“Seriously? Ain’t even got electricity, Brina,” he huffed.
Yep. I should have known.
“I don’t think there’s going to be the panic you’re imagining. Lots of humans are going to think those videos are fake,” Karl added.
“And lots will think they are real.” I thought about the guy in the outfitter shop. He’d been reluctant to believe the tales of attacking shifters. He’d refused to sell the tainted bullets or even point me to where I could get them, but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t. “Even Alaskan natives are going to start shooting first and asking questions later. They’ll assume that every one of us they see is a potential killer. They know us, Karl. They’re our friends and neighbors. They know who we are, but with five people dead and these attacks, they’ll fear for their safety. And all the tourists… What’s next, registration? If this keeps going on, we’ll be considered a danger to all humans. If the angels don’t intervene, human government will. We’ve always had more freedoms in Alaska than in the other states, partly because the angels haven’t really bothered with us up here and the humans trust us. But now we’ll be tagged and restricted. Us as well as all the packs in the lower forty-eight, and even in the rest of the world…we’ll find ourselves declared dangerous.”
He reached out and smoothed my hair, his other hand taking the phone from me and putting it on the counter facedown. “That’s a long way off. Three or four rogues isn’t going to turn the world against us.”
I stared down at the phone. He was wrong. I, of all people, understood how things can catch fire in an internet age. “It won’t take three or four rogues. All it will take is one rogue, and one clever marketing campaign.”
Karl continued to cook dinner while I went outside and wandered his property, looking for a decent cell signal so I could do some research. There had to be noise on the internet, either on the comment section of these videos or in hunter and hiker forums about the attacks. And that was where I was sure I’d find some endorsement or referral to whoever was selling the bullets.
I glanced back at the flickering firelight shining through the cabin windows and felt guilty. Karl was making me dinner. He was happy to see me and was looking forward to some romantic time together, but here I was, type A, second to the Alpha, obsessing over all this. I couldn’t help it. If I could just get a name and number, or at the very least an e-mail address or website, I could go back in and stick all this into a corner of my mind to deal with tomorrow.
I finally got a weak signal by standing on the hood of my Jeep and reaching my arms up as far as they could go, which made typing difficult. Still I managed, searching hunter and hiker forums and chat groups, looking for any reference to specialized bullets, or shifters, or werewolves. Nothing. Then I got an idea.
And I struck gold. Werewolf had yielded nothing, and neither had shifter, but grizzly attack had. Suddenly there was a whole list of threads with both hunters and hikers concerned over being mauled by giant, aggressive, rabid grizzlies in Alaska that didn’t go down with even a round of .50 caliber bullets. There was an underground hysteria, and it seemed to have one source—a guy with the screen name of StraitShooter. And he was claiming to be with a hunting supply company outside of Juneau named Hit-The-Mark.
I did a quick search of the company, figuring I could always ask one of the Swift River Pack about it. Their main business interest was hosting tours and they knew all the outfitters and supply companies in the state. The website for Hit-The-Mark Outfitters was bare-bones. The internet marketing specialist in me itched to give them a redesign, but many of these smaller, mom-and-pop companies were content to merely have their contact information and location on the internet. This place didn’t even have a physical address or a phone number, just an e-mail address and a vague mission statement about providing for every hunter and hiker’s needs. It was so vague that it made me wonder what they were really selling.
I eyed the cabin and wondered if I had time to do more. As much as I wanted to e-mail Hit-The-Mark, I didn’t want to tip my hand. Clearly their clientele already knew what they were selling, and they most likely wouldn’t respond if they thought I was just some idiot who’d stumbled across their site in a blind search.
I was running out of time. And battery. While I still had enough juice to do it I sent Hit-The-Mark an e-mail, hoping I worded everything right, then I tracked down StraightShooter, grabbed his ISP and tagged a few of his posting trails as my phone was screaming low battery. Just before it died, I sent the lot to Brent with a quick e-mail, knowing he’d put a pack resource on it—someone with electricity and a decent internet connection, probably Elle or Allison, or maybe Zeph. That done, I hopped off the Jeep and headed to the cabin.
I was the worst date ever, I thought, watching Karl as he cooked, breathing in the intoxicating aroma of frying fish. “I’m so sorry. I know it was horribly rude of me to run off and do work-stuff with you in here making me dinner.”
He shot me a smile. “You’ve got responsibilities. You’re assertive and smart and driven. Don’t think I’d like you as much if you just sat on my sofa for the last hour and stared at me.”
“I promise, I’m done. And I really am because my phone is dead and even if I charge it off my car I have to stand on the roof and do some contorted pose just to get one bar of signal.”
“Good.” He flipped the fish. “Now you’re all mine.”
I shivered with anticipation. All his until some ungodly hour of the morning when I had to head back to Ketchikan and catch a plane. And then what? Get the bullet to Ahia. Track down this Hit-The-Mark place. Adjust my ad spend for the week and tweak some graphics for an upcoming sale. Then, in a few weeks, hopefully see Karl again at the barbeque.
I had a lot to do, but somehow the thought of seeing Karl was the highlight. Maybe I needed to take a vacation from work and the pack and see what his life was like out here. Could I do it? Could I hang in the woods for a week with no electricity, no internet, no plumbing? Just the two of us hiking, hunting, running on four legs? In the evening we’d take turns cooking, if I could figure out how to work the woodstove, read, then have sex. Actually we’d probably have sex several times during the course of the day if I had my way. It sounded ideal, but in reality would I be ready to crawl out of my skin within forty-eight hours?
I’d have to give it a try if we had any chance of making this work, just as he’d have to try the not-killing-my-friends and eating salad thing. Putting thoughts of Karl with his barely restrained violence aside, I turned my attention to the amazing spread he was putting on the table. “You do realize this is my personal fantasy to have a sexy guy fix me dinner while I finish up work.”
“Ain’t gonna be all that fancy, but think you’ll like it.” He shot me a quick glance then went back to the stove. “So what work do you do? Wolves work outside the pack, right?”
Oh my God. The fish looked amazing. And so did the veggies. Veggies! He’d actually dug up some veggies for me in spite of his obvious dislike of green things.
“Some of us. Swift River Pack keeps their businesses consolidated and their members work for them. We operate more like a club. We each have responsibilities, and every wolf knows that pack duties come first, but beyond that everyone except our Alpha has an outside career. I used to work for a corporation, but now I have my own company and do marketing for small businesses on a contract basis.”
“Smart woman.”
He sounded rather awed, even though I wasn’t doing anything that a thousand other people weren’t doing. “What about you?”
He put two plates on the table and pulled out a chair for me. I sat, salivating at the huge slab of fried halibut on the plate surrounded by honeyed carrots and roasted brussels sprouts.
“I sell the wood I chop, sell meat from my hunting. Don’t need a lot of money. If I do, I’ll do odd jobs for a bit of cash or trade.”
I took a few bites, savoring the unexpected joy that was Karl’s cooking before asking him to elabor
ate.
“How do you get the wood into town for deliveries without a truck? How do people know you’re selling it if you don’t have a phone or e-mail?” The whole thing boggled my mind. How in the world did people live like this?
“I go into town on occasion and put a note up on the board outside the grocery store. People drive out if they want wood or meat, or if they want me to pull up tree stumps for them. Some humans out here live the same way, Brina. It’s not that odd.”
It seemed odd to me. I envisioned some human showing up out of the blue with a pick-up truck to buy a cord of wood, or to ask Karl to hop in the cab and go off somewhere to pull stumps or clear trees. I guess it was no different than picking up one of the people who hung out in the home improvement store parking lot looking for day jobs.
“I only need enough for things like books, clothes, the occasional tool or hinge, or latch I can’t make myself. And toilet paper.” He grinned. “That’s where I draw the line. Decent toilet paper is a necessity of life.”
I’d never really thought of that. I shook my head to dislodge all the “bear crapping in the woods” jokes. “How long does it take you to walk into town?”
“Few hours if I walk. Less if I run. I make a day of it and enjoy the journey.”
It hit me. That was pretty much Karl’s philosophy on life. And I suddenly wanted it to be mine. I’d like to enjoy the journey too, instead of obsessing over crossing the next thing off my to-do list and living for what needed to be set up and accomplished to meet the next day’s, the next week’s, the next year’s goals.
“Wait…” Something suddenly struck me. “How do you get to your other dens? It must take you weeks to get up to Juneau or Skagway if you’re walking. Does someone give you a lift? Do you hitchhike? Use your savings to take a ferry?”
Every muscle in his body tensed. “I make my own way. Walk some.”
What wasn’t he telling me? “You better head out tomorrow if you want to make it in time for the barbeque, then. Juneau is a long walk, especially if you’re going around the ice fields.”
“I’ve got a den near Juneau. It’s quicker traveling to my dens.”
No. No, it wasn’t. “What, the chimneys connect or something like in Harry Potter? How is it quicker for you to get to your den in Juneau versus some other place in Juneau?”
He sat his fork down. “My dens are beacons. They’re home. If I want to move from home to home, I just do it.”
Was he saying what I thought he was saying? “Like waypoints on a GPS? You close your eyes, click the heels of your ruby slippers together, then poof, you’re there?”
“Don’t know anything about GPS stuff, but my dens are home. Anything that’s home to me, I can travel to. I just want to be there, and I go.”
Teleporting. He was telling me that he could teleport. Ahia was a frickin’ angel and she couldn’t teleport. The gate guardian could. Ahia’s main-squeeze, Raphael, could, but he was an archangel. Karl had sworn he wasn’t Nephilim. Was he an angel? What in the heck was he?
“Can you do it right now? Can you show me? Go up to your home in Juneau, then back. I want to see you do this.”
He shook his head. “I can’t right now. I don’t want to go there. I want to be here with you.”
That was just plain weird. “There are days I don’t want to get in the car and go to the grocery store, but I still can do it. Are you telling me there has to be a deep-seated desire to be at a different den for you to teleport there? You can’t just say ‘oh, I really want the copy of Sons and Lovers from the Juneau den’ and pop back and forth?”
He grunted, then ate a few bites of fish. “I’d have to need that book. Not just think it would be nice to read it, but need it.”
“And the barbeque?”
His eyes met mine. Heat pooled low in my body. “I need to be at that barbeque. It’s more than want, Brina. Fact, I’m kinda worried I might be dreaming one night and wake up to find myself up at the den in Juneau.”
I concentrated on my food, thinking about what he’d said. There was something visceral needed for him to teleport, and his feelings for me qualified. A wet dream might trigger a teleport. Wow…that was some sexual attraction. I’d never inspired that kind of lust before. Ever. It was a heady feeling to know he desired me that much.
I scooped the last bit of fish off my plate only to have Karl cut a section of his and slide it over to me. “Trying to fatten me up?”
I don’t know why I said that. Probably because I was still a bit awestruck at Karl’s attraction to me, his passion for me. And underneath all my confidence and assertive dominance was an insecurity about my skinny, non-feminine body. Carpenter’s dream because I was flat as a board. Built like a boy. Skinny where women were supposed to be curvy. Hard where women were supposed to be soft. Good for a drunken one-night stand. Good to have as a buddy. Good to date until a better wolf came along.
“Like you the way you are. You’re rangy and strong, lean and tough. You’re smart. You’re determined. You’re powerful. You’re the kind of woman a strong man needs by his side and in his bed. You’re beautiful with hair like Indian Paintbrush in late summer, freckles like stars in the night sky, like spots on an orchid. I want to feed you because you like my cooking, and I don’t have much else to offer you.”
I caught my breath, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. I guess we all had our own insecurities.
“I’m not a smart bear, Brina. I never went to school. I learned to read on my own. My folks taught me basic math because it was useful knowledge, but that was it. I don’t know marketing or computer stuff. I don’t know how things work in a pack. I can only manage to spend a day around big groups of shifters before I want to either kill someone or go into a cave and hide for a few weeks. I don’t like humans much. I’m good at killing, at hunting, at chopping wood. And I’m good at cooking fish. That’s all I got.”
What a pair we were. All we seemed to have in common was rocking sex. And the feeling that neither one of us had more to give than rocking sex.
I finished the fish, sat back and looked over at Karl, a heavy lump somewhere in my middle. “This isn’t going to work, is it? This thing between us is going to flame out in a few weeks once we get all the screwing out of our system.”
The gold rolled over his irises, lighting them up. “It will work. It’s more than sex. You’re more than just a good fuck, Brina. We’re different, but we fit together like puzzle pieces. And there’s no flaming out for us. There’s no getting you out of my system.”
There was an intensity in his deep voice that lit me up from inside. “I’ll…I’ll do the dishes,” I announced, standing abruptly. Wait. No dishwasher. Did I have to lug water in from the well or something?
“Fuck the dishes,” Karl growled. Then he stood and flipped the table over.
I yelped in surprise, then laughed as he grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder, climbing up the loft ladder and tossing me down on the mattress.
Karl shed his pants in one quick movement while I watched, grinning. Then he stood there, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised.
“Well?”
Oh. Guess I was supposed to get myself naked instead of waiting for him to tear the clothing off me. I stood, careful to position myself in the part of the loft where I wouldn’t bang my head, which put me about six inches from Karl. I could feel the heat coming off his skin as I pulled my shirt over my head and shimmied out of my shorts. Then I gave him a naughty wink and slowly unsnapped my bra, letting it slide down my arms to his feet. He watched, silent, eyes shimmering with that eerie gold light.
Catching his gaze, I hooked my thumbs in the waistband of my panties and waited for him to drop his stare downward, then slowly wiggled them down my legs.
“There. Naked and ready,” I told him, my voice husky.
“Ready? Cause I haven’t even touched you yet.”
I smiled. “Ready. And I can clearly tell that you’re ready too.”
He grinned, ste
pping forward and picking me up, nearly banging my head on the rafters as he tossed me over his shoulder. Then he dropped to his knees and slid my body down along his until I was on my back with him straddling me. We lay there, sharing a breath. I reached out a hand and trailed my fingers along his face, feeling the scrape of his scruffy whiskers, the hard planes of his cheekbones, the softness of his lips. Then he bent his head and kissed me—my lips, my neck, my breasts, my stomach, until he was between my legs and all I could do was close my eyes and arch my back, moaning with each touch of his tongue.
My senses swirled together—the intimate cozy feel of his den, the smell of wood smoke and pine, of Karl, of our lust curling through the air, the sound of our movements against the sheets, of my ragged breathing and Karl’s murmured endearments, of the sensation of him, so huge and powerful looming over me, my legs tossed over his shoulders.
His fingers joined his tongue and before long I was begging, pleading with him to make me come, but each time I was close, he eased off and my climax danced just out of my reach. Just when I thought I would go insane, he plunged two fingers into me, sucking hard on my clit and my orgasm roared through me. I threw back my head and cried out, bucking against him, my hands gripping his hair. Then slowly he shifted upward, my legs still on his shoulders as he climbed over me.
“This okay?” he asked. I was bent double, his cock pressed against my entrance, his mouth against mine.
“Hell yeah it is,” I told him, my voice sounding breathless and light.
He chuckled and he pushed deep inside of me, swallowing my gasp with his mouth. Damn. He was big, and pretzeled-up like this he felt even bigger. But it felt inexplicably good being filled to the edge of discomfort, feeling him struggle to hold himself back as he drove himself in and out, kissing me like he was drinking water in the desert.
I gripped his arms, my nails digging into his skin. It seemed to send him over the edge, and his pace became fast and uneven. His mouth left mine and I heard him inhale sharply, I felt him thicken. He slammed himself deep, and I felt myself slip over the edge, felt myself shatter just as he shuddered and poured himself into me.
My Paranormal Valentine: A Paranormal Romance Box Set Page 50
