Rough (Wolf Ranch 1)

My stomach tightened, and I didn’t want to ask. But I did. “What?”

She tucked her dark hair back behind her ear. “Rob sent Boyd to date you. To keep you quiet about his bull riding accident because while it was probably pretty bad when it first happened, he healed way too fast to be human. You couldn’t know the truth. Boyd’s always been the charming one of the three Wolf brothers.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I guess Rob figured a little attention from the good-looking one, and you’d be smitten enough to do whatever he asked.”

She looked me over, head to toe. “A little attention goes a long way with some women.”

Oh God. I wanted to puke. She was manipulating me and being a total bitch. She knew a woman’s weaknesses and went right for them. I was smart enough to see that. She’d been all over Boyd at the bar before I got there. Hell, even after. Then her little stunt with the mechanical bull. Boyd had rebuffed her efforts, and she was scorned. He’d wanted me, not her.

The cattiness was one thing, but something in her words rang true.

Boyd had used sex to distract me from examining his wounds. He’d gotten me in the barn, got my panties down around my thighs and made me forget my own name, let alone to look at his wound. Or lack of. He’d even covered the spot with a bandage to fake me out. It was only because of her brother’s eagerness to fool around with his girlfriend and a meddling Jett Markle that the truth had come out. Boyd hadn’t told me he was a shifter.

Had Boyd been seducing me just to keep what they were a secret? How would Karen know that if she hadn’t actually heard it from one of the brothers? She hadn’t been there.

“You’re not one of us. You never will be. He may have had fun with you, but he’ll be back in my bed. He can mate me, bite me as we fuck. I’ll give him pure pups.” She stuck her chest out and practically preened with pride over her ability to birth a shifter baby.

I might deliver babies for a living, but I knew jack about shifters. Was a shifter/shifter mating required? Could there be mixed babies? Was that even possible? Was she messing with me or telling me the truth?

Boyd hadn’t filled me in. He hadn’t answered any of my questions. He’d promised to do so, but instead of coming in last night and staying when he could’ve given me the answers I needed, he’d left. Was he stalling?

I blinked. I couldn’t process all this or look at Karen a second longer.

“Excuse me, I’m late,” I snapped at the same moment Boyd pulled up in his giant truck. I hadn’t expected to see him this morning, but my heart flipped at the sight. I had it for him bad, and I realized now that was more trouble than I ever imagined.

“Uh oh. Speak of the devil,” Karen said, a sly smile curving her glossed lips. “Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Have a fling, ‘cause he’s that good. But I don’t want you to get your heart broken like every other human female who slept with Boyd Wolf.”

“What did you just say?” Boyd growled as he climbed out of his truck and slammed the door. He couldn’t have possibly heard that unless—

Oh yeah. They probably have super hearing, too. Wolf ears.

He stalked toward Karen, but she dashed away. “Gotta run! Thanks for saving James yesterday!” She jumped in a beat-up VW bug and drove off.

“What the fuck did she just say to you?” Boyd demanded as he watched her car disappear around the corner.

I drew back. I didn’t like this side of him, the tense, snarling anger that seemed to simmer beneath the surface. I didn’t like the way he was talking to me. I especially didn’t like all the thoughts rushing through my head right now. I wanted to throat punch Karen for messing with my head.

“Is it true, Boyd?”

“No,” he said immediately before I even clarified what I was asking.

“You’re lying.”

He shook his head, like it would make things clear. “Lying about what? What did she tell you, Audrey?”

“That Rob told you to seduce me to keep me from talking about your accident. To make me forget about looking at it or to ensure I was crazy for thinking you’d been so gravely injured.”

Boyd started to speak, then his mouth snapped closed, then opened again, and my heart dropped to my shoes. Oh shit. Karen had been right.

I’d questioned myself, wondered if I needed a new prescription for my glasses. Doubted my medical assessment. All that time, he’d been telling me I’d exaggerated.

Tears filled my eyes, and I started stumbling blindly for my car door. “When you open your mouth, you better not lie to me.”