by Hattie Hunt
Her eyes flared silver. Slowly, torturously, her fingers played with his bear’s bristly brown fur along his shoulders and neck. She met his gaze, breasts rising and falling with each measured breath. “Tell me Brett and Juliet are elsewhere.”
“They are,” he managed, before crushing his lips into hers. Their teeth clashed as their hunger drove them deeper into one another.
She nipped at his lower lip and growled. Rising from his lap, her hands worked the button on his jeans. They fumbled against the tautness of him, and the button pinched his skin below the navel.
He pushed her hands away, sliding his own under her shirt and pushing them upwards, exposing her breasts. Her nipples pressed against the thin lace of her bra, teasing his senses. It was too much. He pulled his hands back, and motioned for her to undress as he attacked the button on his jeans.
Within moments, they were both gloriously naked in the middle of the kitchen.
She stood in front of him, stripped bare, one hundred percent Ripley. No boundaries, no barriers, no snark to hide behind, her eyes silver and smoldering. Smoke rolled from the tips of her mussed hair, caressing the form of her body with the glow of an ethereal goddess.
“You’re beautiful.”
She bit her bottom lip and shook her head, a tinge of pink warming her cheeks. Then she smiled, returning the appraisal. Her eyes worked over the height of him. He was so tall, the perfect balance to her tiny frame. And those muscles—defined and bulging under the dusting of brown hair. Joe could protect her when she needed it, could support her when she needed a push. This man—this bear man would make a good partner. He could be a valued equal.
All that was neat, but she needed to claim him. She wanted to make him hers, someone no one could take from her. Not Cheryl, not the reapers. No one.
Ripley grabbed his hips and brought him to her, pressing herself into the warmth and strength of his chest.
He kissed her deeply, running his tongue along hers.
She moaned and fell back, supported by his powerful arms.
His lips slid down her neck. One hand left her back and found her breast. He tweaked her hard nipple.
Fiery passion shot through her body with each pinch.
His mouth tracked down her shoulder and onto her breast, finding the nipple and surrounding it in wet warmth. She gasped, struggling to find breath amidst the pounding pleasure rippling over her. His teeth raked lightly against her and she felt she was going to explode. She needed him inside her.
Now.
Ripley shoved him into the chair and mounted him, fingering his manhood and introducing the tip to her waiting entrance. Slowly, she slid onto him, the sunlight flaring in her vision as he filled her.
He took in a sharp breath. She felt so good, so wet, surrounding him as though she’d been made for him and him alone.
She pressed herself down on him, taking him deep into herself. And came. Pleasure rippled around them both, a treasure she couldn’t contain. Releasing, she rose up and then lowered herself onto him again, until he touched her as deeply as he could, and the ripples continued.
Until she was left breathing normally, holding onto one shoulder, her cheek tucked into the crook of his neck. The world had grown brighter, livelier, more vibrant.
This man. Nothing else in the world mattered more than him in that one moment. As stupid and as cheesy as all that sounded, their intimate joining, the way her womanhood contained his member, they connected in the deepest way she could ever have imagined. He was hers.
And that was what she wanted.
She cupped his face, that large, heavy headed face, in both of her hands and stared into his eyes. Those big, brown beautiful eyes of her man-bear. Her man-bear. She didn’t care about the bar. She didn’t care about the town. She cared about him. He had her heart. He had her mind and her body.
She wanted to give him her soul.
Joe gritted his teeth, seeing that look of surrender on her face like a big neon sign. It took everything in him not to take her right then, but he needed something first.
A kiss.
The kiss.
The mating kiss.
With his bear called forward, and her padfoot streaming through her eyes, he brought her lips to his, laying claim to her with everything in his power.
And she met him in every way. The mating bond rushed through him, filling him with want, with love. For the first time since his brother had found Juliet, he felt truly complete.
Joe surrendered. Lifting her off of him, he stood and turned her around. He bent her over the table, the curve of her body inviting him in. That apple ass, so perky and tight and perfect. He ran the palm of his hand along it and parted her legs with his foot.
She moaned, arching her back and looking at him over her shoulder. Her dark hair had fallen partially out of her braid. She looked like a wild thing.
His wild thing.
Taking her hips in his hands, he buried himself inside her. Harder, harder. Faster, faster. The passion building, rising, growing. Her breathing matched his. Her cries of pleasure spurred him on, pleading for release.
Their cries together rose in a desperate crescendo and he spilled his life seed into her as their bodies shuddered in mutual release.
He pulled out, shuddering as he left her. She turned back to him, and he pulled her forward, wrapping her in his arms, tucking her head to his chest, his fingers jammed into her tangled hair.
Ripley wrapped her arms around his waist and held on as though her life depended on it. She closed her eyes and just took in the smell of them together, their sex. Aftershocks rippled through them both as they embraced, content in each other’s comfort.
In that moment, he was hers and she never wanted to be alone again.
Chapter Twenty-One
They gathered their clothes off kitchen floor, filled a couple of glasses of water, and moved to the nest they had made in the living room the night before. They lay together beneath one of the thinner blankets and stared out the window as the clouds passed over the tree tops.
Ripley didn’t want to talk. Sure, she’d waltzed in all sure of herself, but now? She was terrified. Scared to leave. Terrified to stay.
Joe simply enjoyed the feel of her in his arms, her leg thrown over his, her foot snaking around one of his ankles, keeping him close. He knew she probably wanted to keep the silence. While he wasn’t a planner, he did like getting to the bottom of things. They didn’t need concrete plans. He wasn’t going to get down on one knee and propose or anything. He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to either. That didn’t mean they couldn’t discuss a few other things.
“So, the bar.”
She breathed him in and let her breath roll out in a long exhale of steam. “Yeah. Aunt Myrtie’s going to show me how to run it, I guess.”
He nodded, not sure what to say to that. He hoped it worked out. Though, honestly, he made enough for both of them. If she didn’t want to work, she wouldn’t have to. That was, if they officially mated, and if she chose to stay at home. Doing what? He just couldn’t picture Ripley Kent as the stay-at-home type.
“I talked to Decima today.” Her soft voice cut into his reverie, and he nuzzled his chin into her hair.
“You did mention that. You’re not an alpha?”
“Does it feel like I’m an alpha?” She didn’t know everything there was to know about shapeshifters, but she did know that they could feel the power of the alpha from twenty paces.
“No.”
“Then, I’m not.” She snuggled into his chest hair with her cheek, softening the blow of her tone a little. She wasn’t mad at him. She was just frustrated and a little confused. “She says we’re something different.”
“Well, that would make sense. You shift differently.” Which made him curious. He’d never heard of a shifter who could keep their clothes. How did that even work?
She lifted her free shoulder. “That’s just one of the weird things going on. Apparently, her sister chose Sean
.”
“Your brother?”
She nodded.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“I thought so.” Ripley really didn’t know what to think about it, now. “I don’t care about him. He took care of that for me years ago.”
“I can understand, but he lost his parents, too. Same as you.”
“I know that.”
“What’s it like?” he asked suddenly. “Being the padfoot? Do you see death? Do you see the other side?”
“Well…” She wanted to tell him everything. He was the only person on the face of the planet she wanted to tell. “Usually, I only see when someone’s about to die. I can see how bad it’s going to be. I can see how many will die.”
“Yeah?”
“But when I met Leah—”
“One of the Whiskey girls.”
“Yeah. When I met her, I saw all these shadows, like shadow people or spirits or something.”
“Doesn’t she do something with dead people?”
“She can reanimate the dead?” Ripley shook her head and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s the only time I can really see the other side, though.”
“What about when you shift. You run through objects.”
Yeah, about that. “I don’t really see things. It’s like I’m in this plane of almost in-between where the trees and the houses and cars and stuff don’t exist.”
“That’s…weird.” But cool. Did that mean that when she shifted, she was in the spirit world? The theory was neat.
“Except one time. I was in Norway coordinating an order when I found a car that was physical and real while in padfoot form.”
He frowned. “Really.”
“Yeah. It was just real. Nothing special about it otherwise. It didn’t glow like people do when they’re about to die. Three days later, it was used in a car bombing.”
“Seriously.”
“Yeah.”
He stroked her shoulder with his fingertips as a bird warbled outside the window. “How serious are you about staying? How big is this reaper threat?”
“I don’t know.” She had been saying that a lot the last couple of days. She should probably figure out a way to meet with a reaper and discuss whatever bargain Decima had negotiated. “But I’m not too excited about who I work for.”
“What’s going on there?”
“Well, I had thought that my job was above board. Okay, sure it catered to my gypsy life-style, but what I was doing was good.”
“What do you do?” She’d tried explaining it once before, but it hadn’t made a lot of sense.
“I coordinate supplies and materials for places that need to rebuild. There are lot of them springing up all over the place. Not just in the Middle East. All those people fleeing have to go somewhere, and they’re not living in tent cities. Well, not all of them.”
“That sounds good?” Something about her tone said otherwise.
“I got a visitor today. Alexander Orlov, the brother of my employer. He’s a bit higher in the chain-of-command, I guess you could say. I’d seen Alexander’s picture once or twice. I’ve only seen him in person once otherwise, and that was from across the room.”
“Okay?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek wondering just how deep she was with them. “He knows what I do. It’s the reason I got the jobs.”
“I don’t get it.”
Ripley had never tried to explain it to anyone before. It was a lot harder than she thought it would be. “The deal Decima made with the reapers. When we went into an area and saw how many people were going to die, she allowed me to save a selection of people, but I had to set up others to die in their place.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.” But it was dangerously close to playing God.
“Yeah. Though, I’m looking back at all those instances, you know? And the people I set up, more of them died. At the time, I’d been okay with that. But now? The Orlovs…they would send me into places, all over, to meet with contacts. And the things I would see and the information I would get, I wonder just how much of that was accidental and how much of that was them controlling me, controlling us.”
“You’re getting out, though.”
“If they let me.”
“Well, they haven’t come across a community like ours.”
“I hope so.” Though, there were plenty of other paranormal communities just like this one all over the world.
“So, what happens if they come for you?”
Ripley tucked herself in closer to him with a sigh. “I do have another contract that I need to fill for them. I’ll just fill it and—”
Decima surged to the surface.
“What is it?” Ripley asked out loud, jerking to a sitting position.
Brett.
“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, sitting up with her, the blanket draped across his lap.
Ripley shook her head. What about him?
He’s done something stupid.
How stupid?
Look.
Ripley sank into padfoot vision. The hilltop on the horizon above Troutdale glowed. “Shit.” She scrambled to her feet, throwing on her clothes as fast as she could. What can we do about it?
Decima hesitated. She took a step forward, as if wanting to claim the driver’s seat, and stepped back again. Hurry?
Hurry and do what?
“What is it?” Joe asked again.
Ripley switched back to regular vision. “Your brother. I don’t know what he did, but the town is glowing.”
“Glowing good or glowing bad?”
“I only see one kind of glow, Joe.” She buttoned up her jeans and slipped her t-shirt over her head.
Voices sounded at the front door.
Brett and Juliet.
Joe frowned at Ripley, pulling on his pants. “They seem okay.”
She was a little confused herself, but Decima was adamant. Something was wrong.
Brett and Juliet walked in the door, beaming smiles on their faces.
Juliet caught Ripley’s expression first and stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Ripley said.
Brett’s face—so like Joe’s, yet so completely different—twisted. “You just won’t get off my case, will you. Well, get this. You will never be one of us. It doesn’t matter if you—”
“You want to rethink those words, Brother,” Joe growled, taking a step forward.
Juliet’s blue eyes widened and her lips curled upward. Her nostrils flared and her smile widened. She gave Ripley a look that said, Congrats.
Ripley gestured toward Brett.
Juliet rolled her eyes and set her hand on his arm. “Sweetie, stop it. We talked about this.”
“That was before I smelled her all over him.” Brett pulled away from Juliet like she had a disease. “She’s just trying to worm her way in, to find some kind of worth because she can’t find it any other way.”
“That is the ugliest thing I’ve heard you say,” Juliet said. “Take it back.”
“No.” He turned on her, his anger overpowering a twinge of confusion behind his eyes. “And what do you mean always defending her? Is there some strange alliance I need to know about? What’s going on here?”
Juliet jerked back, staring at Brett like he was a different man.
There, Decima whispered. That’s what I was warning against.
Brett advanced on Ripley, and Joe stepped between them.
Where the fuck had she put the damned trank gun?
Juliet grabbed one of Brett’s arms.
His bear shot to the front, and he shoved her aside.
Fuck!
Ripley spotted the rifle beside the door and dove for it. She’d had the precognition to at least load a dart in it. She slid up against the wall, locked the load, sighted and shot.
The dart landed squarely in Brett’s bear ass-cheek.
He grunted, then shifted back to naked human form, hi
s clothes strewn around him.
Juliet stared at him in horror.
Brett stumbled a step forward, one hand on his butt, his fingers seeking the dart.
Joe watched, torn suddenly between helping his twin and protecting Ripley.
Brett slumped to the ground, the dart in his hand.
Joe looked back at Ripley. “You shot my brother.”
“You could say thank you.” She loaded another dart, just in case. “Is anyone bitten?”
“No,” Joe said gruffly. He turned to Juliet “What the hell happened?”
Her hand shook as she put her fingertips to her mouth. “We tried Snow’s cure. We thought—we thought it worked.”
Ripley stared at the door, seeing the town on the other side of it in her mind’s eye, and the glow around it. No. They hadn’t cured it. They’d made it worse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What do we do?” Juliet asked.
Joe just stared at his brother, blatant shock on his face. “You shot him.”
“You really need to get over that.” Ripley pulled her phone out of her pocket and had Tuck’s number up before she’d completed a thought. Her thumb hovered over the call button. As much as he was always her first line of defense, he wouldn’t be a lot of assistance in this. “Trust me?”
Juliet frowned, glanced up at Ripley, then back to Brett. “Yes. Of course.”
“What? Wait. No.” Joe crossed the room in three strides. “You’re not calling Chuck.”
She shouldn’t blame him for that as his first reaction, but it did piss her off a little. “No, fuckhead.” Obviously one epic sex moment and a cuddle wouldn’t change everything in an instant, but she’d hoped he’d at least trust her just a smidge.
He jerked as if she’d slapped him. He knew it had been a knee-jerk reaction. But in fairness, the last time he’d let her go off on her own, she’d informed Chuck about Brett. Now, there was a death warrant on Brett’s head. So, he was having a tough time of it. He tipped her phone toward him so he could see the screen. It blipped to screen saver mode, but he saw the name that had been pulled up. “Tuck. Really?”
She woke her phone back up and flipped through the recent call log. “No. I mean, originally, yes. I always call Tuck for help when I need it. He’s always there.”
