Page 54 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
The number of things contained in that “yet” slammed into me like a hurricane, giving life to the million different scenarios and fantasies locked away in a tightly guarded corner of my brain. They all sprang forward like a water main with a leak.
I’d kept them there because, as I’d just told him, I didn’t know a thing about him besides his first name. So it wasn’t helpful to think so intensely about someone. Now they came rushing over me in a swirling storm that I couldn’t dodge. Even if I’d wanted to.
My body tingled as he fixed both eyes on me—the blue icy and hard while the golden amber glowed with heat and power. Theystood as a perfect definition of the dichotomy of Lincoln as I knew him.
“Lincoln,” I forced myself to say through the maelstrom in my mind and the full-body tingling his attention was eliciting. “Why. Are. You. Here?”
Each word had to be its own sentence, else I risk losing control of my mouth. Of saying something we both might regret.
He didn’t look away. He stared straight into the storm, facing it down without moving or even flinching.
“Because I want to be,” he ground out, his chest rising and falling with a heavy breath. “I need to be. I—”
He shook his head violently enough to send his long hair flying. “You were born here. In New Lockwood, I mean. Correct?”
There was no stopping my eyebrows from shooting up at the sudden change—not only in topic but in his body language. He was once again locked down, trembling in place as something inside him struggled to break free but was unable to escape the cage he was keeping about himself.
“Uh. Yes?”
“Then you left,” he pushed.
“Your ability to ferret out answers is nigh unmatched,” I replied, trying to pull together the pieces of my mind once more. Where was he going with this? What did it have to do with … with whatever had almost happened a moment ago?
“Tell me about that,” he said tightly.
Is that desperation in his voice? What in the name of heavens is going on?
I didn’t hide the skepticism. “That’s what you want to ask me about?”
The burning in his eyes betrayed the lie, but he nodded slowly anyway. “One of the things I want, yes. One of many.”
My mouth drained of all moisture as something slipped through his walls to punch me right between my breasts. A reminder of … of something unspoken.
“So will you tell me?”
“Lincoln, there is nowayyou came out here and broke into my grandmother’s house just to ask me this simple question. You could have knocked on the door and asked me when I answered. Like a normal person.”
He smiled, and my heart stopped for a pair of seconds. “Yet here I am,” he said. “Nor am I normal.”
“Okay, fine,” I said over the butterflies. “My parents moved away when I was ten. That’s it. That’s the entire story. Sorry to disappoint. Now will you leave my grandmother’s house?”
“That’s not it. I want you totell meabout it, Sylvie,” he growled.
I had to brace myself after hearing my name on his lips. The sound of it hit me like a fishing lure, snagging on my chest and pulling me in closer. I hated that feeling of weakness, of nearly succumbing to his inadvertent … whatever it was.
“Why should I?” I challenged, harnessing that frustration and using it. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Other than your name, all I know about you is you’ve spied on me at my grandmother’s funeral, stalked me in the forest, and now you’re here, committing a little breaking and entering. Why, I should be filing a restraining order against you, not authorizing you to write my biography!”
Lincoln stood tall during my tirade. He never flinched, never even wavered. Just watched and listened silently. Accepting it all.
“I’m trying to get to know you now,” he said once I stopped speaking.
“That,” I said, sputtering, searching for more words. “That is the most convoluted, backward way of looking at this!”
Lincoln shrugged my criticism aside. “Would you prefer we do rapid-fire?”
“What?”
“Rapid-fire.” He cocked his head to the side ever so slightly. “Last name?”
