Wild Love (Wilding Pack Wolves 2) - New Adult Paranormal Romance Read Free Page A

Jimmy’s head, feeling through the mess of fur and blood. “I think he’s just knocked out,” he said quickly. “Bullet only grazed him. But I need to get him in the van and stitch him up fast. Head wounds bleed like crazy.”
    Relief trickled through Noah. Jace wouldn’t give that kind of hope if it weren’t real. Noah and three others quickly lifted Jimmy and carried him back to the van. The rest stayed behind to cuff the asshole who shot him. Noah wanted to tear the man apart, but they needed him alive to figure out if he was acting alone. As they were climbing in the van, a movement caught Noah’s eye—the girl, Emily, was staring at them from atop the balcony. He thought her expression was filled with horror, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance. Then she quickly turned and fled.
    He let her go. If she were involved, they could track her down. If not, there was no reason for her to become part of this. He climbed into the van with the rest of his pack, hoping like crazy Jace could keep Jimmy alive.

 
    All Emily had wanted was one night.
    One night with a shifter would have changed everything for her. She would have finally been able to put her past behind her and live her life again. She had tried with other men, but she could never get through a first date without having a panic attack. She knew, she just knew, it would be different with a wolf. Shifters were no ordinary men—they were all about pack and family and love—and she was certain she would be safe with one of them.
    Only it had all gone wrong. And a shifter had been shot.
    Emily dropped her head into her hands, gripping her hair and shaking her head. She’d been sitting at her desk and staring at her screen for an hour, trying to figure out how last night had gone from the most exciting night of her life to the most horrifying in an instant. It had also been the most electrifying and the most embarrassing… it was like all the things her life had never been, for better and worse, all wrapped up in a single, intense night at a dingy motel. Not even a whole night, as she had planned… just a few heart-stopping minutes.
    Part of her was screaming that this was exactly why she didn’t date. Why she only went out to movies with her friend, Sophie, never walked anywhere alone, and spent most of her nights at home with a good book and her cat, Peabody. It was a boring life, but it was a safe life. Another part of her was certain she had lived more in that brief period of time with Noah Wilding than in all the rest of her so-called “life” combined.
    She raised her head and stared at the WildLove program on her screen. She should’ve known that putting herself in the database would’ve unraveled everything like crazy. It was the only thing she’d ever done that was even slightly against the rules. She was WildLove’s lead programmer, for heaven’s sake. It was her job to make sure it ran 24/7 without a hiccup, not to use it to score a date. She had just spent so long watching all the hookups happen, day after day—all those women who were not her, meeting insanely hot, super protective, safe shifter men. Was it so wrong that she wanted a small bit of that life for herself? She knew everything there was to know about shifters, and she was certain even one night would have changed everything.
    She sighed, pushed away from her desk, and went in search of coffee. It only took a minute to brew her favorite chai latte in the breakroom Keurig, then she was back at her desk, a steaming cup by her keyboard, and still at a loss as to what had happened. The only thing to do was to erase last night from her memory… and from the WildLove database.
    Her fingers flew over the keyboard while her coffee cooled.
    She’d spent the last year hoping she might stumble upon a shifter the old-fashioned way, in a coffee shop or on her bus ride into work, even though she knew the odds of that were long. Shifters kept to the shadows for a reason—it was