He didn’t want one.
Ivy moved closer still, and he felt her eyes on him as a shiver down his spine, one that spread heat through his veins and stoked his need, birthing a desire to look at her.
He kept his eyes on his work, ignoring her, doing his best to shut her out and pretend she didn’t exist.
The sooner she got a damned photograph of a bear and left, the better.
It had been a mistake to let her stay, worse than a mistake to agree to her remaining on his property, close to him, overnight.
He should have made her leave.
He breathed a low sigh of relief when she took her eyes off him and moved away, and he relaxed again, that heat she stirred washing out of him and allowing him to focus back on his work.
Another row of shingles went down quickly, and he was falling back into a nice tempo.
Ivy gasped loudly.
Rath whipped around to face her, a bolt of fear shooting through him, worry that hurled a hundred images of her in danger at him and had him ready to spring off the roof of the cabin and shift to fight whatever had startled her.
To protect her.
He stilled.
She leaped backwards, out of the stream, grimacing as the pebbles on the shore bit into her now-bare feet, and shivered, muttering obscenities to herself beneath her breath.
Her mouth snapped shut and she tensed, and every instinct he possessed said that she had felt him looking at her, was aware a predator watched her, a beast who wanted to fight, seethed with a need to attack.
She slowly turned to look over her left shoulder at him, a pink stain on her cheeks. “It was cold.”
That was all she had to say?
She had almost given him a fucking heart attack, had pushed him close to shifting in front of her, a human, revealing his kind to her, and all she could say was it was cold?
He growled at her, “What did you expect? It comes from the glacier.”
He pushed out a slow breath, trying to steady his racing heart and purge the adrenaline that had shot through him at the thought she was in danger, and ignored the way she scowled at him. No way he was going to apologise for the bite that had been in his tone.
Who the fuck walked in a glacial river in spring without testing the temperature with their hand first?
He huffed and vaulted from the roof, landing in a silent crouch on the deck, and pushed onto his feet to stride towards her where she stood sheepishly beside the river, her eyes on it now.
Maybe scolding her had been a bit much.
That tight, squirming feeling kicked off in his chest again and he did his damnedest to ignore it as he reached the river, pulled a cloth from his back pocket and crouched beside the crystal clear water. He wetted the handkerchief and rubbed it over his brow and neck, wiping the sweat from it. The water was particularly cold today, more so than normal. The warmer weather was probably melting the snow on the mountains and bringing it down into the river.
He glanced at her feet, at her pinkened toes, and then back at his cloth as he lowered it in front of him.
“You okay?” he said gruffly, sort of an apology, but not an outright one, because he didn’t need her getting comfortable around him.
Because he shouldn’t be getting comfortable around her.
“Mmhmm.” She shuffled along the bank a few inches, away from him, and busied herself with her camera, and that feeling in his chest grew worse, had him wanting to rise onto his feet and apologise to her.
Rath looked down at the water, shoved his damp cloth back into his jeans pocket, and scooped some up, drinking it from his palm. Her eyes landed on him, and he could sense her interest as she watched him, her curiosity as she turned towards him and the spark of anger and irritation he had detected in her faded. He scooped another handful of water up and drank it, sighed as the coolness of it washed through him, chilling that spark of fire in his blood that she kept igniting.
He eased back, pushed his hands against his knees and rose to his full height. “It’s clean. Pure. There’s nothing but forest and mountains between here and the source.”
She still looked wary, and he could understand why, but his cougar senses would warn him if the water was infected with something, and in all his years at Cougar Creek, he had never had a problem drinking directly from the river. Even with his constitution, it was possible for him to become ill if he downed enough bacteria.
“You’ve never gotten sick from it?” She glanced at the water.
“Never.” He kept his eyes locked on her, studying the subtle ways her expression shifted as she considered drinking from the river.
“I’ve done it once or twice before.” Her eyes darted to him and then away again. “I always worry there will be something in it though that will make me ill.”
“You won’t get sick.” When he said that, her hazel gaze leaped to him and she searched his eyes, as if looking for the truth in them, or maybe the reassurance she needed to go through with it.
She must have found it, because she stooped, and his eyes dropped to her as she cupped her hands and scooped water into them, and lifted it to her lips. Her eyes drifted shut as she drank it, and he almost groaned as beads of water chased down her chin and her throat. His cougar side purred in deep appreciation of the sight of her, looking for all the world as if she was made to walk in his one.
She lowered her hands and looked up at him, her gaze catching his and holding it, and as the sun bathed her face, made her eyes sparkle and brightened them, he lost himself in charting every fleck of gold against the hazel of her irises.
His heart beat harder, stronger, drummed against his chest and in his ears as he stared down into her eyes, the air between them crackling with energy that chased over his skin, had the hairs on the back of his neck rising and his breath coming faster.
A need to growl, to snarl and make her cower, make her submit to him, rose within him, had golden fur on the verge of rippling over his arms and chest beneath his dark green fleece.
He shook it and the spell she had cast on him off and pushed away from her, his voice a dark rough rumble. “Only gasp like that when you’re about to get attacked in the future.”
Because it did things to him that made him dangerous.
Made him want to forget everything.
Made him want to lose himself in her.
Chapter 5
“Let me help.” Ivy followed Rath as he stormed away from her, his damned back up over her gasping.
It wasn’t as if she had committed a crime, so she couldn’t understand why he was making such a big deal of it. The iciness of the water had shocked her, and she had done what had come naturally.
Gasped.
Part of her wanted to stay near the river in case bears showed up, and maybe to avoid him a little, but the rest of her had her chasing him down, determined to do something that would stop him from being so gruff with her. Downright moody.
Maybe he was always like this.
Maybe she was expecting too much and any attempt to smooth things over between them so her night here wouldn’t be awkward and a complete disaster was going to backfire and only make things worse.
“I don’t need help.” He proved that by nimbly leaping to land on his right foot on a post of the railing that enclosed the deck that ran around the front and right side of the cabin and vaulting from it onto the roof as if he was a professional gymnast.
“It’s the least I can do for you letting me stay here. I want to repay you.”
When he glanced down at her, banked heat in his stormy grey eyes, images of other ways of paying him back popped into her head. She immediately shoved them out again.
He turned away and looked as if he was going to ignore her until she got bored and went away, but then he huffed as he glanced around the roof. He stilled and stared at the rafters through the hole he was repairing, his rugged face dark with whatever thoughts were crossing his mind, his near-black eyebrows dropping low, causing a wrinkle at the
top of his straight nose and a slight twist of his lips.
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “Fine. Hand me those shingles.”
There was a weight of regret in his tone, one that made it clear he wasn’t happy about her helping him. Why? Was he the sort of man who preferred to fly solo in everything he did? Did he view her helping as something that would make his work less rewarding?
Or was it something else?
She gathered a stack of the wooden shingles and tiptoed, stretching them towards him as he reached down for them, his eyes fixed on the roof, held away from her.
She was starting to get the impression that his problem wasn’t with people, it was with her.
Well, he wasn’t the first difficult man she had worked with, and she wasn’t going to let his temperament deter her from paying him back by helping him.
While he worked, she took off her camera and set it down on a rusty metal table, and moved the table close to her, so the camera would be within arm’s reach if a bear showed up. He had said they wouldn’t come today, but what did he know about wild animals? It was impossible to predict their movements. There was still a chance that the bears would show up.
A chance that she clung to as she handed him more shingles whenever he needed them and kept one eye on the river as the day wore on.
“They won’t come now,” he said and she snapped herself back to him, tearing her gaze away from the river and lifting it to him where he balanced on the edge of the roof, his left leg dangling and his right one bent at the knee.
He rested his arm on it, letting his left one drape with his leg, and looked down at her.
“They might.” She tried to keep the disappointed note from her voice, because if she heard it, she would want to give up on them, and she had never given up on anything.
Not yet anyway.
“Something must have spooked them.” He raised his head and scanned the scenery beyond her, a wrinkle forming between his dark eyebrows as he set his jaw, focus written in every line of his face. His eyes looked brighter again, almost golden. His deep voice lowered to a smooth warm tone that was soothing. “Maybe they’ll show up in the evening.”
She glanced at the river and had the feeling he was being nice to her, saying what she wanted to hear so she didn’t lose heart, but when she looked at him, his handsome face was dark and he was focused back on his work, hammering in the shingles with a renewed sense of purpose, as if the poor things had done something wrong.
Or maybe he felt he had done something wrong by being nice to her.
It hadn’t slipped her notice that he had been keeping his distance. She had known enough men to spot the signs that screamed he wanted her gone, regretted letting her stay and had thought the better of it. It was fine with her. As soon as she got her shots, or tomorrow morning passed without a bear showing up, she was moving on.
She had learned her lesson where men were concerned, was damned if she was going to get caught up in him and get burned all over again.
But damn, he didn’t make it easy.
He hammered the last shingle home, admired his work with a satisfied glint in his grey eyes, and then twisted away from the roof. He planted his hands against the edge of it and sprang down, his body flexing deliciously as he pushed off, hips arching forwards, and landed squarely on his feet on the deck just a metre from her.
He must have been a professional gymnast in a previous life.
Although she did suppose his agility could easily have come from working alone on the cabins, his days passed in manual labour and physical exertion making him more flexible and stronger than most men.
He slowly rose to his full height, his eyes darker than before as he lifted them to her, and stared at her for a long, drawn out and intoxicating moment before he casually discarded his hammer and pulled a handful of nails from his back pocket. She tensed as he leaned towards her, heart doing a flip in her chest as he came close to brushing her left arm with his chest, and his masculine earthy scent filled her senses.
The sound of the nails hitting the metal table beside her was loud in the thick silence.
He paused, and she swore he looked at her, swore he leaned towards her a little as he withdrew and pulled in a deep breath.
As if he was taking her scent into his lungs in the way she wanted to breathe his in.
He didn’t look at her as he moved around her, but he tensed as his left arm brushed hers.
His voice came from behind her, a note of warmth in it that was new, and a little startling. “You deserve a beer after your work. Come on.”
“What I really need is a shower,” she muttered as she turned to follow him, sure that she stank after her trek through the forest and today’s work.
He paused and looked at the river. “You can wash in it.”
Ivy shuddered. “It was freezing. No thank you!”
He smiled, and hell, it was dazzling, lit up his whole face and was such a contrast to the man who had been glowering at her from the moment they had met that all she could do was stare at him and wonder who this man was and when had he switched bodies with the Rath she had thought she had been coming to know?
“I have a bath. The water’s heated by the solar panels and the burner, but it should be hot enough. You’re welcome to use it.” The moment he said that, something crossed his face, something that erased the warmth from him and left her feeling cold as he moved away from her, heading towards his cabin.
Ivy lingered, her gaze following him up the sloping green as his long legs swiftly devoured the distance between him and the cabin as if he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough.
Infuriating.
It was definitely a word that applied to him.
He wanted her off his land, and then let her stay. He was nice to her one minute, and biting her head off in the next. He smiled at her, and then hit her with a scowl so fierce she was left reeling.
She wasn’t sure she could figure him out if her life depended on it.
As smoke curled from the chimney of his cabin, filtering through the tall pines that sheltered it to blend with the grey of the mountain beyond, she picked up her camera and flicked through the photographs, using them to distract her from him. She didn’t need to figure him out.
Tomorrow, she would be gone, and he would be just a memory.
One she was beginning to feel would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She sighed, set the strap of her camera over her shoulder, and trudged up the slope to his cabin. When she reached it, stepping up onto the deck, he emerged so swiftly he almost collided with her.
“You took your time,” he grumbled, and she shrugged, because she didn’t owe him an explanation. He edged past her as if she had a contagious disease and he didn’t want to risk getting it and stepped off the deck. “Bath is filled.”
With that, he was striding away from her.
Infuriating man.
She peered into his cabin. It was roomier than she had expected, with a small kitchen area to her right and a rickety looking staircase that curved up to a loft, and a living room ahead of her. She walked to the coffee table and set her camera down beside his laptop, bent and stripped off her boots. She placed them near the log burner and looked around for the bathroom.
A door beyond the couch, opposite the fire, revealed a white tub.
Ivy crossed the room to it and frowned.
Infuriating and complicated.
She canted her head at the neat stack of fluffy white towels folded on the closed seat of the toilet beside the sink near the bathtub, and the arrangement of shampoo and body wash bottles on top of them.
He seemed to hate showing her any kindness, had reacted badly all the times he had been nice to her, and now he had shown a great amount of care, filling the bath for her, presenting her with fresh towels and leaving the cabin so she would have it to herself.
Even if she had all the time in the world, she wasn’t sure she would ever figure Rath out.
Not when Rath had obviously used all of his hot water supply to fill the bath as much as he could, to around halfway up the white tub.
She stepped into the tub, sank into the water, and moaned as she leaned back and it lapped over her breasts and shoulders.
Heaven.
Her eyes slipped shut and she relaxed, savouring the way the water warmed every inch of her and seemed to chase the fatigue from her body and the tension from her muscles.
A bath had never felt so luxurious.
She wasn’t sure how long she soaked, but the water was growing cooler when she finally forced herself to reach for the shampoo and body wash, and set to work. When she was done, she eased back again, wringing out every last drop of time in the bath.
She didn’t want to leave it.
Or put her old clothes back on.
She was sure they stank too and her odour had been half the reason he had been so off with her, keeping his distance. She couldn’t blame him.
“Shoot,” she muttered as the thought of fresh clothes had her remembering that she had left her pack in the living room, near the door.
Her heart pounded as she considered trying to reach it.
She wasn’t sure where Rath was now. She had been in the bath so long that he could be anywhere, had probably gotten bored of waiting for her to emerge and had returned to the cabin for that beer he had clearly wanted as a reward for his hard work.
Ivy stood and let the water run off her, and grabbed one of the towels from the stack. Thankfully, it was large enough to wrap around her, and covered her from her chest to midway down her thighs. She tucked it closed beside her left breast, opened the door and peeked out.
Shifters Gone Wild; Collection Page 18