Free Lonely Alpha by Ranae Rose Page A

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inside the den, but she longed to touch him, not with a cold nose,
but warm hands. An irresistible urge to wrap her arms around him
seized her, and the next moment, she was doing just that. She
breathed a thoroughly human sigh of relief. “Jack,” she barely
dared to whisper. She knew she should be silent, but saying his
name brought her a strange sense of comfort, and she needed to know
what kind of condition he was in. “How bad is it?”

Chapter 6
     
    “Pretty bad, I reckon.” His voice was rougher
and shakier than she’d ever heard it. “We’ll have to lie low in
here ‘till nighttime.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, still speaking in
hushed tones. “If we hadn’t made love we might not have been in the
cabin when the hunter came, and this might not have happened.” At
the memory of their tryst, dual waves of arousal and guilt
assaulted her. Maybe her desire for Jack had overpowered her better
judgment.
    “Don’t be sorry,” he growled. “I told you
makin’ love to you would be worth some suffering, and I stand by
that statement.”
    She eased the embrace she’d wrapped him in,
realizing it was probably hurting him.
    “No,” he said, catching one of her wrists and
holding her palm against his chest. “If we’ve gotta lie here naked
together in the dark where I can’t see you, I at least want to feel
you touch me.”
    She didn’t argue. She’d do anything to keep
him calm so he didn’t aggravate his injury further, and even this
simple contact with him helped to calm her nerves. What was it
about him? Even shot and bleeding, he made her feel secure. She bit
down on her inner lip as she thought about the men she’d dated –
none too seriously – back in Nashville. She couldn’t say the same
about any of them. After being raised by a single mother and never
knowing her father, she hadn’t been overeager to place her
unreserved confidence in a man – instead, she preferred to get to
know someone over time. But she trusted Jack, inexplicably, to her
core. The irony struck her in the form of nervous laughter.
    “Good Lord Mandy,” Jack grunted. “If you know
somethin’ so funny, tell me. I could use a little humor right
now.”
    “It’s nothing like that,” she said, tracing
the smooth line of his collar bone and then resting her palm on his
chest again. “I was just thinking that I might be a little
crazy.”
    “What, vacation not exactly going as
planned?” he asked knowingly.
    “Not at all.” She’d meant to sound
lighthearted – in a good mood, to distract him from his pain – but
it didn’t work. A man had never been a part of her plans for her
week in the Smoky Mountains, let alone a werewolf, and she’d
certainly never imagined the situation she found herself in
now.
    “Well I’m sorry about the hunter,” Jack said.
“Seems like you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But
another part of me thinks…well, maybe you were in the right place
at the right time. I hate to imagine lyin’ here like this without
you. I’m glad I finally found you.”
    His seemingly heartfelt confession stirred
contradicting feelings of tenderness and alarm in Mandy. “Found –
you’ve been looking for me?”
    “Not really looking so much as hoping. Hoping
for a mate, though I admit, I didn’t think I’d ever really find
one.”
    “A mate?” Mandy’s mouth went dry.
    “Well yeah,” Jack said, as if the idea were
the most natural thing in the world. He picked her hand up off his
chest and held it in his own, stroking her palm with his calloused
fingertips. “Mandy?”
    “Yeah?” she barely managed to squeak out.
What was he going to do next – propose? She stifled another bout of
borderline-hysterical laughter.
    “I’m tired. I’m gonna go to sleep for a
little while.”
    She clenched back, gripping his hand tightly.
“Oh my God, Jack – you’re not dying, are you?” The thought of
losing him was as heart-wrenching as the thought of being