by Renee Rose
“I know who you are, Willow. You’re mine. But if you want to find your family, it’ll be easier now. We just have to find your home pack. Ginger wolves are rare. It shouldn’t be too hard. Although I hope you’ll stay here with me. To be my alpha mate.”
She studied my face. “Can’t argue with fate, can I?” She smiled.
I kissed her—gently—because she was still weak. And we had to deal with a dead body and probably a whole bunch of federal agents. Later, I’d kiss her thoroughly. I’d kiss her all fucking night long.
WILLOW
The local sheriff and his deputy arrived first. I was still a little lightheaded from the gunshot, or maybe from discovering I was a shifter, but years of protocol pushed to the forefront.
“Agent Johnson?”
“Yes, sir.”
After I’d shifted back, I’d called Vaughn and tried to convince him to send backup, so we could catch whoever showed up with the empty trailer for the cows and drugs, but he wouldn’t have it—especially after he heard I’d already been shot at. He’d notified the sheriff to get there immediately, and the sheriff had arrived with lights flashing, which probably meant whoever was responsible for driving the drugs across the border would keep right on driving past.
I kept my hand over the wound at my side as I reached out to shake his hand. Boyd and Audrey had brought me a change of clothes, which I’d stained a little with blood from my wound to make it look like a bullet just grazed me.
“I’m Sheriff Duncan.” He stared at Markle’s fallen body in the dirt, repulsion showing on his face. “Is that your perp?”
“Yes. Jett Markle, owner of this ranch.” I pointed to the crates of drugs. “We had a shootout after I found his supply.” I attempted a wry grin. “Good thing I’m a better shot than he was.”
He looked at my side. “You were hit? Do we need to get you to the hospital?”
“No, it’s a flesh wound. The neighbor, Dr. Ames, already patched me up.” I nodded at Audrey, who had remained to make sure no one tried to get a look at my rapidly healing bullet hole. She’d covered it with a bandage and was prepared to attest to the fact that I had merely been grazed by a bullet and didn’t need to go into the hospital tonight.
She stood near Boyd’s pickup with Rob and Boyd, who refused to leave us unprotected.
“Evening Sheriff Duncan,” Rob lifted a hand in greeting.
The sheriff nodded at Rob and Boyd. “Evening, gentlemen.”
“Did my boss tell you there was a possibility of his friends showing up?” I asked.
The sheriff touched the gun at his side. “He told me. I’ve got back up on the way. If they come, we’ll get them.”
Yeah, I wasn’t so sure about that.
The op hadn’t gone as planned. I’d wanted Markle behind bars, so we could use him to get Murrieta. After what happened, I was happy he was dead. His intentions for me didn’t make me feel bad in the slightest.
We had the drugs, knew how they arrived at the ranch and how they left and got to Canada.
With Markle dead, there was no information on getting to Murrieta. Vaughn planned to send a guy to the next planned drug pickup at the closed rest area, but it wasn’t going to be Murrieta himself. Only another cog in his huge drug wheel.
I’d pretty much blown the case. We were back to square one because Murietta wouldn’t give a shit that Markle was dead. He’d been a mere pawn. He’d have another one by tonight to rebuild the drug path to Canada.
The shipments were stopped for now but wouldn’t be for long.
I’d failed, and I had no doubt I was out of a job. For once in my life, I didn’t care.
Everything I’d thought about myself had been wrong. My name really wasn’t Willow Johnson. I’d always known that. Tonight was the first time there was a real clue to who I was. To what I was.
I was a shifter.
A shifter!
And that mattered so much more than this stupid case I’d been fixated on for the past year.
“The DEA will be here in the morning, so if your men could just keep watch, it would be much appreciated. I’d like to get back and clean up and get a couple hours sleep before I have to meet them here to search the place and take care of all the procedures and paperwork.”
“You’re staying at the Shefield place?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Okay, Agent. Let me take your statement and then you can go ahead. We’ll stay here to protect the crime scene.”
Thank God for small town sheriffs.
I looked over at Rob and gave him a weak smile.
Everything had changed. My whole life had turned upside down, and the one thing I knew that mattered—the only thing—was him.
29
WILLOW
“And now, my little ginger she-wolf, it’s time for your punishment.” Rob backed me up against the bed, tugging my clothes off as he went.
We were at his pack’s mountain lodge in the private bedroom in the back. Rob brought me up so I could practice shifting, but first… he had something else in mind.
I’d spent the past day bogged down in procedures. The sheriff and paramedics with Markle’s body had left by dawn, but the DEA had remained all day, searching the property, making an inventory of the drugs and working with Canadian customs to watch for other shipments. Markle’s drug channel was shut down.
My body had mostly healed. I still had a mark and felt twinges where the bullet hit me, but that was it. My shifter genes had saved my life.
Everything in my life suddenly made sense. What I’d told Rob when I’d first shifted back: my sensitive nose, my heightened instincts, my love of running. And what I hadn’t told him. Why I’d never felt like I belonged in society. Until I’d come to Cooper Valley and found Rob. I knew from my paperwork my birth mother, who had been just a teenager, had been admitted as a Jane Doe to a hospital in Billings. She’d had me and disappeared from her hospital bed, abandoning me. Whether she was the shifter or my dad was, I couldn’t be sure, but for some reason, it changed the story for me.
I’d felt abandoned before. Unwanted.
Now I felt special. My parents—or one of them—had given me a gift. I was half-shifter. Able to turn into a beautiful ginger wolf, according to Rob. And I had a mate. I’d known it since the first second he’d barged into my room and caught me with my dildo.
We still had to discuss our future.
I had to decide if being his mate was what I wanted, although there wasn’t all that much of a decision.
“Why punishment? I haven’t been bad,” I replied, allowing him to slip my panties off, so I stood naked before him.
He arched a brow. “You went to Markle’s, a known drug dealer, not once, not twice but multiple times without someone with you. I told you I wanted you to stay away from him. That’s being a bad girl.”
A shiver of excitement ran through me at the same time as remorse. I’d been doing my job, and he’d just been trying to protect me. I could see how he’d have been afraid. God, if I’d seen someone hold a gun to his head… then shoot him. I wanted to throw up. I so deserved to be spanked or whatever he wanted to make amends. To make him feel better, to know I was safe and whole and under his control.
It was over though, and he needed to get past it as much as me. I’d let him do whatever he needed to feel better because it would heal me, too, and not the gunshot wound.
I wouldn’t let him sink into the what if’s though. “You’ll have to catch me, first,” I called out, turning and dashing through the lodge.
He stayed a breath behind me but let me get all the way in before he caught me up around the waist and swung me into the air. He tossed and flipped me, so I landed over his shoulder, then carried me back dropped me onto the large bed.
“On your belly, legs spread.” His voice was thick and gravelly with desire.
I grinned up at him. “Make me,” I taunted because I loved it when he showed me his strength. I loved that he could overpowe
r me. That his commands made my body instantly respond.
What could be sexier?
He laughed and climbed over me, snatching up my wrists. In a flash, he had me on my belly, my wrists pinned behind my back in one of his large hands. With the other, he smacked my ass.
I shrieked and wriggled although pain had changed for me now that I’d found my inner wolf. I registered the sensation, but it was not nearly so uncomfortable. In fact, I rather welcomed it. I shoved my ass up for more.
He spanked harder, alternating slapping one cheek then the other until my whole ass was warm and tingly. “Never put yourself in a situation like that again. No guns. No bad guys. In fact, no other men at all.”
Each thing he said was accompanied by a solid spank until I was sure my butt was a fiery shade of red.
“No guns. No men. Only you,” I cried out.
He kept going until he felt reassured of my words or that my ass had been spanked enough that I’d learned my lesson.
Only then did he flip me over. He pointed at me and said, “Don’t move.”
He went to our bags and pulled something out, but I couldn’t see it from where I lay. Moving to stand at the foot of the bed, he tossed the object between my parted legs.
It was the big dildo I’d been using the first time I saw him.
“I want to watch.”
I looked at the dildo, then him. He was definitely bigger. And harder. Thicker. Longer. I didn’t want the latex in my pussy. I wanted him, and I told him so.
Slowly, he shook his head, his dark gaze narrowed, his lids hooded. “Good girls get their pussy’s stuffed with big dick.”
Oh my God. The dirty talk.
Grabbing the toy, I gripped the base as I would Rob. Spreading my legs nice and wide, just as they’d been the week before, I set the dildo at my entrance, ran it over my folds, getting it wet. The spanking had gotten me hot and ready, and there would be no trouble working it inside me.
I looked to Rob, standing gloriously naked and watching. He gripped his dick and stroked himself as I pushed the dildo into me. Whimpering, I loved the feel of it, but knew Rob would stretch me more. Would sink deeper. Would pound me as hard as I could handle.
I wanted Rob, but he was only going to come to me when he was ready. So I’d make him that way. Gripping the toy’s base, I began to fuck myself with it, lifting and lowering my hips to take it, all the while I watched Rob. He wouldn’t be able to miss the wet sounds the toy made as I was so wet.
All at once, he growled, leaned over the bed, pushed my hand out of the way. Carefully, he fucked me once, then again with the dildo, then slipped it free. He held it up, shiny with my arousal.
“One of these days, you’ll fuck your pussy with that while I take your ass.”
I moaned at the visual.
“But now, I want that pussy.” With a quick flick of his wrist on my ankle, he flipped me back onto my belly. Then he moved behind me and nudged my knees wider. “Can I come inside you, Willow?” I loved how hungry he sounded, how much watching me play with myself pushed him to the edge. I also loved my real name coming from his lips. He knew who I was, wanted me. The real me. “I want to take you bare, to have nothing between us from now on.”
“Yes.” I looked over my shoulder at him and found his eyes glowing. I wondered if mine changed color, too, with the need swirling between us. And what shade?
He dragged my hips up until I stood on my knees, then pushed my torso down, still holding my wrists pinned to my back.
I sighed with pleasure the moment his cock dragged through my juices. Pushed back when he nudged at my entrance. Unlike the dildo, he was warm, hard but pliant… and big. So virile. And all for me.
One thrust, and he was in deep. I groaned, closed my eyes at how he felt stretching me open in ways a toy never would. Every time it was like this, as if he’d always be a tight fit.
“I won’t be able to hold back, angel,” he said hoarsely. “After watching you fuck yourself. Fuck, that was so hot. You’re mine now. Understand?”
“Yes,” I gasped because it sounded so right. But then I realized what he was saying.
He held himself still deep inside me. “Will you be my mate? Will you accept my mark, to walk beside me, be my alpha mate?”
This wasn’t a proposal. The words were more important than that. I knew what he was asking, the depth of it. The importance to him and his pack. To his wolf. To mine.
He was going to mark me.
Mate me.
Keep me forever.
Not because he had to in order to defeat the moon madness but because he wanted me.
“Do it,” I begged, squeezing my core around his cock, practically egging him on. “Claim me.”
I didn’t even know where the words came from. How I knew to call it that, but again, it sounded right. It felt right.
Rob let out a long shaky breath then began with an excruciatingly slow pump, sliding out of me and pushing in, like he was relishing every sensation. He took another slow stroke, but on the third, he slammed in hard and then was off to the races. He fucked me hard, thrusting in hard enough to slap his loins against my smarting ass. My face slid on the covers, and I panted, receiving him, until my own need started to ratchet up to a desperate level.
“Rob,” I cried out. “Please!”
Why was he still punishing me? I needed to come. I needed to feel him thicken and hold himself deep. Coat me in his cum. Bite me on the neck. Make me scream and feel like I was his, would always be.
“Willow.”
Yes! It felt so good to have him calling my name. The right name this time. He was right there with me. Me!
“Please,” I begged again. “Please, I need to come.”
“Oh fates,” he shouted, releasing my wrists to grasp my nape instead, to hold me immobile, so he could get deeper. Harder.
His thrusts were violent. Wild. Rough.
Perfect.
I screamed.
He roared.
And then he pushed me flat on my belly and sank deep, his hot cum filling my channel as his teeth sank deep into my shoulder.
It didn’t hurt. I registered the bite as pleasure. Deep, deep, pleasure.
My orgasm crested, and my legs flailed beneath him, ass squeezed tight, pussy clenched around his girth. I milked his cock of all its cum, moaning and sobbing my release as he filled me.
“Willow?” Rob murmured. His tongue stroked over the wounds in my shoulder. “Willow, angel. Are you okay?”
“Mmm.” I couldn’t speak, only smiled into the bed, satisfied. Not just physically but mentally too. I was right where I belonged, with Rob and as his mate.
“Willow? Talk to me.” He eased out and turned me onto my back beneath him.
I gave him a lazy smile. “I’m perfect,” I mumbled. “You’ve ruined me for all my toys.”
A slow, cocky grin spread across his handsome face. “Yes, you are, angel. You’re more than perfect.” He stroked his thumb down my cheek. “And now you’re mine.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I was. There was nothing between us any longer. No secrets.
“As for those toys, oh, we’ll play with them. But you need to come, you find me, and I’ll take care of you. Fingers, mouth, dick. I’m full service.”
His gaze dropped to my spread thighs, to his cum I could feel slipping from me.
“I like the sound of that.”
His face grew serious, as if he suddenly considered the consequences of his action. “Are you okay with this, Willow?” He kept calling me by name as if testing the sound of it on his tongue. “What about the DEA? You don’t have to worry about money, or a job, but I want you happy. Fulfilled.”
I made my eyes wider. “Looks like you’re moving to Phoenix!”
He went still, like he was considering it.
I smiled at the way he was even sparing a thought about the concept. “I’m kidding. You can’t leave your ranch or your pack.”
He relaxed.
�
�I want to stay here with you. Montana is where I grew up. I might not have tons of happy memories about my childhood, but this place… calls to me. I belong here on this land. With you. But having you means I get an entire pack, too. Will they accept me?” I pushed up on my elbows and bit my lip. “I’m not an alpha she-wolf. What happened with that Canadian alpha’s daughter anyway?”
The thought of her made me angry, but I was naked here with Rob, his mark on my neck, not on hers.
“I arranged for her to mate with the male she already knew she belonged to. And you are an alpha she-wolf,” he said, looking me in the eye and making it very clear he was serious. “Or my wolf wouldn’t have picked you. Your human side is irrelevant. I’ve seen your wolf, and she is magnificent. No one could deny your power in this pack.” He leaned down and kissed me. “It wouldn't matter if they did. I told them all I was mating you, even before I knew you were a shifter. Told them to go to hell if they had a problem with it.”
“You did?”
“I went to the Shefield place to tell you. Hell, to throw you over my shoulder and bring you back to the house. My wolf followed your scent and, well… we got a little sidetracked.”
My heart filled and overflowed. He’d chosen me just as I chose him.
“I wonder if my wolf would have ever come out if I hadn’t been shot,” I wondered.
He growled and his jaw clenched at the statement, but he shrugged and ran a finger down the center of my body.
“I told the pack elders off. I chose you, Willow. Human, wolf… giraffe. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled his body down on top of mine. “You did?” I smiled against his lips.
He licked into mine, kissed me thoroughly. “I did, angel. I’d pick you over the pack any day.”
I kissed him back. “I would never make you choose.” I stared up at his wonderful face. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Rob. I didn’t want to, you have to believe that. I couldn’t risk you or the case. My hands were tied.”
