by Abby Niles
As she let the towel fall to puddle around her feet, a strangled groan caught in his throat.
Fuck.
No bathing suit. All red lace. Was that what she wore every day under her drab clothes?
She turned to climb into the tub and caught him staring. For a moment their gazes held, then she shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t have a suit. Panties and bra will have to suffice. Besides, there’s hardly any difference between these and my bathing suit.”
Not fucking likely. A bathing suit covered. This…this silhouetted. In all the wrong spots. Make that the right spots.
He gulped at the flat expanse of her stomach, the low…so very low…panties that barely covered anything. The lacy bra wasn’t much better, as it displayed the darkened areas that were clearly her nipples. His cock tightened.
Holy shit.
Jerking his attention back to the fridge, he called out, “I’m going to find something for dinner.” It came out as a strangled croak. Shit. The splash as she entered brought teasing images to mind of water lapping around her body, kissing her skin, touching her in places—
Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head.
Food, Townsend. Think food.
But her blissful sounds of pleasure tormented him. A sigh here, a low moan there. He could imagine her head reclined against the edge of the tub, eyes closed as the jets of water soothed her feet and limbs. And stimulated other parts of her body…
His beast stirred. And the urge to join her increased.
What would it hurt? He deserved a little rest and relaxation, too, before things got serious tomorrow. He’d just stay on the opposite side of the tub.
Yeah.
Decision made, he closed the fridge, went into the bathroom, shed his clothes, and grabbed a towel.
When he got to the hot tub, he said, “Scoot over.”
Val’s eyes popped open. “W-what are you doing?” As her gaze dipped down his chest, he stood a little straighter, letting her assess his body. But when her appraisal traveled even lower, to the boxer briefs he had on in lieu of swim trunks, his cock stirred, and he quickly vaulted into the water before she saw something she most definitely didn’t need to see.
“Joining you. The hot tub was a good idea. A little R & R is in order.”
She pushed up in the water, tension radiating off what had been a relaxed body seconds before. “Oh. Um.”
Keep the conversation neutral. “You ready for tomorrow?”
She sent him an are-you-for-real? look. “In my almost four years as head of SPAC, I’ve crawled under houses, trekked over mountains, been in a couple of shoot-outs, but I have never had to camp.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You did not just say that. I’m going to have to dig a hole to use the bathroom…like a cat.”
A startled laugh came out of his mouth. “Well, there is that.”
“And what if I have to use the bathroom at night? I’m going to have to stumble around with a flashlight searching for a poison ivy–free zone to squat in. So, no, I’m not ready for tomorrow.”
“I’ll rig something up for you so you won’t have to do that.”
“Well, my ass is thankful for that.”
Again he chuckled, and he was caught off guard at how easily Val was able to make him laugh. Often, actually. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed being around a woman so much, and that was saying a lot since he loved women. But Val was different. She put him at ease in the same way she confused him.
Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes, just enjoying the water rippling around his body. Feeling at peace and relaxed.
“Britton?”
“Hmm?”
“What about bears?”
Lifting his head a fraction, he peeked out one eye. “What about them?”
“Are you serious?”
“It’ll be okay.”
“How can you be sure? They don’t like us. Out of all the animals, they tend to be the most aggressive, especially this time of year with the cubs. I haven’t been too worried during the day since they tend to be more active early morning and night, but what if one comes across us while we’re asleep?”
“I’ve camped my entire life and I’ve never had anything happen.”
“Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t. Freaking Peter from forensics went camping with a bunch of guys a few weeks ago and had to pee after they went to bed. He walked a few feet from their campsite to do his business and was welcomed by an irate mama bear. He had to shift to be able to outrun the damn thing. I can’t shift, Britton.”
Brows puckered, she was staring at him with such vulnerable fear, a protectiveness he didn’t know he was capable of surged up in him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He held her gaze until the air between them started to thicken, and judging by the way her throat worked on a swallow, she’d felt the change between them, too.
Definitely not a bear she’d have to have to worry about mauling her.
Yeah, jumping in the hot tub with this woman had been a decision of epically stupid proportions.
Forcing himself to break eye contact, he peered out over the mountains. “Have you never been camping, Val?” Raw. His voice was fucking raw.
“No.” She cleared her throat. At least hers had been as hoarse as his. “Uh. Mom and Dad were hotel people.”
“Your brothers never wanted to go?”
“Hello? Hotel people.”
Thankful she was trying to take the previous hot and heady moment into light and airy, he chuckled. “Ah.”
“Dad always said he got to enjoy wildlife when he was out beating the streets during the day. When he went on vacation he wanted comfort. I take it your family was different?”
She shifted her position and her foot floated up, lightly grazing his thigh. An electrifying reaction walloped across his skin. He bit back a groan. Fuck.
“Yep,” he all but croaked out. Think dentist drills. Needles. “Went on my first camping expedition still in the womb, and never stopped.”
How he got that last sentence out was beyond him, but he was mighty proud of his damn self, especially with that red lace bra teasing the hell out of him as the water lapped over the swell of her breasts.
Silence descended between them, making him all the more aware of the breathtaking water nymph sitting in front of him. He practically vibrated with the need to touch her, to run his hands down the exposed skin of her shoulders, then dip below the rippling surface to everything hidden beneath. Dea, he needed something to distract him.
Val hesitantly asked, “Britton, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve heard the stories about—” She nibbled her bottom lip. “But I’ve never heard it from you. What happened that night?”
Well, he’d wanted a distraction. Asking about the worst night of his life wasn’t so much a distraction as it was a complete mood killer. “Other than me royally screwing up?” He couldn’t help the sarcasm.
Expression contrite, she studied him a moment. “I know I’ve given you some major grief about what happened, rubbed your nose in my taking your job, but…everyone’s always said you were impeccable with your investigations. You never slipped. Something must have happened that night. Something the High Council is unaware of, or they don’t care.”
He ran his palm over his mouth. He hadn’t spoken about that night with anyone—not even Liam or Aidan, his two best friends. The High Council knew very well how things had unfolded, but they weren’t looking for good reason, all they were focused on was that he’d slipped. He’d never seen a point in sharing the entire story.
At his continued silence, she murmured, “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
He drew in a deep breath, then released it. “There was a child.”
She frowned. “A child?”
“The kid was a surprise. There’d been a murder of a human an hour before. But the crime scene
reeked of shifter.”
Val made a face. “I hate those cases. So much deceit necessary to keep the murderer’s identity hidden from the humans, just so we can punish the perp by shifter law. All those ‘unsolved’ cases, which have actually been solved and justice served. Makes me feel so bad for the families who have no closure. But that’s SPAC’s whole purpose. To conceal the truth.”
“Yep. And this time was no different. I had to clean up the crime scene, no fingerprints or other evidence. Then I trailed the perp’s scent to a house. He wasn’t there, but I picked up another scent and started snooping around the outside. That’s when I heard a whimper.” Britton blew out a ragged breath. “I’ll never forget that sound, Val. So innocent…so full of fear. And it came from the cellar. That’s where I found her. She was barely five years old, and terrified.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “You were the one who found that little girl?”
“The asshole had welded a cage door onto his small utility room. Only big enough for a cot. He had her locked inside. I thought I could just yank it open, but I couldn’t get the door to budge. Fucking steel. Then I noticed the floor was dirt. I had no idea when that man would return, and I felt the pressure to get her out and keep her from being caught in a cross fire. I told her I was going to get my dog to help.”
“Dog? I thought I heard your beast was a—”
He held up a hand. “I didn’t think saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to get my jaguar,’ would be a good idea. Since she was so young, I believed I could get away with telling her it was a dog. I made sure to say that he was a nice black dog that loved to be scratched behind his ears, so she shouldn’t be afraid. Then I moved out of view and shifted. In less than a minute, I had a hole dug under that door. She didn’t even hesitate, just crawled out and hugged my neck, Val. Then scratched me behind the ears.”
Britton paused, remembering how overwhelmed he’d felt at having earned the complete trust of this terrified child. How in those moments he’d been so damn proud to be part of SPAC, of being a shifter so he’d been able to save her, not knowing that in only a few short hours everything would be taken from him.
“I wasn’t about to leave her unprotected so I could shift back and put my clothes on. I deliberately decided to make sure she got to a safe location first. Unfortunately, this wasn’t some abandoned house out in the sticks. It was in a residential area. As soon as I padded outside, the neighbors saw me and the screams started. And then I was being shot at. I had nowhere to go but back in the cellar. The little girl was even more terrified at the ruckus, and I’d saved her once, so she followed me. Which meant I still couldn’t shift. Then animal control came and tranquilized me. It wasn’t really enough to knock me out, but I had to pretend.”
“Oh, Britton. I knew a child was involved, but I had no— Dea, now I feel even more horrible for the things I’ve said over the years.”
He waved it off. “I screwed up. Not only did the High Council believe I put the entire race at risk by shifting in such a public area, but I FUBAR-ed that case horribly. We already had a murder on our hands, and now that same shifter had kidnapped a human child. And I brought it all into the public instead of concealing it.”
“How did you get away from animal control?”
“The dispatcher was a half-shifter. When she got a call that a black jaguar was on the loose, she dispatched the call to SPAC, who then figured out it was me. They sent a shifter who worked for animal control to ‘accidentally’ let me loose.”
“I don’t understand, Britton. The High Council was able to get the case hushed up. I know the perpetrator is in Kerker. And there weren’t any human reports of a man shifting into an animal. So why are you being punished for something that essentially didn’t happen?”
“Why was Samantha Mills thrown in jail and her baby taken from her?”
“She broke the law.”
“In the eyes of the High Council, so did I. Old laws, Val, old laws that they cling to in the name of preserving the shifter race.” He sighed. “At least I wasn’t put in Kerker.”
“But twenty years without your beast…”
He shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. The first year was tough, but the last three have been easier. It’s become my life. Besides, being a human has its perks. When I get pissed, I don’t have a claw-swiping cat making it worse. ”
Dea, he was so fucking lying now. It had been his life, up until a few days ago. Yeah, his beast’s anger could magnify his own, or they could have opposite reactions and have a battle of wills…but not having that wasn’t a perk. After losing the animal, then getting it back, he realized how much he loved the connection he had with his beast, how empty he’d been until he’d felt it stir within him yesterday.
Now he was going to have to do the adjustment all over again. As much as he would love to grab hold of Val’s encouragement from earlier, he wasn’t fool enough to believe that the High Council would ever give him a full pardon. If he even ventured down that line of thinking, he was just asking for a world of hurt when this was over.
“It just isn’t right,” she murmured.
“I did the crime, now I have to do the time.” He tried for a lighthearted smile, but it felt flat to even him.
“You didn’t do a crime,” she insisted. “Not in my eyes, anyway. You saved a little girl from Dea knows what horrible fate.”
An odd sensation tweaked his chest, almost like gratitude…but deeper. As if her support was something he’d needed to hear. Which was insane. “There was a lot I could’ve done besides shifting. The High Council had no trouble letting me know each and every possibility as they injected the serum. I could’ve called for backup and had the girl moved, so she wasn’t connected to a shifter. I could’ve left her there and gone back later after we’d apprehended the suspect. I could’ve, could’ve, could’ve.”
“Thinking back now…would you have done it differently?”
He was silent a moment. “No. All it took was that whimper. No choice. I had to get into the house.”
She slid across the tub toward him and took his hand. Her lips curved up sadly. “You did the right thing.”
The feel of her slender fingers entwining with his sent shock waves over his body. He sat stock-still for the space of a second, then he grasped her around the back of the neck and pulled her close, their faces inches apart. A sharp gasp shot past her lips and he stopped, but he couldn’t make himself let her go. They were frozen, his hand latched around her neck, her hands braced on his shoulders, her quickened breath puffing onto his mouth. Their gazes locked. For an endless moment they regarded each other. Then she lowered her eyes.
“I think we should eat,” she whispered before pushing away.
Water sluiced down her body as she stood. He watched her climb out of the tub and wrap herself in a towel before going inside. The door closed gently after her.
A whistling exhale gushed from his lungs as he looked down at the roiling water. He shoved a hand through his hair. Fucking hell. The need to kiss her had been even stronger than this afternoon. His attraction to her had become more potent. Practically overwhelming. Far more powerful than anything he’d ever felt before.
What had changed?
A thought occurred, one so terrible it felt like a two-hundred-pound jaguar had barreled into his chest.
His jaguar.
Only one thing had changed. He was a shifter again. Which meant…
Fuck. Me.
These odd symptoms weren’t some manifestation of the serum. These symptoms were the Drall. That irresistible urge to mate.
Forever.
No.
No. No. No.
He did not want this. Being immune to the mating instinct was the only part of being human that he’d liked. No worries about encountering that one woman on earth who would awaken the compelling need to kiss. But not just any kiss. The kiss. It was dangerous, and it wouldn’t lead to a wild fuck-filled night in bed. No, that intimate meetin
g of lips would lead to the mating instinct blasting forward, controlling him, goading him to begin the bonding ritual—to fewse his soul to hers.
The fucking Fewshon. He shuddered. Once he marked her, she would become a part of him. Her soul would thrive within him. He’d be consumed by one woman—for all eternity.
The mere idea made him feel sick. The one-woman deal wasn’t for him. Never had been, never would be.
Besides, after watching the hell Aidan and Liam had gone through to get their love-for-eternity bullshit, Britton had the damn sense to run while the getting was still good.
For a bonding that supposedly promised the ultimate happiness, it sure brought a shit-ton of pain and suffering along with it. He wanted no part of that. Damn it. This attraction he suddenly felt for Val wasn’t even real! The Drall had bulldozed over years of bona fide loathing, and was making him feel all warm and tingly toward his worst enemy. How messed up was that?
At least she would never know. The mating instinct only triggered when a male shifter met his true mate. As a half shifter, she didn’t have a Drall, so she was clueless, with none of the misdirected symptoms he was having—thank the Dea for that, at least.
He had to get this case over with pronto, so the High Council would give him the serum again and kill the damned instinct.
He hated the idea of giving up his beast again, but right now he was more terrified of the Drall than he was of sixteen more years as a human. Nothing scary about being human. Boring, maybe. The Drall? Petrifying. Boring won out over being bound to one woman until the end of time.
He shuddered again. Yeah, get the case over and life would return to normal.
Val would never know that she was supposedly his eternal mate.
The idea was so preposterous he snorted. There was no way in hell Val had been made for him unless the Dea really did have a twisted sense of humor. Maybe the serum had somehow fucked up his shifter side and had made the instinct latch onto the first woman who wandered into his sight. That made more sense than him and Val being destined for each other.
