Run Fur Love (BBW Tiger Shifter Romance)

by Catherine Vale

  He looked at her, and for a brief second, she thought there was going to be another story or distorted version of the truth, or something that would just confuse the whole issue even more. Then something changed in his eyes, the calm dropping away for a second and showing her a naked vulnerability that had never been there before. Her heart stumbled, picked itself up, and kept beating.

  “Tell me the truth, Jericho. Please.”

  “I’ve told you the truth since I met you.”

  She thought that was a long way away from what she needed to hear, but he seemed bent on telling her this in his own way, so she kept quiet, and listened.

  “I just haven’t told you the truth in the right order.”

  That made her blink and want to laugh, except she had the feeling her life might still depend on what he said.

  “I am from Kentucky, but I left that life a long time ago. I worked my way across the country, doing odd jobs, getting hired on for things no one else wanted to do.”

  She’d started to ask how he became an assassin, but he’d cut her off with a shake of his head, and the rest of his explanation.

  “Legitimate jobs. A roughneck on an oil rig in Louisiana, driving heavy machinery up in the oil fields in Canada, deckhand on a crab boat in Alaska. Hard work that guys try, and then decide they don’t like, or can’t do, and leave. I stuck it out, but then moved on. Got restless, wanted a change.”

  “And the woman in North Dakota? Where does she fit in this version of the truth?”

  “After the crab boat in Alaska. That was where I lived before North Dakota. I came back from Alaska, and wanted to get as far away from water as I could. The middle of the country seemed a good place.” He squinted up into the sun. “I’ve got two stickers on the plate, so it’s longer than just one ride across Montana since I left her.”

  “But you were still over her by the time you hit the state line?”

  “Yeah. I was. She’d left me before that, but I still pretended we had something. Finally, it just got to be too much to keep up the game. And I left.”

  “Where does being a hired killer fit into all of this?”

  He held her gaze for a moment, the pain in his clear gray eyes, telling her there was so much more to the story than he could ever explain right then and there. That expression was back on his face, his eyes were that of a deep pool of emotions, and maybe he didn’t even know how deep the water went.

  “There are networks…hidden ways to find people who are looking to have things done, things that not just anyone could do.” His eyes dropped for a moment, and when he looked back at her, she decided he’d kicked off from the bottom, and was making his way back to the surface. “I got in too deep. Couldn’t get out as easy as I got in.” He seemed relieved to have said that, to have admitted what his life was like because of that fateful decision to accept a deal from the devil. She wondered if it was the first time he’d even admitted it to himself.

  “And is your last name really Steele?”

  That made him laugh, a real laugh that she hadn’t heard before. It made her smile, despite the turmoil she felt inside. The tension that had built up between them, faded away a little bit. “It is. And so is Jericho.”

  Something in his laugh, and the way the story spun out, eased the knots in her stomach. Until that little last bit left her, she hadn’t realized how cramped up her body felt. For the first time since this morning, when she smelled the smoke, she felt like she could take a deep breath. Suddenly the air filled her lungs, and she held it, taking in the sweet smell of dry grass and hay and dust. It felt good.

  “Is there anything else you need to know?” Jericho fixed her with a look that seemed to say he would be willing to tell her his birth date, and social security number, and his mother’s maiden name. “Anything that you need to know to be able to trust me?”

  “Is it important to you that I trust you?” She wasn’t ready to commit to anything, not quite yet, even if it was only telling him she trusted him. Or wanted to.

  “I’d like it if you did. It would...” He closed his eyes, and she could almost see him searching for the right words. When he opened his eyes, she wasn’t sure he’d found them, but time was passing, and there was some place they needed to be.

  “It would make me happy, if you trusted me. No, not happy.” He sounded as though he was struggling to find the right words. “That’s too simple of a word for what I mean. Let’s just say that I’d like it very much if you could try to trust me. Can you do that?”

  “Let’s just say that I do, more than I did when this day started.”

  A kind of darkness left his face, the edges smoothing out a little. Not quite a smile, but his mouth took on the relaxed look she’d noticed the night before. God, had it been just the night before? It seemed like days ago that he’d walked into her bar, that she’d caught his strong shifter scent, and her life had turned upside down, and gone all kinds of crazy.

  “Let’s go find Duke.” She took one last deep breath, as if testing that the tension was really gone. And it was. She trusted that, trusted how her body felt, more than she trusted her emotions. Those were still churning and swirling, generally in a mess. But her body was calm and strong, and she found herself standing straight and tall. Her leg hurt like a son of a bitch, but it didn’t seem important at the moment.

  “Then let’s get going.” Jericho got on the bike. It coughed to life, running rough. It belched smoke, then smoothed out. He revved the engine, and nodded.

  “Get on.”

  She reached down, and grabbed his leather jacket, handing it to him. He shrugged into it, then looked back at her, and nodded. It took her a minute to work up the courage to get on the bike. He’d told her he’d come to kill her just before they’d plunged down the hill in the woods, and she’d had no choice but to go with him. Now, she had a choice. She glanced at the other bikes, lying on the road. The choice was there; she didn’t think he’d force her to go with him.

  But she swung on behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist. They sat for a minute, the machine vibrating beneath her, the cadence of the engine rising, and falling. Jericho turned, glancing at her over his shoulder. She nodded, and he gave her a smile. And then he gunned the bike, and they headed down the narrow road, toward Echo Lake. And hopefully toward her brother.

  * * *

  There was no actual road to Echo Lake. Just a trail that was damned hard to find, unless you know which farm after which mile marker, and which break in what fence, and then which stand of trees, when all the stands of trees looked alike. She’d gotten Jericho headed in the right direction, and then held on. And then her mind started working.

  The longer they rode, and the more she thought about it, the less she realized she really knew about the man she had her arms wrapped around. The wind roared past her ears, and it felt like it was pulling away everything Jericho had said, like smoke blowing in the wind. The only thing she kept coming back to was he’d told he never lied to her. And if that wasn’t a lie, then it was the truest thing she knew about him, and it was the thing she was hanging on to with all her strength.

  Somewhere close to where she thought the trail was, she tapped Jericho on the shoulder. He slowed, pulled over, left the engine running.

  “You lost?” She heard the smile in his voice.

  She punched him in the shoulder, not lightly, then pointed toward Table Mountain. “Just misplaced for a second. We’re going up and over that, along a ridge, and then down to the little valley that’s hidden between the mountain, and the range behind. It’s got only the one trail in from this side, and on the other, it’s about fifteen miles on what amounts to just a footpath, and that only goes to the nearest road, which is in worse shape than the footpath. I’m looking for the mile markers, so go slow for a few miles, okay?”

  “Got it. Just make sure I know where to turn to get off this road.”

  He revved the bike, shifted it into gear, and they started down the faded gray road. For a
minute, she wanted to forget that they were looking for her brother, someone who had just as big of a target on his back as she had on hers. The air was cool, almost cold in the shadows, a relief after the heat of the past weeks. It had been longer than she could remember, since she’d ridden behind someone, and especially a man that excited her on so many levels. It would be nice, she thought, to trust him. She’d wanted him to stay longer than just one night, and he had, but it wasn’t in a way she’d ever imagined. He’d tied her stomach up in knots, and set her heart beating like a caged bird, and he’d lit a fire inside her that she’d thought was dead, and cold.

  The road turned, and twisted, hugging the edge of the hills below Table Mountain. The fields to their right started getting greener, and the hills were covered with pines, and cedars, their sharp smell scenting the air. Mile markers flashed by, and she started looking for number eighteen.

  It came up, and she tapped Jericho on the shoulder. He slowed the bike, and she pointed. He nodded, slowed the bike, and got them through another ditch, and onto the path. There was a gap between two fenced fields. She leaned forward.

  “Through there, okay? There’s enough room between the fences. Then to the right, toward that clump of pines.”

  He nodded, eased the bike through the ditch, and started down the gap between the fences. She looked ahead, and saw the dry grass was bent and broken, and she took that as a good sign, that Duke had been there, at least a few days ago. But it also might mean that one of Ramsey’s men had come this way too, that someone else knew about Echo Lake besides her, and Duke.

  Jericho took a right at the end of the fences, making for the trees. But he stopped, just short of the clump of pines, put his foot down, and leaned over. The ground here was dirt, part of a cattle run between fields. But the rancher didn’t have beef cattle at the moment. The fields were empty, and the dirt wasn’t torn up with fresh tracks, or cow pies.

  “What?”

  “Tracks. Big bike. One set at least, maybe two. Hard to tell. It rained here, and the tracks are a little washed out.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  He looked up, and she thought he was trying to find the answer to that question in the trees ahead, as if his answer would make the difference in what they were going to do. Then he shrugged.

  “It really only tells us someone else went up here before it rained. And we can hope it was Duke…”

  For now, that’s all she could hope for, too.

  Jericho took the path behind the fields fast, kicking up dust behind them. She knew why; the edge of the trees was only a few hundred yards away. On the open road, they were just a bike heading somewhere. Here, it was obvious by the dust plume where they were, and where they were headed.

  They hit the shade, the temperature dropping by at least ten degrees. Goosebumps prickled her skin, and she hugged Jericho tight, wanting to duck behind his back, but needing to watch where they were going.

  The further they went, the higher they climbed, the more obvious it was that Jericho was born to ride a motorcycle. She thought she was good at handling, and she’d taken this trail before, and if she could believe Jericho—and she wanted to with all her heart—he’d never been here. But he rode as if he came up here every day. Each turn brought her heart into her throat, but he leaned into it, and she followed, and they took the turns and curves smoothly, as though he’d done it a thousand times before.

  There was a clearing she knew was coming up, and then the twists and turns on the downhill into the valley. For a brief moment, she wondered if riding a big noisy machine through the woods might be announcing their presence. She tapped Jericho on the shoulder.

  “What?”

  She just caught the word over the sound of the engine. Leaning forward, she could just get her lips next to his ear.

  “Do we want to go in guns blazing? Or try a stealth approach? Duke might bolt, if he hears us.”

  The bike slowed, and Jericho cut the engine. “Wouldn’t he have heard us already?”

  She shook her head, then shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. Sounds get all distorted down there in the valley. And it depends on what he’s thinking. If he was just up here fishing, probably not. He’d be out fishing, sitting in the sun with a twelve-pack. But if he got spooked, and thinks Morgan’s after him, or worse, who knows. If he was scared enough, he could have made it halfway to Canada by now.”

  “You think we should walk from here?”

  “I don’t think that’s a bad idea. There’s a really dense stand of pines up ahead, with some deadfalls. Stash the bike and if you’re up for a hike, we can walk the rest of the way.”

  He got off the bike, then turned to look at her. “I should be asking you, if you can make it, with that leg.”

  She tried a nimble hop off the bike, but the minute she put weight on the leg, it buckled. Jericho grabbed her, caught her arm, just as she went down.

  “I’m fine. It just gets stiff when I ride.” She wanted to shake off the hand on her, just on principle, but she liked the touch of him, where his hand was, just below the sleeve of her t-shirt. His hand was warm and solid, and it made her feel better somehow, just to have his hand on her.

  “You sure you can make it?”

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  He held on for a little bit longer and then he let go, but his eyes were still on hers. “You know I meant what I said before.”

  “Which before? You’ve said a lot of things today. Was it something I want to hear again?”

  He grinned, a half-assed cocky grin that she liked. “Probably. I said that you’re the most important thing in my world right now. Aside from the pure self-interest of keeping myself alive, you’re it. You’re the reason I’m going to walk over that ridge, and look for a man who I was supposed to kill. Because of you. Because it means something to you to figure this out, and to make what seems like a bunch of wrongs, into something closer to right.”

  She heard the words, and this time they stuck, that he wasn’t just saying something to get something back from her, to get into her pants, or to get her someplace where he could do what Morgan hired him to do. That he meant every word he said, and she was glad to hear it.

  “Thank you. I needed to hear that again.” A sudden wave of something like shyness came over her. She’d had him in her bed, ravaged him like a wild animal, while he was cuffed to the frame. But to tell him that what he said meant something, made her face warm and her heart flutter. She gave him a smile, and then turned away, suddenly all business.

  “The trees are over there. You can see them...”

  He had her arm in his big hand again, and she let him turn her around. She knew what he was going to do, and as much as she thought there should be a sense of urgency about finding Duke, when Jericho kissed her, she gave in and let him.

  There was a sense of urgency in his kiss, a longing she hadn’t felt before. It sent a new sensation running through her, a sense that they were closer somehow. Maybe it was her imagination, maybe it was wishful thinking, the desire to make them closer than they really were. But wishful or not, she liked how that closeness felt. She closed her eyes, and let him pull her into his arms and let him kiss her, until she was breathless.

  He stepped back, reached up and touched her cheek. “That was nice.”

  That made her smile. “Yes. It was, although nice is a bit of an understatement.”

  “I’m hoping there’ll be more of those, in the future.”

  She nodded. “Me too. But right now, we should go find Duke.”

  “Right. I’ll take care of the bike. Here.” He shrugged out of his leather jacket, and handed it to her. “I wanted to stop before when you started shivering, but it makes me nervous out there.” He tipped his head toward where the highway would have been, if there weren’t trees in the way.

  “Thanks.” She put her arms in the sleeves, as he maneuvered the bike behind the fallen pines. The jacket was like a condensed version of every scent the man carried: human,
shifter, the smoke from the bar. She drew a deep breath, half fearing she’d catch the scent of perfume, of another woman. But from what her nose could tell, it was all male, and all Jericho.

  “This way. It’s shorter than the bike trail, and it comes out above the little cabin that’s here. If Duke’s there, we might be able to see his bike, unless he’s sleeping with it in the cabin.”

  “Try not to be too much of a badass, Harley. If your leg hurts, we stop and rest. Okay?”

  She grinned, as they walked up through the trees, and focused on where to put her feet. The land rose sharply, and after a few minutes, her leg began to ache. But she was going to be a hard ass, and she was not going to ask to stop and rest.

  They crested the ridge after fifteen minutes. If she’d been chilled before, now after that hike and wearing Jericho’s jacket, she was warm. Really warm. A little voice inside her head made a gleeful little boast that she was leaving her own scent on Jericho’s jacket. She wondered if that meant she was marking him as her own, and then she thought just maybe she was, and it made her smile.

  “There.” Jericho pointed, and she looked where she knew the cabin was. It was a one room little building, brown siding against brown tree trunks, a faded galvanized tin roof.

  “You have good eyes.”

  “I should. I’m a shifter, after all.”

  “Let me go first. Go slow, and stay behind me. If he’s there and sees me, he probably won’t run. But if he sees you and he has a gun, there might be trouble.”

  “Right. Just be careful, okay?”

  “Yes. I know. Careful is my middle name.”

  She started down the hill, slipping on pine needles and tripping over rocks, but she made steady progress. There was no sign of Duke’s bike, but she couldn’t see the front of the cabin. There was no smoke either, but that didn’t surprise her. It hadn’t been chilly enough, really, to need a fire, and Duke was probably used to eating out of cans.

  The backside of the cabin had three windows, just under the roof line, and a back door. That door was closed, and the windows were shuttered. She stopped, listening for any sound, any scent, anything that would tell her if someone was there. Finally, she turned to Jericho.