Pack or Prey (Wolfblooded book 1)

Chapter 1, Part 1

April 7th 2008, 4:18 p.m.

The trouble with trouble is it is one sneaky son-of-a-bitch. If it came at us with a flashing neon sign and megaphone, warning us to go the other way, I'd bet most people's lives would have turned out completely different. Sadly, for many—and me especially—trouble comes when we least expect it and sometimes disguised as everything we think we want. My own brown-eyed, leather-clad flavor of t-r-o-u-b-l-e could have come to me on a pale horse with a procession of trumpets and I'm pretty sure I'd be doomed just the same.

There were no horses, and no trumpets to speak of, but there was the deafening roar of ten or so bikes pulling into the field where my parents had parked our car.

I stared at the line of machines as we entered the fairgrounds, and imagined jumping on one and burning out of this city with middle fingers blazing. I envied how free the men and women looked. Free from what, I couldn't say, but there was something in their ease of simply existing that seemed unchained and unobligated. I'd never felt so comfortable in my existence. I wondered what it would have felt like to fit in with my family the way the bikers appeared to fit with one another.

I was different than them, different than my sister. I didn't know what made us that way, but I would never be on the same wavelength as the rest of them. It was a fact I'd started coming to grips with over the last few years.

The bikers, however, didn't appear to have any problems connecting to one another. A pang of jealousy blew through me as I watched them. They were completely at ease with one another. No tension, no awkwardness. They just... were.

"You ride?"

His eyes, large, brown, and staring into me as if he knew my every secret, snared me the instant I spun around. An awkward thrill ran through me. The lighter, almost gold flecks in the sea of brown stole away all thoughts, leaving me silent and wondering at the twinkle of humor glittering in those eyes. I wondered what he found so funny, and then I realized it was probably the chick staring at him with her mouth gaping and tongue practically flopped onto the ground.

"Ah-I..." Suddenly very aware of my thin, awkward arms, I had no idea what to do with them. I shuffled my feet and moved between clasping my hands behind my back and laying them down at my sides before finally settling on crossing them in front of me.

He laughed, shoving his hands into his pockets, and looked out to the group in the distance. "It's a thrill, you know. Nothing beats it. No job, no house, no money," he said before giving me a sideways grin. "Not even great sex compares to the freedom of the road. Once you get that engine humming between your legs, I guarantee nothing'll ever measure up."

I could feel heat spreading over my cheeks. My hormones didn't stand a chance with that visual, let alone coming from someone as gorgeous him. I wiped my hand across my cheek, as if that would help clear the blush from my skin, and tried for cool and casual.

"I've never ridden," I confessed as he looked away from me, finally freeing me from the uncomfortable eye contact.

Only a few months shy of eighteen myself, he didn't look to be more than a couple of years older than me; a hell of a lot younger than most of those guys across the lot. His hair was cut very short, especially on the sides. A little dip in the center of his chin peeked through the start of a goatee. Stubble spread across his jawline and halfway down his neck. Somehow he made it look insanely hot, rather than just plain dirty.

His eyes found me again, and I swallowed down the hard lump forming in my throat. I quickly looked at the ground, embarrassed to have been caught staring.

"That's a shame. I bet you look hot on the back of a bike." Me sitting behind him, my thighs wrapped around his hips as the bike vibrated under us. The imagery sent my tummy into somersaults. "Want to try it out?"