Page 33 of Hungry Like the Wolf

Something about that made Robbie feel sad, like the real trick of fate was making someone so perfect, so molecularly significant, and then living your whole life without ever even knowing they existed.

“How do you know?” Robbie asked.

JJ shrugged. “I’ve never met mine. So I don’t know.”

“But if you had to guess?”

“If I had to guess, I would say that it’s probably like porn.”

Robbie snorted a laugh. “What the hell, man?”

“You know. Porn is impossible to define, but you know it when you see it. I imagine it’s a lot like that. Impossible to describe the feeling of finding that person, but you know it when you do.”

Robbie decided right then that he liked JJ, who lifted himself off the boulder and took off back down the path to finish circling the lake.

They ran full speed all the way back, pulling up to walk when they reached the scatter of cabins farthest away from the mess hall, with the word pack still rattling around Robbie’s thoughts. He wanted to ask JJ what it meant to become pack, what it would mean for Nadja. He wanted to ask him how JJ knew Nadja in the first place. He wanted to learn everything about this place, but before he could ask, he and JJ were greeted by a lanky teenager jogging up the path toward them.

“We need your help down at the mess, boss,” they said.

“Not your boss, Frank,” JJ said.

“Whatever,” Frank huffed. “We still need your help. They can’t get the vent hood to work, and Rose tells me without the vent, they can’t light the stove, and without the stove, there isn’t gonna be dinner tonight.”

Robbie’s ears pricked up at that. He’d worked in kitchens off and on since he was a teenager. No matter what else he tried, he always came back to it, unable to resist the allure of the energy, the rhythm.

Before JJ could answer, Robbie said, “I know a bit about hoods.”

Both JJ and Frank blinked at him.

“Do we have time for me to go put some pants on?”

JJ clapped a hand on his shoulder and laughed loudly enough to startle the birds in the trees overhead.

When Robbie entered the cabin, he saw that the bathroom door was closed with the shower running. If they were really mates, he would have knocked on the door before cracking it open and telling her that he’d be back soon. Hell, if they were really mates, he probably would have knocked and then tried to sneak a peak of Nadja in the shower, wet and slippery like the girls in one of those carwash calendars his older cousin always had hanging on his bedroom wall when they were kids, suds and conditioner sluicing down her body in streams.

He shook his head to clear that very unhelpful image as he hopped into his jeans and pulled a T-shirt over his head, one from the bag of clothes JJ had dropped off before their run. It was from a fun run for a pediatric cancer nonprofit from what he could tell, but it was worn and soft.

He definitely did not think about Nadja combing her fingers through her soaking wet hair as he put on socks and laced his boots. And he definitely did not think about her bending at the waist to dry her ankles, working the towel up her calves and knees and thighs toward her—he jumped to his feet, shaking his head again as if that would clear those crystal-clear mental images like an Etch-a-Sketch.

He went to the bathroom door to knock, to tell her through the door that he was heading out to the mess hall for a few minutes, that he’d be back in a jiffy. But as he leaned toward the door, he heard her humming softly over the water running and pipes creaking. It sounded like Fleetwood Mac, but he couldn’t tell for certain. He stepped away from the door and walked to the exit, briefly amused by how strange it was not to check for his phone, wallet, or keys on his way out.

As it turned out, the hood was filthy, the filters completely clogged, which had overworked the fan. He worked on cleaning the hood itself and the filters while another wolf, Whit, tinkered with the wiring on the fan’s motor. They got the hood working again, but then Robbie noticed how the stove itself would benefit from a more thorough cleaning and disassembled the whole thing.

After he got the stove put back together, he found himself standing at the large stainless steel prep table in the middle of the kitchen, dicing onions and sautéing them with an unholy amount of ground beef that would become pasta sauce before Rose chased him out of the kitchen with a swat to his backside with a wooden spoon that was so reminiscent of his ma that he felt his throat tighten a little bit around his laugh as he trotted out of the kitchen’s side door and into the darkening early evening.

His heart was lighter than it had been in a long time as he took both steps onto the porch in one jump, throwing the door open, and shutting it behind him, talking as soon as he got inside.

“Hey, Doc,” he said, making his way across the living room in two strides and heading toward the bedroom, where the door was open. “Sorry I’m so late. I got caught helping with some equipment in the kitchen and then I?—”

He stopped abruptly, frozen in his tracks, his tongue a lead weight in his mouth that had his jaw dropping low, at the sight of Nadja standing in nothing but a pair of panties, reaching behind her to fasten a bra, her elbows kicked out and back like wings, her chin dropped low and her fingers fumbling to get the last hook through its loop.

She gasped when she saw him and froze herself, clearly torn between covering herself, her nipples nearly visible over the drooping cups, the straps falling down her shoulders, and finishing the task at hand.

“Robbie,” she said breathily, and he watched as her stomach contracted on the exhale.

Before he could stop himself, he said, “Do you need some help?”

“No, I’ve got it. It’s just this clasp is bent. I should hook it first, but I—” she stopped and, for a moment, they just looked at each other.