by Anna Lowe
Heya, Janna, he’d say when she got closer and try to play it cool.
Heya, Cole, she’d answer and maybe even tilt her chin up for a kiss.
But neither one of them got around to saying anything, because when Janna was still a couple of hundred yards away, another voice screeched.
“Johnny! No!”
Both of them spun toward the stock pens, where someone was running. Pointing. Yelling.
“Stop! Oh my God, stop!”
A second person was climbing the split-rail fence and yelling, too. “Johnny! Johnny!”
It took him precious seconds to zoom in on the spot they gestured toward. A little blur of red in the dirt of the pens. A little kid.
“Johnny!” a woman screamed, but the kid just ran on. More voices joined the first two, and a dog started to bark.
“Moo!” the kid cried in glee. Just a little guy in overalls, having a great time outfoxing his parents, who clung to the fence and waved at him madly as he ran on. “Moo!”
The bull in the far corner of the paddock perked up its ears. Its nostrils flared. One massive hoof pawed the ground, and its white-rimmed eyes narrowed on the child.
Oh, shit.
“Stop!” another voice called. It was Janna, streaking into the paddock when no one else dared to, chasing down the kid. She had her hair in a ponytail, and it whipped behind her as she ran full tilt.
“Jesus,” he muttered, running for the fence from where he’d been on the hill. He scrambled over the three rungs, swung himself over the top rail, and leaped into the corral. “Janna!”
Janna didn’t stop, though. Not even when the bull snorted and swung its head and massive horns her way.
Cole hit the ground, sprinting hard. Trying to intercept Janna and the kid and bull, all at the same time. His feet pounded the ground, but it seemed to take forever, because that was his woman out there.
The bull roared and barreled straight at the boy, who froze and gaped like a deer in the middle of a highway. A deer about to get plowed down by an eighteen-wheeler in the ugliest possible way.
Voices sounded from all sides, but all Cole saw was the scene ahead. He saw the bull, eating up the distance to its target. Saw Janna, closing in on the kid. She scooped the child up without slowing her fleet feet and raced straight for the fence on the other side.
The bull leaned left, altering course to intercept her.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” a not-too-helpful onlooker screamed.
Cole kicked into another gear, too busy running to utter a sound. If he had a spare breath, he’d use it to blurt a string of curses that would reach over the state line.
Pip the dog ran in and raced right for the bull, who lowered his head and swiped sideways, missing the mutt by an inch. The bull barely broke its step, though. It was still locked on to Janna and the kid wailing in her arms.
“Faster!” someone shouted, as if Janna hadn’t thought of that.
“Janna!” he yelled. Two damn syllables when his mind was crowded with a whole string of instructions he could never get out in time. Cut back my way. Over here to your right. Head off at an angle and run for your life.
But her name was all he could get out. No time for anything more than that and a frantic prayer. “Janna!”
She ran on, then made an abrupt cut right — precisely the way he’d envisioned. His heart skipped a beat, then pounded on. He was closer now, but the bull was closer, too.
He yanked the bandana off his neck and wrapped one end around his fist. Snapped it in the air while running full tilt and hissing at the bull.
Over here, motherfucker. Over here.
Janna sprinted on, following the exact path he would have marked in the dirt for her if he’d have had the time. As if they’d mapped it all out ahead of time on a chalkboard or a secret playbook.
Inwardly, he cheered Janna on. Outwardly, he went on hissing and snapping the bandana at the bull.
Two dark eyes and the points of two very sharp horns swung his way, and the bull snorted. It might as well have rubbed its hooves together and chuckled, Now, now. What’s this?
Cole pulled up in his tracks and looked the bull square in the eye, challenging it.
This is where you need to attack. He whistled in a way even the stupidest bull would understand. Come and get me.
The bull snorted, lowered its horns, and charged.
Elation briefly coursed through his veins, and he nearly pumped his fist. He’d gotten the beast away from Janna and the child!
The icy truth belted him a second later. Two thousand pounds of angry bull was heading straight his way, and it was going for the kill.
It was exactly the situation he’d willingly put himself in thousands of times, back when he was still doing the job he loved. The rush, the edge, the split-second timing. The battle of wits, of man versus beast. He could saddle up tired trail horses in his sleep. But this kind of all-or-nothing duel…
Nothing came close. Nothing.
He balanced on the balls of his feet, waved the bandana as far from his body as he could, and counted down the inches between him and the colossus. If he had his fellow bullfighters to help out, this wouldn’t be half as suicidal. Teasing a bull wasn’t as crazy as people imagined if you worked with a good team. And he and Frank and George had been the best. Forming a triangle, taking turns drawing the bull away from the man closest to its horns. Knowing just when to jump in and when to dart the hell away.
A team gave you the edge you needed. A team gave you a chance.
Which meant he was screwed. Well and truly screwed. He was alone. A single target for a single, raging bull. No triangle. No padding, no armored vest. And no backup, except for Rosalind’s hysterical mutt, yipping madly at the bull’s heels.
The bull thundered up, and Cole reached out as if to catch it. He wheeled at the last second, missing the horns by a hair. Darting left before the bull could bulldoze under him, he got clear while the animal’s momentum carried it away.
A breather. He had a half-second breather in which to figure some way out of a mess no sane bullfighter would ever find himself in — namely, in the middle of an open paddock, with what seemed like miles to the nearest fence he might leap over. No chute to trick the bull into, no mounted backup. No one there to count on but himself. He glanced left and spotted Janna, closing in on the fence and safety. Thank God for that.
The bull bellowed and came around for a second charge. A bull who didn’t like losing, from the looks of it.
Cole kept his left shoulder to it and sidestepped away. Slowly, because it wasn’t about outrunning the bull. Just about timing. Perfect timing. He didn’t bother with the bandana this time, because the bull would see past that trick.
“Right here, mister.” He could see the whites of the bull’s eyes, the pink flare of its nostrils. “Right here.”
The ground rumbled as the bull closed in. Cole gathered his weight on his right foot and stretched out his arms. Warding off a bull as heavy as that would never work, but it would give him a sense of the animal’s momentum and help him adjust.
The bull grunted and lowered its horns. Sneaky bastard, going for Cole’s feet. It practically plowed a line through the dirt, kicking up dust as it chose exactly the right moment to pop up.
Cole was faster by a hair. He spun away fast enough to miss being gored, but not fast enough to miss altogether. The bull smacked his ass with the flat of its forehead and lifted him clear off his feet.
Airtime. Cole splayed his arms, trying to control his flight. He felt suspended in space and time, watching it tick slowly by. He kept his feet under him because landing this wrong would make him dead meat.
Jesus. This wasn’t just airtime, but major airtime, giving him plenty of time to think. About life, about death. About the bull waiting to finish him off.
The ground grew closer…closer…
The air left his lungs as he hit the dirt running. Snorting like a bull, because the air was full of dust churned up by
four massive feet.
He cut out of the way just as the bull came charging again, and this time, the bull turned on a dime. Jabbed its horns, curved past, then raised its hips…
Cole saw the bottom of the beast’s curved hooves, aimed for his skull. The air whooshed over his head as he ducked instinctively. Ducked his whole body, turtling his head in, because the hooves were sweeping right over him now. Fifteen hundred pounds of beast swept an inch above him in a merciless kick aimed to shoot Cole right off the planet and into outer space.
Whoosh!
Cole backpedaled just in time to see the bull’s hoof slice the air in front of his face.
Holy shit. The bull had missed by a hair. The thinnest hair ever.
Woof woof woof woof woof! Pip barked hysterically, buying him time to get away. If he survived this day, he’d get that dog the biggest damn bone any canine had ever seen.
A whip cracked in the air, and Cole flinched as if another opponent had appeared, ready to flay his hide. A glance up showed Rosalind, high on the top rail of the fence, cracking her old leather whip at the bull like a geriatric version of Indiana Jones.
“Hey! Hey!” she hollered at the top of her lungs.
Cole ran for the fence in the millisecond that the bull paused. He didn’t dare look back, just sprinted for his life, the way Janna and Rosalind screamed for him to do. The ground behind him shook like there was a whole herd of bison hot on his heels. A tiny whoosh sounded — the lift of the bull’s horns, aimed at his back.
He leaped for the fence with every muscle in his body. Stretching his arms, straining forward an inch ahead of those horns.
And bang! He smashed into the top rail just as Rosalind cracked the whip, making the bull wheel away an inch before it barreled into the fence.
“Jesus, Cole.” Janna’s eyes were huge.
A couple of strong hands grabbed his shirt and hauled him over to the sane side of the fence, and people started smacking him on the back. Some of those smacks were of the what-the-hell-were-you-thinking type, while others said, Good job.
“Damn good job,” Rosalind murmured as he coughed and hacked and sneezed, hunched over with his hands on his knees. Not quite shaking inside, but close.
“Oh my God, oh my God…” The mother all but crushed the boy to her chest while Janna calmed her down.
“It’s all good. It’s all right.”
Cole drank in the sight of that mother, holding her son. Rocking him. Crying in nerve-rattling fear but smiling at the same time. And when she looked up with gratitude pouring from her eyes — the most sincere kind of gratitude that never quite made it to the tongue — Cole held his breath.
That gratitude was aimed at him.
You saved him, Janna’s look said. You saved a future. You did that, Cole.
Her proud gaze stayed on him, determined to knock the message into his thick head.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the father said again and again.
Thank you. Words a man heard a thousand times in his life, but not always that waterlogged with emotion, and not always for all the right reasons. But today…
Cole tilted his head back, looked at the sky, and gulped a couple of times. He replayed it all in his mind but got stuck on one part over and over again. The image of the bull, heading straight for Janna.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the hysterical voices, away from the pacing bull still looking for a way through the fence. Over to the shade of the barn, where he ran his hands over her shoulders again and again.
“Are you okay?” He said it a thousand times, not quite ready to let the fear for her go.
“I’m fine. Cole, I’m fine.”
Didn’t seem to matter how often she said that, though. He needed to be sure. He smoothed her hair, touched her face. Held her smaller, softer hands in his and checked them, too, until he buried her in a hug he wasn’t about to let her out of anytime soon.
“I’m okay, Cole. You’re the one who was nearly gored.”
He shook his head. Didn’t she know how little his life mattered and how much hers did?
“You could have been killed,” he murmured.
“Believe me, I’m hard to kill.” When she laughed and pulled back, her eyes sparkled with some private joke. But then again, Janna’s eyes always sparkled. She ran a hand over his cheek before submitting to another full-body crush.
“I’m fine, Cole.”
Her voice was muffled. Her hands slid around his waist, and finally, finally, his heart slowed down a little bit. Fear gradually slipped back and gave way to warmer, calmer things. Like how nice her hair smelled. How good it was to feel her heart beating against his. How perfectly her body fit against his. Not too small, not too big. Just right.
So right that, before he knew it, he was touching her again, and in a whole different way. Nuzzling her ear. Sliding his hands over her body, tracing her perfect curves instead of checking for broken bones.
She tilted her head up, and the second their lips met, he knew that was only the start.
Her fingers tightened on his shirt, and her eyes had that feral shine they got sometimes.
“Cole,” she whispered in a husky voice.
The scent of arousal filled the space around them, and for once, he didn’t wonder how the hell he knew what that was.
“Janna.” He held her hand tighter and tugged her up the stairs.
Chapter Eight
Janna wrestled with her inner wolf as they started up the stairs.
We came to talk to him, not screw him!
But her protests were halfhearted, and her wolf knew it.
Not waiting a second longer to bond with my mate! the beast growled back.
Bond. Screw. Fuck. Whichever term she used, the danger was still there. Sleeping with Cole would bring his wolf closer to the surface — a dangerous proposition. But doing so would also bring their souls closer, which might help save him when the transformation began.
Exactly, her wolf agreed quickly. And besides…
Janna tightened her grip on Cole’s shirt, knowing just what the besides was. She was hungry for her mate. Starving. Craving him in a way she’d never craved any man.
“Janna,” he whispered in her ear.
The little control she had left went into making sure her nails didn’t turn into claws and rip off his shirt. Just seeing him at work on the fence from across the property had set her off. There was a brooding kind of animal energy coming off him. And watching him confront the bull tipped her right over the edge.
A good mate! A brave one, who protects what is his! Her wolf nodded eagerly.
If she were in a clearer frame of mind, she might have shrugged the thought away, because she didn’t need anyone’s protection. She could take care of herself.
Except, of course, Cole had rescued her twice now.
Time for us to rescue him.
She let her tongue tangle with his and her limbs give in to his insistent pull. Tasting the animal in him for the first time made her inch a little closer to the end of her wolf’s leash. The voice she’d strained to hear back in the saloon was shouting in her ear, banishing her last doubts.
This man is your mate. Take him. Care for him. Hold him…
Oh, she’d hold him, all right. Wrap her legs around him and care for him like she’d never cared for anyone before.
“Cole.” She meant it as a gentle whisper, but it came out hungry and hoarse.
She had a brief glimpse of his eyes flaring with desire before he crushed her into another kiss. His hand slid up her ribs, grazing her breast just enough to send flames shooting through her soul. But then he yanked away, muttering to himself.
She could sense his inner wolf wrestling for control, though it was still deeply submerged. The battle would turn into full-blown war eventually, but for now, Cole was beating it back. Which gave her hope. If he could keep his balance now, maybe he could hang on to his sanity when the worst of the Change set in.
&nb
sp; She grabbed his hand and put it right back where it had been. “I want you to touch me,” she whispered. “To want me. To take me.”
I want you, her wolf echoed with an inner growl.
The tight muscles of his face relaxed slightly, and she nearly cheered. The inner voice was right; she could help his two sides mesh.
And he can help us, her wolf sighed.
How she and Cole didn’t trip over one another, tangoing up those steep stairs, she didn’t know. But somehow, they made it to the landing, stepping from blazing sunlight to the shade of the overhanging roof. A place where they could hide from harsh truths for a while.
Cole was the one who kicked the door open, but it was Janna who dragged him inside. She yanked his shirt right over his shoulders the minute they stepped on the braided rug by the door, then got to work on his pants.
“Janna…” he growled in warning.
“I want this.” She laughed out of the blue. “It’s crazy how much I want this.”
“Crazy…” he muttered, cocking his head at her. He shook his head silently, then backed her against a wall. “Crazy enough to want a guy like me?” He squeezed every hard inch of his body against hers and pinned her arms above her head.
She slid a leg around his and reached out for another kiss.
“Wanting you is the only sane part of all this.” She didn’t expand on all this, because explaining was the hard part, but she could get to that later.
Much later, her wolf agreed.
She started the kiss, but he took over and made it all his. Let her know just what kind of loving he’d be subjecting her to. Hard. Fast. Greedy, but indulgent, too, like the way his hands rushed over her breasts, then slowed down to tease and toy.
“Is this shirt a favorite of yours?” he mumbled.
She shook her head breathlessly.
“Good.” He tore down the front of it, sending buttons flying. He leaned away just long enough to unclip her bra before pushing forward and capturing her once more.
Mine, his glowing eyes said the second before he dipped down.
