Page 26 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

“Oh god…” I whimpered, covering my face with my hands. “What have I done?”

Camden sat up, his eyes sad and filled with concern. “Hey, hey, Marlowe, this isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. We tried to tell you about the heat…”

“Heat?” I yelled, scrambling away from him. “You guys must have drugged me. What happened – that’s not natural!”

I stumbled out of the bed, my legs weak, and rushed out the door and down a hall. I came into a large living room and open kitchen in an A-frame building. A winter wonderland outside tall windows took my breath away, and I saw Archer and Elias sitting on a plush couch working on laptops, while a third man I didn’t know watched TV.

They all stood as they realized it was me, and Archer cleared his throat cautiously. “Marlowe, how are you feeling?”

My heart raced, and I wrapped my arms around my chest. I wore a large t-shirt bearing the logo for Wolfcrest Construction and nothing else. Several days’ worth of sweat covered my skin, my hair was disgustingly greasy, and my mouth was dry.

“How long?” I asked quietly.

Elias took a tentative step forward, while the third man rubbed the back of his neck.

“How. Long?” I asked again, punctuating each word.

“About four and a half days,” Archer responded. “It’s Wednesday morning.”

A shuddering breath slammed through me and my knees buckled. Elias caught me before I could fall, but I screamed and pushed him away, backing up into the wall. I slid down it until I landed on the floor

“What the hell did you guys do to me? Heats aren’t real. You must have slipped something into my drink!”

Camden came up to my side, sitting down next to me. “You really think there’s a drug that can do all that? Think about it, babe.”

Since when was he some voice of reason?

I sniffed, then closed my eyes and went through the date-rape drugs I’d studied. As far as I knew, none of them really made someone that deliriously horny.

Maybe they’d given me MDMA? But that only lasted a few hours, and the few times I’d tried it, it had mostly just made me touchy-feely.

Besides, if a drug that turned people into wanton messes for half a week straight existed, I definitely would have heard about it through my job at a woman’s advocacy nonprofit.

The man I didn’t know sighed and walked into the kitchen. “I’m making breakfast. Who wants some?”

My stomach rumbled like I hadn’t eaten in days. If what I had pieced together from my flashes of memory were correct, then that was likely the case.

He grinned, pointing a spatula at me. “Pancakes?”

I nodded slightly, and he slapped a dish towel over his shoulder as he grabbed a bowl and whisk, turning on a Bluetooth speaker.

Smooth reggae beats filled the room and Camden stood up, offering me his hands. “Here, let me show you where the bathroom is. I bet you wanna take a shower, right?”

My bottom lip trembled and I nodded again, letting him help me. I left Archer and Elias in the living room and followed Camden down the wood-paneled hall. “This is my cabin,” he explained. “The pack and I come up here every once in a while to drink, let off some steam, and be idiots.”

How idiotic? Like kidnap-a-drugged-woman-and-rape-her idiotic?

I wanted to be furious, but once the initial fear, anger, and confusion over my situation faded, my gut began to whisper to me that these guys hadn’t tried to take advantage of me in my frenzied state. Not one memory of someone’s cock inside me, or a hand on my breasts, or a mouth on my skin. The vibrator, yes, but I also remembered begging to be fucked, and Archer cooly and calmly asking for my consent each time to help me get off with a toy instead.

I attempted to calm down, taking note of the pictures of the four of them over the years that hung on the walls. “How did you meet?” I asked.

Camden opened a closet and took out a towel, handing it to me with a proud smile on his face. “We played football together in high school.”

I hugged the towel to my chest and stopped at a photo of the four of them in their uniforms, looking like they probably won a four-way tie for prom king. Meanwhile, when I was in high school, I’d been busy doing stuff like organizing a school walk-out over dress code policies that discriminated against female students.

“Elias was the quarterback, Nolan and I were linebackers, and Archer was a wide receiver.”

I raised my eyebrow. “You say that like it means something.”

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