by Jenna Kernan
“You were saying?” he mocked.
“I was saying that if you don’t take me soon I’m going to launch myself on you like a knight on a broadsword.”
And he was broad, and long and oh so ready for her. She twitched under his touch now, as he grinned at her. She’d never seen such control. It was driving her insane.
She rubbed against him. His eyes went dark as his sex twitched. A bead of moisture issued from the tip and all humor left his face.
“Take me,” she begged.
“Yes.”
He rolled to his knees, hoisting her legs high. She clasped them around his back and clenched, trying to bring him to her, but his sex slid wet and hard, along her belly. She relaxed her legs and he slid back, using one hand to position himself at her opening. She bit her lip in anticipation, looking at the length of him poised. She ached to bring him inside; her body pulsing with need.
He raised his eyes to meet hers, giving her one last chance to reject him.
“Now,” she said.
And he took her, gliding forward and into her body, slowly, broaching only a few inches. Her body stretched, and her head dropped back at the wonderful feeling of fullness. She longed to take the rest of him. He waited there, his head beside hers, but for what she was not certain.
“Do I hurt you?” he whispered.
She turned her head and bit him hard on the thick, muscular junction of his neck and shoulder. It had the effect of striking a horse with a riding crop. He lifted onto his elbows and slid forward in a rough stroke that made her body quiver with delight. Their hips locked and he gave a growl of satisfaction.
“Faster,” she commanded.
And he accommodated, driving forward again and again as she opened her legs wide to accept him deep into her body. The ride grew quick and his breathing erratic. She knew he was reaching his limit. He locked one arm around her shoulder, holding as he drove forward. His other hand slipped down between them to tease her aroused flesh. It was like firing a starting pistol. She exploded into her next orgasm with a startled cry of astonishment. He panted in her ear and then arched.
Her body’s rippling contraction milked him and she felt the rush of warmth rush from his body to hers. In that perfect moment of mutual pleasure, she wished she was not so dutiful about taking her birth control.
Where did that come from?
She didn’t know, nor did she try to understand, just acknowledged that the regret was there, along with the delight.
“Thank you for accepting me,” he whispered. Then his voice changed from the warm honey of satisfaction. Now it held a note of doubt. “Did I hurt you?”
“Nothing but bliss,” she said and stroked his thick dark hair. “Rest a bit and we’ll try round two.”
His laugh was slow and content. “Yes.”
She dozed then, waking when he carried her to bed, cradling her in the silken iron of his arms. He stretched her out on a featherbed and she sank deep into the soft luxury of the mattress. The bed sagged as he lay beside her, dragging the coverlet over them to cocoon her with the warmth of his body and his bed. He drew her close, wrapping a trunklike leg over hers, pinning her to his side. She felt his rising need pressing to her hip and smiled in pleasure. He stroked her from shoulder to thigh, roaming and arousing, calling her back from slumber to passion.
She had left him again, by falling asleep; her slumber a sort of abandonment. So she shook off her stupor and concentrated on him, urging him to his back and slithering over him to press flesh to warm flesh. She reached between his legs, grasping him in her two hands and finding she could still not contain him. She lowered her lips to him, taking his head in her mouth, drawing him deep as she used her tongue to stroke the vein that rode the underside of his erection.
He gasped and she smiled. For just this moment she was more powerful than he. Or did he just permit her to explore his aroused flesh, drawing her mouth and lips over the long length of him? The muscles in his legs bunched now as he strained to remain motionless.
He reached down, grasping her shoulders, dragging her up and over his chest, until their hips met.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“If you like to tease me, do it from here.”
She accepted the challenge, lifting her hips and holding him in position so she could slide over him in one sharp, hard drop.
His intake of breath was nearly as sweet as the sensation of friction and fullness.
She lifted up, nearly unseating herself and then fell again. There was no need to be gentle. She knew he could take what she wanted to give him. And so she rose in achingly slow motions, lifting like a rider posting on a horse and then impaled herself over and over again. Soon the leisurely ride was driving her mad. Her effort to bring him to heel was failing, as it grew nearly impossible to keep up her excruciatingly slow pace. She glistened with a sheen of sweat and trembled as she resisted the need to move faster. It grew too much as her release shimmered before her. She wanted it and broke into a mad frenzy of speed, but he captured her hips, holding her motionless with no noticeable effort. Her body pulsed all about him, hovering on the edge of release.
“Oh, please,” she begged.
He flipped her to her back with a quickness that made her head spin.
“You started this. You’ll finish it. If I can take it, you can.”
He held her hips, pinning her deep into the mattress as he continued the slow draw and quick thrust of her earlier seduction. She writhed, bucked, begged, but he continued on with control that was maddening and exquisite torture.
Her orgasm rolled in like distant thunder slowly building to a dangerous storm.
He was dragging his thick erection from her once more when her orgasm hit like a lightning strike deep inside her core. Her body arched with spasmodic explosion, the most intense of her life. She cried his name, riding the crest of the pleasure he had given her. On and on it went and she understood in some deep place that he was right to keep her from snatching her pleasure for this was something to be savored. The lushness of this was so much deeper, richer than anything she could have imagined. He drew back so far that she thought he might leave her and then came back, driving again into her pulsing body. His orgasm came as their hips locked. She felt a wonderful pressure that brushed against pain as he pressed himself to the deepest depths of her and she stretched to accept him. The head of his sex beat rhythmically against her cervix with his release, and she wrapped her legs about him to bring him still closer. He clasped his arms around her as they sank into the dark folds of his bed.
Yes, she breathed, this was what couplings should be. It was only as she drifted in her afterglow that she remembered his words. He said his life would be long and hers short. One way or another, she would lose him and she would be no more than the first of many.
Chapter Five
Luisa startled awake as Ty sprang naked to his feet, standing alert beside the bed.
She dragged the covers up before herself and glanced nervously around the room. He looked as if there were some immediate threat, but she could see nothing in the sunlit bedroom.
Morning! Her heart sank. The night was gone, slipping by as she slept.
“Ty?”
“Something’s wrong. One of the bears.”
She was on her knees now, still clutching the sheet.
“Which one?”
“The old one you call T78. They’re attacking him.” Ty closed his eyes as Luisa scrambled from the bed. Where the hell were her clothes? Living room, she remembered.
“Who is?”
He didn’t seem to hear her as his unfocused gaze drifted about the ceiling.
“They’ve dragged him from his den in the high meadow.” Ty’s eyes snapped to hers. “I have to go.”
He stalked to the doorway, clothing covering him as he went. But her shout stopped him and she caught up.
“Take me with you.”
“Too dangerous.”
“I want to help.�
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He grasped her shoulders in that velvet grip, the way one might hold a violet in a closed fist, protecting the bloom without crushing the petals.
“I’m going to kill them, Luisa.”
“But what if they shoot you?”
His smile was cold, his eyes deadly. “My little warrior, you need have no fear for my life.”
“I don’t think—”
“Luisa, this is my purpose. I am their guardian. I will come back for you. Stay here—stay safe.”
“I can’t. I have to report in.”
His troubled eyes pinned her. He looked as if he knew this moment would come, but it had arrived too soon. “Will you wait a little longer?”
She wanted to, but her partner, her friends…her life were elsewhere.
“They’ll be worried.”
His lips pressed into a thin line. It was obvious he did not wish to lose her, but that he needed to leave. “It came sooner than I had expected.”
“What?”
“Our parting.”
“But I just have to let them know I’m okay. I can come back.”
He shook his head. “If this bear was not crying for help, I don’t think I’d have the strength to release you.” He stepped away, his shoulders rounded in defeat. “My SUV is in the garage. Keys are inside.”
“I don’t know where I am.”
“You’re off South Tepee Creek Road. Take 986 to the West Park Entrance. You know it?”
She did…even knew of his luxurious home. It was the object of speculation, the house that never had an occupant.
“Will I see you again?”
He sighed. “I was brave enough to take you, knowing I can’t keep you. But to see you again…it prolongs the pain.”
“Why do you assume that you will drive me away?”
“A century of experience.”
“Sharing a life takes courage. Something I know you do not lack. I’m coming back here tonight. I hope you’ll be here.”
He stalked to the front door, retreating with astonishing speed. By the time she had pulled on her pants and boots, he was outside and running down the road. She watched him through the picture window, as she groped for the remains of her shirt and found her radio resting beside her holster with her tranquilizer gun. Her pants still held her cell phone, set on silent, as it always was when she was working. There were fifteen missed calls.
She paused at the crack of thunder, so unfamiliar this time of year. The storm swept in from the west. She ran onto the porch to watch the twister tearing across the open meadow. Ty lifted his arms. For a moment she thought it was the debris in the wind, but then she realized what she witnessed. He changed into his bear form—rising, growing. Goliath now stood where Ty had been. The mighty bear roared as the funnel cloud consumed him. When the Whirlwind lifted, he was gone.
Luisa laced her boots and ran for the back of the house and into the adjoining garage. A black SUV was covered with salt and dirt, but the keys dangled from the ignition.
She was off and on her way an instant later, hitting the buttons on her cell phone to bring up the recent calls. She didn’t use the radio because it was too public.
A moment later she had her partner, Buck, on the phone. The aging veteran of bear research did not sound like himself when he answered.
“Luisa? Jesus. Is that you?”
“I’m here. I’m okay.”
“What the hell happened? Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick. The Feds are searching for you. Thought your disappearance might be linked to the death threats. All our people are out with the local law enforcement, too.”
He reminded her of her dad, back in the days when breaking curfew was cause for an investigation.
“Call them off, or better yet, send them to T78.”
“The bear?”
“Those guys, the ones who attacked me, that’s where they are.”
Luisa prayed that they didn’t shoot Ty as she turned onto the park roads and headed for home where her skis would allow her to follow him.
“What happened to those men, Luisa? Looked like a bear attack, but we didn’t see any tracks.”
She told him about the men at the den and the shooting.
“My God,” he said.
“This guy showed up. He defended me. Next I know I’m in his pickup truck bouncing over some back road.”
“He kidnapped you?”
“Rescued me.”
“We found a sled and your rifle and skis.”
Luisa frowned. “Two sleds.”
“Two bodies—one sled.”
“Three bodies.”
“Luisa, are you all right? I said two. Both Ben Hatcher’s boys. Can’t find him or the other two brothers.”
At the name, Luisa’s face heated. “Those bastards. I should have known.” The men were ranchers; inferior ones who blamed everyone but themselves for their misfortunes. They’d been caught poaching fox and never paid the fines or their taxes and were poised to lose their ranch.
“Have you been to their place?”
“Yeah. But they’re gone. The sheriff already searched the place.”
“Did you find my maps?”
“Negative. This is why you should take that job in Idaho Falls. It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“They’re not chasing me off.”
“It’s a promotion, for Christ’s sake.”
“No. Not until this is settled.”
There was a pause and then Buck spoke again. “Hey, remember that mauling? The hiker that shot the cub?”
Just when she didn’t think she could get angrier… The guy killed a cub and was killed by the sow. They had the bear locked up and were just checking the hair samples from the victim’s body to confirm the identity before putting her down.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Not her.”
Luisa gripped the wheel at the sense of relief. “What?”
“No match, and get this—a male grizzly. So I’m heading over to your place to get the hair samples. We can check them against the ones found on the body.”
Luisa knew whose hairs they were. “Son of a bitch!”
“I thought you’d be happy. She’ll be released.”
And Goliath would be number one on the most wanted list.
“I’m heading home now. I’ll pick it up. Where are you?”
“Base.”
Luisa floored the gas. “I’ll be there soon.”
“The Feds want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, when I get there.”
She pressed the disconnect and tossed the phone on the passenger seat.
The ride seemed to take forever. Finally, she sighted the small house that was home since she started studying the bears here fourteen months ago.
She ran up the snowy steps and into the house, retrieving the samples and removing one small glass vial. The high whine of a snowmobile brought her back onto the porch. Someone was coming. Ty? Buck? There were two sleds judging from the engine sounds. She clicked on her radio.
“Station, Luisa here.”
“Hey, you home safe?” Buck’s familiar voice rattled through the radio.
“You still at the base?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I got company. Two sleds from the sound. Any idea?”
“I’m calling the rangers.”
The two men roared into her yard, billowing diesel smoke. She was halfway down the porch preparing to chew them out when she noticed the back end of one sled and drew up short. There was a distinct series of gashes that she recognized immediately. A grizzly, a big one, had attacked that sled.
Luisa came up short as the men dismounted. She had the holster shield unhooked and her hand on the grip when the second rider drew his rifle from the sheath across his back and aimed the barrel at her chest.
“That’s the grizzly-loving bitch.” He was dressed in a navy blue, one-piece winter cover—designed for sledding. The garment only accentuated his
overlarge belly and spindly legs, but she recognized the voice anywhere. Ben Hatcher. The one holding the weapon was likely one of his sons.
Luisa faced the one glaring at her down from behind the barrel of his cocked rifle.
“You boys been here before, maybe made a mess?” As she spoke she started clicking the radio, sending the SOS call to her partner, knowing he was too far away to help. Then she pressed the call button and held it so he could hear the conversation but not reply. “Maybe you sent me some love letters?”
“If you’d of listened, you’d still be breathing this time tomorrow.”
“Just doing my job.”
“Them bears is killing our cattle.”
“Government pays for those.”
“Government?” He made a disgusted sound in his throat and spit. “Shoot her, Cal.”
The man hesitated.
“Killing me is going to get you boys in a world of trouble.” She eyed Cal. “You most of all, since you’re the trigger man.”
“That thing killed my boys. You think I’m going to let you live after that,” said Hatcher. Man, she hoped Buck was hearing this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She resisted the urge to release the button to protect Ty, but then thought these might be her last words.
“You called him, that—that thing!”
The windstorm ripped down the hillside so suddenly it toppled the two men. Cal rolled to his belly and aimed. Luisa dropped to the porch as the rifle shot zinged by her left ear. Her radio skidded down the steps.
Dark, menacing clouds dipped low and she heard tree trunks snapping like matchsticks.
The Thunderbirds, she realized. Ty was here. The wind swept over them and, for a moment, she could not rise against the buffeting force. And then it was past her and she saw the huge grizzly, standing between her and her attackers.