by Renee Rose
“Yeah, everything seems to be in working order, Doc,” Boyd murmured, his voice deeper than it had been when we started.
Oh God. What just happened?
You just came all over his face. My arousal actually coated his chin, some satisfied part of myself said. Maybe it was my body. My poor, neglected body. I’d been primed from years of withdrawal.
I pushed my glasses up on my nose, blinking to get the stars out of them. My mouth was swollen from his kisses, my neck tingled from beard burn. And my pussy… My body buzzed, warmth and heat still pulsing through in a slow, satisfied rhythm.
Boyd straightened and pulled my panties up, then my pants, then zipped and buttoned them as if he hadn’t just gotten in them and gotten me off faster than a rocket on a ten second countdown. I’d never had a man dress me before, and somehow, it felt almost more intimate than what he’d just done. As if this was something special.
“Um… wow. Whoa.”
Great. Real articulate, Audrey.
I dragged my fingers through my hair to straighten the mess. I was sure I looked exactly like a woman who’d just had a roll in the hay. “Do you do that with every woman who shows up at the ranch?”
I cursed myself for sounding so breathless.
His eyes narrowed. “No way. Not at all.”
Except he looked guilty, like he definitely did do this with every woman who showed up.
Okay, well, I had no regrets. I wasn’t going to slut-shame myself for indulging in the sexiest cowboy alive. I didn’t want to be a notch on his belt, but I had just come so hard, I was still seeing stars. My body had definitely deserved some attention, and this bull rider certainly knew his stuff. Holy shit, did he. Marina had said go for it, and I sure as hell had.
But he didn’t fit the picture I planned for my future. The devoted husband. Did the guy who gave me babies talk dirty and finger fuck me up against the side of the barn? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, was it? I was a good girl and imagined a wild romp in bed. Maybe the lights would stay on. Maybe a few unusual positions for it to be fun and different. But this?
Wow.
This just proved that Boyd was obviously after one thing: another conquest. We’d barely talked, and he had my jeans and panties around my thighs. And while I enjoyed—okay, I way more than enjoyed—that sexy interlude, I couldn’t take this further. Who was I kidding? He probably wouldn’t want to either.
I wasn’t judging him or his sexual proclivities, but I was the type who preferred sex in a committed relationship. To me, it was about deepening intimacy, exchanging love. A fun time in the barn wasn’t any of those things. After my mother not even knowing who my dad was, I wasn’t keen on one-night stands. I wanted what I’d never had growing up. A family. So yeah, if I stayed, I’d get addicted to those fingers and tongue. If he got his dick out, I’d probably be ruined forever.
I needed to get the hell out of here before this thing got any more out of hand.
Boyd leaned against the side of the barn and adjusted the bulge in his jeans. The huge bulge that ran down the inside of his thigh. Holy shit, all that was his dick?
I wanted to see it. All those inches. Touch it, feel the heat of it, the hardness. I doubted my fingers would get around it. My satisfied pussy clenched at the thought of that thing fitting in me.
No!
I was never going to find out how it would stretch me open, make me feel so full.
And a thing of that size stuck inside his well-worn jeans? A pang of guilt ran through me at leaving him blue-balled, but hey. I wasn’t the one to initiate this thing.
“So, Doc. You ready to take me up on that tour of the area?” He gave me that cocky, crooked smile. The one that got women out of their panties. Including me. “There are so many beautiful places to see in Cooper Valley.”
I bent down to pick up my keys, which must’ve fallen from my pocket during our romp. “Thank you, Boyd.” I glanced up at him, realized his dick was right at my eye level and stood up abruptly. “I, ah, appreciate the offer, but like I said before, I don’t have much time off. In fact, I need to get back to work right now.” I started backing toward the open barn door. “Because this was just hospital business, you know.”
He followed me, staying in the circle of my personal space, making me so damn susceptible to his charm. “Business,” he murmured mockingly. “Uh huh.”
“Yes. I came to check on—”
“I know.” He waved away my focus from his abdomen—the area of his wound. “But now you know I’m fine. And I know you’re pretty magnificent, yourself. Tasty, too.”
Oh, that sexy cowboy swagger. That dirty mouth.
Yeah, I’d do him again. And that made me everything he said. I was a bad girl. No good girl would think of doing what we’d just done.
Eek.
And that was why I needed to run the hell away from Wolf Ranch as fast as I could.
Boyd Wolf was temptation simmering in a gorgeous cowboy package. And I needed to remove myself from his influence before I tugged down his jeans and had my way with him.
I stumbled through the open barn door and then turned, walking swiftly toward my car.
“You sure, Doctor Ames?” he called from behind me. “I’ll be around for a few more days, at least.”
I stopped and turned, my professional instincts returning. “You can’t return to work until you’ve had a complete physical. I explicitly told your bosses that.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, which irritated the hell out of me. This guy was way too alpha male. And everyone knew, they made the very worst patients of all.
“Looks like you were the one who got the physical,” he countered.
I blushed so hotly, it was possible I would burst into flames. He didn’t just say that. The cocky little shit!
I spared us both the goodbyes. Leaving swiftly was far more important than pleasantries that being a good girl would have had me said. I slid into my seat and slammed the door, jamming the key in the ignition.
Dammit! I dropped the keyring onto the floorboard. I leaned over to pick it up, frustration making my eyes burn with unshed tears. I knew Boyd still stood there watching, even though I refused to look. His magnetic field pulled women in from miles around. I’d probably feel it the entire drive down the road.
I started the car up and threw it in reverse, backing up way faster than I usually did. Boyd lifted his hand in a wave. I tried not to look, but he got me. Those green eyes trained straight through the rearview mirror, pinning me with a stare. For once, the cocky smile wasn’t present. He almost appeared… dismayed.
But that didn’t make sense. Boyd Wolf packed enough ego to last him a lifetime. He surely wouldn’t mourn one lost opportunity with a short, bespectacled doctor who could lose fifteen pounds and had zero game. Maybe it was because he hadn’t gotten off, that I was leaving before he had a happy ending of his own.
Only because the sun was in my eyes, I watched him in my mirror as I drove away.
Boyd never moved. He just stood there, staring at the back of my car like he’d lost his best friend.
I was sure I imagined that last part. No bad boy like him gave that notch on his bedpost a second glance.
Totally sure.
8
BOYD
Fuck. I couldn’t have screwed things up any worse.
No, that wasn’t true. I kept Audrey from getting a look at my wound, and I made her come. That had to mean something.
Why, then, did I feel this nagging heaviness about the way things went down? Why was my wolf moping, nudging me to go after her?
I had no idea how long I stood there, but it was enough time for Rob to stalk up from the corral without me noticing.
“You gonna tell me what all this is about?” he rumbled. I was in trouble if I could let a two-hundred plus pound shifter sneak up on me.
I glared at the dust that had kicked up behind Audrey’s car at the end of our long dirt drive.
“Boyd?”
he prompted. “What the fuck happened?”
I pulled my gloves out of my pocket and put them on, turning to stalk back to the barn. My dick was hurting, my balls ached to be emptied. I’d take care of it later in the shower, but I had to bleed off the excess energy somehow. Shifting and going for a run would work, but there were chores to be done. Unsaid ranch rules were chores first, run after.
“I asked you a question.” Rob infused alpha command into his voice as he caught my shoulder, and I went still, my body responding instinctively to the pack leader. I didn’t look at him, though. I couldn’t.
He wasn’t just my alpha. He wasn’t just my brother. He’d played the role of my father… hell, both parents, after they’d been killed when I was twelve. It had been my fault he’d been thrust into the role of alpha and parent in the blink of an eye. Mom and Dad had headed into Cooper Valley for me. While Rob and Colton had already started to shift by the time they were my age, they’d called me defective. Two and four years older, they left me behind when they went off and roamed the property. I’d been jealous, hurt and didn’t think myself much of a shifter.
You’re not a shifter if you can’t shift, they’d taunted.
Instead of embracing the pack life, I’d pretended I was completely human. I’d wanted to go to the county fair and meet my school friends. Friends who couldn’t shift, like me. I’d spent the day there, with the plan that my parents would pick me up at ten by the entrance. I’d dared my friend to have a third corndog and go on the Tilt-A-Whirl without hurling. There’d been five dollars in it, and I’d only realized what time it was when thunder clapped overhead. I’d left Bobby Sweetin to puke his guts out minus the five dollars.
I’d been seventeen minutes late.
Seventeen minutes where we could have been through the canyon before the rock slide, before our car had been knocked off the road and partially crushed. I’d survived without a scratch. My parents? The state patrol said they’d been killed in an instant.
They might not have suffered, but I did. Every fucking day. If I hadn’t been such a little shit and kept them waiting, Rob wouldn’t have been forced to skip college to take care of the pack and two little brothers.
It had been my fault, and I knew it. I was the family fuck-up. Turned out, I wasn’t defective because I couldn’t shift—I’d survived the accident because I’d shifted and been able to get out of the mangled truck in my new wolf form. Four paws had gotten me up the wet bank. I was defective because I’d destroyed the Wolf pack with one stupid middle-school prank.
I’d been wild and reckless after that and hadn’t stopped. I might not be an alpha of a pack, but I was king of the rodeo. I was invincible, literally. I had nothing to fear on the back of a bull. I might get hurt, but not for long.
Except this time, I had a lot to worry about. I might have recovered fast, but I’d been distracted, just like at the county fair. This time, it was by Abe’s hand on Audrey’s shoulder. That bit of jealousy could destroy the pack all over again. Audrey suspected. While I had no problem getting her off for the rest of her life to distract her, I didn’t think that was going to work. She wasn’t a ditzy buckle bunny out for a good time. Audrey Ames was all brains… and had one sweet, addictive pussy.
“Talk. Now.” More alpha command.
I sighed, prepared myself for his anger and disappointment and glanced at him over my shoulder. “I got gored at the last rodeo, and she was the arena doc.” I didn’t elaborate on why I got gored in the first place, only highlighting how stupid I’d been. He wouldn’t approve of mating a human. He wouldn't believe I had the urge to mark her as mine.
His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t show much emotion. He never did. I knew never to play poker with the fucker. “Seriously, Boyd? How did that happen?”
I didn’t answer because I’d already decided I wasn’t telling him that Audrey was mine. Not yet, anyway. Not until I’d explored it further.
I wasn’t that stupid.
I wanted more with her. Not that what we just did in the barn didn’t count as a whole fucking lot.
“Let me guess—you were more focused on getting some pussy than you were on staying on your bull?” The sound of disgust in Rob’s voice raised my hackles, but it was the fact that he was right that really burned me.
It also made me want to punch him in the fucking throat. Because Audrey was not some pussy. She was so much more. I wanted to tell him off for disrespecting her like that, but I couldn’t.
I turned to face him head on, a snarl on my lip. “I’m taking care of the problem, so you can fuck off.”
And that was how I ended up with my hat flying off and me landing ass first in the dirt with my nose bleeding. His fist came up out of nowhere. I might have killer reflexes to keep my ass on the back of a bull, but Rob had alpha reflexes and a whole fuckton of command to go with it.
No one challenged an alpha wolf. Especially not when there was family history. It was definitely broken, and my nose hurt like a bitch. I sniffed, wiped the dripping blood with the back of my hand and picked up Audrey’s scent. My fingers were covered with it from fingering her. My wolf snapped and snarled, not caring I’d been laid out, but that Rob was getting in the way of me being with Audrey. Still, I couldn’t explain because all he’d do was shut me down not with his fist this time, but an alpha command to stay the fuck away from her.
I stayed down and showed my throat to signify my surrender to his pack position.
Rob folded his arms over his chest and glared down at me. “The fact that you’re being an asshole tells me we have a real problem here. I’m going to fill in the blanks, so correct me if I’m wrong. You got hurt at an event, and she treated you, discovered you healed fucking fast and was curious. Something like that?”
I gave him one quick nod.
“How much does that doctor know and what are you going to do about it?”
I rolled to my side and stood, brushed the dirt off my ass, ignoring the blood as I set the break. Pack justice was often physical because there was no real harm. My nose would heal within the hour. My perpetually wounded pride and neverending guilt? I was still waiting for that to fix.
“She rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital—”
“Ambulance? What the fuck did you do to yourself?”
I didn’t answer that, just finished my explanation. “—then she saw me walk out not long after. I have it under control.”
One of his dark brows winged up in a look that screamed yeah right. “How exactly? By getting into her pants and getting her off? Don’t think I can’t smell her scent all over you. Did your magic dick solve this colossal fuck-up?”
Yeah, that stung. He’d hit the bullseye with his words and made my plan sound like the dumbest idea ever. I shrugged. “Kept her from examining me, and she’s off the ranch.” It sounded lame even to my own ears.
Rob looked down the drive where she’d disappeared. His next order took me by surprise. “That doctor is too smart to fall for your shenanigans. You might have needed to hide out here for a few days to miraculously heal, but you’re not leaving town until we know this situation has been contained. You need to stay on her.”
“What?” I asked.
He pursed his lips and set his hands on his hips. “Make yourself her new best friend until she’s convinced you’re the most ordinary human male in the county.”
I preferred she believe I was extraordinary in a few areas, but I didn’t bother arguing that point with Rob. Instead of him ordering me to never see her again like I’d expected, he told me to do the exact fucking opposite.
He wanted me to be her best friend. Well, that wasn’t fucking happening. Best friends didn’t finger fuck or get eaten out. But see her again and maybe again and again? My wolf practically howled, and I was getting hard at the thought of tasting her. And more.
But how could I be with her and not claim her completely? I couldn’t just fuck her and forget her as Rob was insinuating. Sure, that was my MO since I lo
st my virginity in Mary Sanchez’s basement in twelfth grade. Maybe this idea was bad. Really bad. I wanted her for my mate. For forever. Rob wanted it temporary and until any possible thought of the existence of shifters was forgotten.
He wouldn’t want me to claim her. Hell, no. If he had any idea of my need to mate her, he’d punch me in the face again and set one of the ranch hands on her to watch her for a while.
No fucking way.
So I’d do what he said and try to figure out how to make her mine and somehow keep the fact I was a shifter a total secret at the same time.
I nodded and stuck my hat back on my head. “Done.”
My wolf was happy as fuck. I’d finish my chores, get cleaned up and head into town. Track down Audrey and become her best friend—who would soon be fucking her until her headboard broke. I couldn’t have asked for a more appealing assignment and potentially the biggest mistake of my life.
I was a risktaker, and this was one fucking huge risk. This wasn’t riding an angry bull. This was making my wolf happy.
There was no fucking way I was going to walk away when this task was over. I wasn’t going back to the rodeo and riding bulls. Not unless my sweet doctor came with me.
I wasn’t going anywhere without Audrey.
She was mine and mine alone.
I just had to make sure she got on board with that plan, too.
9
AUDREY
“That’s it, I can see your baby’s head,” I coaxed my patient. Alana had been in labor for twenty-three hours and was definitely getting tired.
“You’re almost there, Mama,” Becky, the nurse said, rubbing her shoulder. “Think how amazing it will feel to hold your sweet baby in your arms.”
Alana whimpered and nodded, sweat beading on her forehead. She’d wanted an all-natural birth, and I always honored my patient’s wishes unless I deemed it completely medically necessary to intervene. So when labor stalled, I had Becky walk her up and down the hallway rather than give her a shot of Pitocin to get things going again. It worked. The weight of the baby’s head on her cervix caused it to dilate, and labor picked back up. Now she was just a few more pushes from the finish line.
