by Hattie Hunt
They didn’t speak most of the way there, but neither of them seemed interested in letting go of the other’s hand. Even when it made traversing a fallen tree or crossing the stream more awkward than it needed to be. Eventually, Ripley stepped off the game trail they had been following and led Joe up a hill. She pulled him around a house sized boulder and came home. The cave wasn’t romantic, but it was safe. Large enough to not feel closed in, but small enough to feel secure.
Joe’s grip on her hand tightened as he looked around, and the radiating nerves that had followed them through the woods melted away.
A small stash of supplies littered a natural shelf in the back of the cave, all things Ripley had left behind. Matches. Some kindling—not that they really needed it. Dead leaves covered most of the floor, crunching under their feet. An undisturbed ring of rocks circled a small pit she had once used for campfires. Ripley picked up the branches she used as a make-shift broom and raked the leaves out of the cave, revealing the smooth floor of sand and rock.
She laid the broom against the shelf and knelt over a cooler tucked into the deepest nook in the rock. She opened it to find her stash of blankets, mercifully dry and free of nesting critters despite their years of abandon. Ripley pulled them out, whipping them into the air with a good shake before throwing them on the floor of the cave. They didn’t smell super amazing, but she could deal with it. It was still preferable to sitting on the bare floor.
Joe hovered in the cave opening, watching her, but not really seeing anything.
She knew that look. She’d seen it so many times during her time in war-torn countries. The shock. The realization. The reality.
Her heart hurt for him, quaking in her chest. Yes. She knew he’d needed to get there. She had hoped he would get there sooner, but now… she wished for any sign of optimism. The slightest glimmer of hope in his eyes.
She just knew it was practically impossible.
With the nest set up, Ripley turned her attention to the fire. It wasn’t cool enough to really need one, even in the natural chill of the cave. With the two of them sitting in the nest together, they should be plenty warm.
But fire did something to calm and soothe the soul.
It didn’t take long. The wood she’d gathered almost a decade ago was good and dry now, and the kindling was decent. She stoked it to life and then lay back on the blankets, looking up at Joe.
He hadn’t moved.
Sighing, she opened her arms. “Joe.”
He jerked, looking at her like she had appeared out of nowhere.
She flicked her fingers for him to join her.
He frowned, stepping backward a little as if now that he was awake, he realized that he should be somewhere else. With his brother maybe? Helping Juliet, perhaps?
Ripley flicked her fingers again and raised her eyebrows.
He closed his eyes in defeat and sank onto the blankets beside her.
She maneuvered him so that he was practically lying on her. She wrapped one leg over his, holding him close to her. Yeah, she realized that was supposed to be the man’s move. Comforting the damsel and whatnot, but she was no damned damsel and she certainly wasn’t the one whose world was falling apart.
Arching her back to resituate over the rock stabbing her in the kidney, Ripley settled closer into Joe, pulling his hands up into hers. “I used to come here all the time.”
“I can see that.”
Small talk had never been her strong point, but she didn’t know what else to say. They could talk about the future, about Brett, until they were blue in the face and it wouldn’t solve anything. They needed Leslie to find a cure. They needed to save the town. They needed to save Brett. Yesterday.
And all they could do was cuddle.
She trudged on, hating the silence. “I don’t even know how I found this place, really. I think Decima did.”
A faint agreement surged through Ripley’s mind.
She smiled to herself. “She did.” It was odd being on speaking terms with her padfoot all of a sudden. “I had just shifted…in the middle of school. Next thing I remember, I was here.”
“Wait.” Joe stirred in her arms. “I don’t remember you ever shifting in school. No one knew you were one of us.”
“Oh, no. I didn’t actually shift in school. I always got this wild feeling and then I would see things. Death…whatever, energy I guess. I don’t know. And I would run out and as soon as I was out of sight of the school, Decima would take over.”
“Hmm. She really didn’t want to be discovered.”
“No. She didn’t.” But now that Ripley knew a little bit more about it—though still not enough to make sense of—she understood that what Decima had done could have gotten them both killed. Still could.
“What’s it like?” he asked softly, tracing the lines of her palm with his fingertip. “To talk to her?”
His touch warmed her from the inside out. He could do that all night and she wouldn’t stop him. “Weird, I guess. I mean, she was silent for so long and now all of the sudden, she’s talking to me.”
“Why now?”
There were so many reasons. She could feel them. She could understand them. “Because Tuck finally made me realize that she needs a little respect.”
Joe shrugged. “Well, obviously.”
“Not obviously.” She didn’t really know what it was like to be a shapeshifter, but being a padfoot was just a little different. Shapeshifters allowed their animal spirits out. They invited them. Often. But padfoots were… “The Kent family were trained to keep the padfoot restrained. They weren’t allowed out. They were kept on a very tight, controlled leash.”
“And De—” He stopped. “I forgot her name.”
“Decima.”
“Yes. Decima found a way to break out of that.”
“She did.” And Ripley had to respect that. She was a woman who broke rules, so to meet a fellow rule-breaker… “She managed to talk Daddy into not training me, knowing full well that when he died, she was coming to me. The only Kent who didn’t know how to handle a padfoot.”
He rested his head on her breast and traced lines along the inside of her knee. “I wonder what made your family create such a…I mean, the training, the rules.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. No one talks about it, that’s for sure. And Aunt Myrtie is adamant that I learn to control it.”
“Hmm.”
Alexander Orlov came to mind, though. “I have to wonder, though, just how powerful the padfoot could be in the wrong hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean my work. You know? I help build rescue towns for those in need, I guess you could say. But there are other things too. Things I don’t like to admit. And Alexander knows about my padfoot. He…uses it to his own end.”
“Can the protections the witches put on the town protect you against him?”
She shook her head. “He wasn’t repelled by them. He walked right into the Fox Hole and requested strongly that I maintain my employment.”
Joe wrapped her leg with his arm and squeezed his fingers around her thigh. “I want you to stay here.”
She snorted, loving the feel of his hand on her thigh. “So you can protect me?”
“Yes. So I can protect you, so I know you’re safe.”
That sounded so wonderful. “Stay in this crap town filled with people who really don’t like me much.”
“You never really gave them a chance.”
“Oh, I did.”
“Now that they know…”
“That I’m not just a human sack of trash, I’m a padfoot sack of trash?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Your mother might be the worst, but she’s not the only one. People have always treated us with disrespect.”
He hugged her leg. “We’ll figure something out.”
She almost believed.
Almost.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They spent the next several hours talk
ing and watching the fire as the shadows moved outside their bubble of protection. Ripley hadn’t known she was the kind of woman who could provide comfort to anyone.
And yet, there she was, holding him to her and talking him off the emotional cliff he was standing on.
As the hours slipped by, they resituated until she wasn’t the one holding him. He was the one holding her. She loved it. The feel of his strong arms around her, making her feel safe in a way she hadn’t felt since…well, she couldn’t remember when. The sound of his voice. The way his smell mixed with the dirt and the leaves and the smoke of the fire.
And the stories they shared.
She told him things she hadn’t told anyone else. Sometimes, things she’d forgotten herself. Things she hadn’t even realized she paid attention to.
His own admissions surprised her a little. He was a lot more observant than she’d ever given him credit for. Joe and that big damned heart of his. She never wanted to leave that cave.
Together, in there, things were perfect. Outside was the real world, and it sucked.
Joe held Ripley in his arms. He buried his nose in her hair, drinking up her scent. She grounded him and made him feel as though everything might be all right.
The things she’d lived through, experienced. He was no longer surprised at how tough she was or how crass. She hadn’t just seen the war, she’d been there. Lived it. She’d survived it.
And if everything she said was true, she was part of the cause.
He couldn’t begin to imagine how that made her feel. Guilt? Grief? What could it possibly be like to know that the war was partially her fault? To know that she was merely swapping one set of lives for another? To see the price of that reflected in blood, day after day?
It was a level of responsibility he just couldn’t shoulder. And he could shoulder a lot. He could manage the building of entire complexes, hospitals, skyscrapers. But this? No.
At least building a hospital, he knew he was providing hope. Well, he supposed he was just earning a paycheck. But at the end of the day, even years down the road, he could say that his job helped save lives. And it did. Without that hospital, where would the people go to be seen by the doctor? How would they be healed?
And the skyscrapers? He helped give people jobs. Helped give people places to live. Granted, very wealthy people, but it didn’t really matter. He helped people.
According to Ripley, most of the people she had saved ended up dead anyway. Her barter hadn’t exactly worked out.
Maybe it was just a consequence of war. She believed there was no safe place in a war, that a front line could be found anywhere. All it took was hate, and the world was full of it. Hate was like a virus spreading faster than the internet could report it.
Joe didn’t see it that way. It couldn’t be that bad, really. Because…it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.
Maybe it was a matter of perspective. If he had seen what she had…
In any case, he didn’t want her to leave again, to go back out there.
If Brett died…when Brett died…
He couldn’t think past that thought. That horrific fucking thought. When Brett died.
She’d said it so casually.
When Brett died.
She hadn’t even paused. She’d just kept going.
Dear gods. What would he do if Brett died?
He couldn’t hedge his hopes on Ripley saving Brett. He wasn’t going to force that level of responsibility on her. That was unfair. Especially with everything else she’d had to shoulder.
So, what? He couldn’t dream of making her leave. He couldn’t force himself to. He loved too deeply, too easily. One of these days it was going to kill him.
Maybe soon.
Fuck. No. That wasn’t an issue. He’d keep one foot moving in front of the other, with or without her.
But would he ever love again?
His mother would force “acceptable” women on him. He knew that. But all he’d want was Ripley and…
He was going to tell her to leave. If Brett died. If the witches couldn’t save him. He was going to make her leave him. It just wouldn’t be fair to her. She wasn’t a healer. She wasn’t a nurturer.
And he wouldn’t be worth being around. Not even close.
Joe shifted his weight, the waistband of his jeans cutting into him with the pressure of his growing manhood. His body apparently thought differently. It wanted her to stay. Needed her to stay. Visions of her naked body pushed back his melancholy monologue. He wanted to remove her clothes. He wanted to splay her on the nest of blankets, to study the curves of her perfect breasts, the way her hips arced out from her waist in invitation. He wanted to feel the folds of her womanhood, finger her until her wetness slicked his fingers, promising his own sweet release when their bodies joined.
Her fingers traced idly along his leg, which didn’t help. He needed her to stop if he was ever going to be able to tell her to leave. But he couldn’t find a single inkling of resolve to push her away.
“I need to feel your skin,” he heard himself say.
Ripley shivered, her hand pausing on its path along his leg. The sound of his husky voice tickled her soul, rousing her own need. She closed her eyes and moved her hand again, lightly tracking the length of his leg until her fingers reached his bulge. He sighed in pleasure, and her breath caught.
Before, they had been desperate. More than desperate. Not much had changed, but this time… it felt different. Deeper. More intimate.
And the only thing she could think of was seeing him naked.
Why should she deny herself? Why should he? They were adults. If they wanted something, all they had to do was ask. The worst thing either of them could say was no.
Ripley pulled herself away from him and sat up, settling herself on her knees in front of him. She crossed her arms, picking up the edges of her shirt in her fingers. Inching the hem upwards, she arched an eyebrow in question. She paused, just as her thumbs brushed against the lace of her bra. The corner of Joe’s mouth twitched, and he levered himself up on to an elbow.
A shiver rippled up her back as Ripley pulled her shirt the rest of the way off. “Is this enough?”
Joe stifled a pleasured groan. Not even close. He rose to his knees, hands itching to touch her skin, to run his hands along the length of her. “For now.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I want to see him.”
“Him.” Joe chuckled and ducked his head to look down at his bulging manhood. “Are we twelve?”
“I’m trying not to be crass.” Honestly, she might be brash, but she still struggled with male anatomy names. Strange as that sounded. She didn’t want to call it a dick. It sounded rude, and he wasn’t the crass kind of guy.
“You just want to see it?” His expression was open, but questioning, with just a hint of snark.
And it looked like all thoughts of morality had been wiped off his face. “I want you to open your zipper and pull your dick out.” There. Bold. Brass. No questions.
His eyebrows shot up and he tipped his head with a slight smile on his face. “I’ve never had that request before.”
What was the worst thing he could say? No?
Instead, he unzipped himself and brought out his full, solid member.
There was something beautiful and amazing about it, full and thick, tipped in gentleness. Ripley breathed evenly, her mind racing, trying to decide how she wanted to feel it, what she wanted to do with it.
“I want to see your breasts.”
She smiled slightly, thinking about teasing him. But instead, she reached behind her and unclasped her bra, letting it slide down her arms to the ground.
Her breasts weren’t huge, but they could fill his hands. Her nipples hardened in the cool air and Joe felt himself harden a little more. He needed to touch her. He reached out and rubbed his thumb across her nipple.
She inhaled sharply and reached for him, running a teasing finger along his member.
Ripley tipped her head.
“Take off all your clothes.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. “You, too.”
They made quick work of their clothing, eyes flicking between this button, that body part. Hands fumbled over their own bodies, ripping their clothes free, oblivious to the way the cool air hit their hot skin.
Standing now in the flickering firelight, they drank in the sight of one another, the pale strands of sunlight filtering through the cave opening in perfect highlights.
Ripley placed her fingertips on Joe’s chest and pushed, guiding him to the flat rock they’d been laying against. She picked up a blanket and tossed it over the rock. Then she pushed him down on top of it.
He smiled, looking up at her, ready and willing.
She was in control, and she wanted to ride him. Straddling his hips, she brought his tip to her opening.
Not yet.
Her fingertips pressed against him and she rubbed her clit along his length, slicking him with her wet readiness. He felt so good against her, and she moaned, gripping his strong shoulder, her nails digging into his flesh.
Joe sucked in a breath and his member twitched, impatient with her torment.
His impatience pushed her over the edge. She brought her other hand to his chest and slowly slid onto him, bringing him into her inch by tortured inch, savoring the feel of him as he filled her. Her skin met his hips, but he wasn’t deep enough. Widening her legs, she took him deeper, until he touched the pit of fire in her belly. It exploded outward. Her body clenched around him in a powerful orgasm that rolled over her like a tidal wave.
It cooled, rolling away and leaving her still straddling him, filled to the deepest part of herself with all of him. She ground her hips against him, aftershocks and building pleasure ricocheting through her entire body. She rolled her hips in a small circle, feeling his tip press new places, each a different shock, a different fireworks display.
Smaller orgasms rippled through her. Sweat broke over her skin. This was where she belonged. Always and forever. She kept one hand on his shoulder and arched her back, her other arm falling to her side.