by Anna Lowe
Beth shrugged. Axel was a big guy. Big guys needed big lunches.
Aunt Jean uttered a weary sigh and tightened her grip on Beth’s arm. “I really think you ought to go join him.”
Exactly what she’d been dying to do every day but couldn’t quite work up the nerve to do. It was fine for the man of her dreams to wake up and walk right into her arms. But for her to stride right into his arms? She wasn’t the type. Besides, it was better to admire silently from afar than to face rejection, right?
Her wolf growled quietly inside.
“Sweetheart, you do know that different shifter species can mix, right?” Ruth asked gently. “Mate. Even have children.”
She was absolutely, positively not thinking that far down the line. So what if her wolf whined and wagged its tail at the thought?
“Of course they can have children.” Aunt Jean nodded. “Both have a human side.”
“But what about the animal side?” The question popped out before Beth could catch it.
“What about it?”
Her imagination provided the image of a disfigured pup: not quite wolf, not quite boar. She gulped, groping for words. “Well, Zack’s parents were different shifter species, right? Coyote and wolf. And he came out somewhere in between…”
“I think most of the girls on the ranch would agree that our tracker came out very well, indeed,” Jean chuckled.
True, her wolf nodded. The man is hot. Not that he’s my type…
All of a sudden, her wolf had a type?
Big. Strong. Gentle, her wolf hummed away.
Beth shook her head, trying to clear away the wolf’s voice. “You know what I mean. If Zack came out in between, what would happen with a wolf and a javelina’s pups?”
Ruth dismissed her concern with a wave. “Coyotes and wolves are close enough to blend. Others don’t. The dominant shifter comes out. I had a distant cousin who mated with an eagle shifter.”
Beth could picture it now: a flying wolf.
Ruth shook her head. “They had three kids. Two eagle shifters and one wolf.” She looked Beth right in the eye. “And they loved every one of them just the same.”
Beth stood a little straighter and struggled to keep anger out of her voice. “Of course I would love my children.”
Especially if they’re Axel’s, her wolf added, not quite getting the point.
“I’m just…just…”
Just what?
Worried. Scared. Terrified of rejection by the man she couldn’t get out of her mind.
Aunt Jean cleared her throat sharply. It must have been some type of signal, because Ruth grabbed her other arm, and before Beth knew what was happening, they both marched her out the front door.
“But…but…” Oh God, what would he think?
“No buts, my dear.”
“But…”
Axel must have been lost in a really good daydream, because his eyes only snapped open when they stepped close.
“Axel, sweetheart,” Aunt Jean called.
He looked up with a smile, then blinked at Beth with a look that was part joy, part terror.
“Hello.” He rose from the seat and stretched up. Up. Up. God, the man was big.
“Such a polite young man,” Ruth murmured, elbowing Beth in the ribs.
“Hello, Axel,” Beth managed.
“Hello.” He nodded and smiled a shy smile that chipped away—ever so slightly—at her fears and doubts.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Beth hasn’t had lunch. Can she share?” Jean said, more order than request.
“Of course.” Axel’s nod was firm, though his voice wobbled a little bit.
The two older women parked her firmly in the seat beside him.
“And she wanted to show you this book,” Aunt Jean added, placing a picture book on the table.
I did? She glanced down at The Art of the Blacksmithy by Merritt Klein.
“We’ll be heading along now,” Ruth murmured.
The two women beat a hasty retreat, and silence settled in. A cozy kind of silence, if a bit awkward around the edges.
A hummingbird flashed by. The breeze played in the leaves. The ranch was peaceful, the day unseasonably warm.
“Hi,” Beth repeated, completely tongue-tied.
“Hi.”
Electric signals zipped around and around her brain in wild circles, but none of them seemed to result in any action apart from gazing at his face. His rust-colored scruff had grown into a proper beard, and it suited him. A thin edge of white showed where his teeth caught his lower lip and held it tight. His eyes were a rich, luminous brown, alive with excited little flashes like a pond full of secret treasures sunk deep, deep down.
God, he was close. And oh, the air was so warm. A perfect afternoon—when the chill of morning had worn off but the shiver of evening hadn’t yet set in. When the last strands of summer hung from the trees, and the quiet of winter hid somewhere over the western hills.
If the two of them had been on a porch swing, Beth would have given the ground a little push and sent it gently rocking. Tipped her glass of lemonade to his and made a toast. Maybe even leaned in for a kiss.
Instead, she swiveled nervously on her seat.
Axel opened his mouth and took a breath, about to speak, and her whole body went still.
His mouth closed, and her heart thumped harder.
For Christ’s sake! her wolf screamed. Say something!
“Um…nice book,” she tried.
Her wolf rolled its eyes.
“Nice book,” he whispered back.
Well, it was a start.
“What did you want to show me?” he murmured softly.
My naked body, sweating under yours, her wolf supplied. My legs, wrapped around your waist. My mouth, screaming your name—
“The…um…the pictures in this book,” she stammered.
Her wolf groaned.
She forced her eyes away from the rise and fall of Axel’s mile-wide chest and looked at the book instead. In the cover photo, sparks flew as a hammer worked metal over an anvil in a closeup shot.
“How’s work?” she asked, opening it to the first page.
“Good.” His voice was so low that even that one word seemed to vibrate right out of the ground.
“Good,” she whispered back, skimming past the table of contents.
“And you?”
“Good.”
And there they were, right back where they started.
Beth started leafing through Part One: Outdoor Art. The first page showed a wrought-iron garden gate, woven with vines. Some vines were real, others metal, but both seemed equally alive, equally determined to creep around the bars of the gate.
“Beautiful,” she murmured, tilting the book toward him.
“Nice,” he agreed, rotating a tiny bit closer on the seat. Their legs brushed.
Maybe the book hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all.
The next page showed the basin of a fountain ringed with metal birds so lifelike, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see them flap their wings and soar away. The page after that featured a brass door knocker in the shape of a gecko.
They sat there quietly, the two most breathless, overheated people to ever peruse the pages of that book. Their shoulders touched, and their scents surreptitiously rubbed off on one another. His was leather and oak and the open desert in the calm after a passing storm. Hers, violet mixed with lavender and a tiny hint of dry ink, as if the library had left its mark on her after all these years.
“I like that one.” She pointed to a candlestick on the next page. Watched his eyes sweep over it, the corner of his mouth twitch.
He nodded. “I like it, too.” The words plucked her heartstrings and worked their way deep into her soul.
“Did George show you how to make something like that?”
His inhale was almost long enough to be called wistful. “Maybe someday.”
&n
bsp; His words had an over-the-rainbow kind of longing in them, and she ached to run out, find exactly whatever his vision of someday was, and deliver it to him.
“Maybe someday, you can,” she whispered.
He looked at her then let that rumbly bass loose again. “Maybe I could.”
A pair of hummingbirds zoomed by, and they both watched the tiny flashes of blue and green converge on the feeder by the library.
Beth wiggled her toes inside her shoes. What to say? What to do?
Kiss him, her wolf whispered.
She’d always been a little wary of her wolf’s base instincts. But how could something be wrong if it felt so right?
She turned another page in the book and glanced up at him. The minute her eyes found his hickory gaze, they bounced away. He’d been looking at her. Holding his breath, barely moving, except for the jerk of his head.
She shocked herself by reaching for his beard. “You have something here…” she murmured the fib. There was nothing there. Her wolf made her say it.
Just one little touch… the beast begged.
She cupped his chin and gently stroked his beard with her thumb. Practically sighed at the pleasure of that contact, and at the sight of him, closing his eyes and leaning in to her touch.
Nice, his whole body seemed to purr. Nice.
It was nice. Dreamy. Perfect. When she stroked his beard with the grain, it was cottony soft. When she stroked against the grain, it was bristly. A perfect reflection of the man. The rust color was a shade lighter than his hair, a touch darker than the hues of the autumn leaves falling from the trees.
Trust me, her wolf pleaded with her human side. Trust me…
The whole earth seemed to hum around her, and a warm breeze danced in from out of nowhere. It wrapped around her ankles and starting winding up her body. She leaned closer, because she couldn’t not get closer. Tilted her head up just as he tilted down until their lips met in a kiss.
The lightest, gentlest kiss that had ever knocked a girl off her feet. His lips were dry on the outside but just as soft as she remembered them along the seam, and inside…like a pillow made just for her.
She sighed into that daydream of a kiss, full of longing and goodness and hope.
Axel barely moved except for tilting his head ever so slightly, finding the perfect angle for their lips to cross.
Mate… her wolf hummed inside. My mate.
A dangerous thought for a woman on her second kiss with a stranger, but the way her whole body was thrumming, what else could he be?
Axel tugged her a little closer, kissed a little deeper. One coarse thumb stroked the back of her neck as his tongue tested the seam of her lips. Ever so tentatively, as if he weren’t sure she wanted the same thing.
Want! her wolf cried. Need!
In the end, she was the one slipping her tongue past his. It was her, twisting toward his chest for more contact. Her, whimpering into the kiss.
Axel hummed like a bird who’d just flown hundreds of miles over open desert to find the sweetest nectar in the world. Like he’d been following a legend, unsure if it even existed until he stumbled into just the right oasis and found the ultimate prize. A single, blooming flower with magical properties, perhaps—the last of its kind.
She swiveled to face him, weaving her legs between his. Slipped a hand along his ribs, tracing the hard cords of muscle, soaking in his heat. Every breath she took was heavy, drawing his scent deep into her lungs.
Her wolf was moved to poetry for the very first time. Kissing him is heaven.
The human half of her mind did better. Kissing him is sipping hot chocolate next to a fireplace in winter while reading my favorite books.
Her wolf sighed in agreement. The parts where the heroine wins her man.
It was silly, but that’s what Axel made her feel like: a heroine, not just the ranch librarian.
Eventually, they ran out of air, and both gulped for breath at exactly the same time. For a single, terrifying instant, she was afraid he’d jolt back to reality and break away. But he didn’t. He dove right back in, hugging her legs with his, smoothing his hands along her sides in a second kiss that rivaled the first.
Until a disgruntled voice sounded not two steps away.
“Now, now. What do we have here?”
Chapter Seven
The minute Beth ripped away from Axel and focused on the face above the shimmering blouse, her gut wrenched. Only Audrey could kick the greatest moment of a person’s life down a rocky cliff and smile the way she was smiling right now.
Tight-lipped. Predatory. An icy, I’m so not amused smile.
Beth could practically see Audrey work through a rolodex of insults, selecting exactly the right one.
As if you deserve this man. Audrey’s opening volley boomed across no man’s land, starting the assault.
I do deserve him, Beth wanted to cry in return. He’s my mate.
Audrey’s lips curled up. Her eyes attacked Beth’s with the same look she’d used for the past thirty-plus years. Don’t make me laugh.
It took everything Beth had not to shrink away while her stomach roiled. Axel made her feel like a hero; Audrey made her a laughingstock.
The platinum blonde tossed her hair, and the sun caught in gold highlights. She shot Beth a You have no chance, Plain Jane look, and turned to Axel with a slightly warmer smile. A smile that said, You ain’t seen nothing yet. She thrust her shoulders back, making her boobs bounce under the thin silk of her blouse.
“Hello, Axel,” she purred.
Every hair on Beth’s arms stood on high alert. Her wolf snarled under its breath.
Axel’s hand tightened to a fist under hers.
“Hi,” he murmured in a flat voice. So flat, it was almost scary.
But Audrey wasn’t one to be easily swayed, not even by a massive boar telling her to back off. Her lips curled and her eyes flashed at Beth. You call what you were attempting a kiss? I’ll show you a kiss…
Beth winced, picturing deep tongues, groping hands, dirty words.
“Oh, what’s this?” Audrey reached between the two of them, keeping her back to Beth and her boobs to Axel. She snagged a tomato from Axel’s unfinished salad and brought it to her mouth. Oil and vinegar dripped across the open book, not that Audrey seemed to notice.
A good thing Beth couldn’t see Audrey bite down on the tomato; she might just have been sick. Just imagining the painted lips closing over it and savoring the juices was bad enough.
“Yum,” Audrey announced, drawing the sound out.
From the stricken look on Axel’s face, Audrey had probably looked him in the eye as she did it, making it clear exactly what she found so yummy. His eyes flamed, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.
Aunt Jean might as well have jumped in at that moment and handed him a stenciled T-shirt: Polite Young Man. Unable to insult a lady, no matter how dirty her tactics. Beth could feel his pulse skip in anger, feel his muscles coil. If Audrey had been a man, Beth would have been standing in the middle of a fistfight.
But Audrey wasn’t a man, and Axel clearly wasn’t armed for her kind of fight. He cleared his throat and stood to leave, but Audrey just sidled closer.
“Audrey,” he growled, gripping Beth’s hand tighter.
Every muscle in Beth’s body twitched. Her claws pushed from under her fingernails so insistently, it hurt. Her wolf growled, desperate for a fight.
“So, Axel,” Audrey went on in her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. She thrust one ample hip to the side. “I have an offer you just can’t refuse…”
I doubt it, Axel’s faint snort said.
Beth rose from her seat with her own growl of warning. “Audrey…”
It was time to stand her ground. To finally show Audrey she would not be cowed. To finally—
“Mister Axel! Mister Axel!” a tiny voice called.
“Beth! Beth!”
Two little girls came skipping up, oblivious to the poison in the air, and for that
split second, Beth wavered.
“Beth, you promised us a story,” Tana said, grabbing her hand.
“Yay! A story!” Holly added.
Axel’s eyes darted to the children and Beth could see him waver, too. Her gentle giant would never make a scene in front of the kids.
“Yes, why don’t you go read them a story?” Audrey’s eyes took on a triumphant sheen.
All the courage Beth had worked up rushed into her fists, but she kept them balled tightly at her sides. Audrey might not have much class, but Beth did.
“Mister Axel, you want to come, too?” Holly asked, cheery as a poppy. She hopped on one of the rotating seats and swiveled around.
Audrey all but shoved the little girl aside, yellow sundress and all, and stepped sideways to block Axel from view. “He’s busy. Can’t you see?”
Busy falling prey to a black widow. Beth imagined him fighting the sticky strands of Audrey’s web. But every man succumbed to Audrey’s allure, sooner or later. After which they wouldn’t give Beth a second glance.
So fight for him! her wolf cried. Fight now!
But how could she with the kids around?
“But…but…” Holly stuttered.
Beth’s heart stuttered the same way. But…but…
No more buts! her wolf roared.
She opened her mouth. Kids or no kids, she was ready to put Audrey in her place.
It might have been Beth’s shining moment, her payback for years of torment, but before she could get the words out…
“Audrey!” a voice barked from behind them, and everyone went silent. Hell, half the desert went quiet at that command.
Beth looked up to see Ty, the pack alpha, standing in the walkway like a dark thundercloud poised at the entrance to a slot canyon.
“Hi, Daddy,” little Tana called, completely unconcerned.
“Hi, pumpkin,” Ty replied, half a tone higher than his usual growl. Then his voice dug back into the depths of the earth. “Audrey. Come. Now.”
Ty’s eyes flicked briefly to Beth, then jumped away again, dismissing her. That’s just Beth, his eyes seemed to declare. Who cares about her?
Just like that, Beth’s courage fled.
Audrey puckered up her lips an inch from Axel’s brow, and he, too, froze in place.