Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles #2) Read Free Page A

the only one who knows it . He was planning something, and he needed her to pull it off.
    His lips were brushing hers when she turned her head.
    “Lucy,” she said. “Your girlfriend, remember?”
    He grunted. “I’m sorry, Kat,” he muttered, and he let her go.
    Katelyn took a sharp breath. Just being around Justin was like being hypnotized. It had to be something chemical, because they were both werewolves. It couldn’t be that she was that weak.
    “Hormones,” he muttered.
    “What?”
    He huffed. “Look, I know you have to be going crazy right now. All the chemicals in your body have been shaken up, changed. The wolf side of you is fighting the human side and it’s like being a little kid again. Everything will feel more extreme for you and when you’re not with someone to remind you how to act, you’re going to have to remember that your life is riding on your behavior. It’s going to take a while to learn to handle it. Right now, the wolf in you is responding to the wolf in me but you don’t even have the impulse control of a two-year-old human.”
    “Feeling like a two-year-old is not my current problem,” she snapped. Her problem was that she wanted to kiss him like there was no tomorrow.
    “When your body learns to adapt to everything that’s happening to it, you’ll feel fully in control again.” He paused. “Until then . . . be damn careful around me or any other young wolf in the pack.”
    “Like being alone out here with you is being damn careful,” she groused.
    “Yeah, well, if we are truly alone.”
    He was trying to joke, she could tell, but it just fed into her paranoia, her feeling of being watched.
    “ So not funny.”
    He sighed. “Look. It’s not a question of whether you’re a human or an animal. You’re both. And you’re going to have to learn to live with that twenty-four/seven. There will be times when the animal part of you’ll want to act on something and it will be wrong. Same with the other way. So deal with the human issues with human responses and the animal issues with animal responses.”
    “And what if the issue is both human and animal?”
    His grin was evil. “Like making out?”
    She nodded, completely humiliated to be discussing it with him like this. But she thought about Halloween when she’d gone from kissing Trick to kissing Justin while barely missing a beat, then hating herself for it.
    “Then tread very, very carefully. You bite a human, draw even just a little blood accidentally, and they’ll change.”
    Thinking of Trick, she swallowed hard. “ Maybe they’ll change. We don’t know. Because I'm different.”
    “You willing to take that chance?”
    He reached out to push a strand of hair back from her face and even though she wanted to step closer to him she forced herself to take a step back.
    “What’d you do with the animal trap I got caught in?” she asked, wanting desperately to change the topic.
    “Hid it,” he said uneasily, as if he didn’t want to discuss it. “You tell no one, hear?”
    “Someone already knows,” she insisted. “Knows enough to put out a trap.”
    “That thing was old. It didn’t even spring. It would have taken your arm off when you fell into it if it had been working.”
    “But it doesn’t matter when it was put out,” she said, sensing she should shut up but not being able to. “It matters that it was put out.”
    “Kat, I’m not an idiot.” When she opened her mouth to speak again, he said, “You should go back before your grandfather misses you.” Then he added, “Lee wants you to come over tomorrow.”
    Cold chills washed down her back. She never wanted to see Lee Fenner — or any of them — again. She knew that was too much to wish for, but she had hoped for some kind of reprieve before it all started—learning to fit in, groveling like a kicked dog before that madman —
    “I have homework,” she said rebelliously.
    He smiled grimly. “You’re going to have to do better than