Carrie caught sight of herself in the mirror again and inwardly groaned. Right - of course. She had to look like a drowned rat while being saved by a rugged wolf shifter, didn’t she? What else should she expect?
She tried to smooth down her hair that had started drying from wet rat-tails, and was now taking on the appearance of a frizzy bird nest. She soon realized it was futile and instead decided to focus on studying the wolf.
He wasn’t what she would call handsome. His face was too hard and unforgiving for that, and the scars and bruises only added to the harshness, but there was certainly something about him, something that made her quiver inside, and a little on the outside too. Perhaps it was those eyes. Perhaps it was the aura of power and danger he exuded that was downright palpable. Perhaps she needed to pull herself together.
Oh, cheese and crackers, she knew it was bad, but when she looked at him she just wanted to melt into a puddle of shameful lust. Another predator shifter! Worse, a wolf shifter and obviously one who wasn’t a stranger to fights – he looked like he’d gone seven rounds with a baseball bat. Jeez, her brother would go ape if he knew she was lusting after a wolf. After everything they went through with their dad, he told her firmly to stay the hell away from wolves.
But, she couldn’t help herself. Maybe there was something wrong with her. She just couldn’t stop falling for predators. Honestly, she’d tried dating prey shifters and they bored her to tears. Her reindeer grunted in embarrassment. Her inner beast just couldn’t get on board with anyone other than a predator.
He glanced back at her and she inhaled. “I’m going to find someone.”
“Oh, ah…”
He leaped over the reception, his tall, bulky form, easily gliding over it, and pushed his way through the door marked ‘private.’
“Ooh.”
Carrie shook her head and rifled through her purse for her compact. As she heard muffled yelling from behind the ‘private’ door, she hastily swiped some powder over her face, hoping to cover some of the blotchiness from her cheeks. What she really needed was a shower, a blow dryer, and her full make-up kit to look presentable, but this would have to do.
She snapped the compact shut and stashed it away just as her wolf strode out, holding a skinny young coyote shifter by the back of his shirt. The boy looked both sullen and embarrassed.
The wolf dumped him behind the reception desk, and leaped back over to their side of the desk.
“You’re not going to tell my manager I was watching porn, are you?” quavered the young coyote. “I swear, it’s not my fault – I have to watch it, just ask my therapist!”
Carrie blinked but the wolf just growled.
“Two rooms, now.”
“Um, ah, we only have one room left,” said the young male in a trembling voice.
The wolf rumbled lowly. He sounded like a motorboat and Carrie couldn’t deny she rather liked the sound. It was rather comforting, and, honestly, a bit of a turn on. However, the noise just seemed to make the young man more agitated.
“It’s the floods you see. People are stuck here because of the floods. They can’t get out of here because of the floods, so we’re virtually full. We just have the one room because we weren’t able to use it until now because the toilet was broken, but Wayne managed to fix it an hour ago, so we can use the room again,” he babbled with increasing agitation.
“We’ll take the room for one night,” said Carrie, stepping forward and giving the young man a reassuring smile.
The wolf grunted and nodded and handed over a credit card. “I’ll sleep in my truck.”
“Oh, it’s a double room,” said the young man jovially, “Plenty of room for you both.”
The wolf glared at him until he looked away and started processing the credit card.
“No, it’s your room, I…”
“Key,” demanded the wolf.
“Ah, what name…” started the young man, but on seeing the wolf’s expression didn’t try to pursue it and merely handed him the key and his credit card back. “Room thirteen.”
“Lucky thirteen,” murmured Carrie.
The young man snickered but the wolf didn’t seem to notice. He was already holding the door open and waiting for her. She smiled at the young man and scampered after the wolf.
*
Carrie frowned at the room. It was about as good as she expected, given that the receptionist had been watching porn rather than attending to his duty, and that some of the letters on the sign outside were not working – instead of Grosse-Point Motel, it said Gross Pit Moe. Still, the room looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since the seventies. In fact, she was pretty certain that her grandmother had the same, pink, flowery wallpaper in her guest room when Carrie first went to live with her. She smiled as she remembered her old, pink room. Her grandma had fussed about getting it redecorated, but Carrie had been happy with anything. Her parents only had a one-bedroom apartment, so Carrie and Mal had been forced to sleep in the living room every night.
“I think my grandmother used to have this wallpaper,” said Carrie in amusement.
The wolf placed her case on the floor and looked at the walls. His lips curled slightly.
“It’s pretty heady stuff.”
“You’re telling me. I had trouble sleeping looking at that every night.”
For wallpaper it was certainly loud.
“Think you’ll manage tonight?”
Carrie looked up at the wolf and smiled. “I should really be the one to sleep in your truck. This is your room.”
The wolf smiled a little wider and Carrie bit her lip to stop herself from moaning. Why was she such a sucker for a rugged guy? It was really going to get her into trouble one day… well, more trouble than she was already in.
“You’re not spending the night in my truck. Over the past year, my truck’s been broken into four times. So far, all they got is nicotine gum and pennies, but I’m not leaving a reindeer shifter in there for them to take.”
Carrie giggled. “Yes, I suppose it would be pretty careless to leave me in there overnight.” She licked her lips and looked around the room. “But you paid for this room, you should get to sleep in it. You know, the boy on the desk was right.”
“About the fact that he has to watch porn for a medical reason?” quipped the wolf.
Carrie blushed. “I meant about it being a big room. You take the bed and I’ll take the couch.” She strode over to it. “I’m sure it’s perfectly fine to sleep – gah!”
She had tried to sit on it, to prove it would make a comfortable bed, but she sat down a little hard, and went right through it.
“Little help?” she gasped, as she found herself trapped in the couch.
He grasped her hands as he tried not to laugh and pulled her out. The smile on his face had turned into a downright grin.
“You were saying something?” he asked in amusement.
Carrie pursed her lips and tried to straighten out her dress. “I’m sure the floor…” She thought about tapping her foot on the floor to prove its sturdiness but decided against it.
“You know what, on second thought, this is a really big bed,” she said, walking over to it and gingerly sitting down – the last thing she wanted was to go through that as well. She had probably embarrassed herself enough in front of this guy to last a lifetime.
“I’m sure we can manage to share, right? I mean we are both adults, right?”
She knew she could control herself, in spite of her inner reindeer’s encouragement, but could he? Carrie looked at him expectantly, hoping that he would admit that he couldn’t bear to sleep next to her without ravishing her, but, disappointingly, he just shrugged.
“Great,” she croaked, carefully getting up from the bed. “Umm, if you don’t mind I’ll take the first shower. I’m a little… gross,” she admitted with a wince.
“Sure. It’s Anne, right?”
Carrie froze in the middle of grabbing her suitcase. Yes, that was the name she had s
aid in the bar, mostly because she didn’t want to admit her real name to some strange, pervy coyote shifter. Truthfully, her name was Carrie-Anne. The only people who had ever called her Anne were her parents. After Mal took her away from them, she started going by Carrie, wanting to distance herself as much as possible from them.
She looked at the wolf and considered telling him all this, but she doubted he would be very interested in the convoluted backstory of her name. So, she merely nodded. Besides, it wasn’t like she was really lying – it was part of her name.
“What’s your name?” she asked brightly and then giggled. “I suppose it is a little weird that we decided to share a room before we introduced ourselves.”
It seemed to her that he wavered for just a second, but it may have just been her imagination, because when he answered, she didn’t think he was lying.
“Michael. Nice to meet you, Anne.”
Chapter Four
Riker tried to ignore the tinkle of water that he could hear from the bathroom. Tried to ignore the fact that she – Anne, the reindeer – was in there, standing beneath the stream of water, completely naked, and that only a very flimsy door and a broken lock separated them.
He stared at the door for a couple of beats and allowed some very ungentlemanly thoughts to run through his head. Finally, he pulled himself together and quickly went through his case. He didn’t want her to see what his case contained – namely his weapons stash. He didn’t want to make her nervous, but then, he couldn’t leave it in the truck. Nothing of any value should be left in the truck, certainly not weapons, or reindeer shifters…
Riker looked at the bed as he scented something fruity coming from the bathroom. She was probably using body wash, probably soaping up her young, supple body… Something inside him stirred uneasily, and with every moment that passed, the bed seemed a little smaller. How the hell was he supposed to share it with her and keep his damn paws to himself? His inner wolf, usually so stoic, was virtually panting like a puppy. Though, he wasn’t sure he approved of the fruity scent. Her natural scent was already pretty appealing; it was soft and delicate and reminded him of wildflowers. Reminded him of when he was a young pup, and he and his pack mates used to chase through fields of wildflowers, tumbling over their too big paws and trying to outrun each other. The scent reminded him of home, and uneasily, he wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
Michael. He didn’t know what possessed him. He hadn’t used that name in years. Even his friends and fellow hunters had no idea his first name was Michael. To them he was just Riker – grizzled, old, tough as boots, Riker. Mick once joked that Riker didn’t have a first name, that his mom had raised him, calling him by his last name. Mick wasn’t always particularly funny.
Speak of the devil. His phone beeped with a message from Mick. It was just an update on the local flood warnings. Then Mick told him not to do anything he wouldn’t do followed by an emoji.
Riker glanced at the bathroom door. Oh, he was sure that Mick would happily pick up a female in the bar, and wouldn’t give a second thought to taking her back to his hotel room. Riker though, he would never usually indulge in female company in the middle of a hunt, even if the hunt was on pause. Though, it was hardly like he was indulging in anything.
He snapped his case shut and stashed it under the bed. He grabbed his other bag and searched through the assortment of clothes, socks, and underwear. Riker kept an apartment out of habit, but he was rarely there. In the past four years, he worked out he had only been at his apartment for a total of thirty-six days. So he kept most of his clothes with him while he traveled, not that he had that many.
Finally, he laid his hands on the calamine lotion he was looking for. He didn’t bother with a first-aid kit; his shifter healing abilities usually sorted out any major issues. But he kept the calamine lotion around, and that usually got applied to anything from a scratch to a stab wound, mostly to stop him from itching while his skin knit back together. His tussle with the owl earlier had left him with a few scrapes on his chest – those talons were damn sharp – so a little calamine was called for.
Riker pulled his shirt off and tossed it on the bed. He put the lotion on the sideboard and surveyed himself in the mirror, taking in the gashes and bruises to his rib cage. His wolf huffed in annoyance. Maybe he was starting to slow down. Used to be it took a huge shifter to put those kinds of marks on him – like a bear or a tiger. Now, though, an owl shifter could almost whoop his butt. His wolf snarled indignantly. Yeah, yeah, he won in the end, but it had been harder than it should have been. Maybe it was time he started thinking about…
“Oh, my!”
He whipped around to find Anne framed in the bathroom door. She was wearing a short robe and a towel was twisted around her head. Her cheeks were pink, and she smelled fresh, and clean, and unbelievably enticing. His chest inflated as he took in the lines of her curvy legs. Rawr.
“Are you okay?” she asked, worry marring her brow as she padded over to him.
“Huh?”
Her eyes focused on his chest and he snapped himself to attention. “Yeah, sure,” he dismissed.
Anne gnawed on her plump lip. “But, your chest looks really bad.”
“Thanks,” he chuckled.
“Oh, no I didn’t mean it like that!” she mumbled as her cheeks turned an even deeper shade of pink.
“I know what you meant, and I’m fine.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
She leaned closer to him, inspecting his wounds, and her scent made his inner beast groan.
“I’ll heal. For now, I have this.”
He pointed at the calamine lotion and she giggled as she inspected the bottle.
“My goodness, I haven’t seen one of these since I was a teenager – my grandma used to douse me in it no matter what was wrong with me.” She squinted at the bottle. “Wow, this bottle is twenty years old.”
“Yeah, I’ve had it a while,” he said gruffly, swiping it from her hand.
He didn’t get into that many scrapes, so the calamine had lasted nearly his whole career. He had been a hunter for a long time, probably as long as she had been alive – and he didn’t like that thought one bit. It made him feel old and pervy for thinking of her in a carnal way. Not that he was going to stop, but it just made him angry.
“How did you get hurt?” she asked, eyebrows knitted in disapproval.
“Fight.”
He’d rather her not think he was some lout who got into random fights, but it was never a good idea to admit to being a hunter. Hunters needed to operate in stealth, and running around, shouting his mouth off about what he did would just cause problems later.
“Yes, I guessed that,” she said with a wry smile. “I have some cotton wool pads in my bag, let me help.”
Riker watched in the mirror as she rifled through her suitcase. Watched open-mouthed as she leaned over and her short robe rode up, revealing an unbelievably peachy rear end. Her cheeks were mesmerizingly symmetrical, almost identical, apart from the small birthmark on the left one - it looked like a strawberry from where he was standing, though he wouldn’t mind a closer look…
She turned around and locked eyes with him in the mirror. He could have looked away, could have been embarrassed, but he didn’t - he just looked at her shamelessly. She was a shifter; if they really were sleeping in the same room, sleeping in the same bed, she was surely going to scent his arousal for her - there was no escaping that. There wasn’t much point in pretending he didn’t find her attractive. But, jeez, usually he could control himself better than this. Usually, he could ignore any wanton feelings of lust, but he didn’t seem to be doing a good job around her.
Anne blushed again but she smiled in pleasure. His wolf growled smugly as he scented her own desire. He may be a grizzled, old bastard, but she still desired him.
She kept her eyes down as she scurried over to him. “Here, let me,” she breathed.
Riker s
tood still as she took the lotion, dabbed it onto the pad, and started daubing his cuts and bruises. His skin tingled where her fingers brushed against him.
“I’m afraid I may have used all the hot water,” she murmured.
“Doesn’t matter.”
When on a hunt he could go for weeks without washing. He smelled pretty terrible at the end of it, but sometimes he just didn’t have the time to stop for something as basic as a little water and soap.
“Well, you don’t smell like you need a shower anyway,” she said in a rush. “I mean, you smell good, I mean… ah…”
Riker chuckled and she laughingly told him to stop as it made his chest vibrate.
Her breathing was slowly increasing again. Her chest moving up and down in a very enchanting and attractive way. Her robe gaped and he could see the swell of her breasts, the soft, entrancing skin that just begged to be touched.
“How come you’re out here on your own anyway?” he rumbled.
Anne shrugged slightly. “I was driving down to visit my boyfriend who was attending a conference.”
“Ex-boyfriend?” he growled. He was sure she had already mentioned an ex-boyfriend.
Anne nodded and sighed. “I found him in bed with another woman.”
“Dick,” hissed Riker.
“Well, he was certainly thinking with that,” she admitted ruefully. “I was in such a rush to get away that I left my wallet in his hotel room, and for the last twenty miles I just ignored my check engine light. So, I ended up here in the middle of nowhere. What about you? How come you’re out here?”
“Just passing through,” he said vaguely.
His wolf humphed. Yes, he would like to tell her the truth, but hunters needed to remain anonymous. Even their families didn’t know where they were ninety-nine percent of the time. Those who had any families. Hunting wasn’t a profession that was conducive to having a little wife and kids back home. Having a little reindeer shifter waiting for him with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her beautiful eyes…
“Got caught up in the floods, huh?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, though it wasn’t quite like that.
The Reindeer's New Year Love (Reindeer Holidays Book 7) Page 2
