by Tessa Clarke
“I thought maybe we could head down Sweet Susannah. There are some meteor showers happening in the eastern sky tonight that I wanted to get a better look at.” He wondered if she knew that he was proposing going down a run named after his dead mate. It was symbolic. Saying one final goodbye to Susie before opening his heart to Astrid. But if she knew, Astrid might think it was strange.
Astrid hesitated and then elevated her shoulders as if to indicate that this would be okay with her, and Chance took her hand and guided her out of the lodge. Jason made a point of locking the door behind them. Several of the other groups had already headed off and Stefanie, one of the ski patrollers on duty that night, skied up to them.
“Just doing a safety check. Both of you have headlamps and a charged phone, right? And we’re assuming that you’re going to be each other’s buddy. Nobody’s tailgunning tonight, and with the lifts shut down, it would take us some time to sled a toboggan up to any accident, so be careful. No fancy moves Mr. Trainor,” she said severely, but with a wink.
“Absolutely,” Chance said. It was possible that he was a little drunker than he had previously realized.
All the better for giving him enough liquid courage to ask Astrid to come over to his place when they got to the bottom.
“My phone’s dead,” Astrid said. “But I have my radio.” Stefanie nodded and skied off. She had done her due diligence, but was not really worried about them.
The last of the other groups left, and Astrid and Chance poled over to the top of Sweet Savannah. It was a steep, technical run, but no more so than the ones the others were taking. And he and Astrid could ski it in their sleep. Their headlamps cut a swathe of sparkles in the freshly fallen snow.
“After you,” he said, gesturing at the run. “Stop at the top of the waterfall, and we’ll see if we can see the shower.”
Astrid gave him a wicked smile and pushed off, sweeping down through the trees, a trail of light fluffy powder fanning out behind her, her light illuminating the fir and pine that hugged sides of the run. He followed her closely, not wanting to lose her in the trees.
After an exhilarating rush through the trees, Astrid pulled to a stop on top of the waterfall, a ten-foot cascade of sheer ice that most skiers went around. Chance usually dropped it, but he wouldn’t tonight. Not while drunk. The moonlight shimmered off the icicles that made up the main part of the waterfall.
He stopped right close to Astrid and placed an arm around her waist, feeling a shot of adrenaline as he touched her. She leaned into him slightly, but still tentatively. She was the perfect height. He towered over most women, which made things like dancing and sex sometimes a little awkward, but Astrid was just right, which introduced a whole bunch of delightful opportunities in the bedroom.
“I was thinking,” he said, and then paused. What he’d actually been thinking was that she was just the right height for his cock, both bent over the bed and pressed against the wall. He reeled his thoughts in. “Maybe you might like to come back to my place when we get to the bottom.”
She pulled away a little. “I don’t know, Chance. I like you, but in the ski patrol shack, drunken one-night stands between two regular occupants tend to take on a life of their own. I’d never hear the end of it.”
“I don’t even work there, and I’m not drunk.”
She gave his arm a light punch. “No, but you practically live there and I’m drunk, or drunk enough. Seriously. I don’t do one-night stands. Let’s just say I’ve had some bad experiences.”
He tightened his hold around her. “Who said it would be a one-night stand?”
She looked at him more sharply. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I like you Tris, a lot, so shoot me.”
“Really?” she said.
“Really.”
“You could have any sexy little ski bunny you wanted.”
Funny she should mention rabbits. “I prefer humans,” he said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with bunnies.”
Astrid snorted. “You know what I mean.”
He flipped off his headlamp, and turned to her, flipping her light off as well. Then he lifted her chin. “You, Astrid Delacour, were the sexiest ski bunny in that lodge tonight. Perhaps not the littlest, but little is overrated.”
Astrid gave him a light push, and he took the opportunity to invade her mouth with his tongue. She seemed surprised, but didn’t push away, and his kiss seemed to ignite something in her. It didn’t take long for her tongue to be entwined with his. His cock throbbed with need by the time he pulled away. He’d fuck her right here in the snow right now if he didn’t know from personal experience that it was damn cold and not nearly as fun as one might think.
He heard the hoarseness in his own voice. “I promise you an enjoyable night, what’s left of it. I won’t even touch you unless you want me to, Scout’s Honor. You can set the pace. But if you’d prefer, we can go out for a drink sometime this week instead.”
Astrid hesitated, clearly thinking. Then she gave him a wry look. “Fine. I’ll come to your place,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with you.” A smile stole across her face. “It doesn’t mean I’m not sleeping with you either. I want to see how bachelor and freeskier your place is.”
“I don’t have any Pilsner Blue Ribbons on my bedside table or skis on my couch, I promise.”
“What about roommates?”
“Kicked them out last year. It’s just me.”
“In that case, sleeping with you is a definite possibility.” She pulled a droll face, which made him laugh. “Just kidding. I’ll come over. We can talk. We can see what happens.”
Chance grinned back at her, slipped his hands down over her buttocks, and pulled her lips back to his.
Chapter Three: Astrid
Chance Trainor was kissing her. He was kissing her after asking her to come over to his place, after telling her that he liked her a lot and that she was sexy.
The way he was kissing her now certainly made her feel sexy. Astrid knew she had an outdoorsy charm that appealed to a certain kind of man. She had pretty hair and even, attractive features, but she was so big. She was not only wide and muscular, she was also tall, and she didn’t even have huge tits to compensate for it. It wasn’t fair. She never thought of herself as sexy. Going for Flynn had been a pure act of desperate hope, spurred on by the fact that Flynn was so nice, and look how that had turned out. She’d made a fool of herself.
Could she trust Chance? He seemed sincere. But he was a freeskier, a champion freeskier. Surely that meant he totally slept around. But the way he was kissing her was turning her insides to molten. Her breath was becoming jagged, and she was pretty sure she was letting out soft moans of desire. She’d been determined to stick to her policy regarding one-night stands, but right now she just wanted to see Chance naked and touch every inch of his shockingly perfect body.
He pulled away and gave her his lopsided grin. “Let’s head down. The sooner we get there, the sooner I can convince you to spend some time in my bed.”
Convincing her might not be that be hard, Astrid reflected, if he kept kissing her like that. Nevertheless, she was still hurting from Flynn. She didn’t want to do anything stupid.
They both flipped their headlamps back on, and Astrid wrapped her fingers back around her poles preparing to push off and ski around the waterfall. For a second, she considered dropping it, just to show Chance that she could. But that would be dumb to do at night, while drunk, and Astrid despite being a party girl, was always responsible on skis.
A flash of movement caught her eye. A giant white owl swooped out of the trees, flying low, its talons extended and eyes glittering in the moonlight. It was heading right for them. She screamed and Chance whirled, snapping his pole up in defense. The owl didn’t veer away and instead descended on Chance in a fury, flapping its long wings and trying to scratch Chance with its claws. Chance swung his pole at the beast to keep it at bay.
&
nbsp; “What’s it doing?” Astrid shrieked.
“Get back,” Chance yelled. “Go to the bottom of the waterfall, Astrid.”
Astrid complied, clearing the expanse of ice and rock in a matter of three tight turns on the left side. She looked back up to see the owl still going after Chance, almost like it was possessed. Maybe it was rabid.
“Chance, drop the waterfall. Maybe it won’t follow us into the trees.”
Chance looked like he was about to obey when a pack of coyotes emerged from the trees, growling and making low yips at Chance. Astrid’s heart froze. There had to be thirty of them at least. They started to surround him, and he darted her an odd and almost helpless glance before launching off the other side of the waterfall away from her, and disappearing into the trees. What was he doing? Was he trying to lead them away from her?
The coyotes leapt off the icy expanse after him, and the vicious screams, growls, and cries that emerged from the trees curdled her blood. It sounded like an animal was being ripped to shreds. They were killing Chance. She blinked back a flood of panicked tears. The owl had come to perch on a tree above her and watched her with cold, unblinking eyes. Was she to be next?
She removed her mitt and tried to withdraw her cell phone. Then she remembered it was dead.
She dug out her radio and was about try the patroller channel when she saw the tiger. He emerged from the trees where Chance had disappeared, a smear of fresh blood on his maw. He padded towards her, his body an outline of muscle, his footsteps utterly silent in the snow. Astrid’s hands began to tremble violently, and her radio slipped out of them, vanishing in the freshly fallen snow.
The tiger approached, never taking his eyes from her. Astrid searched her memory banks for the appropriate behavior in front of big cats from her wilderness training courses. Look big and yell. She rose up to her full height, threw her arms into the air and prepared to bellow. Where on earth had a tiger come from?
But abruptly the tiger became a man, a naked man, stunning in his muscled perfection. Chance.
Chance was a shifter? Profound shock and jittery relief washed over her. Well sort of relief, she amended. She was relieved that she wasn’t about to be consumed by a tiger. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Chance being a shifter.
But as he approached, she saw he didn’t look quite right. There was a wildness and fierceness to this Chance that didn’t mesh with the Chance she knew. This Chance had scars on his face, and his hair was longer and more untamed. And yet in every other respect, he was identical.
“You will come with me,” he said in a strained voice.
“Chance?” she said. It seemed at the same time both impossible and absolutely certain that this man was Chance. He looked exactly like him, and he had emerged from the trees into which Chance had gone. Who else could it be?
“Chance is injured,” The man said. “I’m his brother Rowan. I’m taking Chance back to my cave.”
Astrid was fairly certain her jaw was hanging slack. Chance was a shifter, had an identical twin brother, and his brother lived in a cave. A cave?
“Maybe I’ll just get going,” she said. “I’ll just ski down on my own.” Was this bad, she wondered. Was she abandoning Chance to a strange tiger shapeshifter who could appear just like Chance?
The man’s brow creased. “Your place is with your mate when he’s injured.”
Astrid drew back. “He isn’t my mate. How hurt is he?”
“He requires some stitches. My mate can do them. I apologize for making assumptions. I can only sense how he feels about you, not how you feel about him.”
Wha? What was this man talking about?
“If he’s okay to ski, I can take him to the hospital,” she said brightly. Mr. Rowan, bare-chest, become-a-tiger, have-blood-on-his-chin was starting to creep her out, even though she had to admit, his body was beyond magnificent. She wondered if Chance’s was just as fine.
“I don’t think he should ski,” Rowan said. “Why don’t you come and see him and then you can decide?”
Chance lay on his side in the snow in a pool of blood. The bodies of dead coyotes lay all around them, stains of red creeping into the snow beneath them. Chance was in his human form, naked as well, although his ski jacket and pants had been wrapped around him, and his face was white, but he was conscious and looking more than a little sheepish as she approached with his brother. A stunning white-haired woman, who was also naked, leaned over him placing gauze on his wounds.
“Marika, this is Chance’s mate,” Rowan said tersely. “Let her have a few words with Chance before we move him. She wants to go down alone.”
The woman nodded and stepped aside. Astrid blinked. What was all this talk of mates? And why was everyone naked?
“Hey,” she said to Chance.
“Hey, Tris,” he replied a little weakly.
“You okay?”
“I’ll be fine. The coyotes were taking a round out of me before Rowan appeared. A little family blood feud. They got me good while I was stripping to shift. Ski gear can be a little confining. Sometimes I think Rowan might have it right with his loin cloths and furs.”
“So, you’re a shifter?”
“Yeah. I was hoping to wow you with my lovemaking and break that to you a little later.”
“I see.” She wanted to kneel and take his blond head into her lap, but she held back.
“I don’t think you should head off alone, Tris. Rowan and I didn’t kill all the coyotes and Lothoren, the owl, is still around here. It’s not safe.”
“Rowan lives in a cave then?”
Chance winced and seemed to go even whiter. “Yeah, should make my bachelor pad look like a castle. He’s a wild one—a shifter who’s decided to return to the land and spend most of his time in animal form. They’re safe, if a little unpredictable. Marika will stitch me up and then we can ski down in the morning. Shifters take care of their own. Human doctors would ask too many questions. Dylan usually stitches me up.”
Astrid glanced back over to where Rowan and Marika stood watching the forest around them. She reeled from the revelations of the night and the implication that Dylan, her boss and one of her best friends, was a shifter too. But Chance was losing a lot of blood from the looks of it. He needed to get stitched up.
“All right,” she said. “Off to the cave we go.”
Chapter Four: Chance
Of all the ways for Astrid to find out he was a shifter, this was not it. She watched him now; she watched all of them, her eyes twitchy and uncertain. He’d shifted for the short trip to the cave. It was just easier. He healed faster in his tiger form, and he could more easily move while bleeding on four feet. Rowan and Marika had shifted too—Marika becoming a beautiful silvery snowshoe hare—and Astrid had followed behind them carrying her skis and all of his gear.
The cave was warm, if thick with smoke, with a stoked fire in the center. Chance found a pallet on the floor and shifted back to his human form so Marika could do her stitching. Astrid sat not too far away, her knees pulled to her chest. He could smell wariness on her and sense the caution in all her movements.
Rowan and Marika had donned simple sleeveless shifts when they reached the cave. It was probably out of some sense of propriety. Chance was pretty sure they went naked when they were alone.
“They probably thought you were me. The conflict is getting worse” Rowan said quietly. “I need your help, Chance.”
“I don’t know, Row. I honor my animal form, but I’m part of the human world. Couldn’t you relocate to Bear Canyon? I have friends there and bears and tigers can live and let live. Gavin and his pack won’t follow you there.”
“I don’t believe in running,” Rowan answered and went and sat by the fire, leaving Marika to do her work.
Chance winced as she disinfected and sewed together a particularly deep gash on his thigh. At least his brother and sister-in-law believed enough in human practices to have disinfectant on hand. A
nd at least he was up to date on his rabies shots.
Damned coyotes. They were always so feral and territorial. They also didn’t believe in mixed-race marriages, which made Rowan and Marika targets.
Chance hadn’t been pleased when his twin brother announced his intention to go wild and live in the woods to be truer to his animal roots. But he’d supported him. There were wild ones in every shifter family. But fighting for him against a pack of weasely coyotes and that cursed owl, that was another thing altogether. The owl had nearly taken him out during the freeski event yesterday when he flew directly across Chance’s path in pursuit of Marika. He knew the coyote pack had been harassing his brother, but the attack tonight was far beyond harassment. One-on-one, the coyotes didn’t stand a chance against a tiger, but in a pack like that, their teeth sometimes hit their mark and he could see why his brother was worried, especially about his mate.
“Hold still, Chance.” Marika’s voice seemed to ripple silver. She rarely spoke, preferring to communicate through movement and smell.
“You could come and live with me down in White Peaks,” he offered.
Marika smiled and blew an impatient little huff of air out of her nose. She smelled like the sweetest grass of summer. She didn’t reply to his offer. He knew the answer was no. He tried to imagine them in his little house on Sun Valley Road on the outskirts of town where he had plenty of access to the mountains.
He’d hoped to impress Astrid with his well-appointed and tidy property, which he’d built himself and probably did not resemble what she’d pictured at all. He was well aware of the types of houses that most ski bums inhabited.
But instead he’d brought her to a cave.
Thinking about Astrid and what he had hoped to do with her at his house had started to make him hard again. He made sure one of the furs was covering his groin, or Rowan would think he was hot for Marika.
“You warm enough,” he said to Astrid.
She nodded, almost robotically.
