Summer’s Wolf

Chapter Four

A tap on his door stilled his fingers from the guitar strings. Cullen frowned. People never visited him. He stood from his seat on the floor, placed his guitar gently on the couch, and crossed the room to the entrance. He sniffed the air. The aroma of peaches and baby oil assailed his nose. Summer. As the delicious odor made the hair on his arms stand up, he tried not to groan.

She didn’t speak, just looked up at him. Dark smudges stained the skin beneath her eyes, her teeth chattered. He pulled her into the cabin, as he made note of the fact that she was barefoot and wore only the shorts and tee-shirt Gabriel had inappropriately packed for her.

“What are you doing out here? You don’t have a coat or shoes.” He shut the door behind her and loosened his grip on her arm.

Her teeth rattled and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I couldn’t stay with Ashlee. I’ll leave in the morning, find somewhere else to live off of this rock you call an island, but do you think I could sleep on your floor tonight?”

His mind whirled. He found it almost impossible to concentrate on what she said when she stood in front of him so obviously freezing. Goosebumps covered her skin and her nipples were hard and visible through her thin tee-shirt. He forced his gaze from the tantalizing view and made himself focus on the fact she was cold. He crossed to the couch and picked up a wool blanket. He wrapped her up in it, nearly coming out of his skin when his fingers brushed the flesh of her arm.

She stared up in his eyes and he shivered, but not from the cold. Having her there, in his cabin, made him feel mashed up inside. Her scent permeated the room, filling his head until he couldn’t breathe properly. He had the strangest urge to pick her up and rub her against the curtains, the bed, and the rug, so he could find her scent whenever he wanted to.

“So, is it okay, or not?” She continued to stare at him. He realized she’d asked him a question and he hadn’t answered it. She’d come to his home, through the freezing cold, wearing almost nothing, completely barefoot. Why did Ashlee let her leave this way?

“No, it’s not okay.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, then I’ll go.” She tried to turn but his arms held her steady, wrapped in the blanket.

“What are you talking about? Go where?” When another shiver wracked her slight body, electricity traveled up his arms.

“I asked you if I could stay tonight and you just said no.”

“I’m sorry, Summer.” It felt like a prayer, the way her name passed over his lips. “I seem to be having a conversation all by myself, in my own mind, and you can’t hear it. Of course you can stay. Here,” Cullen picked her up in his arms. He felt very gallant, not a sensation he was used to. It actually made him grin for a moment before he stopped himself. Summer didn’t need to see him beaming like an idiot. He placed her down on the couch and tucked the blanket in around her.

“I’m going to get you some warmer clothes. It’s drafty in here.” He walked into the bedroom and noticed his unmade bed. After he made her something to eat, he would clean up in here. She could spend the night in his room. As he pulled a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants out of his drawers he heard her call after him. “It feels warm in here to me.”

“It’s not.” Although he was hot as hell, had been ever since she’d arrived.

Cullen returned to the living room and sat on the edge of couch by her feet, handing her the clothes. “When you’ve warmed up a little, put these on.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking the clothes.

He wanted to lean over and kiss the spot between her neck and her shoulder until she shivered not from the cold, but from the heat his mouth created in her body.

“It’s plenty warm in here. I’m just chilled. You have your shirt off for goodness sake. How cold could it be?”

He looked down at his bare chest. She was right. Did human girls find it rude for men to be shirtless in front of them in this day and age? It was so hard for him to remember sometimes.

“I’ll go dress myself, sorry.” He rose off the couch.

“I didn’t say you had to put on clothes.”

Was it his imagination or had her voice dropped an octave? It had taken on a husky tone, like she might sound when she first woke up in the morning. His groin throbbed hard. Our mate.

Yes, she was their mate. But that didn’t mean he would give into his primal urges and take her right there on the couch, without so much as a by-your-leave.

He had to change the subject before he behaved like a teenager and gave into the need to kiss her. “What was Ashlee thinking letting you run out there dressed like that?”

“I didn’t actually give Ashlee and Tristan a choice. I kind of just left.” Emotions played across Summer’s face and he wished he could read her mind.

“And Ashlee is not my keeper. I’m a year older than she was when she met Tristan, brought him home, mated him, rescued him from the spell, and started to lead the pack with him. She was my age when she had Braden.”

Cullen stared. He wasn’t even sure what to say to that. Did she think he thought her too young to make her own decisions?

“Do you like soup? I keep chicken noodle here.” He turned towards the kitchen.

“Why do you do that?”

He kept his back turned to her. After three hundred years, he could sometimes catch himself before he said the wrong thing. If he didn’t face her, she wouldn’t be able to see him struggle to find the right words.

“Why do I do what?” Had he kept his voice even? He wasn’t sure.

“You change the subject at your convenience. I just said something to you that warrants an answer and you totally ignored me.”

He whirled around. “I seem to have the same problem with you that I have with the rest of the world, which is an inability to say the right thing. Maybe I should rephrase that and say I have a unique attribute that allows me to find the one thing to say that is sure to piss off everyone around me. So, I opt to say nothing or to say innocuous things. Somehow, it still ends up being wrong. If I change the subject it is to spare your feelings, a gift I give no one else.”

Summer flung the blanket off and crossed to him. He opened his mouth to rebuke her stubbornness. She silenced him when she pushed her body against his and pressed her mouth gently to his lips.

For a moment, Cullen felt like time stopped. Her kiss was a feather’s touch. Nothing existed on the planet except Summer’s soft skin, sensual lips, and strong, steady heartbeat.

He wanted desperately to deepen the kiss, to plunge his tongue into her mouth over and over again. To show her with his mouth what he wanted to do to other places on her body. But, he couldn’t allow himself the pleasure. If he let himself that small amount, the flood gates that held his self-control at bay would slam open. Cullen would be lost to the intensity with Summer as collateral damage. He would have to mate her, and he knew Summer had no idea what that entailed. Maybe the physical act she could understand but she hadn’t spent enough time with the pack to see that mating was so much more than marriage. It was eternal. There was no way out. Not even death separated mates as one partner almost always followed the other immediately to death.

He couldn’t be responsible for inflicting himself on her for the rest of her life and beyond—not if he wasn’t exactly what she wanted. He wasn’t some young pup, just recently shifted with no baggage for his mate to digest. He had too many years—most of them filled with unspeakable acts he’d rather not remember he’d done—behind him.

When she pulled back from their kiss, he reluctantly let her.

Kiss her again.

Wow, his wolf had certainly rediscovered its ability to boss him around. But he wouldn’t relent this time. No, he knew he was right. She had to know him better, had to go into their mating with both eyes open. If he gave into his passion for her tonight, while she was vulnerable, she might let him off the hook, but he would never forgive himself.

Unlike his young pack mates, he knew better than to think that every mated pair lived in perfect harmony. Their souls belonged to each other, they might even share love. But it was still possible for one half of the pair to destroy the life of the other. He need not look any further than Mary Jo and Kendrick Kane, the parents of their Alpha.

Mary Jo had hidden the unmated females from the pack to save their lives from the evil schemes Kendrick had plotted out for them. In retaliation, Kendrick, a man Cullen would have sworn was his friend, killed his wife and didn’t follow her to the grave. If that was possible, Cullen couldn’t count on anything—including the surety of happily ever after with his destined bride.

If they didn’t mate, she would not have to follow him to the grave or share his burdens. He wasn’t sure how it worked; she might even take other lovers. But, it was better to not let himself follow that line of thought because then he might lose control of his temper and kill whoever he imagined her having sex with.

“Hello, still here.” Summer cleared her throat. “I don’t want you to hold back your thoughts from me. You must always tell me the truth and I will do the same for you.”

He nodded. At least that was one way to guarantee she got to know him. “Okay.”

Her hands fell to her sides and he missed their warmth on his bare arms. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want any soup.”

Soup? The talk of food seemed a lifetime ago.

She continued to talk. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to kill Claudius.”

She didn’t?

“I want to kill him myself. I want you to teach me how.”

Cullen closed his eyes. The last thing he wanted to do in the universe was teach Summer Morrison how to become a killer. She hadn’t been born to do that. Her hands were clean, unscarred—like her soul.

He shook his head. “Out of the question. I can almost guarantee Tristan will order me to kill Claudius tomorrow. But if he doesn’t, I will take care of him myself. You will have nothing to do with it.”

Her eyes flared and he swore he saw flames dance inside of their aquamarine depths. “You don’t get to decide that. If I want to kill Claudius, I will do it. You can either help me or not.”

She stormed away from him to the window. Her back was strained, her stance wide. He wanted to go over and wrap his arms around her waist, tuck her body against his and make love to her until the horrors of the day left her and she no longer desired death or vengeance.

But he hadn’t earned that right yet.

He stepped an inch closer to her. If anyone understood boundaries, it was Cullen. “You think you could do that? Snuff out a man’s life, evil though he certainly is, and watch as he took his last breaths?”

She whirled around, putting several paces between them. “I think I could. He murdered my parents and he loved it. Besides, people do it all the time. How hard could it be? Destruction of our fellow humans is one of the basic disgusting things that is encoded in our DNA. You do it all the time.”

He shook his head. “Only when necessary.”

She huffed out a snort. “Fine. But you’ve done it enough and you’re still standing and walking around. You don’t seem destroyed by it. He took my parents lives. I want his.”

“This is grief talking.”

She stormed towards him. “You don’t know enough about me to make a statement like that.”

Tell her we know everything about her.

But he wouldn’t tell her that. She would laugh at him or worse demand he let her leave.

“If you believe nothing else, believe this: taking someone’s life, even if that person deserves it, changes you. If you must have him dead, and I don’t disagree that he needs to be removed from this planet, I will do the deed.”

Countless black marks marred his soul. One more would not make that much of a difference. And he would do anything for Summer. If she asked him to, he would break every moral and ethical rule in existence.

She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “I’m not going to relent on this, Cullen.”

“Then we will never agree, because neither will I.”

She’s exhausted. She needs sleep.

His wolf was right. Summer needed rest.

“Wait here.” He walked into his bedroom and quickly changed the sheets on his bed for clean ones. He pulled up the covers. After a minute, he decided it looked presentable and he returned to the living room.

Summer stood by the window again. She looked out into the night, her forehead pressed against the cool glass. “Isn’t death supposed to be easy for us? We’re animals.” She spoke without turning around.

“Do you know so little about your wolf after all of this time?”

She laughed but it was a cold sound and it brought no joy to Cullen’s heart to hear it. “She gets frustrated with me. I don’t often do what she wants.”

His lips twitched. “I try to fulfill the wishes of mine at least ninety percent of the time. He’s usually right.”

Summer turned around and leaned her back against the window. “I don’t even like mine. I make it a point to tune her out as much as possible.”

“Now that, Summer Morrison, makes me sad. Our wolf is a gift to us from fate. It’s a present so sought after that men kill, cheat, and destroy to possess it. Duplication of our canine half seems to be impossible. If we never know our wolves, we are never whole beings.”

Summer narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell you what. I will learn to embrace my inner wolf. I will listen to it, follow its guidance, and even shift if you will teach me how to kill Claudius.”

Cullen considered the deal she proposed. It might pay to agree. Once Summer started to embrace her wolf, she wouldn’t want to kill Claudius. She would want Cullen to do it because that was the way the pack worked. The more comfortable she got with her four leggedness, the more she would crave the workings of the pack. If he agreed to her deal, it would solve two big problems for him. Summer would finally know herself completely, and Cullen wouldn’t have to worry about exposing her to the destructive side of life.

He nodded. “All right. Now,” he extended his hand. “You should go to bed. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow if I’m going to make a killer out of you.”

Summer raised an eyebrow. “Why do I feel like you’ve just manipulated me?”

“Because you’re a smart woman. I have done what you accuse me of. But you’d better learn that now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Learn what?”

He pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. For a moment, he just enjoyed the softness of her lips.

“I’m always in control and I always win in a fight.”