens, neighbors for nearly all of their adult lives, and both relationshipphobes, Tristan and Angeline had traded apartment keys with the understanding that they would look out for each other. Angeline had expected the arrangement to continue into their elder years.
Unfortunately for her, last summer Tristan had accidentally claimed a mate and subsequently fallen in love, breaking up their platonic cohesiveness. Angeline didn’t begrudge Tristan’s happiness, but she had felt a little lonely since he’d moved out of his apartment.
But not lonely enough to play nice with a Dogman who had found his way into the wrong apartment. Everyone in the Walker’s Run pack had been anticipating the wolfan paramilitary man’s arrival for weeks. Everyone except Angeline.
Turbulent emotions rose inside her. When her first and only love, Tanner Phillips, had chosen life as a Dogman over a mateship with her, Angeline had never wanted to hear the word Dogman again. Neither did she ever want to come face-to-face with one.
So instead of welcoming this Dogman like a hero, she had a mind to toss his ass outside into the cold and slam the door in his face. Next to the two empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter, she dropped her purse and the carry-out bag from Taylor’s Roadhouse, her uncle’s restaurant where she worked part-time.
“Hey!” she snapped. After being on her feet all night, Angeline wanted a hot shower to wash away the food odors from her body and to relax in the utter quiet and comfort of her home. Alone. The sooner she got the Dogman into the right apartment, the better. “Wake up!”
Curled on his side, face pressed against the duffel bag he used as a pillow, the man gave no indication that he’d heard her. Every muscle in his body remained tightly coiled. A muscle spasmed along his clenched jaw and the deep furrows creased his brow.
Angeline’s irritation level dropped a few notches. “Are you all right?” She touched him. An unexpected electric current caused her fingers to tighten on his bare shoulder when she should’ve let go.
His large hand cuffed her wrist as he sat up. “Who are you?” he snarled. His glaring silvery-green gaze appeared to be clouded and unfocused.
“The person who owns the couch you’re sleeping on.” Angeline yanked her captive arm against his hold. Instead of freeing herself, she became more entangled with him as he rolled off the couch and stood, leaning heavily on her.
“Where’s my team?” A shag of black hair curtained his forehead, dark brows slashed angrily over his eyes and his naturally brown skin lightly glistened with sweat. “Where’s Dayax?”
“Wherever you think you are, you aren’t!” She grappled against his effort to restrain her. “This is my apartment, not Tristan’s, and I want you to leave.”
Angeline’s heart pounded with a healthy dose of adrenaline, but not outright fear. She’d had to contend with two older brothers growing up. Wrestling over one thing or another had been a daily sport and they hadn’t given her any slack just because of her gender.
She wiggled one arm free, sharpened her elbow and jammed it into his solar plexus. An audible gasp filled her ear. His hold loosened. Falling away, he snatched the tails of her sweater.
With a resounding oomph, he hit the carpeted floor, flat on his back with Angeline sprawling on top of him. Immediately, his meaty arms caged her, then rolling her beneath him, he pinned her with his weight.
“I can’t breathe!” At least not all that well.
Hands flat against his muscled chest, damp from sweat, Angeline shoved hard but nothing happened. Pushing over a concrete wall might’ve been easier than getting the wolfan male to budge.
“Who are you?” Though he allowed her some wiggle room, the timbre of his growl gave grave warning.
“The woman who will unman you if you don’t get the hell off me!” Angeline scraped her nails down his taut abdomen to the waistband of his boxers. Odd, considering wolfan males didn’t care to wear men’s underwear. But it was winter and she was grateful that his bare ass hadn’t christened her new couch.
The undergarment, however, didn’t prevent her from gripping his heavy sack in a manner any man would recognize as anything but playful.
A painful snarl parted his lips. Each time she squeezed, his lids shuttered and his gaze became more focused and alert. She knew the moment his brain recognized that he was crouched intimately above a female whose body was perfectly aligned with his.
“Think carefully about your next move, Dogman.”
“Oh, I’m not moving, Angel,” he said calmly. Clearly. Seductively. “Not until you let go of my balls.”
“Good,” she said, ignoring the flutter in her stomach that his deep, quiet Texas drawl had started to stir. “Now that you’re awake, do you know where you are?”
A whisper of a smile curved his mouth. “In heaven.” Eyes drifting closed, he lowered his face to hers and rubbed his check against her jaw, snuffling her hair. “God, you smell divine.”
Despite the awkward circumstance, Angeline didn’t sense any threat in his manner. The reverent way he breathed in her scent seemed almost like an act of worship.
His clean male musk invaded her senses, sparking a primal interest better left dormant.
“All right. The sniff feast is over.” She squeezed his sack.
Once she had his full attention again, Angeline let go.
He eased off her and she sat up, watching him hoist himself onto the couch. Only then did she realize that most of his left leg was missing. She also noticed the scattered scars on his arms and torso. Some new, others quite old.
Her heart pinched but she wouldn’t allow sympathy to fester. She had no business feeling anything for a Dogman.
Leaning down, he picked up the blanket that had slid to the floor during their struggle and folded it. “Apologies for the intrusion, Angel.”
“My name isn’t Angel. It’s Angeline.” She sank into the oversize chair. “That was some nightmare you were having when I came home. Have those often?”
“Every time I fall asleep.”
No wonder his eyes looked weary, and wary and sad.
“And why are you sleeping on my couch, Dogman?”
“I prefer Lincoln,” he said quietly. “Tristan left the wrong key beneath the doormat. When I called, he said you wouldn’t mind if I crashed here. Clearly, he made a mistake.” He removed a nude-colored stocking from the oversize duffel bag. Grimacing, he began stretching it over his naturally bronze stump.
Angeline folded her arms over her chest, hoping he didn’t notice her weakness, a traitorous heart that tweaked because of the traumatic loss he had suffered. “Tristan should’ve warned me.”
If he had, she might’ve refused.
Watching Lincoln pull the state-of-the-art prosthetic leg from his duffel, guilt stabbed at her conscience. He would only be in town a few weeks. She could grit her teeth and be neighborly for that long, couldn’t she?
Chapter 2 (#u484207a4-2c17-5558-bff5-b92a662a77e9)
Half naked and legless wasn’t how Lincoln had imagined meeting his guardian angel in the flesh. Angeline’s long auburn hair framed a face Lincoln would have recognized even if he were a blind man with only his hands to feel the shape of her feminine brow, her high, angular cheeks and soft, full lips. God only knew how often he had traced every angle and plane of the woman in the worn photograph he’d carried with him for the better part of the last fifteen years. Now that he’d encountered the she-wolf in the flesh, his heart wouldn’t stop fluttering and the tingly sensation in his stomach would make him sick if it didn’t stop soon.
Attaching the prosthetic to his stump, Lincoln didn’t dare take his gaze off Angeline, fearing she would disappear like she had so often in his dreams.
The old picture entrusted to him by the dying Dogman on Lincoln’s first mission hadn’t done Angeline justice because it had failed to capture her fire and strength of will. Unlike the fragile, ethereal female he’d envisioned, the real woman—strong, sassy, sexy—took him utterly by surprise.
“When is the last time you ate?” Despite the gentleness in her voice, Angeline’s hard, no-nonsense gaze didn’t soften.
“On the plane, somewhere over the ocean,” he said over the loud rumblings of his stomach. Grabbing his camo pants, he stuffed his good leg into the pant leg and then slid the other pant leg over his prosthetic without embarrassment over his nearly nude state. For Wahyas, nudity was as natural as eating and breathing.
“I’m coming off a ten-hour flight from Munich. I got stuck in customs for over two hours in the Atlanta airport because the TSA agents had never seen the bionics used in my leg. Then I had a nearly three-hour drive to get here and all of the drive-throughs in town were closed.”
He wouldn’t starve, though. Inside his duffel were the rations he’d consumed for so long that he no longer remembered the taste of real food.
Wordlessly, Angeline stood and strolled into the kitchen. Lincoln quickly wiggled the pants over his boxers. He didn’t particularly like the undergarments but had learned to tolerate them during his recovery when the friction from long pants made his stump feel as if it were on fire.
“Bon appetite,” Angeline said, returning with a large foam box in her hands.
She opened the lid. The spicy scent of a mountain of buffalo chicken wings made his mouth water. His eyes might’ve, too, because she had offered him food. Actual everyday, take-for-granted, comfort food. Not canned or freeze-dried rations. Not bland, pasty mess hall slop or the airline’s processed micro meals. Real, honest-to-goodness food, only mere inches from his face.
But, remembering the near-empty refrigerator and pantry, he waved away her offering. “Thanks. But no.”
Times were tough and he didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness.
Her nostrils flared slightly and her full, luscious lips flattened.
“I meant no offense,” he said, pulling on a black sweatshirt. Wolfans took food seriously. Refusing food insulted the one offering it. “But I don’t need your supper.”
His stomach protested. Loudly.
“I’m not the one whose stomach is about to eat itself.” She jabbed the box toward him. “Take them, they’re yours.”
“I saw the fridge.” He gently pushed back the tempting container. “You need to eat those more than I do. I have rations that will hold me over. And I’ll pay you for the beer.” He dug a wallet from the duffel and held out a fifty-dollar bill.
Mouth open and shock rippling through her gaze, she stared at his hand. Suddenly, full-bellied feminine laughter shook her body.
Before the explosion, Lincoln had found a woman’s laugh sexy. In his current circumstance, scarred and crippled, he felt belittled and hurt. He’d built up a fantasy about this woman. One where her kindness and gentleness had soothed and safe-guarded him. In reality, Angeline mocked him the same way the Program’s bureaucrats had when Lincoln had insisted that he could still perform his sworn duties.
The money slipped through his fingers and drifted to the floor. Whether she used it or not, Lincoln didn’t care.
He stood, steady and effortlessly. After a month of endless practice, he could stand, walk, run, jump and climb stairs with ease. Kneeling could be a bit tricky, but he managed. Shifting into his wolf form had proven to be the most challenging. No longer could he simply strip down and crouch before turning into his wolf. Now he had to carefully remove the artificial leg, otherwise it would turn to ash during the transformation.
As life changing as the loss had been, he was grateful to be alive. If he’d died instead of Lila, no one would go to the lengths Lincoln would to find his missing wolfling.
He slung the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder then trudged toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To sleep in my truck until I can straighten this out with Tristan,” he snapped, too exhausted to keep the frustration and anger from his voice.
“I wasn’t laughing at you, Lincoln.”
His hand froze on the doorknob.
“It’s sweet of you to overpay for the beer to help me out with groceries, but I don’t need it. The fridge is empty because I don’t like to cook, not because I can’t afford to buy food. That’s why I laughed.”
She eased behind him. “You see, I can take care of myself. And if I ever needed anything, my family and my pack would step up. That’s how the Walker’s Run Co-operative works.”
A few years ago, while in Romania and assigned to a protective detail for the Woelfesenat’s negotiator, Brice Walker, Lincoln had learned of the Walker’s Run pack’s co-operative. Consisting of wolfans and a handful of humans aware of the existence of Wahyas, the Co-op gave the Walker’s Run pack a public, human face and a clever way to hide in plain sight among the unsuspecting townsfolk in Maico, a small Appalachian community in northeast Georgia where the pack resided.
Pivoting toward Angeline, Lincoln noticed the genuine concern etched on her face. Clearly, she hadn’t meant to upset him and he felt like an idiot to have allowed a trivial misunderstanding to bruise his pride.
Nine weeks in the infirmary at Headquarters had turned him soft. Lincoln had hoped time away from HQ might help him regain his bearings. Now, he might need to reassess that decision.
How could he stay focused on increasing his stamina and sharpening his combat skills so he could return to Somalia and find Dayax when his guardian angel had escaped his dreams and lived only a few door down from where he would be staying?
“You can have this back.” Slowly, her long, tapered fingers slid into his hip pocket to deposit the fifty. The ensuing jolt to his system rendered his entire body flaccid, except for his shaft, which instantly hardened.
“As I said before, bon appétit!” Moving her other hand from behind her back, Angeline presented him with the box of chicken wings. “And no there’s no need to sleep in your truck. I have a key to Tristan’s apartment.”
“Why?” Lincoln wondered about the relationship between the two and why Tristan had failed to mention that tidbit during their brief call earlier.
“Neighbors look out for each other.” She picked up a keyring from the kitchen counter, worked off a key and handed it to Lincoln. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Lincoln.”
A key in one hand and food in the other, he should be happy to finally be getting into his temporary apartment. “I wouldn’t mind some company for a while.”
Her gaze slid down his torso to the erection his pants couldn’t hide. Food and sex. A wolfan male’s priorities.
“I gave you food. Now you need to take care of the rest on your own.” She reached past him and opened the door. The biting February air gusted into the apartment and nipped his skin beneath the sweatshirt.
“Good night, Lincoln.” Angeline patted his chest, urging him to leave.
He’d barely stepped outside when the door closed behind him and locked.
“Whew! That was close.” Angeline’s voice reached his ears despite the barrier.
Turning, he strolled down the open corridor to the corner apartment, a smile budding on his face even as a weight settled in his heart. He had a mission to complete. Until he found Dayax, Lincoln would do well to resist the devilish diversion of his angelic neighbor.
Heart thumping and holding her breath, Angeline leaned against the door. The jumble of feelings knotting inside her were a fluke. Lincoln was a Dogman. Period. She could be neighborly but absolutely nothing else.
She squinched her eyes to banish the vision of him watching her beneath long, dark lashes as his silvery-green gaze caressed her face with reverence and awe. The effort merely branded the image into her brain.
