Padding naked through the lodge, Liesel put her clothing outside on the porch where she could change back when she returned. Without any further hesitation, she shifted.
In wolf form, Liesel felt the urge to run like she hadn’t in a long, long time.
So she ran.
***
It was a short run compared to the long solo treks she would take by herself on her own pack lands, but she’d run fast and free long enough that her wolf felt more centered by the time she’d jumped back on the porch and shifted back to her human form.
Liesel frowned when she noticed her pile of clothing was gone. Frowning, she turned around and let out a gasp when she saw Gray lounging in a rocker on the far side of the porch.
How had she missed him? And why were her clothes folded up nice and neat in his lap?
She raised an eyebrow at him, refusing to be embarrassed by the fact that she didn’t have a stitch of clothing on her body. Shifters were pretty relaxed about nudity in general, and Liesel was more relaxed than most. If anything, she was surprised that the sheriff wasn’t more uncomfortable with her in the buff than he was showing.
“What are you doing with my clothes?”
He didn’t answer right away and the longer he ran his gaze over her body, the hotter her skin began to feel. Was he…was he checking her out?
Liesel assumed Grayson Anders would be the last man on earth to look at her with that spark of hunger in his eyes, but there he was, dragging his eyes over her skin with enough heat that Liesel swore she could feel it.
“I said we were going to talk yesterday and you were all shut up in your room when I got back,” he said, his low voice even rougher than she remembered. “So, we’re going to talk now.”
Liesel schooled her features and forced herself to pull in long, slow breaths. Was she imagining the tension between them right now? She had to be. It was all in her totally messed up complicated head.
“So, talk.”
Her voice was stronger than she felt at the moment, thankfully. He’d still yet to meet her gaze, as his eyes were taking in her full hips and round breasts. His eyes flashed wolf for the briefest of seconds and she knew that the tension wasn’t just one sided.
“You matter to people.”
Spell broken, her eyes snapped up to his, but she didn’t say anything. Frowning, she waited for him to continue.
“You think you don’t. You think the way you shove people away will save you from caring too much and it’ll save people from caring too much for you,” he said. “But you’re wrong. People already care for you and trying to push them away won’t work.”
Liesel frowned at him, every nerve ending ablaze and her mind racing. What was he talking about?
“You don’t even know me, Anders,” she said and he was on his feet stalking toward her. Without meaning to, she backed up a step and bumped into the side of the house.
Both of his arms shot out as he dropped her clothes to the floor and pinned her to the wall. He leaned in close until their noses were nearly touching.
“You matter to people. You matter to me,” he ground out. “Stop trying to act like you don’t. If something ever happened to you there are a lot of people who’d be lost. Stop acting like a kid.”
She opened her mouth to protest his take on her, but he silenced her by slanting his hot mouth over hers. His tongue slipped through and ravaged her. Without meaning to, she let out a strangled moan at the sensations and just how right it felt. Grasping his button-down shirt in her hands, she pulled him closer and deepened the kiss.
It set Gray off and his hands were in her hair as he kissed the very oxygen from her body. As one hand slid down to cup her ass and pull her closer, Liesel’s body caught on fire and she arched into him, wanting more. More kissing. More friction. More Gray.
He finally pulled away from her and she noted with a tiny bit of satisfaction that he was breathing heavy and his eyes were glazed.
“My sentinels are out there. You ought to get some clothes on so I don’t have to gouge their eyes out for seeing you naked,” he said, a smile playing on the corner of his lips. “We’ll finish this later.”
With that, he turned away and jogged down the porch steps and toward the rising sun.
Liesel, head in a daze, snapped out of it when she heard the yipping of a wolf in the distance. He wasn’t kidding—his sentinels were all on their way to the lodge for their daily workout.
She blinked and walked into the lodge, wondering just how much he’d meant those last four words.
Chapter Seven
Grayson
At this rate, he’d have to walk halfway to Kentucky before the massive erection in his pants let up.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but she’d been so damn irresistible with her brave little show of defiance on his porch. The curves and softness of her standing there without an ounce of shame had nearly done him and his wolf in. She was a woman after his own heart as she stood there with no shame or embarrassment of her curves.
And the way she’d reacted to his words? He knew he’d hit the nail on the head when he told her that people were going to care about her whether or not she stopped trying to shove them away.
He bit out a growl as he gave his sentinels the signal that it was all clear. More than likely, Pax had seen their encounter on the porch and had given him a little space. Thankfully he hadn’t given Gray too much space or he’d be naked in his bed with Liesel at this point.
That was a distraction he really didn’t need at this point, if he was being perfectly honest.
“Morning,” Pax said as he shifted and rolled his neck out. He kept spare clothes up in the lodge, preferring an early morning run just like Liesel had.
They wandered slowly back to the lodge, Gray hoping Liesel had more than enough time to get herself settled and dressed. There was no sign of her by the time they made it to the kitchen, but Pax sniffed at the air when they settled in to the kitchen.
“Smells like cucumber and melon lotion,” he said with a smile. Gray raised an eyebrow at him.
“What?” the Beta laughed with a shrug. “I had an ex-girlfriend who loved that stuff.”
Liesel’s smell was everywhere in his lodge. It wasn’t just from the shower she’d taken before her run. Every inch of Gray’s sacred man-cave lodge now smelled like the female and his wolf was happier than a pig in mud every time they came home. She was invading his space.
An hour later, after the sentinels had gone, she came downstairs dressed for work. She didn’t meet his eyes and he didn’t miss the adorable blush on her cheeks as she obviously remembered their porch encounter at the sight of him.
He cleared his throat and pushed the same memory away. It’d been a mistake to kiss her and a mistake to promise her more. He wasn’t that guy.
“I apologize for what I did on the porch,” he said and her eyes snapped up, wary. “That was out of line.”
She only shook her head and pretended to tie her shoe. He couldn’t see her expression.
“Ready?” he said, a little gruffer than he meant to. He didn’t miss the confusion in her eyes at his tone and before he could get a good read on the emotions, she shut down and masked her face.
“Yup,” she said and walked out the front door. As they neared their own trucks, she called over to him.
“Bella and I have plans tonight,” she said, her tone bordering on icy. “I won’t need an escort home. We’re going out with some of our pack members. I’ll be home late.”
That was all she said and it took everything he had not to question her more. Where were they going? Who were they meeting? Did he know the pack mates she was going out with? Were any of them unmated males? Had she had a relationship with any of them?
The questions were relentless in his mind and he had to physically shake his head to clear his thoughts—they were like a runaway train.
She wanted a night out? Fine. What did it matter to him?
Liesel tore off Canyon pack
lands like a bat out of hell and he had to push his truck to keep up with the way she was flying over the gravel. Yep, he’d gone and stuck his boot in it, alright. He’d upset her and he probably wouldn’t get a chance to make it right for a while. She had no plans to see him anytime soon and he’d just have to live with his own stupidity.
***
Hours later, his mind was still on that kiss. Gray’s imagination had practically run wild with how smooth and soft her lips had been and how she’d practically melted beneath his touch.
He also wondered if she’d felt half as much in that exchange as he had.
“Boss?”
Shit. Chet was talking to him.
They were sitting in his truck parked across from a pawn shop that served as a de facto clubhouse for the High Desert Kings.
Waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Gray said, turning his attention back to his deputy. “What’d you ask me?”
Chet let out a huff of laughter.
“I asked you if you just got Bailey’s text.”
Chet shook his head and laughed to himself while Gray pulled out his phone to read the update from his other deputy on duty.
Nothing unusual here.
He’d been posted in a private vehicle a few hundred yards away from the trailer park. It’d been eerily quiet the past few days with no activity coming from the mountain lion shifters. Gray was getting restless and had called on his on-duty staff to do a little recon with him.
So far, nothing.
As he scrolled through his other messages, he happened upon the fact that Liesel hadn’t messaged him in over a day now.
Not that he was counting or anything…
You okay?
He couldn’t help himself and before he knew it, he’d sent the question to Liesel’s phone, desperate for any connection with her after the way he’d messed things up.
The answer came almost five minutes later, by which time Gray’d nearly chewed the inside of his cheek raw from trying to calm down and not fidget.
Fine.
Oh, damn. Fine? She must be well and truly mad at him for her to send him such a brush-off answer. But the question was—was she mad at the kiss or the fact that he’d tried to apologize it away as a mistake?
Gray closed his eyes and scrubbed his hand over his face.
He was losing his mind. What did it matter the reason she was mad at him?
“You’re in bad shape today, huh, Boss?”
Chet’s question made him shake his head.
“I’m fine today,” he grumbled. “Just a little out of sorts.”
Chet’s laughter didn’t help anything.
“Obviously,” the man replied. ‘Hopefully you’ll sort her out soon enough.”
Gray’s eyes snapped open.
“What makes you think there’s even a her involved?”
Looking out the window, he noticed his deputy shaking his head and laughing to himself.
“In situations like this, Boss,” he said. “There’s always a her.”
Damned if he wasn’t right.
The shriek of his cell phone jerked him out of his reverie and he pulled it off his lap, glancing at the number. Bailey.
“Yeah?”
“I got a tip that a bunch of them are going to meet up over at the Armory,” his deputy spoke into the other end. “There’s going to be a good-sized gathering of them and word on the street is they’re recruiting help in whatever they’re planning.”
By that point, Gray had put the phone on speaker and Chet was listening in.
“You boys have plans tonight?” Gray asked and Chet shook his head.
“I’m in,” Bailey said with a laugh. Bailey was a shifter in the Canyon pack and Chet, being human, would just be another guy out for a good night. Hopefully Gray would be able to blend in long enough to see who the mountain lions were talking to and what they might be up to.
“Sounds like a plan, boys,” he said, a smile curving at his lips. “Meet you at the station at 8 and we’ll ride out together with a couple sentinels from the pack.”
Finally, they were getting somewhere.
Chapter Eight
Liesel
“I’ve never even heard of the Armory,” Liesel said as the women got ready in Bella’s large bathroom. She was back on Boulder territory in her best friend’s cabin getting ready for a night on the town with a couple other friends from the pack.
“Ethan said it had a cool kind of rustic vibe to it,” Bella replied as she opened her eyes wide and put on another coat of mascara.
She’d come straight there after work and hadn’t missed the little ping in her heart she had felt when she walked outside to her truck to see Gray not in his usual parking spot. She was a big girl and she was glad he got the message—but still. She’d gotten so used to him always being there, that when he wasn’t, she definitely noticed.
His words had haunted her all day, too.
You matter to people.
The memory of the sound of his voice sent a shiver down her spine.
You matter to me.
He’d said that to her. Did he mean it? How did she matter to the straight-laced, poker-faced Alpha male?
And why was she driving herself crazy trying to answer the question?
He was in her head in the worst way and Liesel didn’t know how to get him out. The short ten days she’d spent in his pack and around his people, she was starting to realize there was a lot more to him than just an immaculately clean truck and cabinets organized like Martha Stewart.
He was an honest man who cared about the people around him—all the people around him. From the folks that lived in the outskirts of the county to the shifters that shared pack land with him, there wasn’t a person in a 100-mile radius that Gray didn’t put before himself.
He was a noble man, Liesel realized with a start, and he obviously felt something for her. But was it fleeting? Was she too much of a damaged-goods type of person for him?
The thought brought her mood down swiftly and she dropped the lipstick she had in her hand. Of course she was. People like Gray didn’t need to get romantically attached to head cases with baggage like her.
“You okay, Leese?” Bella had lowered her mascara and was looking at her in the mirror.
Pasting on the biggest, fakest smile she could, Liesel nodded.
“Of course,” she grit through her teeth. “Why’d you ask?”
Bella shook her head and got back to her makeup. Liesel decided that she’d had enough of that line of thinking and that tonight she’d do what she was best at—overcompensating her thoughts with a lot of action and risk taking. And drinking, too.
A knock on Bella’s front door made her start as she turned to watch their friends Ethan, Fernie, and Audrey walk through. They were all from the Boulder pack and had all helped Liesel through those first few months back from captivity.
But for some reason, they hadn’t seen through her armor in the past 18 months like Gray had in less than a week.
Growling to herself, Liesel applied the lipstick and promised herself that her thoughts of Grayson Anders stopped immediately.
She was going to drink. She was going to dance. And she wasn’t going to obsess about Sheriff Blow Hard.
Starting…now.
***
An hour later and they were all standing in the Armory wondering what the hell they’d been thinking.
“I thought you said this place was hot?” Bella hissed at Ethan. Liesel only smiled and tried to keep her cool as the scent of mountain lion hit her from every single angle.
The place was crawling with them, but nobody spared their group a second glance.
The music was subpar and the drinks were watered down, but after enough of them. Liesel began to relax.
Maybe the sheriff had overplayed the danger they were all in. Maybe he was nothing more than a stuffy control freak. Odds were that he was. With a smile, Liesel tipped her head back and downed her vodka and soda and shive
red as the cheap alcohol hit her system.
“Dance?” Bella was begging her, as the guys had flat refused her. The girl loved to dance and by that point, Liesel had downed enough drinks to not care much.
“Sure,” she giggled as Bella led her out on the floor.
It took a few solid minutes of feeling incredibly awkward and out of synch before a song came on that had a beat strong enough for Liesel to get lost in. Soon, she was bumping and swaying and so lost in the music that she neither noticed nor cared when it became obvious the dance floor was filling up.
Bella twirled and giggled, dancing on her toes and making a spectacle of herself. Liesel laughed. It was total Bella.
Soon, they were lost in the music and Liesel hardly noticed when she felt a body pressed up behind her, moving with her to the beat. She assumed it was Fernie or Ethan, but the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up when she realized it was a stranger dancing with her, his hands on her hips and his chest pressed against her back.
Shit.
She looked for Bella for help, but her friend was entwined with a guy halfway across the dancefloor and lost in her own little world. Liesel was on her own.
Twisting in the man’s arms, she turned to face him and started when she realized he was a very tall, very handsome falcon shifter. He chucked a nod at her and she returned the smile, relaxing a little. Knowing her luck, it’d have been drunk old Arnie dancing behind her and she would have had to brawl her way out of the club.
Settling back into her good time, Liesel enjoyed the next song as much as she could. The falcon was a little hands-y, but nothing she couldn’t handle with a few gentle reminders that she wasn’t a toy to be pawed on. Two songs later, a fog had settled on Liesel and she realized it’d been a few minutes since she had her eyes on Bella. Or Ethan and Fernie for that matter. Stopping in the middle of the dance floor, Liesel frowned and scanned the bar. Where had her friends gone?
Giving the falcon boy a lame, half-yelled excuse, Liesel dashed off the dance floor and scoured the club for her friends, who all seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Where the hell had they gone?
She checked the women’s restroom, the two opposite-end bars in the place, she checked every table in between the bars, all while trying to maintain a slightly buzzed, low profile each time she neared a table of mountain lions. She couldn’t tell the difference between a plain ol’ lion shifter and a member of the High Desert Kings, so she just did her best to stay invisible to both.
Alpha's Love Page 4
