Despite being smaller and lighter in build, goats were surprisingly strong, not to mention fast and extremely agile. Just catching them and holding them down looked like it would be challenging.
"Oh, I don’t shear the goats, just the alpacas. As you can see, my four A's are sweet and pretty tame. I just slip a halter on them and take them to the barn. If I fasten their halter rope securely and get them to cush—I mean, lie down with their legs folded beneath them—they're chill about letting me use the clippers on them. If they're being stubborn, I get Beto to help me." She grinned. "They look so skinny and naked after they're shorn, but I bet it's a relief once the weather really gets warm."
"How do you harvest the cashmere from the goats, if you don't shear them?" asked Carl.
"It's actually pretty easy," Michelle replied. "I found some plans on the Internet for building this cool contraption that's basically a platform, with a neck-squeeze to hold them in place and a treat bucket to keep them occupied, while I sit on a stool and comb them out." She smiled. "They remember that treat bucket the next time, and jump up on the platform and assume the position without me having to do anything except call them over."
Carl remembered what she had said yesterday about working smarter, not harder, and felt a fresh burst of admiration for her.
Michelle continued, "That combing platform also makes it easy to administer their doses of dewormer and whatever else they need. Luckily, I only have to comb them out once a year, after the weather warms up and they start shedding their undercoats, which is the cashmere part." She sighed. "I won't lie—I get less than half a pound of the good stuff from each goat, so I had to buy more goats my first spring here to make it worthwhile. And they're not cheap, let me tell you. Even with all the planning I did, I was really hemorrhaging money for a while. I'm hoping that next year will be the year I finally break even."
"Squeeze or not, that sounds like a lot of work when you have a flock as big as yours," Carl said. "Speaking of combing, one of my parents' neighbors in Palmer have started keeping musk oxen. They're huge and ornery, but they're trying to breed a gentler variety that doesn't try to kill you when it's time to administer vaccines or comb out their undercoats."
"Wool…from oxen. Like, cattle?" Michelle sounded incredulous. "Really?" She paused, and her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Wait, this isn't like the 'rocks in your backpack' thing, is it?"
"No, I'm serious," Carl assured her. "Musk oxen have been around since the last Ice Age, and they're actually related to sheep and goats. They have these incredibly thick coats, with an amazing undercoat. Ever hear of qiviut?"
Michelle shook her head.
"It's musk ox wool, and it's super-soft, super-warm, and super-durable." He paused and grinned at her. "And super-expensive, too. I've seen skeins of qiviut wool selling for a couple of hundred dollars each."
"Two hundred dollars a skein?" Michelle's eyes widened, and her expression lit up with sudden hope. She looked around her pasture, apparently calculating whether it was big enough to add a musk ox or two.
Then, to Carl's pleasure, she put down the bucket she still held and reached for his hand. "Thank you for taking me and my ranch seriously."
"Why wouldn't I?" Carl asked, surprised.
"Well, you're from a ranch family," Michelle said, looking down. "And Dennis always—"
"Screw Dennis," Carl interrupted, his tone harsh. He'd only met the man briefly, but he could imagine how the constant stream of criticisms must have affected Michelle's self-confidence.
Gentling his tone, he continued, "I mean, yeah, sure, I grew up on a ranch, but I don't know jack about goats or alpacas. You've clearly done your homework, and your animals look healthy and well cared-for."
She squeezed his hand. "Thanks. I really try."
"Looks like you're succeeding." He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
A spike in the pulse beating just under the tender skin of her wrist rewarded him. He drew her into his arms and found her lips with his own.
She tasted so damned good and responded to him with immediate passion. The combination was intoxicating, and he didn’t want to stop.
So he didn't, not for a long, long time.
They were both panting with desire when they finally parted.
"We'd better stop," Michelle said breathlessly, "or we're going to scandalize the goats. And possibly the alpacas too."
Carl chuckled. "I'm sure Alfred already disapproves of me. I could see it in his eyes as he deigned to accept a carrot from me."
"Nah." Michelle said. "If he doesn't try to kick you, then he's cool with you."
"Good to know," Carl said dryly. "I guess it was just my wolf shape that he wasn't crazy about." He looked around the pasture. "Speaking of which, since we're here, I want to take a look—and a sniff— around to see if I can figure out what kind of critter's been attacking your fence and harassing your livestock."
"Thanks, I'd appreciate that—" Michelle began, then interrupted herself as he began to strip. "Wait, what are you doing?"
Carl kept unbuttoning his shirt. "My senses are sharper when I'm in my wolf shape."
"Oh." Michelle blinked and accepted the shirt that he handed her.
His t-shirt came off next, followed by his boots, socks, and pants. She put them all in the RTV's cargo space, then watched with a mixture of amusement and appreciation as he shimmied out of his briefs.
He grinned at her and posed like a bodybuilder, which made her laugh.
"Which part of the fence did the bear—or whatever it was—knock over?" he asked.
Michelle pointed to a section across the pasture, where a dense stand of aspen stood on the other side of the fence, their leaves beginning to turn autumn gold.
Carl nodded and let his wolf rise. His shift began with the familiar pins-and-needles sensation over every inch of skin.
It hurt, as expected, but not as badly as it had yesterday. A couple of good meals and a few hours of sleep had put his injuries well on the road to healing.
A few moments later, he rose on four paws and stretched to dispel the last of the lingering sensations and mild dizziness that accompanied a shift. His hurt leg was sore, but he could at least put weight on it now.
He limped over to Michelle and was relieved to note that her scent remained free of fear. Carl's wolf shape was twice the size of a normal gray wolf, and his head came up to her chest.
With his senses sharpened tenfold in this shape, she smelled even better than before. His tail wagged as he came to a halt in front of her.
"Can you talk when you're a wolf?" she asked.
Carl shook his head.
She reached out her hand, then halted before she touched him.
"Is it okay if I pet you?" She sounded hesitant.
Oh, hell yeah, I want her to touch me. To accept me in both of my shapes. He sat on his haunches and nudged her palm with his head.
Her touch was tentative at first, as she stroked his head and neck. Then, as he continued to wag his tail, she became bolder, scratching his ears and under jaw, which made his eyes close in pleasure.
Michelle's sweet scent surrounded him, her hands were gentle as they moved through his fur, and suddenly, all was right with the world.
Our mate. Right at the moment, that concept didn't seem quite so far-fetched.
Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and grinned at her, opening his jaws and letting his tongue loll to taste her delicious scent in the air.
"My, what big teeth you have," she said, her face alight with wonder and good humor.
Then he rose and set to work.
The heavy rains had done a good job of washing away most of the older scents along the fence line as well as any tracks laid down before this morning.
The overwhelming scents here came from the goats and the alpaca as well as the two dogs.
As he followed the pasture's perimeter, nose to the ground, Michelle directed the dogs to keep the increasingly nervous goats away from
him. Remembering his previous encounter with Alfred, Carl kept a wary eye out for any alpacas heading his way as he investigated the site Michelle had indicated.
He found nothing except the scents he expected: strong odors from the livestock, and fainter traces of Michelle and Beto. He doubled back along the fence line, just to make sure.
Still nothing. No scent traces, no foot or paw prints, no convenient tufts of fur or fabric caught on the wires. He huffed in frustration and made a complete circuit of the pasture, examining every inch of the fence. Twice.
Nope.
Whatever was invading Michelle's property was either smart or had been incredibly lucky with timing its visits to coincide with the storm. In any case, last night's deluge had destroyed any useful evidence.
Carl wondered if perhaps the invader had visited any other parts of Michelle's property. It's worth checking out.
He walked over to the pasture gate, eyed, it, and despite his sore leg, couldn't resist the temptation to show off a little for her. Bunching his muscles, he leaped over the fence, easily clearing the barbed wire strands at the top.
The landing hurt his leg more than he'd expected, and he staggered a little, swearing silently.
"Wait—where are you going?" Michelle shouted after him.
He turned his head in her direction and saw her climb into her RTV.
Then he headed down the narrow, muddy track that led back to her house and barn.
Chapter 14
In Hot Water
Michelle followed him in the RTV, keeping her distance so that he could work.
When he reached the vegetable and fruit trees, he finally found what he'd been looking for on the tree trunks—the scent of a young male black bear who had been helping himself to apples and pears.
His claws had scored the bark of an apple tree where it had apparently gone up on his hind legs to reach the fruit.
Carl's nose led him to day-old bear scat near the barn, and more claw marks where it had tried to break in, apparently attracted by the scents of the grain treats and root vegetables stored there.
It hadn't tried to approach the house, though, which gave him hope that the bear still retained some of its fear of humans.
The intermittent sunlight vanished entirely as the clouds that had been gathering all morning finally closed in. The first drops of wind-driven rain hit Carl's nose as he turned and headed for Michelle's covered porch.
Yep, looks like fire season is definitely over. Which meant that his parents and the rest of his pack would be expecting him to return to Alaska, and soon. Dammit.
He had just completed his shift back to human when Michelle parked the RTV and came around the corner of the house, her arms filled with his clothing.
"Here," she said, offering it to him. "You must be freezing."
"I think I need to shower first," Carl said, indicating the mud that covered his hands and feet and had splattered over his torso.
"Do you need someone to wash your back?" Michelle offered, to his intense delight.
"I wouldn’t say no." He gave her a slow smile and saw the answering flush of color in her face.
He reported his findings to her as he wiped his feet vigorously on her doormat, then walked to her bathroom with its double shower, trying not to touch anything along the way.
"…I'm still skeptical that it's a black bear going after your goats, though," he finished, "Since that's more grizzly behavior than black bear…though if a black bear gets hungry enough, it'll kill whatever it can.
"But that's just the thing," Michelle said. "Between my trees and all kinds of wild berries in the forest, the bears around here can't really be starving, can they?"
"Yeah, it's a conundrum," Carl agreed. "Anyway, even if this particular bear doesn't seem like a good candidate for having attacked your fences and your livestock, it does need to be scared away before it learns to associate humans with food."
"I don't have to shoot it or anything, do I?" she asked. She sounded upset.
"I'm hoping to avoid just that by scaring the hell out of. I have a plan…" Carl continued speaking, outlining what he had in mind.
"I can't thank you enough for offering to help me," Michelle said as she came to a halt in the middle of her bedroom.
She began unbuttoning her woolen shirt.
"Stop," Carl said.
◆◆◆
Surprised, Michelle stopped what she was doing. She looked inquiringly up at the big, naked, mud-covered man blocking her master suite's bathroom doorway.
"Let me," Carl requested, his tone almost reverent as he closed the distance between them.
He loosened her hair from its tight ponytail. Then he began to undress her with slow deliberation, baring her skin inch by inch, bending to kiss each new part revealed.
Once he'd removed her flannel shirt and the t-shirt she wore beneath, he buried his face against the side of her neck, nipping and licking at all the sensitive places he'd discovered last night.
Then he unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, leaving her naked from the waist up.
"Have I told you how beautiful you are?" he asked in a husky voice, brushing the heavy curves of her breasts with the backs of his fingers, tracing a tightening spiral that made her catch her breath.
The sensation of his roughened knuckles against the sensitive tips of her breasts made her knees go weak and made hot, urgent desire spring to life between her legs.
He kissed her, his mouth hot and urgent, as his hands continued to work magic on her breasts.
Last night had been a slow, tender exploration. She could tell that this time was going to be something harder and wilder, and the thought made fresh heat move in throbbing pulses through her pussy.
When he finally knelt and pulled her jeans and panties down to her ankles, she was so turned on that she felt that she could come at any second.
Then he leaned forward and put his face against her, inhaling deeply. His warm breath tantalized her, and the tip of his nose brushed her clit, sending a shock of pure need through her.
"God, your scent." His voice was thick with desire, and she caught a glimpse of his cock, rising proudly erect from his lap. "I can't get enough of it.
Shaking with need, she reached down and cradled his face in her hands.
“Carl.” She tugged at him, urging him to his feet, then pressed herself against him, his hard length pressing into the soft curve of her belly. “I want you.”
His blue eyes were flecked with gold. “I want you too.”
He reached for her hand and led her into her bathroom. He turned on the shower.
When the water was warm and steam began to fill the air, he put his hands on her waist and carried her effortlessly into the wide shower enclosure.
As hot water cascaded over them both, Carl slid his big hands up over her belly and ribs. He paused briefly to cup her breasts and roll her hardened nipples between his fingers in a deliciously rough caress before continuing higher to her shoulders, then down her arms.
Then he lifted her wrists above her head in an iron grip that thrilled her to her core. He pulled her up on her tiptoes, pressing her against the cool tiles of the shower stall.
“Open your legs,” he ordered, his golden eyes blazing.
She obeyed eagerly, and he rewarded her by pushing his thick cock between her aching folds, caressing her with its length.
The sensation was amazing. She gasped, arching against him.
"You like that?" he asked smugly.
To her disappointment, he didn't actually fuck her. Even though she was aching for his big cock to fill her.
Instead, his mouth came down on hers in a hot, urgent kiss, his tongue muffling her moans as he ground himself against her with a hard, delicious friction.
Michelle returned his kiss with desperate hunger. She instinctively closed her legs around his cock, clenching him at the apex of her thighs as she balanced precariously on tiptoes and eagerly rode his length.
She moa
ned, arching and thrusting her hips against Carl as his movements sped up.
"Yeah," he panted, lifting his mouth from hers at last.
Water droplets shone on his cheeks and forehead and the ends of his hair, and his eyes blazed pure gold now. With a shock, she recognized his wolf gazing out at her. "Just like that, love. Let me hear how much you're enjoying this."
Love? She liked that, but Carl didn't give her time to think through the implications.
He bent his head and closed his teeth over her lower lip, sucking it hard into his mouth. Then he worked his way down her neck and her sensitive throat, driving her crazy with sharp caresses that hovered between pain and pleasure.
Hard Landing Page 13
