She hauled herself off the couch, stuffing her arms in her sleeves, and followed him.
As he led her to the car, he made a call. “Stuart… Yeah, I didn’t figure I would be waking you… Yeah, I’m on my way there now… Okay, will do. Later.”
“Who’s Stuart?” she asked as she put her seatbelt on.
“My boss. In Spokane. He’s up, of course. Watching the data.” He turned to smile. “And he’s a shifter, so he understands what we’re about to do.”
“Which is?” She wasn’t sure she was going to like this.
“Park as close as possible and shift. We’ll get to the epicenter in no time, check it out, and be back at the car before dawn.”
“Why would we do that?”
He grinned. “Because we can.”
“Uh-huh.” She closed her eyes and shockingly was able to sleep for about twenty minutes, which was how long it took them to get to the spot. She woke up when Cooper pulled the car onto a gravel road, the crunch of the tires jarring her.
“Sorry, baby.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her gently toward him, setting their entwined fingers on his thigh. “Feel better?”
“Marginally.” She wiped sleep from her eyes with her free hand, wondering what the state of her makeup was.
A few minutes later, he pulled the car over and shut off the engine. “We’re going to shift here, leave everything, and run the last bit to the location. It’s not far.”
“And what exactly is this going to tell us? I mean, earthquakes are way underground, right?”
He nodded as he tugged his shirt over his head and reached for the button on his jeans. “Yes. But my gut tells me there’s something happening above it.” He lifted his hips and shrugged out of the denim covering his cock.
Sharon’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t move. She simply watched as he gracefully tossed all his clothes into the backseat and then reached for the door. “Come on.”
She still watched as he turned and stepped out, his ass so unbelievably fine she wanted to clasp it with both hands. “How about if I wait here,” she suggested.
“Not a chance in hell, Sharon.” He grabbed the doorframe with one hand, the top of the open door with the other, and leaned in to meet her gaze.
She couldn’t blink. Her eyes trailed down to his impressive package, where she stared without moving. She didn’t give two fucks that he watched her ogle him. It was the second time she’d seen him naked, and she liked it as much as the first. If only they could…
But she knew it wouldn’t be possible.
“Do you want me to remove your clothes for you?”
She jerked her attention back to his face when he interrupted her. “No.” Hastily, she undid her seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped out. Without giving him a chance to watch, she quickly shed her clothes, shut the door, and shifted before he rounded the car, also in wolf form.
“You’re beautiful,” he communicated. When they finished the claiming, the three of them would be able to speak to each other telepathically, even in human form. That was part of the unique bond of mates, but for now, they at least had the ability to project their thoughts in wolf form.
All wolves could when they were shifted.
Cooper was a gorgeous brown, a deeper shade than her own fur. He was huge too. And when he batted at her with his paw, he took her breath away. He nodded behind him. “Let’s go.”
She stayed close to his side. Her intuition would probably get her out of the forest if she got lost, but the last thing she wanted to do in the middle of the night was separate from Cooper.
In any case, he didn’t seem inclined to let her get more than a few feet away.
She loved his protective side. In the future it might grow to annoy her, the way he constantly checked to make sure she was still in a room or that she didn’t need anything to drink or eat, but for now it was endearing.
“There.” He stopped abruptly.
She followed his gaze and sucked in a breath. “What is that?”
“Fracking equipment.”
“Seriously? Out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yep. And I’ll bet anything they’re disturbing the land.”
She wouldn’t take that bet. They were always disturbing the land.
“They have too many drilling rigs going. And they’re so close together.” Cooper inched closer. The machines were running, and a few men were standing around one of the drills.
“Jesus, do they never sleep?” she asked.
“Nope. And when they’re done drilling, the compressor station remains to pull the natural gas out of the ground for years. They’re loud.”
“This can’t be safe.” She lowered her body to avoid being seen. Even as a wolf she preferred not to be noticed. Some people wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a wolf purely for sport or because they were scared.
“Not this time. This company is causing tremendous ground disturbance.”
“Can you stop them?”
He laughed into her head. “Hardly. It’s not easy. All I can do is try to get an injunction by proving how many earthquakes are shaking the surrounding area.” Cooper turned around. “Let’s get back.”
“That’s it? That’s all you came here for?”
“Yep. I knew what I would find even before we arrived. Just wanted to see it for myself.”
They turned around, but neither of them moved.
Hovering behind them while they’d spied on the fracking station was a cloudy black spirit.
Sharon sucked in a breath as the aura floated closer and shimmered in front of her. “I don’t think the spirits are fond of fracking, either.”
“I’m sure they’re not. The land is in a state of unrest. Agitated. I suspect we’re going to find these apparitions all over the place for a while.”
“It’s certainly not difficult to know what this one wants.”
“Yeah.” Cooper didn’t sound convinced, even in her head. “I wouldn’t bet on that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s never this simple.”
“Maybe this time…” Sharon watched as the spirit circled around them and then poofed out of sight. “It seems so obvious. The Native American spirits are looking out for the land. I’m sure they want us to get rid of these frackers and anyone else abusing the land.”
“Like the loggers Sawyer dealt with last year,” Cooper added.
“Exactly. And until we fix this, the earth will continue to rumble beneath our feet.”
Cooper glanced at her. “Let’s go. There’s nothing else we can do from here for now.”
He spoke the words, but he made no move to head down the mountain.
“What’s the matter?” She twisted her head to follow his line of sight, and her breath caught in her throat.
Two men stood just inside the tree line about a hundred yards away from Sharon and Cooper. They were incredibly tall. And large. She would guess over six feet. Their attention was riveted to the fracking site, same as Sharon’s and Cooper’s had been moments ago. A deep inhale, even from that distance, told Sharon they were not wolf shifters.
“What the hell are they doing out here in the middle of the night?” she asked rhetorically. Their presence was odd. First because they were clearly hiding and second because it was still dark out. Why would humans be spying on the frackers in the cold dead of night? And how had they gotten to their location?
She inched closer to Cooper. “Coop?”
He shook his head. “No idea. Maybe they have the same goal as us.”
“I guess. At least we know we aren’t the only ones paying attention.”
Cooper didn’t comment. He turned around and started down the side of the mountain.
She followed him back to the car at a jog. They dressed separately on either side of the car and climbed in before freezing their asses off. It was still early spring. The temperature hovered in the upper thirties at this hour of the morning.
“Now what?” she asked a
s they took off.
“Now we go back, and I get back to work.”
“Do you ever sleep?”
“Not in the last week, no.”
“Since the earthquakes started again?”
He turned to face her for a second, grabbing her hand to pull it to his lips. After he kissed her knuckles, he responded, “Not since Fate decided it was time for the three of us to mate,” he whispered.
She shuddered. Her experience had been the same. Sleepless nights during which she woke up frequently, restlessness controlling her body. No matter what she did, she was unable to relax fully. “Yeah.” She sighed, wondering how Jackson had fared in the last week. Had he experienced the same things? Probably.
She hated that he was alone somewhere, trying to work things out in his mind that weren’t explainable by modern science. Until he grasped that and let go of his need to live the life he thought he was meant to lead, they were all doomed.
Chapter Thirteen
Jackson stepped from the shower and grabbed a towel off the hook with shaky hands. He felt as though he’d had ten cups of coffee during the night. In reality, he’d done no such thing. He’d tossed and turned in bed for hours, getting up every so often to pace instead.
His brain wouldn’t slow down. Too much information fired from every synapse to distract him.
And his dick hurt. It went from fully erect to partially erect as if on a roller coaster, never reaching the necessary flaccid state that would allow him to sit still. He’d taken himself in his own hand three times, and each time he came, he found himself hornier than before.
Insanity.
He wrapped the towel around himself as his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since Sharon’s lasagna last night, and after all the physical and mental stress of staying up all night, he was starving.
As he shrugged into a pair of his favorite jeans, he cringed. The zipper and the button were stifling. Dammit.
A knock at the door startled him, and he hurried toward the front of his small apartment, wondering who the hell was at the door at this hour of the morning. The sun was barely up.
Would Cooper or Sharon show up at his place unannounced?
Nope. A peek in the small hole on the front door made him smile. He opened the door to Jazmine. “Why am I not surprised?” he asked as he let her in and shut the door.
She held up a tray. “Coffee? Thought you might need it.”
His hand shook as he wiggled one of the cups from the cardboard drink holder. “Do I look like I need coffee?”
She chuckled. “Not really. No.”
“Who called you?” he asked, assuming she was privy to every detail of his evening.
“Laurie.”
“Remind me who Laurie is,” he said as he took a seat on the sofa and nodded for Jazmine to do the same.
“Laurie is one of Mary’s best friends. She’s mated to Zachary Masters and Corbin Archers. They have one kid so far, Miriam.”
He ignored the way she said “mated.” “Corbin Archers… Isn’t he a deputy on the reservation?”
“Yes.”
“Are any of the three of them…uh…human?”
She grinned. “No.”
He ducked his head and stared at the floor, setting his steaming cup on the coffee table.
“I bet you have a million questions.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this?”
“Wasn’t my place. It’s only because I’m in a committed relationship with Mary that I’m even considered peripherally involved enough to be brought into the fold.” She leaned forward. “Jackson, these are good people. All of them. Trust me.”
He lifted his face. “I don’t want to get involved with them. I told you that before. Why did you push me to do this?” He lifted his hands. He loved Jazmine. They’d always been close, especially as they grew more and more estranged from their parents.
“Because it’s not something you can control, Jackson.”
He widened his eyes. “Really? You don’t think I have free will, either? You sound like Sharon.”
“Not where this is concerned, no.” She shook her head. “I’ve seen it myself. They aren’t kidding. There truly is a hand from above that guides the shifters and puts them in the right place at the right time to fulfill their destinies.”
“Great. First of all, do you not realize how ludicrous that sounds? And second of all, I am. Not. A. Shifter.”
She inhaled slowly. “You’re fated to be with them, nevertheless. And you can’t change that.”
“Seriously, Jaz. Would you listen to yourself?” He straightened his spine. “We’re human beings. We have free will to love who we want. We make choices. We don’t have to marry someone just because it feels good.”
She lifted a brow. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Now you listen to yourself.” She stood abruptly and set her hands on her hips. “Do you have any idea how stupid you sound talking to me like that?”
He cringed. Yeah, probably pretty dumb, actually.
“Look at me.”
He met her gaze.
She was shaking. “Do you think I chose to be in a relationship with a white woman from Cambridge? White, Jackson. And a woman. Does that sound easy to you? Jesus.” She ran her hands through her short brown hair and tucked it behind her ears.
She lowered her voice. “I love her, Jackson. That’s why I’m with her. I would give my life for her. I would give up my life for her. She’s my world. And yes, we hide it. We do so in order to keep our businesses running. We each own a preschool. If people found out about us, they would pull their kids out of our schools and put us out of business.
“So we hide. We sneak around in the night and put hundreds of miles on our cars to spend fleeting moments together. You have never experienced what that’s like.”
He lowered his shoulders, deflated. “I suspect I’m about to find out.”
She slowly smiled. “Yeah, well, at least there are about two dozen family members waiting to help you.” She sat back down next to him and took his hand. “I love you. You know I do. Let it go. Embrace it. It won’t go away. I promise you. When Laurie mated, she tried to break the bond and failed miserably, putting all three of them in a state of shock until she returned.”
“How many of them are human?”
“Not many. Amanda, Mary’s sister, of course. That’s whose house you went to last Friday to pick up the papers. Also Rebecca. You met her at the lodge Tuesday.”
“The nurse?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up with that? I saw the blood on Sharon’s leg. Thought I might pass out with worry.”
Jazmine shrugged. “They heal fast. They shift into wolf form to do so.”
“Oh, so that’s why they nearly shoved me out of the lodge.”
“Yes. Apparently Sharon didn’t want you to find out like that. So abruptly.”
“I see.” He grabbed his coffee and leaned back against the cushions.
“Do you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You have to go to them. You won’t be able to rest until you do.”
“I’m so tired.” He leaned his head back and held his coffee against his chest.
“I know. And it will only get worse.”
“I haven’t slept more than a few hours since last Friday.”
“Neither have they.”
He shuddered. “What about Cooper? There’s no way in hell I’m…”
She giggled. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s just you and Sharon and Cooper and Sharon. Don’t worry. Your heterosexuality isn’t in jeopardy.”
“So we’ll be like sharing her? Like every other night or something?”
She shook her head.
He didn’t think he wanted to hear the answer to that question.
“No. You’ll share her at the same time. In fact you have to take her together the first time in order to complete the claiming.”
He cringed. �
�Like both of us in her at once?”
“Yeah.” She glanced away, her face red. “This is so not a conversation I ever imagined having with my older brother, but yes. Anal and vaginal. Can we move on now?”
“Please.” He felt the same heat rushing up his face. He still couldn’t imagine such a thing. “I’m not in the habit of spending time naked with other men.”
“It won’t seem strange once you get to know them. I promise.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he muttered. He took another fortifying sip of coffee and tried to picture the scenario.
Nope. No matter how he processed it, he ended up cringing. Sure, he knew guys who shared. Hell, he knew several members of the Masters family at least peripherally. But he’d never had his cock out in front of another man except to piss. And he’d never fucked a woman with another man present, let alone rubbing against him.
“Fuck.” He took a longer drink of the now-cooler coffee, though Lord knew he didn’t need the caffeine.
“Did you sleep at all? You look like shit.”
“No.”
“I need to get back. I left Mary sleeping in my warm bed to come talk some sense into my stubborn brother.”
He smiled. “For the record, I’m glad you found someone you love.”
“Thank you. You did too, you know. Now stop dorking around feeling sorry for yourself and go claim your woman.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She rolled her eyes as she stood. “It won’t get better, you know. You can’t ignore them forever. The cost is high. The physical pain will be excruciating. And the mental anguish just as bad. Nothing will get them out of your head.”
“Yeah. I’m beginning to see that.” He stood next to her and followed her to the door.
She hugged him and then jogged toward her car without looking back.
Chapter Fourteen
Sharon lay on her bed trying to get comfortable. And failing.
She curled onto her side, drew her knees up to her chest, and still she shivered. She wasn’t cold. She was agitated. Every muscle in her body flexed and released at will as though she had the flu.
A knot in the pit of her stomach grew with every passing hour. She had stripped off her stifling jeans and sweater when they returned to the condo and put on a pair of loose pink boxers and a white tank top. She hadn’t bothered with a bra. This was her usual sleep attire anyway. And Cooper could go to hell if he didn’t like it.
Sharon's Wolves (Wolf Masters Book 10) Page 8
