Wolf Bonded (Wolfish 1)
This time, the voice comes from down below by the base of the rock.
I lean forward a bit until Kaleb’s bobbing head and shoulders come into view.
“I knew you would come,” he says with a bit of a lilt in his voice. Damn, even his voice oozes with sex appeal today. “Come swim with us.”
I feel my face grow hot.
Beside me, both Aimee and Jess start nudging me with their elbows. I can practically hear the breath trapped in their lungs as neither of them allows themselves to breathe. I have to answer, or else they’re both going to pass out from lack of oxygen.
“You’re insane,” I say, leaning just far enough out that Kaleb can hear my voice. “That water is freezing.”
Kaleb just grins wider. “Aw, come on. It’s not that bad.”
I shake my head, but I can’t help matching a little bit of his smile. It’s infectious.
“Sabrina …” Jess hisses. “What are you doing?”
Aimee still looks like she’s going to pass out. “Go on. If one of them asked me, I’d already be in there with them.”
I nudge both of them with my foot, but from the look on Kaleb’s face, he overheard at least some of that.
“Sorry!” I call down. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
Kaleb laughs and mutters something under his breath about skinny-dipping, but he must be good at knowing when he’s beat. He gives me a wink before swimming back over to the opposite side of the water where Marlowe and Rory are sitting along the edge of the water.
The three of them look like shaggy dogs as they shake the water from their long, dark hair, so soaked that it’s matted to their necks and faces.
Even from here, I catch sight of a scar on Marlowe’s collarbone while I watch that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s pretty decently sized, but his shirt must cover it up at school. Kaleb’s hair is an umber color that seems to change shades depending on how the light catches it, not unlike the specks in his eyes. His hair is so long that he could tie it back in a braid or ponytail that would probably reach the center of his back. Rory has the shortest hair out of the three of them. It’s the darkest too, more black than brown.
He looks a lot more like Romulus than the other two boys do. Adopted, Tom said.
“Look who’s staring now,” Aimee says … and this time, she doesn’t bother dropping her voice.
“Shut up,” I mutter. But she has a point. Now that I’ve been caught, I guess there’s no harm in taking a little look. Just for a minute. Just long enough to make out identical tattoos on the left side of each of the boy’s torsos.
They each have a circle of ink with a triangle inside of it just below their ribcage on the same side. The marks are rough looking, almost like the lines were scratched on instead of drawn, and each has a slightly difficult detail in the center. There’s something about the placement and the shape of the ink against the curvature of their torsos that makes me transfixed on them for a minute.
So transfixed that I don’t hear Tom coming up behind me.
“Come on now, Sabrina, you know you want to join them.”
There’s a hint of something in his voice that I don’t like. Something that makes my stomach sour and panic rise in my chest, even before I realize what he’s doing.
Before I have the chance to turn, Tom’s hands slam into my upper back and shove me off the edge of the rock and into the cold water. The last thing I hear before I’m enveloped in the deafening, blinding roar of freezing water is the sound of his half-choked laugh.
18
Sabrina
Even during the best of circumstances, I’m not a good swimmer.
And here, plunging unexpectedly into ice-cold water in jeans, heavy boots, and an oversized sweater is far from best of circumstances.
There’s a moment where I hang beneath the surface, shock disorienting my brain as I try to figure out what just happened. By the time I’ve begun to realize what I need to do next—swim to the surface—I suddenly find I can’t.
I can’t move at all.
My hoodie somehow managed to get caught on the rocks just below the surface of the water and must have halfway pulled off my body in the plunge, leaving my arms and upper body tangled inside it.