The intensity in his eyes was so bright now that they were like burning amber flames.“It means that I am with you and only you for the rest of our lives. It means if anyone tries to lay a paw on you I chew it off. It means that your happiness is my happiness and my job is to make you fall asleep in my arms with a smile each night.”
“Wow.” Her heart swelled in her chest and she stared up at him in wonder.
“What?” he looked worried. “I tried to say it right.”
“It was better than right.” Tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked hard. “It was… it was like those words filled a part of me I didn’t even realize was empty. Like an ache I’ve learned to live with just stopped hurting.”
“Really? I did good?” A smile curled his beautiful lips as he reached down and stroked her face with a feather-light touch, and it stoked the flames of her desires so high she thought she’d combust.
“Now, let me go so I can tear your pants off,” she added, with a blush. Not very lady-like, but definitely happening.
“Not until you say that you’re mine.” His hand tightened on her wrists.
“Again with the blackmail?! And yes, I’m yours! You son of a bitch! And you’re mine, and if any woman ever tries to get her claws into you, I’ll chew her face off and eat it for lunch!”
Instantly he released her wrists, and then it was a race to see who could strip out of their clothes fastest.
She beat him to the punch and then watched with eager anticipation as his skin was revealed inch by incredible inch. When he shed his pants, his cock stood at full attention, throbbing for her to touch him. It jutted up from a thatch of thick dark hair, and a pearl of pre-cum glistened on the tip.
She wanted to feel him inside her so badly, but he pushed her down and began kissing her way down her stomach.
“I want to taste you first.”
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, her fingers tangling in the silken strands of his hair.
When he moved between her legs, she cried out aloud. He spread her dewy lips open with his fingers and stroked her with his tongue, moaning into her pussy.
“Yes,” she urged him on as he lapped at her. The scent of his musk swirled in the air, mingling with the fruity aroma of her arousal, and his firm hands on her thighs forced her legs open wider.
When his hot mouth closed on the tiny pink pearl of her clit, she uttered a throaty cry that echoed back at her.
She climbed heights of ecstasy, higher and higher, until finally he pulled back and moved up her body again until he was on top of her and the thick head of his cock nudged her aching, needy entrance.
“Please,” she begged, beyond shame now. He entered her in one hard, swift thrust, and her tight tunnel squeezed him. He pumped again, entering her.
Her tight sheath squeezed his massive girth, and he let out a throaty groan of appreciation. She moved under him impatiently, and he drew back and thrust, pumping into her again and again, pistoning into her, growling with pleasure, their sweaty bodies entangled, legs wrapped around each other, until finally he dragged her to the edge of ecstasy.
Finally, her orgasm crashed down on her in an explosion of colored lights behind her eyes and delirious pleasure that flooded her body. She cried out aloud, her fingers sinking into his back. He crushed her in his arm, his body shuddering, his hot seed filling her.
Afterwards, they lay tangled together, and he brushed her sweaty hair from her face and stroked her back with light, delicate touches.
They lay there in a haze of pleasure, the minutes drifting by, their heartbeats thudding in rhythm. Finally, Krista moved in his arms and forced herself to sit up.“We should shift, and listen and scent in case anyone’s close to us,” she said. “Anybody could have taken the opportunity to sneak up on us while we were… distracted.”
“You’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Blake grinned at her, and then the air around him shimmered as fur rippled over his body.
She joined suit, and a couple of minutes later they sat there side-by-side, wolf and fox, together. His massive gray wolf towered over her petite red fox, but somehow, they were perfect together. She leaned against him, scanning the forest and sniffing and listening as he tipped his head back in the air and scented.
He glanced at her questioningly, and she shrugged.
Finally, they shifted back into human form and padded across the wet grass into the tent, naked. It wasn’t long before Blake was inside her again, and impossibly, her desire flared up instantly, wrapping around her like a cloud.
Around 5 a.m. they woke up to the sound of something whistling through the air, and then a woody thunk. Not a gunshot. What the hell was it?
“Stay here!” Blake barked. He shifted in seconds and hurried out of the tent. She followed him in fox form. There was an arrow in an oak tree, still quivering, with a note pinned to the shaft.
The unwashed reek of Bo Durian was strong in the air and on the arrow. Krista and Blake quickly shifted back to their human forms.
Krista recognized the handwriting on the note. It said, “Why you doin’ it out in the woods like animals? Come stay at the summer house.”
Dawnie Reed.
Chapter Twelve
Blake scowled at the note. “It smells like that wolf shifter, Bo. And he’s stinking up the woods near us, too. I can’t believe I didn’t wake up when he was getting close to us. I should go after him.” He trained his cool gaze on the treeline.
“No, that would be the worst thing we could do. Let’s drive into town to get some breakfast and I’ll explain on the way. We needed to get going anyway.” She glanced around uneasily. She didn’t want to talk until they were in the SUV because she didn’t want to be overheard. Bo’s scent still hung in the air, but it was growing weaker—he was heading away from them, fast. He’d just come to deliver Dawnie’s message—via bow and arrow.
They took down the tent in record time, folded it and tossed it into the back of the SUV.
“You drive,” Blake said. “You know where we’re going, and after you fill me in on what’s up, I need to use my sat phone to call Stef and check in.”
She waited until they were in the SUV and driving away before she started talking.
“That was Dawnie Reed’s handwriting, and that was typical Dawnie. Acting all sweet offering us her summer cabin but attaching it to an arrow was a thinly veiled threat. Not only that, she’s making it clear that she knows we’re here in her territory and she has eyes on us.”
“So, we’re not going to stay in her cabin, of course.”
“Oh, yes we are. First of all, if we turn it down it’s practically a declaration of war. And secondly, we’ll be just as safe—or in as much danger—at her cabin as we will anywhere in her territory. She can find us anywhere out here. She’s got people everywhere.”
“You keep calling it her territory,” Blake said. “And it seems to me that she does more harm than good out here. She sells moonshine that has addictive properties and sometimes fries people’s brains or makes them go berserk, she shut down the mines which took away a major source of income in the area… why don’t people rebel?”
Krista heaved a sigh. “Because her family’s ruled this town for generations, and everyone’s just too whipped to stand up to them. And she’s a mean ass grizzly, and so are her kids, and any one of them could take down any other shifter in this county, including you, Blake. And also because she does keep a lot of money flowing into the holler. She makes charitable contributions, she takes in strays and orphans and raises them to be loyal to her… or tries to.” She shuddered as she said it.
She’d been one of those strays. She hadn’t been loyal. Dawnie never found out the true depths of Krista’s disloyalty, or Krista wouldn’t be standing here breathing oxygen.
“Sounds like there’s a story in there.”
She winced. She wanted to believe that he was her fated mate, that he’d meant every word that he said last night. But they’d just met, and he said pretty words, b
ut it wouldn’t the first time that a man had said pretty, empty words to her with passion and feeling.
And in the clear light of morning, with most of the lust-fog having diminished and the orange globe of the sun rising up over the mountaintops and pouring its syrupy light into the holler, she couldn’t help but think of who she was and where she came from.
And the depth of her betrayal against Dawnie.
“There is, but it’s a story for another time,” she said lightly. She looked straight ahead, but she could smell disappointment and hurt burning in the air, so heavy it made her eyes water. He didn’t just want some of her. He wanted all of her.
And he didn’t trust her, not 100 percent. That was understandable; they’d just met. But that went both ways. She wasn’t ready to open herself all the way up yet.
“We’re looking for a missing boy.” Blake’s voice was harsh with accusation, and after their tender intimacy last night, it stung like a swarm of bees.
“I know that. How could you think I’d forget that?”
“When you withhold information from me, you make it impossible for me to do my job and you risk that child’s life.” His warm gaze had frosted over. He sounded like he was a million miles away. She was back to being nothing more than an assignment to him.
Her stomach twisted in a knot.“I’m not withholding anything useful, it’s something that happened ten years ago and has no relevance to today.”
The sharp edge of his voice cut her like a knife blade. “I decide what’s useful to our investigation, Krista.”
“Well, I guess you’ll just have to get my license yanked then,” she snapped.
The temperature in the SUV seemed to drop thirty degrees. She shivered, the hair on her arms lifting. “I’m sorry you think that about me. I’m going to make that call now.”
His voice was stilted and formal as he called Stef on his satellite phone.
She could hear both sides of the conversation.
No, they hadn’t made any headway yet. Several of Michael Coffman’s pride members had been attacked when they went pounding on people’s doors in the area near where Ethan had disappeared, demanding to be allowed in to search, and they’d fought back, injuring three members of a wolf family. Michael was ready to explode with fury and panic, and he was threatening to call in the heads of all the lion prides on the East Coast and basically declare war not just on Flowering Dogwood but on the entire area known as The Zoo if he didn’t get his son back right the hell now. And that war would spill over into Crystal Bay—and have national implications. When shifters went to war with each other, humans tended to get caught in the crossfire.
He’d spoken to Dawnie face-to-face yesterday around midnight at the Flowering Dogwood town hall, and it hadn’t gone well. She’d started out with her benevolent matriarch act, promising that she’d have all of her people out looking for the boy, and assuring him that there was no need for his men to go poking their noses around, saying it would just make things worse. He’d responded with red-hot fury, swearing that he’d send his men wherever he damn well pleased until he had his boy back, and if he didn’t get Ethan back safe and sound he’d rain down hellfire on the entire holler and leave nothing but scorched earth.
The meeting had ended with shouts and threats.
Things were getting worse and Ethan was out there somewhere. If he was still alive. Was he scared, hungry, suffering? Of course he’d be scared, he’d been kept from his father and his pride.
Frustration chewed at Krista. She hated feeling like this. Stick her in a clinic full of desperately ill patients and she was perfectly in her element. She could help, she could make a difference. Here? She was like a third thumb. Useless.
There was a frosty silence in the SUV as the two of them drove into town.
They pulled up to a parking spot on Main Street and climbed out. There was a grocery store here, a gas station, and a General Mercantile where people bought everything from chicken feed to shampoo to sneakers. Downtown was looking worn and tired, weeds poking through the sidewalk, streetlamps with cracked globes. Krista felt a twinge of pain in her heart at the sight.
Turning away from the sad, faded downtown, she dug her phone out of her purse and called Hattie again.
Hattie answered right away. “Krista! You change your mind?”
“Yes, didn’t you get my message?”
“No, but I think my phone’s broken. There’s a red light keeps blinking on it.”
“That’s from the message I left!” she said with exasperation. “I swear, you’re hopeless when it comes to technology.”
“What has technology ever done for me?”
“Cars? Cars are technology. Cars are good. You have a car.” And heaven help everyone on the road when Hattie drove it.
“Where’s everyone gotta go in such a hurry? I’d just as soon have the horse and buggy back. And cars are always bumping into things.” Only when you drive them, Krista thought. “But where are you? You coming by tonight?”
“I might not be able to see you til the shindig. I’m staying at Dawnie’s summer cabin, and I’m with Blake,” she said. “That shifter who was sort of following me? He’s my fated mate.” She shot Blake a dirty look.
“I knew it!” Hattie yelled. “Fated mate! Grandcubs, I’m gonna have grandcubs! I knew he was the one for you, I liked him the first minute I saw him!”
That wasn’t how Krista remembered it… but okay. “You two just go mate now, honey,” Hattie continued.“You get that bond set up good and strong.” Ewwww, was her million-year old aunt talking to her about sex?
“Love you, Aunt Hattie! I’ll see you at the fairgrounds!” That was where they held the shindig every year. She hung up quickly.
Then she looked back at Blake, who was standing a few feet away, frowning.
“You should probably at least pretend you can stand the sight of me,” she said to Blake icily.
His forehead creased in frustration.“Damn it, Krista, you know I— ” But their attention was distracted by a wolf shifter stumbling down the street.
“Houston?” she called. She hurried over to him with Blake right by her side. She winced when she reached the addled shifter. Houston had not aged well. In his forties now, too stooped over for a man that age, clothing stained and smelling bad, graying hair greasy and plastered to his scalp.
He stopped and studied her, turned back to Blake intent on pounding his face, then stopped to assess Krista again. Finally, recognition bloomed on his face, showing he was missing one of his canines. “No, it ain’t.”
Krista chuckled and went in for a hug. Houston was actually one of the few people she’d missed. “It really is, House. What you been up to?” Her voice slipped back into the cadence of the holler.
“Nothin’ much. Who’s that there?” Houston asked, pulling back. He looked at Blake with bleary suspicion. “You bring po-leese to the holler?”
Krista felt a little thrum of alarm. Was Houston putting on an act, and fishing for information? He’d always been one of Dawnie’s biggest customers when it came to her moonshine. She’d thought of him as too simple to be a spy, though.
“He’s not police, he’s ex-military. He’s my fated mate. I’m bringing him to the family gathering.”
“Fated mate! Woo-hoo!” His blood-shot eyes lit up. “Well, ain’t that a fine how-de-do!” He bowed to them, almost falling over on his face. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Houston. So, what’s the scuttlebutt around town?”
He shrugged. “The usual. Things goin’ downhill since the mines closed.” Then a fearful look crossed his face. “Don’t tell Dawnie I said that.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “Anything else happening? Come on, you must have some good gossip for me. I haven’t been here in ages.”
“Well, some cub went missing, and a buncha lions tearin’ up the town looking for him. That’s about all I know.” He ran his fingers through his hair. Then he glanced at Blake and squinted, tr
ying to bring him into focus. “Who’s that? You bring a cop to town?”
She saw Blake wince, and pity squeezed her insides. Memory loss. Not good. Her mind started running through the list of herbs and minerals that would help Houston.
But only if he laid off the sauce.
Of course, telling him that would be stepping on Dawnie’s territory, a dangerous place to be.
He was swaying where he stood. She shook her head in frustration. “Listen. I don’t want to overstep, but I can smell the ‘shine on you, and it’s not even breakfast yet. And I already told you that Blake’s not a cop, he’s military, and he’s my fated mate. I told you that sixty seconds ago.”
“You did?” His face puckered in dismay. “I’m sorry. Mind’s kinda foggy these days.”
The hell with Dawnie. She reached into her purse and pulled out a bag of capsules she had tucked in her makeup bag. She handed them out a lot in the clinic because there was a big substance abuse problem in their neighborhood. She gave him two of them. “Swallow these. Now.” Right there in front of Blake.
He swallowed them dry with a pained gulp without even asking what they were.
She looked at him intently. “Those will sober you up. You’ll feel better within the hour. I can give you a week’s worth, and if you take two a day, every day, they’ll wean you off the ‘shine with no DTs. Will you take them?”
He nodded fuzzily. “I been meaning to cut back. Can’t work or nothin’ when I’m like this, and the pack don’t want to talk to me. I’m sorry, Krista.” She shoved the pills into his shirt pocket, and he reached out and gave her another hug.
“It’s good to have you back, Krista.” And he stumbled away.
She glanced up at Blake.
“That was a nice thing you did for him,” Blake said.
“Thank you.” The words came out clipped, and she headed into the grocery store without bothering to see if he was following, but of course, he was.
Blackmailed By The Wolf (Shifters, Inc. Book 6) Page 9
