by Roxie Noir
“Do you forgive me for being late?” Austin asked. He let his tongue dart out to lick at Trevor as he asked, and in the back of his throat, Trevor made a noise that he didn’t even recognize as his own.
“Not yet,” he murmured, pushing Austin’s head down onto his cock again. Austin went eagerly, bobbing his head up and down, swirling his tongue up and down Trevor’s shaft until he had the other man on the very brink.
Then Austin rocked back on his heels, took Trevor’s hands in his own, and pulled.
They both tumbled to the floor in a heap of warm flesh and Trevor’s hands slid along Austin’s body, feeling the muscles as they tensed and bunched under the skin, finally grabbing onto the other man’s cock as Austin pinned him down, his face hovering above Trevor’s, growling.
“Come on,” Trevor said, his voice low and dangerous. He felt like he was about to burst out of his own skin with wanting, and however it happened, he needed Austin, right now.
He pushed Austin and Austin went over, the two men tumbling together on a thin blanket that was all that separated them from the hard wooden floor of the cabin, growling and moaning like wild animals.
At last, Austin had Trevor pinned, facing forward, his cock sliding between the other man’s buttocks, both of them breathing hard.
Trevor laughed.
“I let you win,” he said, still gasping for breath.
“Is that so?” Austin growled.
It wasn’t. Trevor was big, over six feet, but Austin was a goddamned grizzly and had a good three inches and thirty pounds on him. He lifted a floorboard and took out a little tub of Vaseline and rubbed it on his cock one-handed, his other hand still pinning Trevor even though Trevor wasn’t exactly fighting him.
Without a word, Austin put the tip of his cock on Trevor’s back entrance, and Trevor relaxed. It was instinctual by now, the way that he pushed back against his mate, the only thought in his mind that he needed to feel the other man inside him, now. He imagined that Austin felt the same way when he was on the bottom.
It happened fast, as he stretched and then the head of Austin’s cock was through with a grunt. Immediately, Trevor’s pleasure centers lit up and he got to his hands and knees, rocking backward to take all of Austin in until his mate’s hips were flush with his ass, his cock buried completely inside Trevor.
“Fuck, I missed you,” he growled.
Austin bit his shoulder hard, maybe hard enough to leave a bruise, and Trevor gasped, the pleasure and pain bursting through his senses all at once as Austin withdrew and then thrust his cock into Trevor again, the sheer pleasure of being filled nearly overcoming him.
Then Austin’s hand was wrapped around his cock, pumping him in time with Austin’s own thrusts, and Trevor knew that he was finished. He clenched his teeth together and growled, doing his best not to scream as he got closer and closer to that edge, even as the edges of his vision went white.
“Fuck, Trevor,” Austin whispered, and then Trevor came hard. It felt like he was wrapped completely in his mate, utterly one with the other man as he came with his whole body. He was barely aware of Austin coming as well, the other man roaring against his back, as his hands gripped the blanket in front of him so hard that he thought he might tear holes in it.
Then, it was over. Austin pulled out, kneeling behind Trevor, and Trevor flopped himself over, out of the wet spot, and laid back down in front of the fire. It hadn’t taken fifteen minutes, but both of them felt completely spent, and Austin crawled to Trevor, lying against the other man, letting Trevor’s arm encircle him.
“And so the lion laid down with the lamb,” Austin intoned.
Trevor rolled his eyes. For some reason, Austin thought that was a great joke to make every time they had sex, even though neither of them was a lion or a lamb.
“You know that’s not actually in the bible, right?” Trevor asked.
“Sure it is,” said Austin. “I learned it in Sunday school.”
“The bible says something about wolves and lambs, but never wolves and bears.”
Austin just shrugged, and for a few long moments, they both watched the fire.
Finally, Trevor spoke up.
“What’s her name?”
“Sloane.”
“Sloane,” Trevor said, letting her name drip over his tongue. He thought about her again, about her curves just barely visible under the ugly clothes she’d been wearing, about the way she didn’t seem to have any fear about going off with a cop or being between a bunch of different shifters.
“She’s through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” Austin said.
“No shit,” said Trevor. “That’s a long hike. Is she going north or south?”
“South.”
“Not too much left,” said Trevor. “Except the hardest part.”
“That’s probably why she’s staying with us,” said Austin. “Get a good rest in before tackling the high Sierra.”
The high Sierra were no joke, and Trevor knew it. He’d spent a winter there when he was seventeen, as a wolf. Mostly his own dumb fault, but he just hadn’t thought anything through. After everything had gone down with his parents, he’d wanted to get as far away from them as he could, show them that he didn’t need them anyway, so he’d gone up there.
He’d come close to starving to death. Not even real wolves went to those heights in the winter, and he’d ended up scavenging human food from campgrounds at night like some kind of coyote, doing his best not to be seen.
To that day, he couldn’t stomach Doritos or potato chips.
“How long?” Trevor asked.
“Tonight and tomorrow,” Austin answered.
“She know that unconscious kid?”
“She says no.”
“You believe her?”
“Yeah. You should’ve seen her when I found her, she was totally freaked out, running down the trail to the ranch. There’s no way she did it, and I don’t think she’s hiding anything.”
Trevor believed Austin and trusted his judgement. Austin was the only person he felt that way about.
“Your people know anything about it?”
“They say no.”
“You believe them?”
“Not really.”
Trevor moved his arm slightly under Austin, rearranging his mate’s head so his hand didn’t fall asleep.
“I don’t think they did it, but I think they know more than they’re telling us,” Trevor said. Just talking about his family made him tired and made him half-want to escape again.
The other half knew that leaving wasn’t going to help anyone, either him or them. They were family, and they had to find a way to make that work.
“I hope the kid wakes up,” Austin said. “Barb told the hospital to call her when he did. He’s got to have some idea what happened.”
Trevor just nodded.
“I wish we could just stay here,” he said. “Run away to this cabin. We could hunt deer and garden and just be like this every night.”
“It would never work,” Austin said. “We’d get found and strung up. We’d miss our families too much.”
“We have to do something,” said Trevor. “We could just tell them and then leave.”
Even though he was the one suggesting it, he knew it wouldn’t work. Whatever fantasies they had of running away together were only fantasies, and it was his own family who would be the most opposed to their union. If he ran away, he was just leaving his niece and nephew alone with his increasingly unstable father and a mother who got deeper into the bottle every day.
Maybe if Papa were alive, he thought, but he didn’t bother finishing the sentence. He wasn’t. The end.
Instead, he kissed Austin’s warm hair.
“You have to meet her,” Austin said.
Trevor frowned.
“We can’t be with her,” he said. “We can’t subject her to this, to fucking in a cold cabin once a fortnight and sneaking around. Let her go, she’ll finish her hike and be happy somewhere
else.”
Austin shifted, looking up into Trevor’s eyes.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can,” Trevor said.
“You want her,” Austin said. “I can tell. I know you, Trevor, and I know we spend a lot of time apart but I know better than to believe you when you tell me to let her go.”
Austin reached over Trevor’s torso and took his hand, lacing their fingers together.
“Look me in the eye and say no,” he said.
Trevor looked down. He could practically feel himself fall into the blue pools of Austin’s eyes, the one person he couldn’t lie to. The one person who knew him, not who someone else wanted him to be.
“Okay,” Trevor said.
“Can you get away tomorrow?”
“Sure,” said Trevor. It was easy enough to make up some task and then wander off. It wasn’t like his father was doing a particularly good job of keeping the ranch up, anyway. He spent most of his time in the workshop with the other pack leaders, though ever since he’d kept the feral bear, Trevor wasn’t sure who was watching who.
“I’ll take her for a hike to Three Points Overlook,” Austin said.
“What if she doesn’t want to go hiking?”
“Then I’ll come up with some pretense to come over there,” Austin said. His voice started to go hard, like he was slightly annoyed with his mate.
“Okay,” Trevor said. He closed his eyes and thought of Sloane again, the girl who he’d never even spoken to. He hadn’t known that he could want someone so badly without even meeting them — after all, when he’d met Austin, it had been different.
Really different.
“We should go,” he said, softly, watching the fire die as he stroked Austin’s hair. “It’s getting late, and the morning isn’t getting any later.”
“I know,” Austin said. “I just hate leaving here.”
“Me too,” said Trevor. Austin squeezed his hand. “Me too.”
It took another half hour before a bear and a wolf left the cabin, moving in different directions through the forest.
6
Sloane
The moment that the sun started coming through the blinds in her room, Sloane snapped awake. For half a second she was confused.
Where’s my tent? she thought. Why am I so comfortable?
Then she remembered that she was at the ranch. She also remembered the events of the day before: half-dead guy, terrifying drive down the highway, hot bear shifter.
Good thing I’m leaving tomorrow, she thought, but she wasn’t sure she meant it. Austin’s smile got stuck in her mind, the way he’d leaned toward her and whispered the secret ingredients in the cookies.
Sloane sat up in bed, naked except for underpants, and remembered that her clothes were all still in the dryer.
Shit, she thought. Then her eyes fell on the towel that Barb had given her for her stay.
Fuck it, I’ll just run to the dryer wearing that, she thought. In another second she’d wrapped the towel around herself and was through her bedroom door, hustling down the hall for the dryer.
She was lucky: no one else was up, and she hurriedly got her stuff from the dryer, holding her warm clothes close.
Then she heard footsteps coming down the hall.
Please be Barb, she thought. Please.
Austin turned the bend in the hall, stopped short, and raised his eyebrows.
Fuck.
“Good morning!” Sloane said, as brightly as she could.
Maybe if I act normal, he won’t notice that I’m wearing nothing but a towel, she thought.
“Good morning,” Austin said. His voice sent a rumble through her bones, and Sloane hugged her warm laundry tighter, hoping it would mask the blush quickly rising to her face.
“Just getting my laundry out of the dryer,” Sloane chirped, trying to act like it was the most normal thing in the world. “See you at breakfast!”
Head held high, she marched right past Austin and back to her room.
“See you!” he called after her.
She threw her laundry on the bed and pushed the door closed behind her with her foot, the towel dropping to the floor as she did.
Sloane was early for breakfast. She’d meant to go into the living room for a little while and check out their take-a-book-leave-a-book backpacker’s library, but as soon as she smelled the bacon and coffee that plan got derailed.
“Ow!” said Austin as she pushed the door open. He was standing by the stove, grinning and shaking one hand, looking down at Barb, who was pointing a spatula at him.
“That thing hurts,” he said, still smiling.
“I know you know that already, Austin,” she said. “Now get your paws off my bacon.”
He looked over at Sloane, and Barb followed his gaze.
“You’re early,” she said, clearly a little surprised. “There’s coffee in the big pot, and Austin will make more if that’s the last of it. Cream in the fridge, sugar’s in that little bowl with the spoon.”
Sloane poured herself a cup, dumping cream and sugar into it like there was no tomorrow. It didn’t even taste good, but she enjoyed taking advantage of things she knew she wouldn’t get another chance at for a while.
“You take any coffee with that cream and sugar?” Austin teased.
“Good lord,” said Barb, still standing at the stove. “I’m sorry about him, he makes that joke about once a day.”
Sloane took a long, deliberate drink of her over-sweet, milky coffee, and then smiled at Austin.
“I’ve been drinking nothing but iodine-flavored water for weeks,” she said. “This is heaven.”
Austin just raised his own mug of black coffee to his lips, a teasing smile still playing around his eyes. Something about the way he drank his coffee and leaned against the counter made Sloane go a little weak in the knees — his sheer, swaggering confidence, the way he seemed so certain that she, a short, slightly-chubby girl would be interested in flirting with him?
I mean, I am, Sloane thought. She took another drink of her too-sweet coffee, mostly to break their eye contact. Nothing I like better than a man I can’t have.
Austin poured himself more coffee, then set about making more, and Sloane considered him for a moment.
Maybe we could be pen pals or something, she thought. Then she rolled her eyes at the thought. Sure, because super-hot, grown-ass men love having pen pals. What am I supposed to say? Dear Austin, today I hiked a bunch. Almost to Bakersfield, the city of wonder!
She drained the mug, the grainy, undissolved sugar at the bottom crunching between her teeth. Normally, she would have been grossed out by it, but there was something delightfully decadent about being in a house and just eating sugar.
Austin flicked the switch on the coffee maker, then folded his arms and leaned against the counter for a moment, watching Sloane.
She raised her eyebrows, setting her mug on the counter.
“You got plans for today?” he asked.
Sloane’s heart jumped a little.
“Not really,” she said. “Lie around, drink some beer, maybe read a trashy romance novel about a pirate and the maiden wench who learns to love him.”
Austin raised his eyebrows.
“Sounds exciting,” he said.
“It’s in your library,” Sloane said. “Someone must have left it here. I didn’t get a good look at it, but I assume that puffy shirts get torn open and bosoms heave.”
For just a moment, she remembered her own heaving bosom last night, during the braless incident.
“Maybe I should read it,” Austin said. “I do like a good heaving bosom.”
Sloane felt herself turn bright pink.
“Austin,” Barb said from behind him. He grinned.
“Sorry, Barb,” he said.
Sloane slid her mug across the counter toward him.
“If you’re going to scandalize me, at least pour me some more coffee,” she said.
Austin’s eyes sparkled in am
usement as he did.
“How many sugars?” he asked. “Ten? Twenty?”
“Just give me the sugar and I can do it myself,” she said.
“First you’re scandalized by bosom talk, and now you want me to give you some sugar?”
Sloane laughed.
“What exactly are you offering?” she asked. She made her voice sound as casual as she could, even though on the inside her heart was racing, her pulse throbbing through her veins.
Austin just grinned and handed over the sugar bowl, watching as Sloane piled spoon after spoon of sugar into her coffee.
“You’re probably hiked out,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “But there’s a great quick hike to an overlook.”
Yes, I will absolutely go on a hike alone with you, Sloane thought.
Not wanting to seem too eager, she took another sip of her coffee-slash-sugar water, and pretended to consider it.
“How long is it?”
“Four miles round trip,” he said. “Practically a stroll for a girl who’s hiked here from the Canadian border.”
“Is it worth giving up the pirates and the bosoms?” she asked, despite already knowing she’d say yes.
“I think so,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve already gotten your fair share of spectacular views, but this is a good one,” he went on. “Besides, you can’t beat the company.”
“Who’s the company?”
“Me, of course,” he said.
Sloane rolled her eyes in mock-annoyance.
“It’ll be fun,” he said. “I’ll get Barb to pack us lunch—“
“You will?” Barb asked.
“Please?”
“We’ll see,” Barb said. “How’s that fence repair over on the north side coming?”
“Finished yesterday morning,” he said. “Oh, and I chopped the downed tree into some extra firewood for the winter,” he said.
“All right, fine,” Barb said.
“Thank you, Barb,” Austin said, and the gray-haired woman just nodded. It was obvious to Sloane that the two of them had a long-standing, nearly familial relationship. It made her miss her own parents, who she’d barely talked to since starting on the trail, just a phone call here or there to tell them she was still okay, a couple of postcards when she could get to a mailbox.