by Edith DuBois
Slumping forward, she drew in a shuddering breath. Caleb slackened his hold but only to rub his hands up and down her arms as if to warm her. She hadn’t realized that she was cold, but a chill swept through her whole body.
“Shh,” he whispered into her ear. “You’re all right. Everything’s okay. Shh.” Another chill swept through her, but it didn’t stem from her body temperature. It sent echoing ripples of desire through her body. As her senses slowly returned, she realized her backside rested on his lap. She felt his erection firm beneath her bottom, and liquid warmth immediately blossomed between her legs.
“I’m fine now, Mr. Kinman.” She tried to pull away, but again, he didn’t let her. Instead, he pressed his warm lips to her neck. Elena sucked in a breath.
“Your heart’s still beating faster than a rabbit’s with a fox on its trail.”
His words didn’t help to slow it, either.
“Please,” she said, pulling away from his hot, tempting lips. “Please just let me…”
Much to her surprise, Caleb released her. She scrambled away from him and turned to face him. For the first time since she’d met Caleb Kinman, she looked squarely in his black eyes. It knocked her right in the gut, but she forced her eyes to stay locked with his. “We must keep this professional, Mr. Kinman. I need to get these photos. I can’t deal with distractions. I can’t deal with anything. I am here for the photos. Only the photos. Okay?”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her with his burning eyes.
“Mr. Kinman? Do you understand? I can find another guide if I need to. Hello? Mr. Kinman?”
She thought maybe she had gotten to him when his eyes widened, but then he exploded into action. Diving toward Elena, he knocked her backwards and spun around at the same time so that she lay on top of him in the high grass.
Almost ready to release a bloodcurdling scream, Elena paused. Something—some small noise, a twig breaking—stopped her.
The sound of heavy hooves approaching caused her muscles to freeze, including those in her throat. She looked up in time to see a large body moving through the grass about ten feet away from them. Every instinct she possessed told her to grab her camera, but it hung to the ground between their two bodies. Plus, Caleb held her tight against him, forcing her body to remain motionless.
The elk cow made a low, strained grunting noise. It stumbled, and the sounds grew more strained.
After it had moved a few feet away from them, Caleb slackened his grip. Elena couldn’t possibly ignore his cock, pressed so intimately against the hollow between her legs. Her pussy ached. Her pussy creamed at the feel of him. She wanted him. There was no denying that, but she had to follow that elk.
Rolling off him, she quickly checked over her camera to make sure there was no damage. When she saw that there wasn’t, she put her hand on Caleb’s chest after he had risen to a sitting position.
“Listen,” she said. “I am following the cow. I would feel better if you came along, but if you refuse, so be it. Either way, I am following it.”
Then she set off through the grass.
* * * *
Caleb wanted to curse the damn woman, but he sensed a desperate resolution in her words. There was more than her career at stake here he’d be willing to bet. She’d almost had a full-blown panic attack in his arms. That didn’t come from simple career anxiety. Gritting his teeth in annoyance, he crouched low and followed the ripples that Elena made in the grass.
He could hear the cow ahead of them. With the noises it made and the way it left the group so suddenly, Caleb though the cow was probably preparing to give birth. He caught up to Elena, who was close enough to the elk to snap photos. The animal had its head down and trudged forward. Even though the cow was preoccupied, Caleb kept Elena from getting too close by tugging gently on her arm. He didn’t want to frighten the elk, especially if she was about to give birth.
If the cow caught a whiff of Elena, she might get spooked for a few minutes. However, if she smelled Caleb and his bear scent, she would dart away before he or Elena knew what had happened. Either that or the cow would get desperate and charge him. For Elena’s sake, he didn’t want any of those things to happen.
They continued to follow the cow. She had lessened her noise to a soft whine, but it was enough to keep on her trail even when they lost sight of her for a moment or two. Eventually the cow moved into the forest, walking deeper and deeper into the trees. Caleb kept a mental trail in his mind as they walked, noting an odd coral-colored rock, a tree with a limb broken off, a brook, a small animal’s burrow. After they had followed the cow elk for over two hours, she finally reached her destination.
She walked into a thicket of trees with a dense underlayer of bushes to hide her from view. Elena quickly got to work. She removed the lens she’d been using on their trek and switched it with one from her backpack. As she worked, her fingers nimble and deft, her lips puckered, making dimples appear in her pale cheeks.
His mind raced back to their struggle in the tall grass. For a moment, she’d gone completely wild. Unknowingly, her struggling body had awoken every animal instinct he possessed, and the primal urges he’d been holding in check over the past two weeks roared into life. It took all of his concentration to resist the need to dominate the writhing woman. The bear inside him almost came ripping out of his skin. He’d wanted to shove Elena to the ground and pound his cock deep into her flesh. He’d wanted to hear her scream as he planted his seed in the depths of her womb. He’d wanted to fuck her, to make her his.
But he had not done any of that. He’d simply held her, trying to calm her.
Shaking his head, he forced his attention back to the present.
He watched Elena tread softly up to the copse of trees, not wanting to get too close to the elk, but he stayed close enough to make sure nothing happened to Elena. If the elk did react to her presence for some reason, then he wouldn’t hesitate to risk shifting into his bear form if it meant frightening the elk away. Of course, Elena would most likely run away faster than the elk, but it was a risk he would take without a second’s hesitation if it meant keeping Elena safe.
As the beautiful woman moved around the trees, snapping pictures intermittently, Caleb could hear all of the elk’s goings-on. First it pawed the earth. It snapped low-hanging branches and bits of shrubbery to form a bed. Then it began panting.
After a few moments, Elena’s clicks came quicker.
Caleb heard sloshing, wet noises and then a thud as the newborn fell to the ground. His sensitive ears could even hear as the mama immediately began licking her calf, ridding it of all traces of afterbirth. All the while, Elena clicked away.
The woman was determined. He would give her that much.
Even growing up in Savage Valley, most women he knew quailed at their first sight of an animal giving birth to a baby in the wild, especially an animal as large as an elk. It wasn’t the most beautiful of sights, but Elena never flinched, never faltered.
Something drove that woman, and Caleb Kinman aimed to figure out what that something was.
* * * *
After hours of snapping photos of the elk, Elena finally dragged herself away from the small copse, realizing that Caleb had been waiting patiently without a word of complaint the whole time she’d been engrossed. They were hiking back into town, and the sun was already on its downward track through the sky.
When they came out of the forest and back onto Old Deer Trail, it was almost as if a spell had been lifted. Words came rushing out of Elena. “That was so perfect, Caleb. That was the most incredible sight…it was amazing, so beautiful, so real…I never imagined it would be like that. I’ve seen videos online of animals giving birth, but I mean…I could smell it. I could hear it. It was so visceral. And perfect!”
Caleb chuckled beside her.
“This is exactly the kind of material I need for my portfolio. Just the sort of edge.” She flicked her camera on, wanting to confirm that the shots she’d taken were as
good as she thought they were. She flicked through the images. “This is so gritty. Look at this one.” She held the camera to Caleb, showing him a close-up of the calf’s face as the cow licked off murky, bloody afterbirth. “Nick will love this.”
“Who’s Nick?”
Elena glanced up at the tense tone in his voice. “He’s my cousin. He’s the one who got me the gig with National Geographic.”
Caleb’s face relaxed. “Oh.”
“He’s been with NatGeo for over ten years, and he’s likely the only reason I’m even here.”
“I’ll have to thank him one day.”
Elena was about to launch into another gush over her pictures, but Caleb’s offhanded comment caught her up short. The comment was definitely loaded with all kinds of innuendo, but Elena was trying not to go there with the Kinman brothers. Every day, however, it was proving more and more difficult to keep her thoughts emotion- and lust-free around them. She was tempted in the morning with Caleb and then in the afternoon when the sheriff made it his business to “check up” on her nearly every day. Mostly he just flirted unabashedly.
“Why don’t we take a slight detour to the wildlife center? One of the Greenwood brothers can give us a lift into town. Plus, they’ll want to know about this new calf. That all right with you?”
Elena let out her breath at Caleb’s casual tone.
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
He chuckled low and deep. “You’ll want to watch those words. A man could get some dangerous ideas.”
Elena’s cheeks flamed, and she cursed herself for being so easily aroused. Part of her felt the need to set him straight, to let him know up front that she wasn’t available, wasn’t interested, wasn’t looking for a bloody thing in the romance department.
But then a part of her, a volatile and unpredictable part of her, wanted to fall down in the grass, rip off Caleb’s clothes and let him burrow deep into her cunt. And it seemed like every day this part of herself grew stronger and stronger, like a caged animal growing more and more restless as the minutes ticked by and the bait was dangled just beyond its reach.
Chapter Three
A few minutes later, they approached a wooden structure in a small clearing a few hundred feet from Brown Trout Lake. Small wooden cages, animal pens, and a small paddock surrounded the building. A wooden sign, much like the one she passed on the way into Savage Valley, stood about waist-high outside the front door with the words “Savage Valley Wildlife Preservation” painted white and carved into the sign.
The front door swung open, and a tall, solid man with dirty blond hair came striding from inside, a wide grin splitting his features. “Caleb Kinman, long time no see.” The two men greeted each other with a big bear hug, and Elena hung back.
“How are you, Jeremiah? Looking fit as a fiddle, I see.”
Jeremiah laughed heartily. “Always am.” He glanced over Caleb’s shoulder and caught sight of Elena. His eyes widened, and Elena nearly shrieked with surprise.
His eyes were a deep black. Like Joseph’s and like Caleb’s.
“What do we have here? I didn’t realize you had brought us a visitor. Jeremiah Greenwood at your service, ma’am.” Although he shared an eye color with Joseph and Caleb, his eyes didn’t burn through her like theirs. His eyes twinkled with a certain warmth and charm.
“Are you two related?” she asked.
Jeremiah grinned, and Elena noticed how his eyes crinkled in the corners. She also noticed a scar that stretched from the bottom of his left eye to his chin. It was a faint pink color and was only visible when the late afternoon sun caught it at just the right angle.
“You could say that,” Jeremiah answered, shooting Caleb a knowing look that Elena didn’t even try to comprehend.
“What makes you ask that?” Caleb asked.
“Nothing. I was only wondering.” She didn’t want to admit that she’d noticed his eyes. It felt a little too familiar, and she’d already been forward enough for one day.
“And you are?” Jeremiah asked.
“Oh, excuse me. Elena Ward.” She offered her hand to the affable man.
“What brings you two to our neck of the woods?”
Caleb explained what they had been up to for the past two weeks, explaining about the elk and the cow they’d come across, and Elena found herself wandering around the compound as the two men discussed the herd of elk in the surrounding area.
First she meandered over to a set of cages. In the first one was a raccoon. When she approached, the animal darted to the opposite side of the cage. It cowered in the corner, making low growling noises. Elena wondered why it was caged, thinking perhaps it had a disease, but as she went to move to the next cage, the raccoon moved its body so that the right side of its body was exposed. A large, partially healed gash ran from its shoulder across its ribs and to its back leg. The hair around it had been shaved but had begun to grow back.
“You poor thing,” she whispered. Crouching down, she snapped a few pictures, hoping to capture the creature’s nervous distrust.
After taking a few shots, she moved to the next cage. A fox lay curled up in the corner, its head resting upon its bushy tail. As she approached, it looked up at her with disconsolate eyes. It didn’t even lift its head. She snapped, wondering what made the animal so sad, so dispirited.
“Reba lost her babies last night. She had two little male pups.”
At the sound of Jeremiah’s voice, the mama fox whimpered and released a shuddering sigh. Then she closed her big brown eyes and tucked her face behind her tail.
“What happened?”
“We’re not completely sure, but we think she may have left them while she went hunting. When she came back, they were gone. Probably a wolf or a coyote got them.”
“The poor thing.”
“It was her first litter. We had her when she was a pup. Her mama got run over, and we found Reba in a ditch on the side of the road.”
As Jeremiah spoke, Elena watched Caleb on the other side of the cage, looking down at Reba with a deep empathy. His concern touched Elena, made her want to reach out and hold him.
“Caleb’s the one that found her, brought her to us in the middle of the night.” Elena snapped a quick picture of the man and the fox through the wire.
“How many animals do you keep here?”
“Not too many. We try to get them back into the wild as soon as possible. The less time they spend with humans the better. I’d say, on any given day, we probably have anywhere from twenty to thirty-five animals on the compound.”
Jeremiah took her around the rest of the preservation center, sharing more stories of how they’d gotten some of the animals, and then gave Caleb and her a lift back into town. When they pulled up to the Sheriff’s Department, Joseph was standing on the porch.
A large smile lit up his features when he saw Elena sitting in the passenger’s side of Jeremiah’s Jeep. Annoyed with how a simple smile could send shivers up and down her body, Elena quietly thanked Jeremiah for his ride and then crawled out of the vehicle, hoping to make a quick escape.
“I don’t think so.” Caleb blocked her path to the rental car.
“Caleb, I need to get to my car please.”
His black eyes bore into hers, and he didn’t budge. Flames licked through her veins, and she tried her hardest to ignore the fiery irritation beneath her skin.
She heard Joseph’s heavy footsteps as he came down the porch and then as he crunched across the gravel towards her.
“Tonight, little lady, you are coming to dinner with us.” He grabbed her wrist and tucked her arm in his elbow.
“But I have all these photos to upload. Nick will want to see what I’ve been up to all day.”
“I don’t know who the hell Nick is, and truth be told, I couldn’t give two hoots, either. All I know is that we’ve been asking you to dinner for two weeks now, and your refusals are starting to border on rude.”
Elena halfheartedly tried to pull her hand out of t
he crook of his arm, but Joseph just chuckled. “Give it up. Tonight, you’re eating with us.”
The sun had almost disappeared behind the purple and white-tipped heights of the Makua mountain range, and the whole town was glazed in a deep aubergine hue. For a magical moment, it felt absolutely right to be walking down the quiet streets of Savage Valley between the Kinman brothers. It was almost as if they belonged to her and to no one else.
Elena blinked away the thought, frightened at how good it felt floating around her mind.
Luckily, at that moment, the most wonderful aroma floated by to distract her from inappropriate thoughts.
“What is that?” Elena took a big whiff.
“Savage Hunger.” Caleb’s voice rumbled beside her.
A few hundred feet ahead, Elena spotted the flashing neon sign of the diner. Her stomach growled furiously in response.
Joseph chuckled and leaned back a little to speak across her back to Caleb. “Proof that she’s human.” He straightened back up. “My brother and I were beginning to think you were some kind of machine surviving on solar power alone.”
“Hardly.” Her stomach continued to rumble quietly. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. Although the food at the lodge was decent, the smells wafting to her from the diner had her saliva glands working overtime.
When they walked through the glass doors, an older woman greeted them. “Evening, Sheriff. Deputy.”
“Evening, Rita. This is our friend, Elena Ward.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Elena offered her hand to the woman who shook it warmly.
“Your booth’s waiting for you. I gotta take out an order, and I’ll be right with you honeys.”
Elena followed the Kinman brothers, glancing around and taking in the details of the diner. All the booths were upholstered in black, and accents of orange gave the diner a lively splash of color. It was a modernized ’50s diner, but black and white pictures lined the walls from the diner’s glory days.
