Read Wolfen for Free Online

rate it was going, she was going to have herself convinced that it was actually a good idea to fraternize with the guys next door before long. Hopefully, they'd be long gone before she lost her grip on sanity, but she wouldn't place any bets on it.

     

      The entire time she'd been trying to focus on her work arguments had been darting back and forth through her mind in a heated debate between hormones and sanity.

     

      Granted, they didn't look like the ‘boy next door’ type with their motorcycles, leather jackets and pants, tribal tattoos and pierced body parts, she told herself, but they'd acted so neighborly in helping her with her groceries! And it wasn't as if she wasn't a rebel in her own way. She didn't have a regular job, or dress like the average person either.

     

      She wore her hair unfashionably long—mostly because she rarely thought about such things and didn't have the time or inclination to make regular trips to the hair salon—and what difference did it make anyway? She spent more of her time tramping about the woods somewhere than anything else.

     

      Just because they didn't look like they had jobs, of any kind, didn't mean they didn't. Or that they made their living selling drugs or by some other equally illegal means. They could be on vacation. Or maybe they worked in construction and were between jobs? Or on their way to one?

     

      They were certainly built like men who did physical labor for a living.

     

      Anyway, they were young.

     

      Men didn't age like women, the skunks! They could be older than they looked. They didn't act like kids—except for the motorcycles, but that still didn't mean anything when she'd seen motorcycle gang members with gray hair and beards.

     

      She was still certain they were young, too young to have any real interest in a woman her age. They were probably just amusing themselves with the ‘science geek', older woman, pathetic plain Jane desperate for a man's attention. They probably thought it was hilarious the way she reacted to their flirting—catatonia accompanied by neon flashing blushes and squirming discomfort.

     

      Irritated with herself, she moved away from the window when it began to grow dark, set her alarm, and resolutely lay down to take a nap so that she'd be more alert for her nocturnal wanderings. If the wolf didn't show up at the cabin again tonight, she decided, she'd go down to the area she'd found just off one of the paths that indicated the wolf pack regularly passed that way. Even if she didn't manage to tag one, she might be able to get a head count and that would be some progress.

     

      She surprised herself by actually dozing off, but it wasn't the alarm that woke her. It was vibrations traveling through the bed and through her. She lay still for a few minutes after she'd surfaced toward consciousness, trying to figure out what the noise was that was annoying her and where it might be coming from.

     

      Suddenly recalling Balin had invited her over for drinks and music, the vibrations finally connected in her sluggish brain and she pushed herself upright. Slowly, anger began to pound through her, matching the beat vibrating through everything around her. Rolling from the bed, she stumbled around the darkened cabin and finally found the door and flung it open. Stomping angrily from her cabin to the one next door, she began pounding on the door with her fist.

     

      She'd just raised her hand to pound on the door a second time, a little louder, when the panel was abruptly snatched open. Con stood framed in the opening, his expression still, unreadable, though the same couldn't be said for his eyes. They skimmed a leisurely path down her length and finally traced a return path. His pale blue orbs had darkened considerably when he met her gaze again, gleaming now with something that wasn't amusement, although his finely etched lips had quirked upward at one corner. “Decided to join us?” he