Ranger Trent (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 2)

by Meg Ripley

  “It’s a good start,” Allie said, with the little grin I liked so much. “But you’d better have dessert for me as well as a repeat performance.”

  “Oh--fuck, I almost forgot,” I said, shaking my head and laughing. “I have dessert. Give me a minute to catch my breath.” I kissed her on the cheek sloppily, and then on the forehead, and then on the lips, and sank back down onto the bed, waiting for my heart to slow down, for my breathing to even out.

  When I was recovered enough to be able to use my legs, I crawled out of the bed and gave Allie another quick grin on my way to the bedroom door. I padded across the living room and into the kitchen, and opened the fridge to look for the treat I’d gotten earlier that day. The Hoffman’s Chocolates box jumped out at me from everything else on the same shelf, and I picked it up, taking just a second to glance inside and make sure that my surprise for Allie was perfectly intact still.

  I carried the box with me back into the bedroom and found Allie half-sitting up at the head of the bed, bright-eyed and smiling. She saw the box in my hands and the smile deepened. “Oooh, what did you get us?”

  “Chocolate covered strawberries, and a few of the dipped Oreos,” I told her. I sat down on the bed and opened the box up, extending it towards Allie. She immediately plucked one of the strawberries, and I watched her face as she closed her eyes and bit into it; the sound of the moan that left her throat was as good as it was during sex--and it started me right back up. Plenty of time in the night still, I reminded my cock, setting the box down between Allie and me and picking out a chocolate-dipped Oreo for myself.

  “This is definitely at least as good as anything we could have gotten at Houston’s,” Allie said around a mouthful of chocolate and strawberry. She leaned in close and kissed me on the lips, and I could taste the sweet-tart strawberry, the bittersweet chocolate, the taste of her.

  “Damn straight,” I said. “Besides, at Houston’s we couldn’t combine dessert and sex.”

  “You are not putting an Oreo in my pussy, just so we’re clear,” Allie said. I snorted and almost had Oreo crumbs in my nose.

  “Not what I was thinking, but I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her. I kissed her again. “Have another strawberry and then let’s get back down to it--we have lost time to make up for.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I stubbed out my cigarette in the almost full ashtray and looked around the green room back behind the festival main stage. Nick and Olivia had wandered off, and Mary still wasn’t letting Alex stray too far from her side, but things felt mostly pretty good. We were going to be playing the headline spot for the second night--not the biggest honor, which would go to The Strokes the next night, but it was a pretty good billing for Molly Riot, especially considering we’d nearly self-destructed less than a year before.

  I spotted Allie, chatting with one of the members of Hop Along with her camera around her neck on its strap, just hanging there for the moment. It was early days yet for our promotion stint for the new album, but when Mary had insisted that she should come on the road with us for Alex’s sake--to keep him on the straight and narrow--I’d pulled rank and gotten Allie included. The only Molly Riot girlfriends who hadn’t come along were Fran and Sophie; Fran because she had her own band to worry about and Sophie because she couldn’t--and didn’t want to--justify taking time off of work.

  There had been grumbles about that, but in the end, we’d all sort of concluded that girlfriends on the tour bus weren’t as bad as we used to think, especially considering the fact that Nick and Olivia and Fran and Jules had originally hooked up on previous tours. It meant more money out of pocket, but the album was already selling well enough to make that less of a concern, especially since we weren’t doing anything particularly expensive with the lighting effects onstage.

  Allie had sort of become the unofficial band chronicler, working with Olivia; they got along so well on their first project that Nick and I had joked that they were going to leave us for each other eventually. Olivia had gotten Allie some more work in journalism, and of course Allie was getting one quarter of Alex’s shares of the album sales.

  “Yo!” I looked around, shaken out of my thoughts by the sound of Jules’ voice. “We’re supposed to talk about the set list soon--don’t forget.” I nodded. One of the things that had come out of the near-breakup of Molly Riot was that every member of the band had a particular thing that they were in charge of. We’d decided not to leave so much up to Ron or the label anymore--that had been a big thing that had sneaked up on us, that had made us all dissatisfied. So, Jules was in charge of managing shit at tour dates, Nick handled press, Dan worked on the website, I did merchandise, and Alex was the chosen representative to deal with the label--it was what he did best, anyway.

  Allie caught sight of me and finished up her conversation, smiling at whoever it was and waving as she turned and walked towards me. She lifted her camera up as she came closer, and before I could even think about posing in any way, she’d snapped a quick, candid picture of me. “It really isn’t fair how naturally photogenic you are,” she told me, coming to sit down next to me on the raised part of the concrete floor; it had probably been a ramp at one point, I’d decided, but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere anymore.

  “I think it’s all your talent in picking the exact right moment,” I told her, shaking my head. “I’ve taken plenty of awkward-ass pictures of myself.”

  “I’ve already managed to get enough shots of different people hanging around backstage to make a few thousand,” Allie told me, stretching just enough to lift the hem of her tee shirt up. “The rest of today I can just hang out and drink and have a good time.”

  “Funny how your day ends before mine even begins,” I said, reaching over to tweak one of Allie’s braids.

  “Well, I mean, if it makes you feel better I can keep working the rest of the day into tonight, make some more money,” Allie pointed out tartly.

  “Come with me to our green room, at least,” I suggested. “Get a few snaps of us debating tonight’s set list.” Things were not entirely tension free between Allie and Alex, but with Mary playing chaperone, they’d started to relax a bit.

  All in all, it looked like we’d finally come out of the rough patch we’d put ourselves into. I lit another cigarette and hopped down from the former ramp, and gave Allie a quick kiss. I couldn’t have imagined, at the beginning of recording the album, that everything would fall into place as perfectly as it had: I had a woman I loved, I had an open invitation to work with Bent Bridges whenever I had the free time, and Molly Riot were better, bigger, and stronger than ever. I held Allie’s hand all the way to the green room, and thought to myself that--sappy as it sounded--I was probably one of the happiest fucking guys at the entire festival.

  THE END

  Alpha Cowboy Romances By Sierra Wyatt

  Wild Saddles

  Callie Tyler grinned to herself as she tied Lateefah’s reins to a pole right outside her assigned cabin at the rodeo. She was tired; deliciously so. But since she was also a rodeo junkie, she felt invigorated just being there. She loved everything about the rodeo; the sights, the sounds, the crowd, the noise, and most of all, the sheer rush of adrenaline competing in the rodeo gave her.

  She stroked Lateefah, crooning softly into the horse’s wide ears as she offered Lateefah a treat and rubbed her down. She had traveled far to get to the competition and even though it wouldn’t begin for two days yet, she was positively chomping at the bit.

  That was the thing about her; she was always impatient when it came to rodeo. She had never actually competed in the rodeo, merely trailed along in the wake of her brother Wade, but he had always been a touch over-protective and never let her compete. Her gaze drifted to the gold piece of masculine wristwatch adorning her hand and she smiled wistfully. Wade couldn’t make it this time because his wife had just presented him with a beautiful baby girl he absolutely could not tear himself away from.

  Thinking of little Laila made her
smile again. The girl was as cute as a button with innocent, wide staring eyes, a sweet smile, and barely-there baby hair. Just three days old and she had managed to wrap them all around her tiny little finger without trying.

  Well Callie had Laila to thank for her brother’s unprecedented willingness to let her travel to compete in the rodeo in his stead and alone; so she was completely a fan. At twenty-two, she was an adult alright, but Wade seemed to think she was a kid; probably because he was more than a decade older than her at thirty-four.

  She opened the door to her cabin, shrugging off her jacket and letting it slide to the floor as the door shut behind her. Her ash-blonde hair was done up in a tight bun high on her head that, unbeknownst to her, revealed the slender, graceful curve of her feminine neck.

  Callie sat on the edge of the bed, tugged off her boots and proceeded to shimmy out of her jeans. She whipped her tee-shirt over her head, unhitched her bra, and loosened her hair from its bun, letting it drift down to her waist, before flopping onto her bed. She closed her eyes with an audible sigh; every bone in her body protested as she tried to roll onto her side and she resignedly remained on her stomach.

  In mere seconds, she was snoring softly.

  ****

  Cade Gallagher swore ripely as he studied the small drop of blood on his finger. True, it wasn’t worth crying over, but coming on top of the kind of day he had had, he could be forgiven for being a bit touchy. First, his truck had broken down about a few miles away from the rodeo, and then his cell phone battery had up and died—again; and what crisis would be complete without his horse getting a stone in its hoof?

  He had only noticed it when he got to the rodeo and, exhausted as he was, he had had to get rid of the damn thing and sooth the poor animal. The last thing he needed was Caesar going lame just when this competition from hell was going to begin. If there was one thing Cade hated, it was the rodeo—and yet, here he was! He needed the money because that fool father of his had gambled away their entire savings and spent the rest of what he could scrape together on women right before he died two weeks ago.

  Selfishness was something Cade had never been able to understand and had always abhorred which was why he hesitated to apply the word to his ‘dearly departed’ father. But when he considered the fact that they had been extremely wealthy until three months ago when his father learned he had less than four months to live due to his hitherto undetected cancer—and proceeded to squander everything that wasn’t nailed down—he didn’t know what else to think.

  “You’ll be alright here, Boy,” he crooned, stroking Caesar.

  He turned and bounded up the three wooden stairs leading to the door of the cabin, his grey eyes sweeping his surroundings. It was pitch dark outside and he was eager to have a hot meal and flop onto his bed. There wasn’t much chance of getting the first so he might as well settle for sleeping, he decided with a mighty yawn.

  He slammed the door shut behind him, barely remembering to latch it behind. He stumbled over something in the middle of the room right next to the front door. He was so tired, he didn’t bother checking to see what it was as he staggered towards the bed in the middle of the next room. He carefully removed his clothes and hung them over the back of the lone chair in the room. Then he turned, stark naked, towards the bed and froze in his tracks. There was a girl—woman?—in his bed!

  She had a tantalizing expanse of fair, baby-soft skin that made him go hard just looking at her. With an oath, he grabbed a blanket from off the floor and tried to cover her up. But just then, she muttered in her sleep and turned onto her back giving him a sudden eyeful of her huge thrusting breasts, an impossibly flat stomach, thin waist and a small nestle of curls at the juncture of her thighs that told him her blonde locks didn’t come from a bottle.

  His arousal swelled even more insistently making him so hard it hurt.

  Cade cursed aloud.

  The woman’s eyes flew open and in less than one second, she registered the fact that a stark naked, strange man was leaning over her. She screamed immediately—an ear-splitting sound that made him go temporarily deaf—and then she reached for a pillow and swung it at him. It bounced off harmlessly, but was enough to give him pause. Then she rolled off the bed in a tangle of flying long limbs as she reached for an unseen gun and flipped on the bedside lamp in one fluid motion. He relaxed a little when he saw it was rock-salt. That motherfucker hurt as hell and could do more than its fair share of damage, but at least it was not an actual rifle.

  “Okay, hold on—you’re in my bed. Why are you the one who gets to shoot me?”

  That made her pause; she looked askance at him, “Your bed?”

  He shrugged. His eyes scanned the rest of her. She had really luxurious, curly blond hair that hung all the way to her waist, beautiful white teeth that flashed every time she spoke, a face a man could stare at all day and a body straight out of his naughtiest fantasies. He would have her, he decided; maybe not tonight, but one way or the other he had to have this sexy, intoxicating, absolutely tantalizing woman. He would be gentle he decided, because she looked so fragile; her features were so fine they were almost porcelain.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly as his dick swelled even more insistently against his thighs, “Perhaps we should get dressed; I’m sure we both look a tad ridiculous standing around naked with a gun waving this way and that between us.”

  Wry humor flashed in her green eyes and Cade knew immediately that he liked her. She had not squealed and morphed into some shy miss desperately reaching for a blanket or something which was exactly what he had expected.

  She stared at him coolly, her eyes for the first time noticeably flicking down the length of him. Her eyes assessed his face, which he had been told had character. He had a long aristocratic nose, firm thin lips, chiseled chin, firm granite jaw, and high bushy eye brows that lent him an air of raw masculinity that ladies seemed to love. Her gaze descended to his naked, hairless chest, past his small budded nipples, down his flat, washboard abs, and straight to his hard, erect rigid member. He expected her to flick her gaze up to his or look away modestly, instead she stared long and hard at junior before dropping her gaze the rest of the way to his hard, masculine legs.

  When she finally looked up at him, her eyes were carefully blank but she had a slight pink tinge on her cheeks. He realized then that she was not as unaffected as she had made out. Good, he thought as a trickle of sweat worked its way down the middle of his back.

  Slowly, he turned to reach for his clothes and she immediately barked, “Hold it right there, buster!”

  “Just gonna reach for my clothes,” he said, his hands still raised comically in the surrender position.

  “Guess again. Step over towards the bed,” she ordered briskly, waving the gun at him.

  So she wanted to search out his clothes before he reached for them, in case he had a weapon? Smart girl!

  “You got it, ma’am,” he said mildly as he moved to obey her.

  Her eyes still trained on him, she reached for his jeans; dabbed, dabbed. Nothing. She threw them over to him and he caught them on the fly, grinning. Next she flung his tee-shirt to him. She didn’t send over his knapsack, he noticed.

  She looked around the room, as though searching for something.

  “Aren’t you going to get dressed, Sweetheart?” he drawled in a deliberately thick Texas twang.

  Her eyes flashed green fire at him even as her cheeks heated up. He realized with an inward chuckle that her clothes were probably what he had stumbled over at the door.

  He let the chuckle bubble to the surface unable to hide his mirth at her predicament.

  “Well, the way I see it, Honey—” he said, flopping deliberately onto the bed, “you can either head on out to get your clothes, in which case I might arm myself before you return. Or you can send me to go get them in which case…” he trailed off, with a shrug and an insouciant grin.

  She eyed him for a bit, then she slowly picked up his trench coat from t
he chair and wriggled into it with absolutely nothing else underneath. It was the singular most erotic thing he had ever witnessed and the top of his head almost came off, even as his dick pressed all the more insistently against his fly.

  He swallowed.

  “At this point, I’m gonna want to know your name. I don’t know about the fellas you’re used to honey, but I usually like to know who is sleeping in my bed.”

  “Your bed?” she scoffed. “Of all the— This is my room.”

  “Not according to my buddy, it isn’t. This here text says Room 15F.”

  “Well unless your buddy is Wade Tyler, this isn’t your room!” she informed him, disbelievingly. Of all the nerve!

  He paused, “My buddy actually is Wade Tyler. How the hell do you know him?”

  Callie’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it. Wade had seemed especially accommodating and strangely acquiescing of her intention to attend the rodeo alone. What were the odds he hadn’t in fact sent this man after her to keep an eye on her? She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop since Wade honored to her request to go without him, hadn’t she? But to send this man to her room?

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Cade Gallagher. Yours?”

  “Callie Tyler.”

  “Callie? That’s a pretty name…I like it,” he said with a sudden smile that made her breath catch in her throat.

  If she had thought he was handsome before, when he smiled, he was an absolute knockout. And what was he babbling on about her name anyway?

  “Listen Cade, my brother never told me about anyone coming here. Plus, he would never send you to my room. He’s way too protective. Are you sure you’re not talking about a different Wade?”

  “I know he’s a seven-time champion in bronco riding and team roping. Plus he just had a baby girl, Laila, which he’s absolutely crazy about.”