A shifter had definitely staked his claim and Frank Smith’s pack was responsible. Frank had marked a territory he thought belonged to him and he was sending out a message, too. The woman living there was his woman.
“I asked you a question, Carla,” Jock said, growing angrier by the minute as his gaze held at the corner housing her neatly made bed.
What had taken place there? What kind of consummation had she and Frank enjoyed? Damn it to hell, the what-ifs were killing him!
Frank was the son of a dirty scoundrel, a real bastard, and Jock had reason to believe Frank was just like the father who’d sired him. He’d had an occasion to run into Frank’s pack a few years back and he had been told, warned actually, that Frank had set down roots and marked the entire Wyoming region as his.
Considering his scent was stronger around Carla’s place, he would argue Frank’s perceived territory.
“I won’t ask you again,” Jock said. The need to phase lunged at him. The desire to mate drove him to the brink of unruly behavior.
Carla backed away, placing deliberate distance between them. “Who I see isn’t your business.”
“The hell you say!” He thrust his arms forward and clasped his hands around her wrists, drawing her against him. “I want to know, Carla. After that attack today, I have to know. Were you with Frank Smith?”
She flinched.
“Did Frank Smith take you to his bed?” He jerked her to him. “Damn you! I need to know!”
If he’d hoped for denial, he probably wouldn’t receive it from this woman. Carla was too direct, too straightforward and honest, to flat-out lie to his face.
A raspy hitch in her throat gave away the answer, but the blush of her skin was a tell-all sign as well. “Frank and I are close friends.”
“We’re friends,” Jock said, refusing to acknowledge the gush of pain centered in his chest. “But you don’t spread your legs for me.”
“You never asked!” she accused.
His cock jumped in his breeches. He took a ragged breath as a flash of images spun through his head. He could almost picture her body above his, her long, slender fingers holding fast to his shoulders as she rode him. “I’m asking now.”
Silence lingered for several minutes as she stared back at him with knowing eyes. Finally, she took a heavy breath. “You’re too late.”
“Impossible.” He bracketed his arms around her waist and planted kisses from her lips to her ear.
“I don’t know if I belong to him or not.”
“You don’t,” he breathed.
“How do you know?” she asked, arching as his mouth dipped to the patch of skin between her collarbone and neck.
He blew out a hard breath a
nd eased away from her, resting his hand in the curve of his waist. “Do you love him?”
“I care for him.”
“What do you feel exactly?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“He took you because he could, Carla. He made a partial claim on your body so all other shifters would leave you alone.”
“Shifters?”
He scrubbed the side of his recently shaven face as he contemplated the best way to explain his life and the lives of so many who now occupied the land east and west of Laramie. He’d always planned to do this differently, to wait until the time was right to show her who and what he was, but thanks to dragging his feet and Frank’s sudden move to claim her, he had no other choice. “I’m a wolf shifter.”