“Why do you think she did that?”
Shane shrugged and let out a deep breath before guessing, “We didn’t pose a threat. I think she knew her husband well enough to anticipate what his reaction might be if he ever found out.”
“That he’d hunt you all down.”
“That he’d exterminate us, drive us into extinction if not out of the Fist,” he added.
Whitney would have liked to belief that her father would be just as brave as her mother, but she couldn’t be so sure. He was a pure-hearted, protective man, but she could see how that very quality might drive him to make a heated, snap decision if he ever confirmed that werewolves existed in his town.
“This might be the quiet before the storm,” she mentioned, settling back into the crux of his shoulder. “Daddy has a werewolf expert coming in from Jackson Hole. I think the police officer in him would like to think that Pamela Davenport was solely responsible for the Holly van Dyke and Leeanne Whitaker attacks. Investigation-wise, he’s rested. But I think the protective father in him hasn’t let it drop. He has Dante Alighieri’s name and enough questions about the existence of werewolves to put two and two together. He’s going to use the expert to learn a thing or two. If your pack is concerned that Daddy might come after y’all, it’s quite possible he’s about to take the first real step in that direction.”
Shane fell silent and held her a little tighter, and Whitney could feel his fear.
She was afraid of the same thing, but it cut much deeper. She was starting to understand that the man who was holding her, the man who she was thrilled to get to know, who she was starting to sense she might love to spend the rest of her life with in a very real way, was ultimately her father’s enemy. She didn’t want the two most important men in her life to be at war against one another, and now more than ever it made the most logical sense that they should instead join forces—the police department and Shane’s werewolf pack—to hunt down and kill the real threat against Devil’s Fist, Dante Alighieri.
But could she propose that again? She already had and it had nearly pitched them into a heated argument. Shane wouldn’t go for it, that much she knew. But why would he rather risk having the sheriff and the full force of his police department come after the pack?
Well, she determined, it must be because the police are far less threatening than Dante himself.
If her father could capture Dante, if he could do so functioning under the belief that Dante Alighieri was the one and only werewolf in the Fist to the extent that upon capture, Daddy would trust that all would be well in his town, then things might go back to normal and Shane’s werewolf pack could go on co-existing with the residents, undetected. That would be ideal, wouldn’t it? Daddy might even get a section of Yellowstone named after him. He’d like that.
Just as Whitney was about to paint that very picture for Shane, he grazed his large, warm hand down her cheek and searched her eyes.
God, whenever they made eye contact, she felt the whole of her soul opening up. Their connection was building. She could feel it, and it was hard to imagine not being with him. If she could be free with him and never lose her spirit, and if she could trust him enough to never impinge his untamable ways, this could be a love that would last the ages.
“What are you thinking?” he asked her, which came as a surprise.
Shane seemed to be full of surprises. When she’d first met him, she’d pegged him as a dark horse who might not have too much substance, a hollow warrior of sorts, born to kill and perhaps dead inside. But as she was getting to know him, Shane was revealing his tender side. She would’ve never guessed he would be curious about what she was thinking. But now it made sense, and his interest and care about her emotions was becoming something of a great comfort to her.
“How I didn’t expect any of this,” she told him, which was true but didn’t detail the heart of what was really on her mind.
He tucked a lock of her red hair behind her ear and agreed, “Neither did I.”
She loved how he looked at her, how he drank in the sight of how her hair fit behind her ear. When he returned his eyes to meet hers, she was dying to feel those firm lips of his on her, all over her body if she was being honest with herself.
And he must have read her mind, because as the electric intensity between them swelled, he guided her face towards his and pressed his lips to hers in a tender kiss.
She hadn’t meant for a wanton moan to escape her, but it did as she climbed on top of him, straddling his hard lap to deepen their kiss. When she wrapped her arms around his muscular shoulders, breathing in the scent of him, she felt like she couldn’t get enough. She wanted to consume him and feel Shane consuming her as well.
He ran his fingers through her hair, stroking her wild mane back from her face, and then held her one-handed at the nape of her neck, helping her head to tilt as he explored the silken curves of her mouth.
She melted into the strong feel of him as he caressed his large, warm hand down her back. When he reached the small of her back, he began gently rubbing the width of it, and she felt a tight, hot clench contract between her legs.
She pulled back and studied his handsome face, which brought the slightest whisper of a grin to his sexy mouth. In response, he lowered his hand to her ass and gave her a hungry squeeze that instantly turned her thoughts to what he would feel like on top of her.
Whitney couldn’t remember the last time a man had turned her on like this. Perhaps never. Though she’d certainly had her fair share of sexual experiences, she’d never ventured into one after establishing the kind of connection that she naturally shared with Shane.
She felt safe with him. She trusted him with her body, without a doubt, and she was even starting to strongly feel like she could trust him, wholly and completely, with her heart.
Or was this too good to be true?
She tried not to let herself go there and instead focused on the incredible feel of him. The firm wall of his chest, which she was now pressing her palms against, was turning her on to no end, and she soon craved the sight and feel of his bare skin.
When he asked her in a low growl, “What?” and grinned, she realized she was smiling.
She brought the tip of her nose to his, as she felt up the hard mounds of his built pecs, and then rested her forehead against his as she began tugging his black tank top up.
“Is this what you want?” he asked her in that deep, rugged voice of his, as he took over the task of pulling his tank top up and over his head.
As he set it on the couch beside them without taking his eyes off of her, she drank in the sight of his bare chest, the chiseled definition of his abdomen, his tight, hard nipples, all the while running her hands over his body as though she couldn’t quite believe he was real.
But he was.
Real and all man.
And maybe all hers.
She felt magnetized to him. She desperately wanted to devour that sexy mouth of his in a kiss, but first she peeled her Yellowstone corral shirt off. As she brought her mouth to his, Shane was already unfastening her bra clasp.
He popped it open and it spilled off her shoulders, freeing her breasts.
Her nipples hardened in an instant and as he cupped her shape, those large, warm hands of his playing with her supple nudity, another tight clench of arousal came over her.
She could feel him growing hard, stiffening for her beneath his army fatigue pants. Feeling between her legs the effect she had on him, feeling how his body was responding to hers, was incredible.
Without warning, he exercised his extreme strength, lifting her and laying her on the length of the couch. As he angled over her, Whitney on her back, legs spread, and Shane lowering down, she wrapped her slender arms around his muscular shoulders and welcomed the sexy weight of his hard body.
It felt so good being pinned under Shane. As he kissed her she didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t want to miss a thing. She breathed in his masculine scent, growing hotter and
wetter between her legs, until she couldn’t help but slide both of her hands down the hard length of his chest and torso, feeling for the button of his pants.
“Are we really doing this?” he growled in-between hard kisses.
He began pressing those firm lips of his across her cheek and down her neck, giving her a chance to respond.
Were they? Was she about to go all the way with Shane Quinn on her living room couch? God, her body certainly wanted to. The feel of his warm lips traveling the length of her neck, caressing across her collarbone, as his large hand cupped and squeezed her breast, was enough to make her think, yes! She wanted nothing more than to feel his hard dimensions penetrate the tight, wet sheath of her aroused body.
“We might have to get your pants off first,” she teased, and he let out a deep, rumbling chuckle that sounded like pure masculinity.
“Yours as well,” he agreed.
He lifted up to his knees, kneeling over her, to do just that.
She didn’t help so much as watch him open his pants, shove them down his thighs, leaving his evergreen boxer-briefs in place.
Her eyes widened at the large shape of him beneath his underwear and a hot, tingling swirl of arousal blossomed between her spread legs.
She was aching for him now. She not only wanted, but needed to feel him inside of her. She reached for his large shape and took hold of his dimensions through the soft cotton of his boxer-briefs.
Shane groaned in response. Those dark eyes of his drifted shut and his head cocked ever so slightly in response to the feel of her hand, the titillating strokes she was starting to deliver. As he breathed, his huge chest swelled, rising and falling from where he was kneeling over her.
As she continued to feel and explore his hard shape, Shane took her breast in his hand. She sensed that he needed to feel the soft mound of her body to enhance his sexual desire, and knowing that turned her on so hard that the ache between her legs became painfully arousing.
Urgently, one-handedly, she fumbled with the button and fly of her khakis, desperate to undress so that the mystery of his desire could thrust in, fill her, and no longer be something she could only dream about.
But she was having a hell of a time getting her pants open.
Shane’s patience had run out, as well. He stepped off the couch, swung her legs off the edge of the couch, and before dropping to his knees in-between her spread legs, he shoved his own pants the rest of the way off, wrestling for a second to kick both boots off.
Freed of his army fatigues, he jerked her pants open and pulled them clear off her long legs so that she was sitting before him, bare-breasted and in her black cotton panties.
She would’ve liked to have gotten those boxer-briefs of his off, but he was already on his knees, the gorgeous weight of his arms pinning her curvy thighs down, as he brought his fingertips to the cotton-covered runway of her sex.
She moaned, watching and feeling him graze his fingers up and down that sensual strip of her clothed body. Aching and tingling for him, she loved how he looked, how he seemed to be drinking in the sight of her panties, the concave shape of her core beneath.
“I’m going to make you come,” he growled, touching eyes with her briefly before setting his sights on the core of her sex in front of his grinning face.
“Oh,” she breathed in hot anticipation.
She rested her head back against the couch as he gently, teasingly peeled her black cotton panties aside so that he could marvel the shape and scent of her spread body.
When he grazed the pad of his fingertip down her slippery moist length, tracing the curves and folds of her flowery sex, she moaned and melted into the couch, her eyes drifting shut so that all of her could absorb his sensual touch.
As he playfully and tenderly explored her, circling the sensitive button of her anatomy at times before slipping his firm finger into the tight sheath of her body, she thought she might climax right then and there.
It wasn’t just the feel of his penetrating finger that was thrusting her towards the brink of orgasm, even though from a purely physical standpoint he felt beyond incredible. For Whitney, it was the fact that despite Shane being a powerful beast of a man, who could be a strong, muscular brute if he wanted, he was handling her with extreme care, being gentle and tender with his every touch. Knowing he could easily tear a man limb from limb, and yet he was touching her with the utmost care, was a combination that made her body swell with the first clamping clench of her rising climax.
He was bringing her there and as she became swept up into the throes of a blooming orgasm, he wrapped his kissing mouth around her sensitive button, thrusting his finger gently all the while.
She let out a long, sustained moan as she climaxed against his amazing touch, those wet firm kisses he was delivering.
It had taken her by surprise, how insanely good he was making her feel, and as her body calmed she began laughing breathily and joyfully.
He grinned up at her, knowing he had brought her there, and took firm hold of her meaty thighs, letting her panties slide back into place.
No sooner than her body had relaxed into the fading afterglow of tingles, however, a dark feeling cut through her.
They were being watched.
She could feel it.
A harrowing sense of doom crashed over her and she straightened up, her eyes cutting to the curtained windows at the far side of the living room. If someone was out there, could they see in? Her gaze cut to the kitchen, but she couldn’t see the windows or out of them from the couch. Yet she felt watched. She knew they were being watched. Chills broke out across her skin and Shane quickly registered that something was wrong.
As he rose and sat beside her, Whitney tucking her knees up to her chin to cover her nudity, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I feel like there’s someone out there,” she whispered as she tried not to feel like a paranoid hysteric, “watching us.”
Shane furrowed his brow, concerned, as he read the worry that was written all over her face.
He collected her Yellowstone shirt and khakis and helped her cover up, as he asked, “I didn’t hear anything, did you?”
“No, it’s not like last time,” she admitted, remembering how they heard taps and thuds at the bathroom window and behind the house before her daddy showed up. “It’s just a feeling,” she told him as she pulled her pants on after slipping her shirt over her head. “But it’s been coming and going since Delilah didn’t show up here.”
“The feeling of being watched?” he asked as if trying to make sense of it. He pulled his army fatigue pants on then yanked on his tank top. He laced his boots up last as he asked, “When you’re here in the cabin?”
“And when I’m out. I felt like I was being watched at Yellowstone and also when I followed you out to Larry Hardcastle’s shack. I know it doesn’t make sense, but—”
“I believe you,” he told her quickly. But when next she expected him to check outside and around her cabin like last time, he returned to the couch and insisted, “With the mystery that’s swelling up around Delilah’s disappearance, I don’t want you to be alone. Ever. Especially not if you’re feeling watched.”
“Do you think someone is stalking me?”
“I don’t know what to think, but I believe you.”
“Do you think it has something to do with Delilah?”
“Or Dante,” he countered as his dark eyes blackened. “Have you been feeling out of it when you feel watched?”
“No, nothing like that.” Then she remembered, “When I had Lucy over, gosh, last week or so, we were out at my dad’s shooting range and something came over me. I thought it was a sugar crash, because I’d really stuffed my face before we went out. I sort of… blacked out I guess.”
A look of anger came over Shane that she knew wasn’t meant to be directed at her.
“Do you think that could’ve been Dante that time?”
“I definitely think that. You aren’t safe.”
<
br /> “But I haven’t felt out of it since,” she assured him.
“Still,” he asserted, “you’re going to stick with me.”
Whitney didn’t necessarily have a problem with that, not one bit.
She asked him, “Would I be safer if I was a werewolf?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “No,” he said finally. “Dante has managed to get to select members of my pack.” After another long moment, he told her, “If you bonded with me as my one true mate, however, you’d be safe. We both would.”
As soon as he said it, the eerie feeling of dark, devilish eyes watching her suddenly vanished.
She didn’t know what it meant.
All she knew was that more and more she was feeling like she would like for Shane Quinn to make her his.
Chapter Nine
SHANE
Shane did not like the look of dark apprehension on Whitney’s face as they sat on her living room couch. She was, hands down, the strongest woman he’d ever met, and he’d lived a lot of life in a lot of years and had met a hell of a lot of women. No one else compared. So to see her wither and shrink at the very idea that someone was out there, watching and stalking her, filled Shane with a kind of fury he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before.
His first order of business would be to do a perimeter check of the cabin, working his way around the outside of it. But just as he was rising from the couch to do just that, he felt his cell phone vibrate inside the front pocket of his army fatigues.
“It’s Troy,” he told Whitney as he looked at his cell.
“At this hour?” she asked and he was thinking the same thing. It was fast approaching midnight, which meant that whatever his eldest brother had to tell him wouldn’t be good.
“Troy,” he said, answering his cell phone.
“Angel Mercer’s been arrested,” he heard his brother say from the other end of the line. “For her role in my wife’s unlawful imprisonment.”
“Goddamn,” muttered Shane and Whitney widened her eyes up at him as if to ask him what was going on. He covered the mouthpiece and quietly told her, “Angel’s been arrested.” Then he spoke into his cell, “Can’t Reece do anything?”
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