Spirit of the Wolf by Vonna Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

excuse, if you have one. Excuse?” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “No, it isn’t that, is it? Something . . .”
    The horses were impatient to be let out. Cat and he should end this stare-down and tend to them. Instead, he continued to study her. Everything from her bruised lips to her lack of a bra, even the sweat on her throat was his doing. From the night they’d met, he’d felt things for her he hadn’t known he was capable of. Things he’d always refused to examine.
    “Matt?”
    “What?” Instead of telling him to go to hell, which she must believe she had a right to do, she was still speaking to him.
    “I want to see the pictures once they’re uploaded.” She extended a slow, maybe hesitant hand toward him and touched his middle.
    The prints. “No, you don’t.”
    “I saw the real thing. How can photographs be any worse?”
    How little she knew. “Don’t ask.”
    Confusion and perhaps compassion spread over her. “Everything feels as if it’s breaking apart today. Somehow I’m going to put it back together and get some answers. The thing is, I don’t see how I can do that without your help. Are you willing, Matt? Are you?”
    Was he capable? “The horses.” He started toward the rear of the trailer. “They need out.”
    He didn’t hear her footsteps, but somehow she was there, ready to step into the trailer as he unhooked the latch.
    “Talk to me.” She planted her hand over his. “What’s going on?”
    “You don’t want to know,” he said, when the truth was, he couldn’t see past the darkness still clinging to him.
    She backed away, looking at the ground as if expecting something from it. “We’re not getting anywhere. I’m going home. The next move’s up to you, maybe.”
     
    Good thing she added maybe to her comment, Cat thought as she pulled into her driveway with the empty trailer rattling behind her. She’d done a fairly good job of shutting down her mind during the ride home, but now it was waking up, as was her body. After parking beside her six-stall barn, she got out. Hungry whinnying served as a reminder that she was late in feeding her horses. Her own stomach growled, but that would have to wait, because the critters that paid the bills came first.
    But not so first that she was oblivious to her body, she admitted as she headed for the hay stacked under a lean-to. One hand went to her mouth, and she ran a rough nail over her lower lip where Matt’s impact remained. She hadn’t expected him to kiss her. Given everything that had happened since they’d had sex earlier today, she’d believed making out would be the last thing on his mind.
    Making out? It had hardly been that; more like an attack.
    And not just a bruising kiss, she acknowledged as she took wire cutters to the wire around the closest bale. There’d also been a matter of him backing her against the truck door and holding her in place.
    Rough foreplay. If she wanted to evade the truth, she might be able to get away with calling it that. Unfortunately, foreplay was a lie.
    Something had come over Matt. Whatever that something was had made him believe he had the right to manhandle her. He’d plowed over manners and civilized behavior. She could buy that he’d been reacting to finding one of his calves torn apart, but did that really explain things? Wouldn’t most men punch something, curse, maybe blast away in the direction the killers had gone?
    Most wouldn’t jump the bones of the only member of the opposite sex within jumping distance. Not that he’d accomplished the act.
    Shaking her head, she concentrated on the horses. Things were set up so they could go in and out of the barn as they wanted. Come night, she’d lock most of them in individual stalls for security. When she’d showed up, they’d all been out in the two-acre pasture adjacent to the barn with their heads over the top railing and staring at the road, waiting for her.
    Now all were bunched where she always