Greyriver Shifters

by Kristina Weaver

  “Stop, it’s making me hurt.”

  “Me too, baby. My dick is so hard right now it feels like it’s got its own heartbeat. I woke up with the taste of you on my tongue and your scent on my sheets and wanted to roll onto you, into you.”

  I see it, me on my stomach, the way I usually sleep and Banner coming over me, still half asleep as his cock slides home through my wetness, filling me so full I feel him everywhere.

  The image makes me gasp and reach a hand down to my sex before I can stop myself and I moan, blushing bright red when my hand slides over my clit and fire bursts of sensation shoot through me.

  Banner growls, the sound all man and lust, something I never would have seen myself liking, but I do. I love the sounds he makes during sex, as if he’s so into me he can’t control his baser instincts.

  Right now, it sounds as if he’s ready to howl, and I like it.

  “Are you touching yourself, baby?”

  “Can’t help it,” I moan, sliding my finger down to where I’m wet.

  This lust is a fire inside me that keeps burning brighter the more I know him. When I met him, it was so strange, as if my body just knew him, wanted him, needed him. The more I know him, and now after being with him, I feel out of control with need.

  My body wants him all the time, craves him like a fire inside my blood that fizzles and sparks with a life of its own. Inside my head, it’s like there’s a separate part of me that belongs to him and is fighting me to get to him.

  I gasp again when he grunts, and it hits me that I’m not the only one touching myself. The thought makes me ache with an empty beat that burns inside my womb, my body demanding him now. Right now.

  I keep stroking though, the pleasure going higher, and groan when he grunts, the sound of his harsh breaths reaching my ears.

  “You know what I’m doing right now, Cass baby? I’m stroking myself where your body left me sticky and smelling of your musk. Fuck! God, I want you so much. Want you here with me, in bed, coating the sheets with your arousal.”

  I want that too, but I can’t stop. I can’t make myself relinquish the pleasure that’s hitting me, as I rub harder and feel the dam burst inside me, sending shooting arcs of pleasure through me as I orgasm to the sound of his snarls.

  “Banner!”

  “Yeah. Call out my name. That’s it, preza, my little female. I’m coming for you,” he says and groans, the sound of his gravelly voice leaving me panting, as I settle and fall into a bliss-filled stupor.

  The pleasure is there, still coursing through me, and yet I feel pain deep inside as my womb clenches, empty and wanting.

  When I can breathe and ignore the craving, I roll over and stare at the ceiling, wondering if what I’m doing is a mistake. It doesn’t feel that way, not after a life of lonely pretense where I told myself it would be fine if I just had friends.

  Now that I know what being wanted feels like, I’m not sure I can just go back to not having Banner. It sucks because from what I see when he looks at me, this isn’t something he’ll consider permanently.

  I heard him tell his mom that I’m too small and not at all his type. Whatever that means. Maybe he doesn’t like brunettes? Well, it seems he must because last night—

  “What are you thinking?” he asks when I stay silent too long.

  “Nothing. Just…you know this is weird for me. Here I am on the run from a stalker—”

  He growls, cutting me off, and I giggle at the sound of fury I hear in his voice.

  “He won’t touch you ever again! I’ll rip his fucking arms from the sockets and beat his head in with them.”

  “Er, yeah. That sounds…gruesome. Maybe not so much blood and violence just after an orgasm,” I suggest, snorting when he grunts.

  Geez, guys around this town really have that sound down pat, I think, shrugging it off. Maybe it’s a Montana thing?

  “Fine, but know that I mean it. He won’t get within sniffing distance of you, Cass. I swear it.”

  “Aw, you’re so sweet. And I appreciate it! I mean, he was just so…not normal,” I say for lack of a better word without having to confess that I think I saw a werewolf.

  It’s not exactly something you tell a new boyfriend. I mean, the guy I’m sleeping with, if I want him to keep wanting me that is. He’d think I’m a loon. No one wants to sleep with a fruitcake. Unless you’re Charlie Sheen, but once again, no judgement. You like what you like. If I liked that Brooke woman—

  “Stop rambling in your head. I preferred it when you talked out loud. Less silence.”

  “Dude, one person keeps telling me not to talk out loud, and now you’re telling me you like it. You know it’s weird, right?”

  “If that person was Hannah, ignore her. She’s crazy, and she already knows what you’re thinking anyway. She’s a…weirdo.”

  I giggle, tsking him, and sit up against the headboard, clutching the sheet to my chest.

  “You should sleep. You’re working again in a few hours, and you already look exhausted and don’t worry! I know this is just sex for you and that is all good because, because I don’t think I’m up for anything serious either,” I assure him, cringing at the lie.

  I am so up for serious. I’ve already named the seven kids we’re going to have.

  Banner remains silent for a long time before blowing out a breath and grunting.

  “Okay. Fine but we’re still having sex. A lot. And you’re not quitting on me if that’s what that kooky mind of yours has been thinking,” he warns.

  I flush, wondering if he can read my mind, and then shrug it off. Who cares? I like the sex part enough not to want to be sensible.

  “Okay. But this is not…dating. Dating implies we’ll go out and then people will stare, and Hannah has already pissed off the woman from the diner, and she’ll start gossiping and ugh! I hate gossip. Why can’t people just be nice?” I wonder.

  Banner laughs, a deep boom of sound that makes my heart turn over with joy.

  “Only you would think it’s possible, Cass. God, you’re too nice for me,” he mutters.

  “Oh, that’s not true! One time I put chewing gum on my teacher’s seat at school because she called me dumb. And I didn’t feel all that guilty when she got paper stuck to her butt because of it. I can be mean,” I assure him, wincing because it’s somewhat a lie.

  I did put the gum there and paper did get stuck to her butt, but I spent ten minutes stealthily crawling behind her to remove it without her knowledge. Broke my arm in the process when I didn’t see she’d reached the stairs and fell down them. Into her.

  She broke her ankle.

  I still pray about that.

  Banner laughs again, and I snuggle down into the sheets, liking that I’m making him happy. Right now, I feel happy, if a little pained by his quick agreement that we’re just…friends with benefits?

  I think that’s what trendy people call it.

  “Oh baby, somehow I doubt you enjoyed that. I’m going to go and let you sleep for another hour or two, and then I’ll see you when I get home from work.”

  “’kay. Be safe, officer. Don’t let the bears eat you!” I quip, earning myself another snort of amusement.

  “Oh preza, they wouldn’t dare. Now go to sleep.”

  “Bye.”

  “See you later.”

  I’m grinning when he ends the call and snuggle deeper into the blankets, my body replete and strangely tired all of a sudden. Rolling onto my back, I shove the blankets away when a wave of intense heat hits me, setting my skin on fire from the inside out.

  My tank and sleep shorts feel like steel wool against my skin, they scrape over the flesh making me gasp and choke out a whimper. Hot flush, I think, groaning when the heat rises, my blood feeling like its literally boiling in my veins.

  Rolling, I try to reach for the nightstand where my phone is, my hand flopping down and curling into the sheets when nausea and a piercing pain stabs into my gut.

  “Oh God!” I moan, gagging, my eyes
squeezing closed when shafts of agony tear through me.

  I can’t breathe, can’t move, can only scream into the mattress when it feels like I’m being torn apart from the inside out. It’s like the pain I felt before, the day I was eating muffins with Hannah in her kitchen. Only worse, so much worse that it’s almost debilitating and takes me forever to reach across the mattress and use the side to pull myself over.

  I’m sweating, the sheets beneath me drenched by the time I make it over the side of the bed. I fall over the side, hitting the floor with a thump though I feel no pain because everything inside me is one ball of agony inside my belly, the intensity so severe I gag again and open my mouth on a silent scream.

  Definitely have something terrible, I think, blinking away spots in my vision as I crawl toward the nightstand and reach a hand up, my arm burning from the strain.

  My fingertips skate off the nightstand, glancing off the phone and my arm flops down to the floor like a dead weight. Breathing deeply, I swallow convulsively and try again, praying with every screaming inch I make.

  God please, please help me.

  When nothing happens and my arm flops down again and I feel tears leak from my eyes, the sense of helplessness and fear that erupts in my chest making breathing even harder.

  Panting out shallow, pain-filled breaths, I try again, and this time by the grace of God my fingers touch the phone and pull it down. It lands beside my head with a clatter, the back cover popping free but thankfully not ejecting the battery.

  The screen swipe feels like it takes the strength of ten men to accomplish, and by the time I hit my call log I’m swimming in and out of consciousness.

  “Hello?”

  I barely hear the voice, can’t even tell you whose number I hit. All I know as my eyes fall closed is that the doctor must be wrong.

  I definitely feel like this is the rabies.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Banner

  “She didn’t do anything weird or look sick when she was with me! For God’s sake do you think I would really be that much of a bastard to make love to my female while she’s sick?” I roar, slamming a fist into the waiting room wall with enough force the thing shudders and gives in the spot where my fist hits.

  Plaster and drywall shoot out around me when I pull it back, not feeling the pain or caring when blood pours from my knuckles and the scrape running up my forearm.

  “Banner, that isn’t what I’m saying,” Althea says tiredly, rubbing at her eyes. “I just need to know everything, okay? She seemed fine when she left here two days ago. She had healthy chest sounds, her blood work didn’t show anything besides the anomaly of that shifter’s essence, and she’s been taking the blood supplements Grogan developed, more actually, so she should have been fine. Hell, she looked outright peppy to me when she was skipping through the grocery store making conversation with anyone who passed by. No matter how rude they were,” she says and snorts, shaking her head with a tired laugh.

  I know that! Hell, I haven’t seen her for the entire time she was cleaning my house, but when I did, she was glowing. Literally, it looked like she’d never been in better health.

  Christ, we had sex for hours, and it was Cass who seemed insatiable, turning to me not seconds after we finished one round and then went into two, three, and four.

  Judging from that, I am convinced she was healthy. I know it. So why this? Why now? I ask, hating that now that I’ve made up my mind to take my female, court her, mate her, keep her with me forever—even if I have to control my every move during sex—now she’s sick?

  What the fuck.

  “Al, she was one hundred percent good when she was with me. She was healthy and strong, and she didn’t even scent that much of the heat. In fact, I thought it was gone,” I mutter, sliding a hand through my hair.

  After I got a call from Althea that a raging maniac had brought Cass in, I hightailed it right to the clinic only to find a snarling, whining Lync pacing the waiting room scaring the two nurses who work with Al and Grogan.

  He was almost insensible to the point his usual one word barking answers sounded like rabid snarls, and it took me almost an hour to calm him down enough to piece it all together.

  When Cass didn’t show up for work, or breakfast as Lync’s “Food” snarl suggested, he started getting worried. He followed her scent trail back to her cabin, the one closest to mine and banged on the door.

  When no answer came, he bust the thing from its hinges and found her in her room, on the floor and unconscious. And then he rushed her over here, looking like a madman and no doubt scaring the shit out of people.

  What he told me scares me so much I’ve hardly acknowledged the influx of family, nor do I want to talk to Hannah about her guilt over thinking Cass pocket dialed her, especially when she heard a moan and assumed it was a sex moan.

  I don’t blame her. Hell, I couldn’t have spoken to her more than a few minutes before she collapsed, so this is on me too. I should have insisted she stay with me.

  She should have been with me, her mate, not alone in some tiny cabin where anything could have happened. It took an hour before Althea came out to see us, not that she’s got anything more to report back.

  All she can tell us is that Cass is having the same reaction she did before, and they don’t know what it is. Or how to treat it.

  “What I can tell you right now is that she’s looking worse. Her blood pressure is lower than it was the first time she came in; her hormone levels are skyrocketing and she’s not responding to any stimuli. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Won’t it help if I blood her?” I ask, wanting to do something.

  I need to fix this, help her, do something to make my female better. Both animals inside me demand it, as do I.

  “Ban, I just don’t know. It could make it worse or help. I don’t know, but until I run more tests on Cass and figure this out I don’t want to risk it,” she says softly, rising to shove her hands in her lab coat.

  “What then? We just keep going as if this isn’t a problem? For God’s sake, she isn’t even aware of what’s happening here!” I snarl.

  “Because we all agreed that she’d freak out and leave if she knew about us,” Hannah says, drawing my attention. “You know what happened to her Banner, why she left her home and ended up here.”

  I do, and the thought of some filthy fucking shifter getting his teeth into my female, my Fated, makes me want to lose it and tear the world apart to find him. I’ll rip his fucking head clean off his shoulders and present his teeth to my mate as an offering to prove she has no need to fear anymore.

  “I can’t take this shit! She’s so small and fragile. I don’t know how long her little body can take this. As it is, my animals want to blood her. I can barely hold off. What if she gets weaker and weaker when the blood could set in the healing and save her? I should do something! She needs me.”

  “I know, honey,” Hannah sighs, coming over to touch my arm. “I just think Althea is right. We can’t risk it until we know for sure. I mean, not to be a bitch, but every time she’s been around you she’s gone whackadoodle.”

  “Goddammit! If she would at least wake up!” I growl, closing my eyes against a snarl when I hear Lync whine from the corner he’s crept into.

  The male is on his haunches, has been since everyone walked in, and is currently eyeing the Silvertons and my parents with a level of distrust that makes me feel hopeless for the guy.

  The only people he’ll look at or let anywhere near him is Hannah, Logan, and myself. Even poor Mika is pressed up against Bear, as if she’s about to bolt, and Nick keeps glaring at me for keeping Lync a secret and not locking him up again.

  I don’t care about any of that shit though. Right now, I feel Lync’s pain because it’s my own. We want our Cass back.

  “She’ll wake up. She just needs some time to recuperate from this spell. We’ve got her temp down to human standards, her pressure is coming down, and she’s not in pain.”
/>
  That is something at least, and the minute Althea says it, I see Lync relax fractionally and stop the constant whine that’s been a background noise since I got here.

  “Thanks, Al.”

  “No problem. I just wish I fucking knew what to do for her. Poor little thing, she’s so small it frightens me to even touch her.”

  I second that and watch Althea walk away, the sound of her Crocs squeaking against the floor. Leaning back, I don’t say a word and prepare to wait as long as it takes for my female to come back to me.

  I just hope it’s soon because my bear is ready to rip this bitch apart.

  # # # #

  Cass

  I’m floating somewhere between wakefulness and complete darkness when I feel a tickle in my head and try to shift to relieve the sensation. Nothing happens, telling me my body is not awake even if I am.

  Grimacing, I focus on ignoring the feeling and go back to the blissful floating, happy enough to be here because I feel nothing here but peace and the cessation of the crippling pain I felt before.

  Stupid rabies! I bet I have brain worms. Didn’t I tell that hot doctor I have brain worms? I think, snorting silently when it occurs to me that it’s gross and I should be freaking out at the thought of little squiggling things in my brain tissue.

  I highly doubt you’ve got worms, babe. I would so not be your friend if that were the case.

  I hear the snort and amusement that comes with Hannah’s voice and frown, wondering if one of them is a mimic and sounds like my friends. That would be so weird. Talking to a brain worm who is sarcastic like Han. Hilarious.

  I am not a worm! Gross. That’s just nasty, Cass. Honestly, being in here with you is giving me the creeps already. The things you come up with.

  Deciding to just go with it since I can’t wake myself up and I am totally dying of boredom, I shrug and let out a huff.

  Well, if it’s not the worms or rabies, then what is it because let me tell ya, that sucked ass. Never felt that much pain before.