Shifters Forever Worlds Mega Box: Volume 1

by Thorne, Elle

  “It’s past time.” She gave him a dirty look, but not for long, since at least he was willing to tell her the truth now.

  “My parents died when I was young. My father’s father brought me to an island called Syros to raise me. Until he died, that is, then a distant relative from my mother’s side gave me a home in the United States.”

  Something about the way he’d said that concerned her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Overthinking things, again, she chided herself. It was a bad habit.

  “Sounds sad, not having your parents around and then losing your grandfather, too.”

  “I guess.” His face was expressionless. “I’m sure others have gone through worse. That was so long ago, it seems like several lifetimes ago.”

  She could relate to that. Some of the things in her life felt as though they’d happened a long time ago, too.

  “Sophie.” His hand was still on her leg, his fingertips making tiny, lazy circles on her flesh. She couldn’t get her mind off the hypnotizing sensation.

  “Yes?” Her pulse rate was raised, her attraction to him heightened.

  Niko cleared his throat. “Does your family know?”

  She froze. Attraction, gone. Sensations, vanished.

  No. There’s no way he would know.

  She let her breath out slowly. “Know what?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Forgive me.” He put a hand out to help her down.

  She kicked off her useless high heels.

  “No. Please.” Her skin felt clammy. “Tell me. Know what?”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “Niko!” She screamed his name. Anger, frustration, hormones—all getting the best of her. “Answer me, dammit.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Fuck, baby.” He put his arms around her. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. Christ. Come here.”

  She let him hold her, mostly because she had no one else she could share this with, not yet.

  No. She wasn’t going to lie to herself or to her tigress. She let him hold her because there was something about him. Something she knew, deep down inside, and something her tigress seemed to have known for much longer than she had.

  She was falling for him.

  What her tigress knew was a horse of a whole different color. Her tigress knew he was the one for her. He was her fated mate. The one.

  “I can’t talk about it. It’s too…”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Were you…? Do you have someone who…?” Niko struggled with the words. He didn’t want to say them because saying them would make them real, and he thought they’d had something. A connection.

  Well, fuck.

  His panther thought they shared a lot more. His panther was certain she was meant for him.

  “Is the father…? Are you with him?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was one night. I was out alone, after work at After Dark. I should have been more careful. They were rovers.” A series of sobs shook her body. “Two of them held me down. The third…”

  Niko ground his teeth, clenched his hand into a fist.

  “I killed him. I killed the one who did it.” She buried her face in his shoulder. Her words were muffled, but he could make them out. “The other two came back. They’ve come back for revenge more than once. I haven’t told my family, except for one.”

  “How are you hiding the baby’s heartbeat?”

  She raised her head. “That one family member has some connections. She gave me a tea that would allow me to mask the baby’s heartbeat, but only for so long.”

  She turned those beautiful aquamarine eyes his way. Niko melted. He’d give her the world if she asked him for it when she was looking at him like this.

  “When did you first figure it out?” She sniffled.

  “Just now. How often do you have to drink the tea?”

  “Every morning. I missed this morning’s cup.” She grimaced. “So much for secrets.”

  “I’ll keep your secret, Sophie Tiero.”

  “I need to face the music, anyway.”

  “You did nothing wrong.” He tipped her face up, leaned in, and placed his lips on hers. “You’re an amazing woman.”

  She pulled back. Her laugh was bitter. “No man’s going to want me now. I’ll have a little shifter cub in tow. Who’ll want to deal with that?”

  “What’s to deal with? Two for the price of one.” He leaned forward, kissed her again, then smiled against her lips.

  “I was thinking to go see Doc Evans. I was hoping he could help me with the delivery. I also need to visit my mother. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  He realized she was babbling, probably from the stress. “You should do those things. You should tell your family, too. They’ll support you.”

  “Are you kidding? I came here to get my thoughts together, to try to figure out how to do the right thing in this argument my siblings and my father are embroiled in. I’m the only one who hasn’t broken the code. Though, if I deliver a wolf child, I’ll be as good as a traitor, won’t I?”

  “It’s not a wolf. And it’s not a boy. I’d put money on it being a girl.”

  She looked into his eyes, a question in hers.

  “The heartbeat. It’s not a male. It’s beating too fast. It’s also not a wolf. My panther knows. Your tigress knows, too. Haven’t you brought this up to her?”

  “No!” Her voice was vehement.

  “You have way too many burdens for someone who’s as young as you are and in the middle of all this turmoil.”

  “I’m not that young. Far from young.” Her cheeks were flushed from crying, the whites of her eyes veined with red from shedding tears.

  At that moment, Niko realized he wanted this woman more than anyone else. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything. And he wanted her as she was.

  His cock grew hard. He tried to fight it, but everything she was called to everything he needed with such urgency and passion that even if he’d wanted to deny it, his panther wouldn’t be denied.

  He wanted to be sensitive. He didn’t want to do that to her, not after what she’d been through.

  “Sophie.” His voice was hoarse, colored with desire. “If I don’t get some space between us right this minute, woman, I’m going to take you and make you mine.”

  * * *

  Sophie didn’t get off his lap. She didn’t know where they were going from here. She had no idea what would happen after today, or tomorrow, or whenever they were rescued, but there was something about this man she had to be a part of. She wanted Niko to be the last man who’d been inside her body. Not the asshole who’d taken what he wanted.

  She wanted passion to be how she remembered sex, not the ordeal she’d been through.

  He licked his lips, and her muscles flexed, deep inside, responding.

  “I can’t.” She struggled to find the words while his erection pressed against her hip. “I don’t know how to say this.”

  He opened his mouth to say something. She put a finger over his lips.

  “Don’t.” The word was torn from her. “Don’t say anything.” She took a deep breath, cleared her throat. “I need this. I need you.”

  “Do you know what you’re saying?” he rasped, desire changing his voice. A growling sound came from deep within his chest. It was his panther.

  She nodded, placing her hand on his hardness.

  His growl was louder, filling her ears as he helped her off his lap, stood, and dropped his pants.

  Moisture pooled between her legs. Her desire for him seeped into her panties then trailed between her thighs.

  “Your dress. I don’t want to tear it and leave you naked on this island. Never know who might join us.” The lust in his voice was laced with mirth.

  She pushed him backward, seating him on the log, and raised her dress to her hips.

  Niko’s pupils dilated, and his panther’s presence glowed in the depths of his eyes. He took her hand and pulled her
onto his lap, straddling him.

  “This wasn’t how I imagined it would be.” His voice was a hushed growl. “I wanted to please you, Sophie, not just do this. Not like this.”

  “It’s what I need, Niko. I need this. Now.”

  He groaned, as though her words were an aphrodisiac that sent him over the edge. He slid into her with a powerful plunge.

  She gasped, the sound torn from her tigress, coming out in a snarl. She felt him deep, so very deep, his thickness stretching her as if he were holding her from the inside.

  She arched her body, head thrown back, a roar building deep within her chest. Heaven help her, this man had exactly what she needed.

  His lips pressed against her neck, his tongue traveling upward to her chin then downward.

  Sophie wrapped her legs around his waist, taking him deeper inside, sheathing him fully. His fingers dug into the flesh of her ass, pulling her closer to him, then pushing her off while he drove in relentlessly.

  Her body was on fire from the barrage of pleasure from every plunge he made into her.

  She felt a scream building up in her but had no power to control it. It started as a low moan that was building toward crescendo. He pummeled into her over and over while the moan grew with the fierceness of every drive.

  She took her healing from him as she took her pleasure. When the scream began to spiral out of control, he pulled her forward, drinking her cries into his mouth, taking the sound of her pleasures into himself while her muscles spasmed out of control, contracting and flexing around him.

  With a final orgasm that seized control of her body, she stiffened as aftershock followed aftershock.

  Niko grunted then cried out, his face a mask of lust and release, his cock spurting heat deep within her.

  She collapsed forward, her heartbeat synchronizing with his as she panted, his name a whisper that her tigress snarled over and over in her mind.

  “Sophie,” he groaned. “What are you doing to me?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Niko felt bad. He’d told her that he was telling the truth. But he hadn’t told her all the truth.

  Damn.

  How was he supposed to tell her that he’d been hired to look after her? It would make everything they’d done seem like a mockery now.

  What he wanted to tell her was he’d have wanted to be exactly where he was, with or without pay.

  She gazed up at him with those beautiful blue eyes, the amber in their depths filling him with so many emotions.

  He’d always held his emotions back. He’d done that since the day he lost his parents. But with her, not only did he feel, he also didn’t mind showing some of those emotions. He touched his lips to her temple, giving her a featherlight kiss.

  “Let’s see how big the island is. Most of them aren’t too large. I don’t guess we’d get lucky enough to find an abandoned boat full of fuel.” He laughed, rose to his feet, and took her hand.

  “Tell me more about this island. About the history of it.”

  He brushed the dirt and bark off her dress, his hand lingering on her ass, wishing he could give her a bath, then lick every inch of her flesh.

  “I don’t know about this island specifically, but the Aegean is full of these little abandoned islands. My grandfather used to take me to visit when we’d go out fishing. Some only have little churches on them. Some have monasteries that look like fortresses, others have remnants of ancient civilizations. A few were even being excavated.”

  He shrugged. These things had been commonplace where he grew up. “I didn’t realize how special everything was when I was growing up here. It wasn’t until years after Gavin’s father had taken me away that I realized what I’d had.”

  She stopped walking and stood there frozen, staring at him. “Gavin? As in…Gavin Castro?”

  He realized immediately he’d fucked up in a big way. There was no way a woman as smart as Sophie wouldn’t put it together.

  Maybe, if he was lucky, she’d let it go.

  “Yes, Gavin Castro. His mother and mine were sisters. They’d both passed on. But when Gavin’s father heard that my grandfather had passed, he didn’t want to leave me without anyone. I was in an orphanage at the time.”

  “So if you’re Gavin’s cousin…”

  Here we go.

  “It’s not a coincidence that you’re here?”

  He swallowed hard, but the damned lump wouldn’t leave his throat. “Not exactly.” He managed to get the words out despite the lump of clay in his throat.

  She bit down on her lip then chewed it. A frown furrowed her brow. A series of emotions flashed over her face so quickly he couldn’t have identified them even if he’d wanted to.

  “So, by ‘not exactly,’ you mean…?”

  She was clearly going to make him spell it out.

  He scratched the back of his neck then scrubbed his hands over his face. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

  Her hands landed on the hips he’d held on to earlier. The full lips he’d kissed were drawn into a line.

  Shit’s going to hit the fan.

  He took the bull by the horns. “Rafe hired me. On Gavin’s recommendation.”

  Tears sprang into her eyes quicker than a summer thunderstorm could roll in.

  “So, the one guy I think is interested in me, the one guy I’ve been with since…has to be paid to be around me.”

  She turned her back to him, facing the ocean.

  She was unmoving.

  He got it; she felt betrayed. He wished he could help her understand that what they were sharing had nothing to do with Rafe or with being paid, and everything to do with the attraction between them. He just didn’t know how to say it. He’d never been good with words. Words weren’t Niko’s thing; action was, especially if that action required tackling his enemies.

  So he stood there, equally silent, waiting for her to explode at him or make some kind of dire pronouncement.

  It was worse than that, though, because she didn’t say anything at all, nor did she turn around.

  He exhaled the most painful breath he’d ever held. It was far more painful than all the times in Sigma Eps training he’d had to hold his breath underwater. Sigma Eps training had nothing on the emotional toil this was taking.

  He hurt for her. Here she was, pregnant with a baby her family might question her having, trying to juggle it on her own and keeping it a secret. And she had the family drama to handle, what with the younger Tieros bucking the older Tiero code of conduct.

  And I just threw her for a loop.

  Having sex completely complicated matters for her; he could see that.

  It didn’t complicate anything for Niko. He knew what he wanted, and how he wanted it, but it wasn’t all up to him. She had rights and decisions and choices to make.

  “Sophie.”

  “Don’t say my name.” Her voice was cold. “I don’t exist for you.”

  He opened his mouth then closed it, unsure what to say.

  Then, in the distance, he heard the sound of a motor. He scanned the horizon on their side of the island. “There’s a boat coming.”

  * * *

  Sophie looked at him, heartbroken. His beautiful face, more handsome than that statue of a Greek god. That gorgeous body. She’d thought about being with him, making a future with him. And now, she had no trust in him whatsoever.

  She turned toward the ocean, searching for the boat. She could hear the sound of its motor now, too. As angry as she was, as much as she wanted to sink into a well of self-pity, she couldn’t. She had to get away from this island, to a safe place. A place where she’d never have to see Niko again.

  She’d never have to be reminded she was a poor judge of character.

  “Wait here.” Niko put his hand on her arm. “Stay out of sight in case things don’t go exactly as I plan.”

  He shifted and bounded away toward the building where they’d been held captive, the little church their captors had turned into a holding cell
. Clearly, they’d done this more than once if they’d had the place converted to a cell before she and Niko were captured.

  She watched him go. His panther was large and pure black, magnificent, muscle-bound, just as his human was. The panther looked back at her once, his eyes locking with hers. Her tigress howled in sorrow in Sophie’s head.

  Sophie pushed the tigress away. She wasn’t having it.

  And yet she couldn’t stop staring at the fierce panther as he took a series of giant leaps, ready to protect her and her baby with his life.

  Her tigress snarled. She didn’t want to see either Niko or his panther hurt.

  Could she let him go on his own? What if he was outnumbered? What if he failed? For the baby’s sake, she couldn’t let him fail.

  She shifted into her tigress and followed him, keeping enough distance to not be noticed, but close enough to help him if he needed her.

  Niko slipped through the little church’s open door. Sophie stayed behind a rock covered with old volcanic matter.

  They didn’t have long to wait before the boat pulled ashore. It was a smaller boat than the one the kidnapping pirates had taken them aboard when they’d left the Bella.

  She noticed a shadow in the church’s long skinny horizontal window. Niko, still in his panther form, watching, his eyes glowed amber within their dark color.

  Three men jumped off the boat after throwing an anchor out to keep it from drifting. They sloshed through the water then slogged across the sand toward the church. They clearly didn’t suspect anything, as they were jovial and had their weapons tucked away.

  “Evgeny!” The Aussie called for his cohort.

  “Probably sleeping,” one of his fellow kidnappers said. “He can’t take a damned thing seriously, can he?”

  “Maybe. But what about Scott?”

  That must be the American.

  “Scott?” The Aussie reached into his waistband and pulled out a pistol.

  Not good.

  Sophie prepared to leap. As soon as two of the men were inside the little church, she rushed the last one and swiped at him with a paw.