Wolf at the Door Read online

  And what else? Oh yes, don’t run. Any animal will chase something that flees; it’s an instinctive reaction. Far different from her own instinctive reaction, which was to turn and run just as fast as she could. Which wouldn’t, she knew, be anywhere near fast enough. A grizzly could run down a horse over a short distance, with astounding speed for such a huge beast.

  Four steps ... five ... six ... the bear was head-down, peering into the excavation created by its enormous claws ... seven ... it was looking directly at her, and Kelly halted like a statue, mesmerised by the tiny, near-sighted eyes that looked at her, apparently without seeing. Short-sighted, her father had said, but with nose and ears so keen that vision wasn’t terribly important. It would certainly see movement, in any event; Kelly froze.

  Eight steps ... the bear had returned to its digging ... nine ... and suddenly it reared upright, looming like a grizzled mountain as it snuffled out its concern in a grunting, pig-like squeal of query.

  The bear took a step forward, nose upthrust as it tried to catch her scent. Another, and Kelly felt her breath constricting inside her. She didn’t dare to breathe, smothering in her own fear. Another step and she tried to scream.

  ‘Don’t move and don’t make a sound.’ The words hissed in her ear even as a strong hand clasped itself across her mouth, killing the scream before it could escape. An arm wrapped itself around her middle like an iron band, choking away what little air she had inhaled. Kelly would have fainted, but the arm eased immediately and the air rushed in to fill her lungs before fingers of steel closed off her mouth again.

  ‘ The voice at her ear, even in the hiss of a whisper, was unmistakable. She didn’t need to turn and look to know that it was Grey Scofield who held her an immobile captive. And she knew as well that she didn’t dare move, not even to look back, because clearly the bear was becoming more agitated.

  Its squeal of query had deepened to become a growling demand, and even as she watched, the animal’s jaws began to clack together in horrifying fashion, with strings of saliva frothing from the enormous teeth.

  ‘Freeze!’ The command was irrelevant; Kelly couldn’t have moved had she wanted to. Grey’s arms held her actually clear of the ground, and she sensed he was preparing to throw her into the nearest tree if it should become necessary. She could feel the tensing of the muscles as he seemed to flex his arms, like a man preparing to toss the caber in the highland games.

  Then, unaccountably, the bear lowered its bulk to four feet again, and with a mighty shake of its head it turned away to fade like pale golden smoke into the foliage. It disappeared so silently, so quickly, that Kelly wondered if it had really been there at all.

  The constricting band at her waist eased, only to clamp upon her wrist like a living manacle as Grey thrust Kelly around and began to drag her with him up the trail towards the road.

  ‘Move, dammit!’ he growled. ‘He’ll be circling to catch the wind, and I don’t want to be cut off from the trucks.’

  So swiftly did he haul her along that Kelly’s feet barely touched the rough track beneath them, and when she stumbled it was not to fall, but to be simply hauled through the air like a doll in the hands of a child. Not until they had reached the open space of the road clearing and the comparative safety of the trucks — Grey’s parked immediately behind her own — did he allow Kelly to slow to a reasonable pace. And that lasted only a .second.

  As they reached the truck he suddenly turned her in his hands, forcing her back against the side of the truck as he glared down at her through eyes like pale grey pebbles, blank of all expression in the intensity of his rage.

  He seemed to glare at her for hours, but finally his fierce, growling voice invaded the bond of that horrible locking gaze.

  ‘You bloody ... stupid ... little fool!’ he grated. ‘I should break your silly, childish damned neck for you,’

  ‘I ... I ... Kelly tried to reply, but her breathlessness and fear made speech impossible. Never had she seen a human being so angry. There was a tangible aura of rage surrounding Grey that was so fearful she would almost sooner have faced the bear.

  ‘You ... nothing!’ he snarled. ‘Did I or did I not tell you never to wander around alone?’

  His fingers were like claws digging into her shoulders as he shook her, and Kelly’s head snapped forward and back until she thought her neck would snap. She started to try and speak, he didn’t give her the chance.

  ‘Damn it! Didn’t I?’ he demanded, still shaking her.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to speak against the pain of his shaking her, but they did nothing to ease the anger in his eyes. If anything, the expression changed only to one of outright scorn.

  ‘And don’t think tears will help you,’ he growled. ‘You’ll be crying a damned sight worse than that before I’m through with you, little miss. My God! If I’d known you were going to be this stupid I’d have packed you out of camp when you first got there.’

  Shaking his own head with angry disbelief, he stopped shaking her long enough for her to catch a breath.

  ‘I ... I’m ... I’m sorry,’ she managed to say. ‘I thought ... thought you meant ... meant ...’

  ‘Think? You didn’t think at all and you know it,’ Grey snarled. ‘What do you think this is, girl, the bloody English countryside? Well, let me tell you, it’s not! For somebody who doesn’t know what they’re up to, it can be a damned dangerous place to be wandering around … especially alone.’

  He continued to rail at her, but Kelly no longer heard the individual words. Her head was swimming as the realisation of her earlier danger finally registered. She thought for one horrible moment she was going to be sick.

  It seemed like forever until the shaking finally stopped and her vision cleared sufficiently for her to once again face her tormentor. Her long eyelashes fluttered against her tears as she slowly raised her eyes from the deep vee of Grey’s half-open shirt front, up the strong column of his neck to the determined chin and the mouth that still quivered with half suppressed anger. And finally to his eyes, deep pools of icy greyness that, just for an instant, seemed to be regarding Kelly with an unexpected tenderness. But even as that thought registered, his eyes glazed over again to become the expressionless, stony orbs that were so much more familiar.

  Flexing her shoulders against the harshness of his grasp, Kelly met his gaze squarely despite the fluttering inside her, her own anger beginning to rouse in objection to his angry, rough treatment of her.

  Grey regarded her impassively, neither his eyes nor his face giving her any clue to the remaining extent of his anger. But Kelly didn’t care. Glaring up at him, she took several deep breaths before she finally spoke.

  ‘Let... Go ... Of … Me!’ The slowly spaced words emerged in a whisper, but her voice didn’t reveal the trembling of white-hot rage inside her. It also had no obvious effect on Grey, who stood unmoving, his hands still firmly gripping her shoulders.

  ‘You … swine! You callous, unfeeling swine!’ she mouthed, twisting her slim body in a futile attempt to free herself Still he didn’t move.

  Thrusting her hands against his massive chest, she stamped one foot angrily, knowing it was a childish gesture but long past actually caring. It was like shoving against the side of the truck itself; Grey was immobile as a rock. And as silent.

  Kelly’s plump under-lip thrust itself into a determined pout as she glanced down, measuring the position of his legs as she threw back one leg and aimed a vicious kick at his left shin.

  This time, adroitly shifting the leg before her toe struck him, Grey laughed, but it was a harsh, cruel laugh that sent shivers up her spine. And then, abruptly, he released her with yet another bark of laughter.

  ‘You’ve got guts; I’ll give you that," he growled.

  Kelly ignored him, turning to fling open the driver’s door of her vehicle and begin scrambling up into the high seat. The curse she muttered beneath her breath shouldn’t have carried to him, but he heard it. She realised that
as one huge hand flashed out to pluck her from the open doorway of the truck and bring her spinning into his arms.

  ‘You ungrateful little vixen,’ he whispered harshly before lowering his mouth to claim hers in a harsh, almost brutal kiss that forced apart her lips before she could even think of opposing him.

  His arms were wrapped around her middle, crushing the breath from her as his mouth searched her own, demanding, commanding, insisting upon a response.

  At first the response was solely negative. Kelly wriggled and kicked and twisted against the grasp that held her helpless, sobbing for breath as his mouth searched across her lips, her cheek, and down against the warm hollow of her shoulder. But resistance was futile, and even before her mind had registered that fact, her body was beginning to betray her with its own response.

  She could feel the heat of him, the harsh shifting of his chest muscles against the inflamed softness of her breasts. Her nipples were roused by the pressure, the ceaseless shifting of his denim shirt as it rubbed against them. He was holding her back hard against the side of the truck, his aroused body thrusting against her as he systematically violated her with his mouth.

  Kelly’s lips softened, her fingers moving of their own volition through the tangled hair on the back of his neck as she shifted her position ever so slightly so as to belter meet his passionate lips. She was increasingly conscious of her own arousal, the feel of him between her thighs taut and warm despite the thickness of her jeans.

  His growling moan of desire was matched then by her own sobbing response as her responses grew freer, more deliberately matched to the contours of his body and the flexing caresses of his hands at her back. His fingers played a throbbing drum roll at the base of her spine, touching off skyrockets of response as they prickled the sensitive nerve endings. Never had she felt such a compelling, demanding response from within herself.

  As Grey’s lips slid across her cheek to nuzzle beneath the lobe of her ear, Kelly allowed one hand to slacken its grip on his neck, trailing her fingers up along the whiskery line of his jaw, exploring his cheek and forehead before sliding down over the strong lines of his neck to tangle her fingers into the hair of his chest.

  As if in response, he slackened his own grip on her, one arm shifting so that his own hand could begin an exploratory journey of its own up her side and across the tautness of her breasts. His every touch like an electric shock, prodding greater and greater responses from her, he used fingers and lips to bring her closer and ever closer to screaming out her demands for surrender.

  But it wouldn’t really be surrender, she felt. Her body was making demands of its own, thrusting against him, bringing to her lips words of whispered torment and passion as her lips flickered across his ear, guiding his fingers as she twisted herself to make the passage of his hand even more delicious.

  Gone was the tiny voice that should have been crying stop! Kelly didn’t want to stop. She wanted more and more of this man’s incredible lovemaking, wanted him to go on holding her, stroking her, fanning the passions she had never before so much as realised could even exist within her.

  She was only dimly conscious of Grey freeing one hand long enough to open the door of the truck, then his hands were at her waist, lifting her on to the sun-warmed contours of the seat. She held to him, dragging him in on top of her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The raucous blare of a truck horn, followed by a chorus of ragged cheers, shattered the idyllic scene with a brutal suddenness.

  Grey reared back out of the truck with a bellow of undisguised rage and Kelly thrust herself upright to stare in embarrassed horror at the vehicle which had pulled up squarely beside them. The crowd of laughing, cheering oilmen swam into focus with an alien, inhuman, almost animal aura, and in their faces she didn’t see genuine appreciation for the display, but a cruel, mocking derision.

  Her head swam, the blood rushing upward to colour her face with the flush of humiliation. How long had they been there? How much had they seen? Then all thoughts of her own embarrassment fled at the sight of Grey rounding the nose of her truck as he advanced like an avenging tiger upon the truckload of laughing men, and for an instant Kelly felt real fear.

  But only for an instant; then her unbelieving ears told her that he, too, was laughing, returning a ribald jest with one even cruder, more humiliating.

  Her eyes grew wide. She honestly did not — could not — believe it. Until a vagrant breeze carried his voice to her, a growling, gravelly voice that mocked her, mocked everything that had gone before as he laughingly taunted the men before him.

  She couldn’t bear it! Without a conscious thought, she slid over into the driver’s seat, started her truck, and slammed it into gear with a vicious yank on the shift lever. The vehicle bucked and coughed at the unaccustomed treatment, and for a single horrifying instant she thought it would stall. But then, thankfully, the co-ordination of clutch and accelerator came together and the truck flung itself off the verge of the track, flinging gravel and dust in a great fan as it slewed on to the track and roared towards Kakwa camp as if all the devils in hell were following.

  There was time for only a single glance in the wide rear-view mirrors, but it was enough to show Kelly the agile figure of Grey leaping for his own vehicle, and she had a sudden, almost laughable thought of him thundering in pursuit like the hero of a Western movie. The thought died stillborn in the effort to keep the big truck on the road as she roared down the track at far more speed than was safe.

  She arrived in the camp to find the parking lot empty, which was just as well considering the sliding, dust-raising manner in which she flung the truck to a halt before the trailer she now considered home. She didn’t bother to take the keys from the truck, much less the various packets she had brought with her from the city. Grabbing the trailer key from the pocket of her jeans, she was out of one door and in through the other before the truck engine could cease coughing.

  Inside, the door locked and the security chain fumbled into position, she prowled the interior of the trailer like a demented soul. Gone were the tears, replaced by confusion.

  How could Grey have made love to her like that, and then walked over to those other men and laughed about it? And how could she have let him ... helped him ... make love to her in such a totally wanton fashion?

  Even in the throes of her despair, Kelly couldn’t ignore or excuse her own part in the prelude to that provident but humiliating interruption. She had responded to Grey with an abandon that in retrospect frightened her far more than did the bear.

  And he had laughed!

  Shame gave way to rage, bitter rage that coursed through her slender young body as quickly as passion had coursed only minutes earlier. The nerve of Grey Scofield!

  Kelly stalked through the trailer, her anger growing with the certain knowledge that within minutes he would be pounding on the door, demanding entrance.

  For what? To apologise ... it was too late for that. To explain his chauvinistic, mocking attitude ... what possibly could be explained? He had cut her to the very soul, and even an overbearing, arrogant animal like him should realise that.

  Sensitive ears, awareness heightened by her anger, picked up the sound of Grey’s truck arriving. Kelly flung herself down in a chair, rose, sat in another chair, then scurried into the bathroom. She could not face him, had no intention of doing so, yet her ears strained for the sound of him coming to her door.

  And strained in vain. After minutes of torture and anticipation she had to accept it. He wasn’t even going to try and apologise!

  Kelly fussed and fumed, staring into the bathroom mirror at a face pale with emotion, the freckles standing out in stark relief. Her eyes were puffy, not from crying but from holding back the tears, and even as she stared at a strangely unfamiliar countenance in the mirror, her head began to throb.

  The throbbing intensified with the growl of truck engines as an entire flotilla of vehicles swarmed into the compound, forming a line in front of the dinin
g trailer. Rushing to the door of her own trailer, Kelly was mystified for only as long as it took her to look at the clock. It read seven-fifteen, and she realised with a start that it was just breakfast time; obviously the men had been out working, taking full advantage of the long northern daylight when the sun stretched out of bed as early as four a.m.

  And with the realisation came her own hunger, a sudden ravishing hunger spurred by the raging passions within her. She reached for the doorknob, then paused. Could she bring herself to enter the dining hall, to face Grey Scofield and perhaps the jeering of a room full of men? She had a visualisation of Grey holding forth at great length, entertaining his crew with a bawdy tale of his own before-breakfast exploits. At her expense.

  ‘Well, damn Grey Scoficld!’ she muttered, flinging open the door and marching determinedly towards the mess hall. The hazy yet all too vivid memories of the truck-load of jeering men revealed no familiar faces, and in her present mood Kelly didn’t really care. Let him tell the whole camp, if he liked; she didn’t care.

  There was no jeering when Kelly entered the mess trailer, only the expectable chorus of greetings from men intent on stuffing themselves with enormous quantities of bacon and eggs, steak and hash-brown potatoes, stacks of hot buttered toast and pots of steaming, strong black coffee. Grey Scofield, she noted with some surprise, wasn’t there.

  Kelly ducked through the serving hatch and checked quickly that she wasn’t needed, then loaded a plate of her own and wandered over to sit at an empty table, her back to the thinning crowd of men. She didn’t want conversation, didn’t especially want the gentle teasing flirtatiousness of some of the younger men in the camp. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts of anger and humiliation and revenge.

  ‘When you’re finished you’d best go apologise to your truck.’