Bait This! (A 300 Moons Book)

by Tasha Black

  Instantly, the four stilled and rolled off of each other.

  “Dinner’s ready, guys,” she laughed. “Come ’n get it.”

  The other three slid upward into their human forms, and sauntered toward the kitchen.

  Derek sat alone on the knotted rug, looking down at his furry paws with their long pointed claws.

  “Derek?” Mom called from the other room.

  He heard her familiar footsteps and tried to hide himself behind the rocking chair so she wouldn’t see that he wasn’t a boy.

  She saw him right away, of course. Mothers could do that.

  “Oh dear,” she said, trying to scoop him up.

  But he was too heavy.

  She pulled and tugged, but she could not lift him into her arms.

  10

  Hedda turned just in time to see the man fly off the cliffside and drop into the creek.

  She allowed herself a single moment of sheer panic before reining it in.

  The fall was just enough that he could have broken his neck. The water from the mountain spring was cold, nearly freezing. She needed to act fast.

  As she raced to the edge of the cliff and lowered herself down recklessly, hanging onto tree roots, she couldn’t help but remember the omen.

  A single dove.

  And the only thing to happen today was the arrival of this man. A man who had already crashed an airplane, been knocked out by her hasty curse, and flung himself directly into a creek for no reason she could discern.

  Clearly the bad omen was to warn her about him. He wasn’t a demon, but he was trouble.

  She could just walk away. No one would ever know.

  Instead, she slid down the muddy bank, cursing herself for a fool.

  She saw him immediately in the deepest part of the clear stream, a dark cloud swirling in the water around his head.

  Shit.

  He was huge. And now he was soaked and unconscious. How was she going to get him out?

  She scanned the woods, then saw something she could use.

  She studied the mostly dead oak. It was still standing, though nature would take its course soon enough.

  Hedda reached into the oak with her mind.

  She saw it as a sapling, stretching joyfully toward the delicate rays of light that filtered their way down to it between the larger trees. Felt its joy as it grew and became the home to a planet of life, its own as well as squirrels, birds, and entire societies of bugs. The agony of the lightning that had struck it, the pain of losing a huge limb, the suffocating sadness of starving as the broken limb leached nutrients from the living body.

  When she knew it as if its life were her own, she lifted a hand.

  “Cadent,” she told it, and showed it with her hand what she wanted.

  The trees were silent for a moment.

  Then there was a groan as the withered oak fell.

  The top of its trunk hit the other side of the creek with a thundering crash, forming a bridge across the water.

  She ran around the enormous root ball, and touched the bark of its trunk.

  “Sommo,” she whispered, though blessing the tree with sleep was a silly waste of a touch of magic - it was no longer alive.

  By now the man had been in the water for minutes - not seconds.

  Hedda scrabbled across the tree bridge on her hands and knees until she was next to where he half floated, face down.

  She reached out to grasp him by his clothing, but he had drifted just out of her reach.

  She stretched out at a different angle. But still her fingers were an inch from his shirt.

  There was no other way then.

  Hedda held her breath and launched herself in.

  The water stabbed at her with cold fingers, instantly penetrating every part of her, greedily sucking out every degree of warmth from every hidden crevice.

  She ignored the pain of the cold and pushed her way a few steps, where she grabbed the man.

  He was light in the water, and easy to drag, but getting him out would be another story.

  She managed to hoist herself onto the trunk without letting go of his limp arm.

  After her short time in the water, her whole body shook with the cold. The wind was picking up, the storm was almost on them.

  She had to hurry.

  Hedda pulled.

  His body moved, but nowhere near enough to get him out.

  She pulled again, but it was no use.

  I will not leave this man in the water.

  The need to protect him was overwhelming. It was beyond the feeling of a good Samaritan. Was she in shock?

  She shook herself and reached for him again.

  Holding onto the tree with her thighs for all she was worth, she was able to reach out far enough to grab his trouser leg with her other hand.

  Calling on strength she didn’t know she had Hedda pulled until her muscles strained.

  When she got him up on top of the tree, the force nearly made her fall off the other side.

  He didn’t cough.

  She forced herself not to care. It wouldn’t help anyone if she panicked now. She scrambled over him, and then pulled him the rest of the way onto the opposite bank.

  Hedda rolled him over onto his side. She had no idea what she was supposed to do next. In the movies she would have flipped him on his back and done CPR. But that didn’t seem right.

  She lay behind him and squeezed him around the waist, trying not to worry about the wound on the back of his head.

  Nothing.

  She squeezed him again.

  He spluttered and vomited water.

  She let go quickly and moved to where she could see his face.

  He coughed again and again.

  At last he sat up and studied her with those clear blue eyes.

  “W-we have to g-go,” she stammered, the weight of the cold finally falling on her.

  He stood, a little too quickly for what he’d just been through.

  “Is your h-head okay?” she asked.

  He nodded solemnly and took her hand.

  His hand was inexplicably warm around hers.

  She led him up the mountain through the trees. It was over here someplace. If only she weren’t so cold and so tired.

  At last she saw the shape of it silhouetted in the moonlight.

  It wasn’t really a cabin. It was more of a shelter, a porch with a roof and half walls forming a half-circle around a fire pit. Built by the local scouts to earn a wilderness badge years ago, it had been promptly forgotten since everyday life was wilderness in Copper Creek.

  The air prickled at her skin and her bones ached with the cold.

  By the time they got to the shelter she realized the man was supporting her, one arm wrapped around her waist.

  Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

  They entered the small space and she lowered herself to the floor. At least the wind was no longer blowing through her.

  “I’m going to get some wood before it starts raining,” the man told her, concern written on his face.

  She nodded, hoping there were a few scraps of wood already in the fire pit so that she could get a fire going right away.

  She crawled over to it and was happy to find a few sticks. She looked over her shoulder and when she could no longer see him, she whispered, “Illumina.”

  A tiny spark appeared among the sticks. It glowed blue at first, but went flame colored quickly, and soon the tiny fire was crackling merrily.

  Hedda held her hands over the flames as closely as she dared. The heat felt amazing. She hoped he found enough wood to get the thing to blaze. Most likely, a city guy would come back without enough to keep it going for an hour. Or, given his track record, he would manage to hit his head again or get eaten by a bear and not come back at all.

  Somehow the thought made her sad, though they had only exchanged a few words and she didn’t even know his name.

  “I’m here—oh,” the man said as he entered.
<
br />   She looked up to see the surprise on his face and the enormous stack of wood in his arms. He might just be useful after all.

  “I found a match,” she fibbed.

  He smiled down at her.

  At once she was overwhelmed by his masculine beauty. The dark hair, the cerulean eyes, the remains of his drenched and tattered shirt molding to the lean muscles of his arms and torso.

  He should have been shivering as she was. He’d been in the water much longer than she had. And his head…

  “Your head,” she gasped, horrified that she’d let her own discomfort allow her to forget he had a real injury.

  “I’m fine,” he said, kneeling to place the wood near the fire pit.

  “No, you’re not. I saw your head when I pulled you out of the water,” she insisted.

  “Really, it was nothing. A little blood can make a minor scratch look like a big deal in the water,” he insisted, carefully arranging two good sized pieces of kindling in the fire. “I’m surprised you could get it going like this,” he remarked.

  “Let me see your head,” she said, refusing to take the bait.

  11

  Derek couldn’t distract her.

  She was going to see that he had already healed, impossibly quickly.

  It was already too late. She was up on her knees, her hands reaching for his hair.

  He would have to submit.

  She was close enough that he could hear her heartbeat, scent the sweetness of her. The bear moaned, but Derek held him in with all he had, the mark burning his hip like a hot coal beneath his skin, his whole body teeming with energy that he held in by a thread.

  He moved fully into the shelter, hunkering down to her level, and the feeling eased a bit.

  Whatever was going on with him, it seemed to be worse in the moonlight.

  He stilled as her fingers touched his hair.

  Her hands were so gentle. It could have been her feather touch, but he felt a light prickle of electricity between them.

  “It’s fine,” she breathed at last, sitting back on her heels.

  He was drawn between the agony of aching for more of her touch and the relief of having passed the test of having her touch him without incident.

  Her silence roused him.

  He didn’t know what to say. He had been found out.

  “You’re one of them, then,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, not turning, afraid to look her in the eye.

  “You’re a wolf,” she said.

  The bear tossed his snout in the air indignantly at being confused with a canine. Darcy would have howled with laughter at the thought.

  Derek turned to examine the woman’s expression.

  She stared back at him, her lavender eyes clear and frank.

  She knew about shifters.

  He had never told a human he was a shifter before. But this was a different situation than he’d ever been in.

  He considered his options and made a calculated decision within the time it took to blink.

  He nodded and made a noncommittal grunt.

  Willing to admit to being a shifter, but not exactly wanting to tell her he was a bear.

  The way Derek saw it, women fantasized about guys who turned into wolves, he’d seen it in those sparkly vampire movies.

  But most people were white-knuckled in terror at the grainy internet home videos of lumbering bears running rampant. They were forever vandalizing suburban backyards and killing deer, never standing confidently on the edge of a cliff or something, giving a poignant howl.

  If you were going to be a shifter, the writing was on the wall. Wolves were the sexy, sympathetic kings.

  And bears were… well, bumbling and brutish.

  Hedda nodded matter-of-factly at his admission, not seeming to question his status as a wolf.

  “I knew you were a shifter,” she said.

  He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “How did you know?”

  “The town where I used to live was all shifters - wolves,” she said.

  “Not you,” he corrected her.

  “You’re right, not me,” she smiled.

  “But the whole town was shifters?” he asked.

  She nodded again.

  Derek thought about that.

  “You grew up around people, I take it,” she said.

  “Yeah. Well… not exactly, but yes,” he replied.

  “Family of shifters, but out in the human world,” she nodded.

  “Nope, I don’t know anything about my shifter family. I grew up in a home for shifters who were… early bloomers. We lived in a mostly human town,” he told her.

  “Like an orphanage?” she asked.

  Derek shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like anyone talking about Harkness Farms like that. And he certainly did not consider himself an orphan. He had a mom. That she hadn’t given birth to him, and that she had twenty-six or so other kids didn’t change how he felt. Kate Harkness was his mom, plain and simple.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you talk about something uncomfortable,” she looked down, chastened.

  “No, it’s not that at all,” he told her. “As a matter of fact, that’s where I was headed before the plane crash - back home.”

  “So you still visit?” she asked, her head tilted slightly, dark hair slipping forward again.

  He smiled.

  “Oh yeah, I go back every year, more often if Mom needs me, though she’s pretty self-sufficient.”

  “She’s older?” Hedda asked sympathetically.

  Derek threw his head back and laughed.

  “Maybe, but you’d never know it. She runs a farm, the kids help her. But if she’s got too many new kids and not enough older ones then harvest-time can get difficult. We get a lot of tourists from Halloween to Thanksgiving,” he explained. “I like being back there, the farm will always be home. And the little guys are hysterical.”

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re right, that’s not what I pictured.”

  He shrugged.

  “So if you’re not a shifter, what were you doing out in the middle of nowhere before a storm? It seems like we’re pretty far from civilization.”

  Suddenly, her heart-shaped face went pale and she looked away from him, into the fire.

  “It’s a long story. But basically my sisters and I were living here to protect the town on the other side of this mountain.”

  “What town?” he asked. Hadn’t they just come from over there? Was she leading him purposely away from town after all?

  “There is no town anymore,” she said to the crackling fire, her voice steady but her shoulder drooping.

  Derek stared at her, thunderstruck.

  He took a deep breath through his nose.

  There it was.

  He could finally identify the other scent that had been bothering him all night. It was fire. And it was different than the smoke from the plane. Had the town burned down somehow? Was he smelling the remains?

  The bear in his head prodded him unsubtly to think of how to help the woman.

  Derek studied her small form. This human and her sisters were supposed to protect a mountain of wolves? That didn’t make sense. And now the town was gone. Something had gone very wrong. But he didn’t want to ask the wrong question.

  “Where are your sisters?”

  It seemed a good place to start.

  She looked down at the blanket, trailing her fingers over the frayed edge.

  “I messed up. I messed up so badly,” she shook her head. “The whole town was uprooted, the coal mine is still burning. Everyone left.”

  That explained the smell. He remembered reading about a mine cave-in and a failed rescue effort setting the mine ablaze, in a small town in Pennsylvania. He’d had no idea the mine was still burning.

  “They left you?” Derek asked incredulously. He couldn’t imagine turning his back on any of his brothers or sisters.

  “Someone had to stay…
” she trailed off.

  He looked up at her again and was surprised to find her steadfast expression had folded into a mask of sadness. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  All his concerns and calculations went out the window, and Derek Harkness pulled the woman into his arms and held her close.

  As soon as she was against his chest, he heard her heartbeat thrumming. She smelled like a wood fire, and chamomile tea. She was warm in his arms, and so soft.

  Derek thought suddenly of his childhood blankie - a feather filled duvet of monstrous proportion that he had taken a liking to. Mom had cut it down and sewed it into manageable squares for little Derek to snuggle and carry around the farm.

  The train of thought was gone as fleetingly as it hard arrived when she wound her arms around his neck and nuzzled into his chest.

  Derek’s hip burned like it was on fire.

  And her nearness took on a new meaning.

  Her breasts were crushed against his chest, his hands tightened on the curve of her hip.

  The air was suddenly charged with energy.

  Did she feel it too?

  He reached out with his senses and the bear roared with approval in his chest.

  The woman’s breath was shallow and faster than before. A haze of desire haloed her. The small room was filled with the enchanting scent of her arousal.

  Derek felt himself harden to the point of pain.

  She wiggled on his lap, seemingly to find a more comfortable position.

  But to Derek, it felt as if her every move was meant only to tantalize him.

  12

  Hedda was floating.

  The stranger surrounded her, his big body wrapped around hers. The cool of the air chilled one of her wet cheeks, while his feverish skin warmed the other.

  The image of her tears turning to steam against his heated chest flitted through her mind.

  But then his hands tightened on her hips and she forgot everything except her longing for him.

  She had only just met him, and he was a mess. A great big gorgeous mess of a man who was following her haplessly through the woods like a gigantic sexy duckling.

  So why did she feel so safe in his arms? Like he was in control and everything was going to be alright now.

  A little voice in the back of her head scolded her. The Lane women didn’t submit to this sort of thing. They solved their own problems. And besides, he only liked her for the magical charisma that exuded from her.