by T. S. Joyce
“Okay,” she agreed. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was the most she was going to get.
And right now, she’d do just about anything to get a little more time with him.
Chapter Eight
Logan pulled onto East Main and pointed the ruined grille of Muriel’s jeep toward a row of parking spots at the end. At a red light, he pulled to a stop and rested his hand on Muriel’s thigh just for the excuse to touch her.
She’d turned up an alternative rock station and was humming along as her dark hair whipped this way and that in the breeze. The bite on her neck that he got a peek of from time to time filled him with such pride. She was his in a way she wouldn’t be able to belong to another. He wouldn’t ever tell her that, because it would only make leaving her harder, but the secret knowledge was something he reveled in.
He’d done that to her.
And she’d let him.
No matter what had happened between her and Bronson Cress in their unwilling pairing, she hadn’t been broken from it. Awe surged through him at how brave she really was.
A tiny gasp left her lips as they waited for a group of townies to cross the street at the light.
When he turned to see what was wrong, she was staring at a man who was helping a pregnant lady on the crosswalk.
Logan studied him. Probably close to his age, and tall. Plaid shirt and penny loafers, with a mop of blond, wavy hair. All right looking if chicks were into the geeky look.
Muriel obviously knew him. She’d closed her mouth, but her gaze followed the couple as they made their way into a cabinetry store.
Someone honked behind him when he failed to notice the light had turned green, and he hit the gas. When he’d pulled into a parking spot in front of a café, he turned and asked, “Who was he to you?”
She turned haunted eyes on him. “That was Danny. I was with him when my father told me I was to marry Bron.”
Logan battled the ugly feeling that crept into his gut. She needed an ear right now, not a jealous rage. “What happened with him?”
“We were together most of high school. We’d grown up together and our families were close. Everything was so natural with him. I was comfortable. When Dad told me I was to unite the bear shifter clans, I didn’t know what that meant. I thought that maybe he thought I was destined for alpha someday, but I’m a black bear, and I wouldn’t have the dominance to hold it for long. When he brought me into town for a dinner with Trent and Bron, he and Dodger told us together. It was awful.” Muriel blinked hard and dropped her chin to her chest.
The doors to the jeep were open, and a pair of old gossipers in rocking chairs in front of a realtor office were staring at Muriel. He’d make her breakfast at the house and avoid the public right now. Pulling out of the parking spot, he rested his hand across her thigh again and she clutched onto it like he was her life line. With every second that passed, the woman was destroying his resolve to leave her.
“Did you fight the decision?”
“Of course I did. Bron and I both did as much as two kids were able. He had Samantha, and anyone with eyes could tell he loved her more than his own life. His father was dead and it was just he and Trent, and his alpha, Dodger, bullied him relentlessly. My father told me I would be banished if I didn’t go through with it, and I had heard horrible things about being a rogue. And I was so young, only seventeen at the time, that I eventually thought I had no choice.”
“Did you sleep with Danny before you were bedded to Bron?” God, he wanted her to say yes to spare the agony he knew she went through if Bron was her first.
“No. Bron and I slept together on our wedding night. It was just a courthouse wedding. I didn’t even wear a dress or carry flowers. I cried after we were together. I cried most of the times we were together and I felt awful for how ungrateful I was, and for how bad I was in Bron’s bedroom. We just didn’t connect like that and I could never…”
“You couldn’t finish with him?”
“No. Not even once. I thought I was broken. And Bron didn’t hurt me or do anything bad to me. He tried to be understanding and patient, but I didn’t want him to touch me. I know it was horrible of me, but eventually, I made him feel as unwanted as he made me feel when he called out Samantha’s name. We were poisonous together.”
“Shit,” Logan said, rubbing his hands through his hair.
“We were sleeping in separate bedrooms after the first year, and after three years, I moved into my cabin and we made appearances together for the sake of the clan. And then I filed for divorce six months ago. I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew I would be a rogue. Where can I go now? I can choose a clan where my ex-husband will be my alpha, or a clan where my tyrant father is alpha. And Bron was so angry with me.” Tears streamed down her face as she spoke. “He thought I’d given up on him, but that wasn’t it at all. If he was ever going to have a chance at happiness, I had to do this. Danny was already mated to the woman you saw today. It’s not like I thought there was any chance of reconciliation, but I’d checked on Samantha through the years. She was living in Portland and still single, and I knew if Bron was free, he’d eventually contact her. Trent’s death just rushed the plan.”
The woman was basically a saint. She’d made a decision against her clan’s laws to give Bronson a shot at happiness, and now she was stuck as a rogue, picking up the pieces of the unacceptable situation her dick father forced her into. If he ever saw Steven Marsden again, he was going to fucking maim him.
Right now, all he could think about was getting her inside the cabin and showing her how not broken she was.
Having to deal with two of her exes today had put a strain on his animal, and he was practically snarling for him to claim her body again. First Bron, then Danny, and now Logan hated her past with both of them. He hated it because he wanted her future, and he couldn’t have it.
Throwing the jeep into park in front of her cabin, he jogged around the front and pulled her into his arms before she had time to exit the car. He wasn’t even over the porch stairs before she reached for his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Thata girl.
Kicking the door closed behind him, he lowered her to the entryway floor and shucked his jeans. Tearing at her shirt, the fabric ripped easily in his frantic hands, and she tossed her head back and groaned his name as he palmed her perfect tits. She seemed just as frantic as him to feel a connection, to feel necessary to someone else, to feel…something.
Desperate to feel her skin against his, he yanked at the bandages across his torso until they were a shredded pile on the floorboards beside them. Her pants joined them and he rocked back on his knees just to drink in her sexy curves. His woman was no stick on the page of a magazine. She was a fucking perfectly shaped hourglass. An ass he could grab and big perky tits, and fuck, he had to taste her before they did this.
Pressing her knees wide, he ignored her shocked sounding gasp and drove his tongue into her moist opening. She tasted so good, his cock throbbed like it wanted a turn at her. He loved how she got wet for him so fast.
Her fingers found his hair and a guttural moan sounded through her belly. He rested his hand across her stomach just to feel closer to the animal at the surface. He bet she was fucking gorgeous. A black bear, petit probably, and she was all his. His jaws moved and her hips bucked and three more strokes with his tongue and she was screaming his name and pulsing around him.
Frantic to be inside of her, he covered her and slid his thickness all the way into her before she finished coming. He liked feeling her orgasm on his dick, and when the pulsing faded, he began to move within her, gliding against her wetness as she clawed at his back. Lowering his face to hers, he took her lips.
Bucking into her so deeply his hips met hers, his muscles tensed. He couldn’t stop now. He pressed his tongue against hers with every stroke, and his pace became faster as he pounded toward his own release.
“Come with me,” he rasped out.
She was close, green eyes hazy, legs spreadi
ng farther apart for him, hips rolling to meet every thrust, tiny pants of pleasure on her lips, claws in his back, telling him she liked him right where he was. She was so fucking sexy he couldn’t stand it.
Pressure, pressure, pressure, he was going to blow, but he couldn’t until she tipped over the edge with him. She’d liked the bite. He grazed his teeth against her throat and reared back to look into her eyes as she shattered around him. Her pounding pulsing pulled his own release, and he gritted his teeth and bucked wildly into her, spewing his cum into his mate.
His mate?
Fuck.
Jerking his hips, he emptied himself completely into her. The floor under her was slick with the excess she couldn’t hold and he loved it. He loved it being too much for her. He’d rather it be too much than not enough.
“Muriel,” he panted. “You aren’t broken. You just weren’t meant to be his.” She was meant for Logan, but he couldn’t force the words past his lips. He couldn’t admit it out loud and still justify leaving her.
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, trailing soft, sad kisses across his collar bone.
Nothing in him wanted to leave her either. Nothing except the niggling fear that she’d die at his trackers’ hands.
This had been a bad idea. Last night had bonded them, but now something had changed. Something he couldn’t explain, but that was important to his biological make-up. It wasn’t like this where he came from. Mates were interchangeable and breeding rogues were common. But here in Hells Canyon, the magic he’d heard about actually existed. It bound people together on a cellular level and left them bereft if they were separated.
Logan was going to have to rip his own heart out to leave her.
Nothing to be done about that now, you dumbass, he chided himself.
Drawing back, he picked Muriel up off the floor and toted her into the bedroom. She fixed the pillows like she was making a little nest and opened the covers for him to crawl in beside her, and he could just imagine it. Coming home every night to her, deepening their bond until there was no end and beginning to them, treating her like she deserved and causing happy smiles on her beautiful lips. Her neck arched as she cradled his cub.
He’d never wanted to settle down, but after two days with Muriel, his animal didn’t want anything else.
Chapter Nine
“Shira,” Logan whispered.
Muriel frowned and turned her head to see if he was awake. Did he just say Shira?
Propping up on one elbow, she watched his lips as they formed the word again. “Shira.”
Jagged pain crashed through her as she realized Shira must be a woman’s name.
Shocked, she rolled from bed and stood there in the long shadows of the afternoon. Her breath shook as she stared at him. She’d been in this horror story before and it hadn’t ended well for her. Hearing Samantha’s name on Bron’s lips had left her emotionally raw, and now Logan was saying another woman’s name too.
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening again. Half asleep and fully angry, she bolted to the front door and pulled on her clothes that still sat in a pile near the entryway. Then, gathering his, she ran for her bedroom and chucked them onto his chest.
Logan jolted awake. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m ready to take you to your bike now,” she said. Damn her voice as it quivered with her anger.
“What’s wrong?” Logan’s eyes were glowing with that animal color of his and she rushed for the front door, snatched her keys of the ground and slammed it after her.
Was she unreasonably angry? Hell yes she was. She didn’t know him and of course a man who looked and acted and cared like Logan would have a woman or ten already. But she’d let her guard down and thought for a minute that he was here to help her get out of the awful funk her unwilling marriage had thrust her into. He wasn’t supposed to add to her distrust issues.
She started the jeep and honked two impatient sounding beeps. He came out the front door frowning with such a bewildered look on his face.
“You’re angry,” he observed. “I can smell it. What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing at all.” Two timing weasel! “I just think it would be best to take you to your bike now and get this over with.”
His nostrils flared as he inhaled and he nodded his head slightly. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
The trip to He Devil was long and riddled with uncomfortable silence. Not to mention now Logan smelled mad, and his animal was much scarier than hers. Her bear was currently cowered so deep inside of her, she was basically a human.
At the bend in the road where he’d fallen yesterday, she pulled the jeep to a rocking stop and pointed through the woods. “I rolled it in through there. You should be able to find it easily, what with your exceptional tracking skills.”
He shook his head like she’d lost her damned mind and unfolded from the seat. Gripping the roll bar, he said, “I deserve to know why we’re saying goodbye like this.”
“Who’s Shira?” His face went slack with shock and she nodded her head and offered a humorless smile. “Let me guess. She’s part of the mysterious story of your life you can’t share with me.”
She gassed the jeep and watched in the side view mirror as he hooked his hands around the back of his head. “It’s not like that,” he called.
“It never is!”
She couldn’t get away from He Devil fast enough. Away from her father’s land and the trouble Logan brought. Her insides were being shredded by her bear, who seemed desperate for her to change so she could rush back to the man she was falling hard for.
How desperate had she been to latch onto the first handsome man to pay any attention to her? She dashed warm tears away from her cheeks and sniffled. She was pathetic. How could she have thought for even a second that something would’ve come from a relationship with a rogue? A rogue! She was insane. That was the only explanation for her behavior. She’d lost her wits and belonged in some padded cell somewhere far away from all the men who could hurt her.
Seeing her house, the entryway, her bed, wouldn’t make her feel any better, so Muriel stormed her tiny pottery shed out back and flipped on the single hanging light bulb. It was too late to fire the kiln, but she could sure as shit make an ugly bowl set. That’s what she did to work out her frustration. She threw pottery. And a set of off kilter, unbalanced bowls sounded just right for the fury bubbling through her veins. She’d make the ugliest bowls on the planet, and then she’d probably fall so in love with them she’d never sell them, because that’s what she did to the things that helped her through the emotional patches.
She opened the lid to the large, plastic lined trash can in the corner and grabbed a handful of clay. Rolling and kneading the air bubbles from it, she turned on her wheel and filled a bucket with water.
Throwing pottery was the closest she could come to therapy and the hobby had started earning her money when she lived with Bron. Now, it was her main source of income. Tonight wasn’t for money though. Tonight, she would shape clay just for her.
Logan’s face flashed across her mind—him smiling, him looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, his jealous glower as he held the picture of she and Bron.
She slapped the clay into the middle of the wheel and wet her hands. Stupid man, trolling around, sleeping with women when he had one back in Portland, if that was even really where he lived. Maybe everything he’d said had been a lie. She didn’t really know him at all.
She spun the wheel and shaped the lips of the bowl with practiced fingers. Adding more water, she cut in and created the bottom, then took a soaked sponge and hollowed out the inside. She’d finished three similar bowls by the time a knock reverberated off the open shop door.
She jumped and stood so fast, the stool she was sitting on flew backward. A stranger stood there in the evening light with blond hair and eyes that matched the reflective gold of Logan’s.
Unease slithered through her as he entered the room uninvited. “Where is he?” the man asked.
“Who are you?”
He slammed his fist down on a table full of coffee mugs ready for the kiln, shattering several of them. “I’m not playing fucking games. I was told Logan O’Connor was here. Tell me where he is and I’ll leave you to play in your mud.”
Heaving breath, Muriel grabbed a sharp clay tool and backed against the wall as he approached. “Logan left hours ago. I took him to his bike and he’s long gone. I don’t know where to. I can’t help you.” What had Logan got himself into?
“Mmm. I think you should take me around the property and prove he isn’t here. And if I think you’re lying about anything, I’ll kill you.” He practically purred the words and Muriel’s bear roared to be set free.
He had to be a grizzly, and her animal wasn’t up to battling a brown bear though. She had to keep her head if she was going to make it out of this alive.
Thrusting, she stabbed the pointed tool through the man’s hand as he reached for her. With a shriek, she ducked under his arm and bolted for the door as he spat and cursed behind her. Pushing her legs, she sprinted for the house. If she could just get a phone call to Bron, he could order in the closest bears to her cabin and give her some backup.
Her hair wrenched backward, exposing her neck to the setting sun, and she yelped at the blinding pain. The man was so fast. Too fast.
He wrestled her to the ground and she fought the entire way down. She was going to have to change into her bear and fight, but the second she did, he would change too. The risk was huge, setting off a brown bear like that, but she was running out of options. The throaty rumble of a bike sounded from a distance and she flung a wish into the darkening sky that it was Logan.
“Help!” she screamed, just before the man clamped a meaty hand over her mouth.
