Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1)

by K. R. Alexander

  “Barbara Ann likes you. Just get us one. Go,” Mej ordered in Vulpen.

  Komu headed for the bar through a cloud of smoke.

  Getting our key? He must be. The key from Barbara Ann to the story at the top of the world.

  My blood tingled. I smiled more, discovering I looked into the face of a big man in a full black suit.

  “Hello.” The English word. More in English.

  I smiled and nodded.

  Mej stepped between us, answering back in rapid English. He still puffed, as did I, hot and displeased by this man.

  The man, eyes hooded, mustache curving with his smile, held up a hand with a flat patting motion.

  “Hän? Dance good,” he told me in Hän, I suppose. Some words were familiar and some not, leaving me puzzling over them. I wished he would use Tanana or … something. I couldn’t remember what other Na-Dene languages I knew. He struggled over more words I couldn’t follow, then, “Pay you? Dance many nights?”

  I nodded eagerly. “Thank you—”

  Mej lifted a hand so the back of it almost hit my nose. He snarled his words, fast in English, gesturing into the man’s face, then the bar where Komu had walked off, then the front door, then shaking his head.

  Men at our table were snickering.

  The suited man’s smile slipped away like melting snow.

  After a pause, he said something small in English, gave a jerk of his head at Mej, curled his lip at me, and strode away.

  Mej blew out a breath, shoulders below his sweat-damp pale shirt and vest relaxing somewhat. He turned to me. “Sorry.” Speaking in Vulpen. “The hotel manager. Don’t worry. I know a few of his off-license secrets—like selling on Sundays—of which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would like to be informed.”

  “I’m not worried.” Why were they always thinking I was worrying?

  Mej looked into my face. He smiled, laughed a little. “No, I suppose not. That’s the trouble with you, isn’t it?”

  Before I could ask him to elaborate, Komu was back.

  There was a fierce debate between the two as Komu refused to give up the key, saying he was coming too. Mej ripped it from his hand with a growling hiss that sounded more fur than skin. Komu stepped back, shoulders hunching in.

  “Just play a hand with these fine gentlemen. I’ll show her around and we’ll get out of here. That’s enough for tonight. Make sure you win those rounds off Jack for the wolf’s rifle.” Mej changed to English for something to the men around the table—excusing himself.

  “Enjoy,” Komu muttered to me with a sidelong glance. “It’s a good view.”

  I wanted to tell Mej that Komu could come. He didn’t need to be kept from that view with us.

  But Mej was answering first. “The very best.” Addressing me in Vulpen. “I’ll take you to the highest summit in town and you can feast your senses over our great Yukon.”

  Something … crashed.

  Something clicked, turned, fell away.

  Something in my head exploded like beads of water on a burning frying pan. A blink, a breath, a twist in time. A light, a switch, a fall, a landing.

  Foxes around me, holding, laughing, dancing. “This way! Summit, this way!” Kits running, dashing with me, a kit, free and happy in the midnight sun, climbing, climbing… An old vixen, a comb in my hair, smooth, long, slow, stroke, stroke, stroke. “Gently. Summit. Gently.”

  Mej had started away, pulled my hand, completely turned around. He’d said something to me. Komu, having yanked out his chair, had also moved.

  “What is it?”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Summit! This way!”

  “Gently…”

  I blinked and gazed into Mej’s fiery brown eyes. So close and hot and personal, because he knew me. He knew who I was. The idea made me shudder, wanting him even closer.

  “You know my name,” I whispered. It didn’t matter about the noise. I knew they heard me.

  “What?” Komu gasped, face lighting up.

  I beamed into Mej’s eyes, my own burning again, flooding. “You called me by my name.”

  “I … what?” Mej cocked his head.

  I kissed him, up on my toes. “Summit.”

  “Summit? Your name is … Summit?” Komu was hesitant.

  Mej was already laughing, wrapping his arms around me, spinning me in place. His mouth was as hot as before—but even more intoxicating.

  “Summit, Summit, Summit,” he said against my lips when the kiss broke, as if to make sure we both remembered. He set me down. The men made noises beside us at the table. “It’s beautiful.” He cupped my chin against his palm. “Almost as beautiful as you. Come on.”

  Chapter 28

  Stairs clattered below Mej’s boots. My moccasins tread like cobwebs. Along a dim hall, putting the bar and dance hall noise behind us, to another flight of wood stairs.

  “Footfalls of a fox,” Mej murmured in my ear. “You’ll have to excuse my clumping on the dance floor. I hope I didn’t mash your toes.”

  “Never.” I laughed. “I loved your sharp feet. Part of our music.”

  “Sharp feet? Have you ever seen a tap-dancer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This made us both laugh even more. His hand was on my waist, light but still hot. I shouldn’t have been breathless from a climb, no matter that it was a challenge for me, never having seen a staircase before that I recalled. It was the giddy wonder of my name, the way Mej had found it for me, then tied it to my lips, that kept me breathless now.

  “You’ll need to master English,” he said in my ear as we reached the top, not bound for the roof but a room. “You should know what they’re singing, what they ask you from the bar, what they’re trying to sell you in a shop. I’ll teach you. You’ll want reading lessons. We have English books and papers at home and teach kits to read and write English. But that’s new. None of the elders understand it.”

  “Thank you, Mej. I might not be able to … remember lessons. I don’t know…”

  “What do you remember?”

  I whipped around on the hall rug, bumping him as he was close at my shoulder. Another wave of delight rushed me like a hot drink. “I remember me. I’m Summit.”

  “You’ll have no problem.” Mej grinned. For some reason we were both speaking in undertones, as if sneaking up here. “Tem has a little book of numbers and letters she’s outgrown. It goes from kit to kit. You can start lessons with it.”

  “I’d love that.” I dragged myself from his eyes to venture down the hall, gliding my fingertips along wallpaper and wood doors, sniffing smoke and beer fumes.

  “Wood polish,” Mej said, watching me. “They use beer for polishing the woodwork.”

  “Doesn’t it make you sick to drink?” I walked backwards so I could face him, still touching and scenting as I went.

  “Did Demik tell you that? It doesn’t poison a fox to take one shot of whiskey. Otherwise we wouldn’t make birch water. Just don’t overdo.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Anyway—” He twirled the iron key on a ring in his hand. “Tobacco helps. The smoke cuts some of the alcohol—so they say. I wouldn’t overdo anyway. Can’t model ourselves after humanity too closely.”

  I grinned and sniffed a doorknob that smelled of sweet syrup. “I’ll tell Demik you said so.”

  “Please don’t.” Mej raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t want him thinking any more of me than he already does.”

  “More of you?” I laughed.

  “He couldn’t think any less of me.”

  “You and he are to be very close. We must find ways for you to love each other.”

  “Must we?” He still looked amused as he reached for the next door. “Such as?”

  “Dependence. Sharing a den, meals, a mate. You live together already but would hardly speak if you didn’t have to, would you?”

  “Hmm…” Mej unlock the door while I moved up eagerly to his side. “How odd…” He looked at me. “I tho
ught you were simple when I first saw you. Not quite… When I first saw you I thought you were a vision. Then I thought you were simple. But it turns out that is not one of the things wrong with you.”

  He did not open the door. I had to pause and consider his words. He must expect an answer.

  “What is wrong with me?”

  “The stars in your eyes. Could it go with your name? You are far too trusting. Far too willing. Expecting far too much of the best life has to offer. Although it did my heart good the way you blazed past Demik to come here. Besides all that, you are far too beautiful. All of which together could get you into far too much trouble if we don’t keep you safe.”

  “I don’t mind.” I turned my smile from him to the door again, waiting, ready to bound in and see through the glass above the city.

  “Don’t mind what?”

  “If you keep me safe.”

  Mej sighed, then unwillingly laughed as he opened the door. “You don’t mind…” Speaking under his breath.

  The room smelled of humans, talcum powder, leather, dust, smoke, beer. Across from the door was a square window. I dashed here while Mej delicately shut the door after us.

  “Oh…” I let out a breath at the view.

  “There’s more.” Mej stepped up to me

  He flipped a catch and pulled the wood frame up with the glass panels. Two of them lifted straight into the air so we were left with an open space through the wall: nothing to stop us from climbing out like birds and flying away.

  Ecstatically, I leaned head and shoulders out to see in all directions.

  Without a word, Mej seized the back of my dress.

  The night’s sun spread across the long, long main street of Dawson City, while small side streets and miners’ camps tumbled away like the legs of a spider. Beyond the black mud of city streets, black mines tore across the landscape: great swaths of ripped earth where men had used picks and shovels, or fires and dynamite, to force themselves upon the ground like maggots in a wound.

  Beyond all this, rolled open wilderness. Trickles of smoke plumed in the distance from Hän villages. Rivers wide as Dawson City cut off the edges of town. Farthest of all, left, right, and ahead, mountains of all shapes and sizes loomed, from deep green and golden in the light, forming smooth lumps, to sharp, jagged, and covered in a white that cast yellow reflections in the sun, or purple where shadows yawned.

  I inhaled the horsey, doggy, sewage smell and drew back inside with a sigh.

  Mej let his hand rest on my waist. I tipped my head into his shoulder, still watching out the window. I needed the comfort of him, glad he was there. Even wonder at the height and new sights of the evening dulled compared to our dance and my name. After all the anticipation, I would rather be with him than gobbling that view.

  “Something wrong?” His face touched my hair, his nose and lips warm with his breath and contact seeking my scalp.

  “They can’t all be bad,” I answered with my eyes to the wide horizon.

  “Never. No more than all foxes are ‘good’ or ‘bad’—if you go in for such things. We’re individuals.”

  “Demik says they’re all bad.”

  “Life is not one long truth told by Demik.”

  I turned against him, looking up into his eyes. “But it’s not a lie either, is it?”

  Not answering, Mej pushed stray wisps of hair back from my face, fingertips brushing my skin.

  I recalled my promise to him, glad of it, feeling at peace against him despite so many mixed feelings from that view. His blazing eyes, his strong, sharp face, his expression holding a hint of the smile, kept all this evening fresh, as if we still danced, still celebrated my name.

  My eyes must have reminded him as well.

  “You’re a vision, Summit. You’re all the view any dog-fox could ask. You’re our midnight sun highlighting summer’s splendor.”

  “A simple vision?” I smiled up at him.

  “I was wrong.” He traced one fingertip across my cheekbone. “You are many things—which we are just coming to see and know … and feel. ‘Simple’ is not one of them. Even if … you do need an education.” One side of his mouth turned up.

  “I have you for that.”

  “How very lucky for both of us…” As his lips touched mine the warmth skated through my blood, filling my body, my spirit. I craved deeper touches from him, returning to the dance.

  His right hand slid up my back below my hair. His left came to my face, stroking, going behind to hold me in. His tongue tickled my lips and I opened them for him to taste inside.

  He stepped in, almost knocking me over. Both hands on my face then, my own hands going to his arms to keep my balance as I bumped the window frame. I couldn’t breathe for many reasons—from him blocking my mouth and nose to the power of him and thrill through my own body. Past my gasping, I saw that moment again, the way he touched me, burning in his eyes as his focus locked on me, twirling across the stage.

  Mej saw it also, I knew: the picture of us joined after that mating dance, desire like the rhythm itself, one leading to another.

  Pressure of his body along mine revealed his arousal like his tongue thrusting into my mouth. He held my face in a tight grip, keeping me close while he forced me back. Solidity of his teeth on my lips burned. The ridge of the window frame ached. Both forces made my eyes water with pain. It didn’t matter, twined into passion of the dance—which was not all sweet and gentle, but a fire whirl of feeling. Mostly, though, it was joy and love made tangible in our bodies.

  I was ready to finish the dance—the full story we had to tell from that stage to this moment—but Mej pulled away with a wrench that seemed painful, as if someone else had come along and torn him free of me.

  Panting, he bent to rest his palms on the window sill, head bowed, eyes shut tight, mouth open.

  “Your people are not from around here,” he said after a pause.

  I waited, bewildered, not sure I’d understood, though he spoke Vulpen. His words seemed so unconnected to my emotions, and to his, they also seemed to be from someone else.

  “Your name, I mean,” Mej said. “I’ve never heard a name like that. Not what I was expecting.”

  “What were you expecting?” Distracted enough to feel curious, I reached to run my hand along his shoulder, across the smooth leather vest, up the back of his neck.

  Mej flinched. “I don’t know. Something … softer. Ellim or … Ahmay?”

  I caressed backward through his short hair the way he often did, only my touch was very slow, feeling the warm skin and almost bristly hair—neither rough nor soft.

  “Or … Strawberry Bonbon.”

  I laughed. I took a step to bend and inhale through his hair, smelling tobacco smoke and green summer sap and Mej in particular.

  Mej stood upright as abruptly as he’d pulled away from me, turning to face me in the window. “You… We should go back. If I don’t take you back downstairs, very, very soon, I’ll … and you … should be with Demik. You…” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “If this is what you want…” His gaze traveled up and down my body. He touched my arm, staring at my chest, then pulled back.

  I’d never heard him talk like this, so unsure—or even fearful?

  He swallowed, glancing around, and pushed a hand through his own hair. “We have to go downstairs or… Anyway … it’s late.”

  He stepped forward, motions jerky, and leaned in, then back. Without touching me, he turned away.

  “Let’s go.” Once more, he changed his mind. He returned, grabbed my face, and forced his tongue into my mouth while I was still trying to figure him out.

  As he shoved me into the window frame one hand cupped my breast, his palm pressing in like the rest of his body to rub against me. Despite concern for him, I could again envision tumbling from the dance into this: continuing the flow of our movements. Mej rocked his hips, pulling his tongue from my mouth to bite my throat, kiss, lick, taste around my neck while I gasped with pleas
ure of his touches.

  Both hands to my hips, sliding around to pull me in while he pushed through our layers of clothing, further stimulating himself.

  “Summit,” he said into my hair. “Summit…” He moaned, no longer sounding afraid but in pain.

  What was wrong? Just like Demik’s back and forth? Was he really hurting? I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. Surely he didn’t want that.

  I reached in return, feeling for his trousers. I couldn’t find the front buttons through crushing contact between us. Couldn’t even find the tongue of his belt. Nor would he yield. He seemed bent on giving his seed to his trousers instead of to me.

  Had he never been with a mate? Demik had understood how two could be one.

  “Mej?” I held his face since I couldn’t get to his trousers. “Finish the dance…” I kissed him, feverish, trembling for his touch, for the full circle to reach its climax.

  Mej jerked free his belt and scrambled with the two or three buttons. He pulled up my skirt in fistfuls, green top and white shift. Below, he tried to find his way to my naked skin, tore loose too small buttons which clattered to the wood floor, and reached until he felt into me with a finger.

  I cried out with shock and thrill of it, pushing in against him for more. His mouth covered mine, his finger strained into me. In another flash he was bunching the skirts between us, both hands freed to hold onto me.

  I looped my hands around his neck and back, pulling myself up with a jump. Mej shoved my shoulders into the wall beside the window frame, holding me while I also wrapped my legs around him. Summer’s night breeze played over my skin, adding layers of sensation and pleasures as he lifted, pushed, and held on. He strained for me, reaching to make the connection that our bodies had begged for since the dance: a true conclusion.

  I pulled myself up tighter against him, helping to guide him. Mej forced me harder into the wall, painfully tight. I moved with him, telling him to finish, to be my mate.

  Then, in an instant, he pushed again and found his way to me. My body welcomed him, rejoicing with him. It didn’t hurt this time: all blazing and familiar need for him.