Wolf’s Redemption (The Wolves of Langeais #3)

Chapter Fourteen

The moment the rope around her waist loosened, Bek was on her feet and slipping from its loops. As tempted as she was to kick his taut ass as he squatted to assemble sticks into the makings of a small fire, she kept her distance. Distance was good. It kept her away from temptation. The last twelve hours had proved her willpower was sadly lacking when it came to men. Especially highly sexed men with a dark edge to them. Ulrik had that in spades.

Muscles flexed across his broad shoulders as his hands worked to create a spark. Bek curled her fingers into fists by her side, resisting the powerful urge to touch, to caress. She turned her back to him and unstoppered the wineskin. She needed fortification. Lots of it.

She took a sip and the sweet liquid slid easily down her throat. And another sip, then a big gulp. How much of this would she need to be pleasantly buzzed enough to drown out the urging of her lady parts that were all for a little fling in the forest? A quick shag on the carpet of pine needles beneath her feet? She took another swig. Then another.

By the time she’d turned around, confident she had herself under control, Ulrik had the fire lit, his knife in hand, and was skinning and gutting the hares. She seated herself across the fire from him and watched him work, those long fingers of his deftly wielding the knife as he prepared the hares for cooking.

She raised the wineskin to her lips, blocking her view of him.

What the actual fuck? A man gutting an animal is sexy? What is wrong with me?

She needed to put on her big girl panties and behave like a responsible adult. That giving in to her libido would feel good was never in doubt, but that he would be good for her was. Nope. This guy was getting nowhere near her knickers. By design or by default. Hell to the no. She’d keep her wayward desires under control. This time, she would look out for herself.

“So, do you have a plan?” She stoppered the wineskin and set it aside. “Or are we just going to wander aimlessly around in the forest for a while avoiding people, villages and wolves?”

He glanced up at her as he built a makeshift spit over the fire. “I will find my lord. There is a woman in the forest, east of the keep, who may know where he is.”

“We’re going east?”

He set a hare on the spit and the flames flickered over the carcass. “No.”

“You’re going east, and I’m going…home?”

“No. We are heading north, then turning northeast. Then we will make for the…woman in the woods. I will not be responsible for leading Lothair to my lord.”

She’d noticed the pause, the hesitation before he said the word ‘woman’. An ex-lover? As intriguing as it would be to meet her, hiking through the forest and sleeping in the dirt for however long it took to get there wasn’t in her game plan.

“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you tell me how to use the amulet so I can go home? I’m only slowing you down, and there’s no reason for me to stay.” She hiked up her dress and retrieved the gold disc from her jeans pocket. “So what do I do? Say the words again? In reverse maybe?”

He stared at her over the fire. “You are eager to return home and to reunite with your family. I understand. Family is precious.”

“Precious?” Bek snorted. “Not my family. I haven’t seen them in years, and I have no desire to. A bigger bunch of crooks and con artists you’d ever find.”

She hadn’t looked back when she’d skipped out on them a day after her seventeenth birthday. Not a glance, not a fare-thee-well, and she’d made no promises to return. And, unless she was willing to join the family business, they couldn’t give a toss that she’d gone either.

He frowned at her. Lucky him to have a family that cared.

“Then you must have a… What is it called… A career?”

She grimaced. “No.”

No one would call working at Charlie’s a career. It was a necessity. One she could avoid if she stayed here. Now there was a novel solution to her less-than-perfect life.

Firelight danced across his face and chest. It certainly had some appeal, but it wasn’t a workable option. Not if she wanted to keep her resolution of not getting involved. She needed to return, preferably before her parole office put out an APB on her for skipping out of town. And being in the twenty-first century again was a surefire way to ensure she did nothing stupid with Mr. Sex-on-a-stick. If ever that term applied to anyone, it was him. Fuck, he was gorgeous and deliciously sinful.

She shoved away the smutty images. “I don’t belong here, Ulrik. Though my life might be a crap-shoot back home, it’s still mine, and it kind of beats living in a forest forever.”

She’d miss her playlist, her favorite tattoo artist on the corner of Evelyn and Gosterwood. Hell, she’d miss running water, flushing toilets, instant heat and her bed. As old and lumpy as her mattress was, it trumped sleeping on the ground. “I have to go home.”

He studied her across the fire. “I do not have the answer for you, Rebekah, but I know someone who may. The last time we spoke, my lord had intentions of searching for a reversal to the spell.”

“Oh.”

Damn it. Guess she wasn’t leaving anytime soon, then. She tucked the little gold disc back into her jeans.

“If it gives you some comfort, my lord is with a woman who is also from the future.”

“Another person got pulled back in time?” She leaned forward. “Really?”

Was this something that happened to people all the time? They found an amulet and whoomph! They’re back in the tenth century? There must be all sorts of modern people running around here.

He set the second hare over the fire. “Yes, truly. Much the same as you, she found an amulet and deciphered the script.” He shook his head. “It is uncanny. Two women, in such a brief period, traversing time, when I have never seen the likes of it in all my life.”

Okay. So not an everyday occurrence. “Maybe it was the eclipse.”

“The blood moon?”

She shrugged. “You’re right. That’s just superstitious guff. There’s probably a scientific reason for it all far beyond my comprehension. I wasn’t exactly the smartest kid in class.”

He stood up, reached into the waistband of his trousers, and pulled out her phone. “You understand this, and it is clearly a scientific marvel. Not magic, as I first thought. And”—he gave her a rueful smile—“you almost outwitted me.”

He moved to sit beside her, and Bek’s gaze followed every lithe movement, every stretch of his trousers across his muscular thighs. He handed her the phone and took the wineskin, removing the stopper and raising it to his mouth. A drop trickled down into his beard. She tracked the droplet, itching to reach out and stop it. Or maybe lick it off with her tongue. She pulled her gaze away and stared at her phone, her body flushed. This man was killing her.

Her phone was dark and the screen cracked, a spiderweb of lines running across its face. “It’s a communication device. Nothing special. An outdated model. It’s not even an iPhone. Everyone in the twenty-first century has one of these.”

He spat out his wine, and the fire flared with the splash of alcohol.

He wiped his face on his sleeve and stared at her, his eyes wide. “The twenty-first century?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Like you said, I’m from the future.”

His Adam’s apple jerked in his throat. “That is… That is more than a thousand years in the future.”

“Yep. Modern girl here.” And a city girl. “ Totally unsuited for a place like this.”

He took another swig from the wineskin. Then another. Then he handed it to her.

She gulped the sweet liquid down. “Mmhmm. I know the feeling.”

Ulrik took the phone from her hands, his brow furrowed. He turned it over, running his fingers over it and tracing the cracks on the screen as though deciphering it might help him come to grips with how she’d come to be here.

“How does it work? How do you make the light shine?”

She shook her head. “You can’t. The battery’s flat. That’s why the light went out in the dungeon. Without my charger…”

Bek frowned. How did one explain the concept of electricity and power sockets to a man who lived in a world where they cooked food over a fire? Where the sun and candles were the only sources of light, and the only modes of transport were on foot or horseback.

“It needs a power source. It’s useless to me now, but essentially I could…connect with anyone who had one of these, as long as I knew the right set of numbers linked to their device. If they had their device turned on. Then I could talk to them, even if they were all the way back at the keep.”

He nodded, still staring at her phone. What did he make of it all? He seemed to be taking it in his stride. Then again, he had a magical amulet. That couldn’t be bog standard. She doubted every knight in the tenth century was wandering around with one. She eyed him, running her gaze over him from head to toe. So what made him so special? Apart from the obvious.

Ulrik handed her phone back and reached for the wineskin. He took a long drink and stared into the fire. He passed it back to her. Bek took a sip. It had been one of those days. One of those weeks, and it didn’t look as though things were going to get any easier. Chances were, if she was going to figure this out, they were going to need a shit load more wine.