The few men she had known couldn’t hold a candle to the Matheison men. They were as handsome as they were rugged. And probably could entice a bear cub away from its honey.
“Can I help?”
Good gracious.
Jo spun knocking two large mugs of coffee into Ridge. The scalding liquid spilled across the island in the middle and on Ridge. Grabbing a towel, she wiped at the stain that ran down from his muscled chest to his hip-hugging 501s.
Jo dabbed at her guest’s clothes managing to rub the roast blend deeper into the fabric. “I couldn’t find any liquor,” she stammered.”
Ridge suddenly held her hands. “I’m fine.”
You sure are, she quietly smiled.
*****
Ridge shrugged out of his flannel jacket and kicked off his jeans before the coffee had a chance to burn. He’d have preferred not to earn himself another bruise. Getting his head repeatedly knocked and his leg bitten was plenty enough.
“Hot,” he undid his long johns, his thick fingers unhooking the buttons from the cotton. Slipping the material down his long legs, he rubbed his palms over his abs, using the towel his host handed him.
Hot like fire.
Jo glanced at the top of his head down to the fine hairs snaking over his navel to the crisp curls fanning around his penis.
Penis—good gracious, he was naked!
Jo swung her gaze back to the kitchen, searching blindly for a second towel. Her slim hand brushed over his cock and it bobbed and lengthened as if it had found a home.
She looked at Ridge. Embarrassment flooding her arms and cheeks until she couldn’t breathe. “Ridge, Mr. Matheison—.” Turning, she yanked her hand away, shaking her head like she was bear crazy. “I didn’t mean to,” she peeked over her shoulder again and saw him hold the towel over his groin. Her eyes widened as the towel started to rise. He was growing harder.
And sexier.
Jo angled around him to the living room and she slipped. Ridge was right beside her, catching her in his big, beefy arms. She grabbed him for support and they slid across the polished wood into a chaise lounge chair. Jo fell onto her back with her legs in the air and Ridge with his face between her legs. She flung an arm over her eyes. Seeing him and rakishly grin.
She’d thrown herself at an almost complete stranger!
Oh gracious, Jo covered her face with her hands.
Chapter Twelve
He’d had his share of combat and defensive strategy, doing two tours, and one of them in Pakistan. But neither of them ended up with his face upturned in delicious pussy. Spread so wide and delectably, all he need do was snake his tongue and feast to his delight.
Witnessing how beautifully she went commando, she’d earned his ravenous approval.
Ridge could, but didn’t.
The lady had opened up his brother’s home to him and he’d be damned if he’d take advantage of her or make a bigger fool of himself by flaunting his cock and balls in front her, salacious as the temptation may be.
He started to reach for his jeans when he heard her sob.
He’d hurt her, unintentionally; but he’d make things right.
Clad only in wool socks, he knelt at her side. Uncertain how she could react, he did the one thing he could.
*****
Jo opened her eyes witnessing her guest gathering her into his big hands. His muscles flexing as he carried her across the room to a flight of wooden steps. “What are you doing?”
“Shh.”
He traveled to a hallway and paused at a door to an opened room. He knew enough about shock and to take action when he saw it. Ridge never expected he’d be the cause of it.
Bare ass, he strutted holding a woman who’d been nothing except hospitable. Ridge might be going to Hades after today, but he would go being a gentleman.
Then he’d find his brother, and they’d get down to handling the family business.
Ridge padded across the room to what he hoped was a bathroom and found a closet. He grabbed a couple of blankets and threw one on a brass bed. Unfolding it, he kicked the door so it shut and cocooned the woman gently with the second blanket, inside his arms.
*****
Jo never considered herself a pillar of virtue. She certainly didn’t expect to go to pieces when she saw a nude penis either. It wasn’t because she had seen Griff’s brother naked. The feel of him touching her sensitive flesh was what beyond intense. And he had seen she wasn’t wearing underwear.
His breath fanned over her—and she was shocked by how much she’d enjoyed it. The shadow of beard tickled as he grazed her skin nearly bringing her to orgasm.
Leaning into his chest, she felt the muscle ripple under his pecs. The heat from him warming her shoulders and breasts. Along with something thick and heavy angling along the small of her back.
Jo inhaled sharply and turned into his arms.
She didn’t know why she did. Maybe it was the intense couple of days she had experienced. Or the weight of responsibilities between guarding the townspeople of The Cove and the wolven who had become victims through no fault of their own.
Jo understood how it felt to be the one hunted. Targeted by a bullet because of hatred because she was a shifter. Yet, she knew that the man beside her was interested solely in her—and it felt sinfully good. She ran her hands through his thick hair, her lips wet—when she noticed at a lighter lock of hair on Ridge’s head.
He couldn’t be.
*****
Ridge looked into Jo’s eyes, aroused as the woman gazed at him, her lashes long and beautiful. She’d burned away any memory of the pain he’d felt every day after losing the other half of his heart.
He held her at arm’s length and saw her pause, her expression wary.
Did she think he no longer wanted her?
Ridge wanted to take her right there in the soft white throw pillows on the bed so much that he ached. But there were rules about how any man should treat a woman and he wasn’t one who would take advantage of a situation. Even it was stacked in his favor.
He’d seen how she’d admired his body. Not overly muscled, but he could keep up with most whelps half his age. The pain in his weaker leg was gone and he felt himself again.
Aside from accosting her with his nude penis, he had another plan in mind. Ridge dragged her into his arms, searching her eyes for any glimpse of hesitation.
Green light.
Lifting her over his hips, he laid back and watched her pull his arms over her head.
He enjoyed her having the control.
She removed her bra and he took it from her. Snapping it to the other side of the sunlit room like a slingshot. Watching her giggle, he pulled her close. Covering her mouth with his.
*****
The lighter patch of Ridge hair was a telltale sign.
However, the odds he would transform were a billion to one.
Jo laid on top of Ridge musing that she had found another wealthy real estate builder like Griff. Forgetting about the danger of getting her hot and heavy, and with another man, who happened to be his brother.
Chapter Thirteen
Griff finished showering in the downstairs bathroom. The shower had an adjustable nozzle and it warmed his nearly frozen body in all the right places. He dragged a towel over his head, trying to remember everything that had happened to him the past couple of days.
Grabbing another towel, he thought he should maybe check messages, but he didn’t have his phone. Probably Jo had it. Usually, she was the first to greet him. Then again, it was the holiday.
Thinking about meeting Ridge, Griff remembered a time when they had shared everything. Down to the community bathroom when they lived in a foster home, not to mention the double dates they’d had.
Wild times.
“Joanna? Jo, it’s Griffin” Griff searched the first floor after he didn’t see a note on the table near the foyer.
He sauntered across the main floor nude with a towel slung low on his waist when he
stopped at the kitchen.
The center fireplace was still going, and a pair of jeans was on the floor—Button-fly. Coffee had spilled across the kitchen island and there were 2 cups.
Griff made his way up the stairs, two at a time. Afraid something was terribly wrong.
*****
Jo dropped her head as Ridge rose to ease inside her. His length was as impressive as it was thick. She resisted the urge to turn bear and coax him into mating with her. If only they could.
Griff checked the opened rooms on the second floor, hearing moans behind the farthest door down the hall. He knocked it wide and stared—at Jo—and Ridge almost coital in a wheel barrel position.
“Mutherfu—.”
Jo scrambled to her knees, pulling the sheets up to her breasts. She slanted a peek at Ridge’s body, and the thick erection at 90 degrees.
Ridge pulled Jo behind him feeling her breath across his shoulders. “Griff, how’s it going bud?”
Griff glared at his brother then Jo and he lunged at him, his towel slipping to the floor.
“Stop,” Jo dropped the bed sheet as she tried to put herself between the brawling brothers.
“What the hell, do you think you’re doing?” Griff yelled. Jo watched him slug Ridge and they tumbled to the floor.
“Stop it,” commanded Jo.
The brothers quieted. Arms and legs entwined, both sporting huge erections. Suddenly Griff stood.
“Go ahead,” Jo saw him fold his arms over his magnificent chest. “I’d like to hear how the two of you ‘met’.”
Now was hardly the time to get into the semantics, thought Ridge, and instead faced his brother. Explaining he had been trying to find him since yesterday.
Griff listened then he laughed, but Jo noticed that the smiled didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Griff glared. He waited as Ridge and Jo searched for the words. “Screw you.” He struck Ridge and Ridge followed it with an uppercut to Griff’s ribcage.
The two wrestled, unaware Jo was no longer in the room.
*****
Nearing the cellar, Jo slammed the wall with her hands. She tried to focus her emotions. Anger and embarrassment took over as the rage welled up inside her. Something a bearen was unable to control without centuries of practice.
Her back swelled and her nails curved into claws. She screamed as her voice changed from alto, to bear.
The hair on her body grew as she reached her full bear height, her teeth and tongue ready to strike. It always happened.
She found a moment of peace and her world began to crumble around her all over again.
First when she’d become a shifter. Then when she had learned that turning into a bear shifter came with an ultimate price. She’d had to come to terms with who she was. Angry girl, who was made into a beast. Forced to protect those from creatures they knew existed and the ones they didn’t. Jo knew she would never be anything but a monster or find anyone who cared enough to want her as she was.
She desperately wanted to be loved, or at the very least, cherished.
Jo swatted a lamp near the lounge seat, smashing it as she roared.
Ridge and Griff stopped fighting.
“You hear that?” Griff listened. He jogged down the hall from the bedroom and Ridge followed.
They bounded down the stairs and came face to face with a giant grizzly bear.
“Holy—,” Ridge grabbed the fire poker from the hearth aiming it at the animal.
Jo saw the Matheison brothers’ her rage intensifying. She saw Griff sniff the air.
Ridge watched him and Jo turn to the front double doors. They began to shake.
A rumble split the air and through a large bay window, Ridge and Griff saw the biker gang.
*****
Orion hopped off a Harley followed by the runt.
“We know you’re in there,” he said, slapping a bat in his big hand. “Come out and change, so we can end you, witch.”
Jo pushed Ridge and Griff pawing at the doors.
She was ready to face the bikers, no matter how unholy their kind was. She’d take them out, one bear claw rip, at a time.
Ridge stood naked beside Griff, staring, eyes wide. But didn’t bears hibernate in winter?
“Stay here,” Jo said telepathically to Griff.
What the hell? “Did it just growl and did you understand what it said?” Ridge stared at his big brother.
Griff watched Jo, the knowledge of what had happened to him and Jo weighing heavy on his shoulders, as Ridge watched him nod, slowly.
Chapter Fourteen
Blue crossed from the town hall to the library. Next to it was the post office. She went into the alley between the buildings and changed into her human self. It was the one place she could stash a few dresses and other items to wear nobody would miss.
The wall-to-wall keys she had stumbled upon when she’d searched for clues in the rear stock room of town hall, proved what she’d expected. The founders of the town had made an agreement to keep the citizens of Smuggler’s Cove safe. She spent Christmas Eve in the library and asked the librarian to make a photocopy of a document. It proved there was a covenant between the founders and the settlers with a group of creatures called the ‘Were-shifters’.
Blue went into the post office with an envelope she’d hidden near the stock room. The postal worker Manny smiled. “I swear, you look younger every time I see you. Why don’t you ever seem to age, Felicia, like the rest of us?”
“Just good genes, I guess,” she said, although hardly anyone knew she also called herself Blue. Manny smiled hesitantly. She’d given him the address of a family member in San Francisco and Manny checked the postage.
If she was unable to keep her end of the bargain with Jo to help protect the denizens of The Cove from harm, she at least could let the one other person in her life know that she’d always loved her.
She needed to explain why she hadn’t contacted her, and why she had let nearly everyone else believe she was dead. Including the one man she had cared about, who didn’t even know she was still alive. And as long as she didn’t let him see her, he never would.
“Anything for you, after you saved my daughter and from those freak bikers.”
“Thanks, Manny.” He said the letter should get there in a couple weeks, as Felicia remembered tonight was the full moon.
She needed to come up with a plan to guard Manny and the townspeople if the Mistress was unable to help. Because the next attack on the wolves and humans would be soon.
Felicia left the post office in her human form smelling the air. She ran down the alley and into the woods howling for her brothers and sisters to meet at the old Marsden’s mill.
She knew they could smell the bikers’ foul odor too as sure as they all were downwind.
Their Mistress was in danger.
*****
Jo raised up on her haunches, growling fiercely.
The bikers at the rear of the gang backed away, but Orion moved closer.
“You ain’t gonna get away, this time, sugar,” Orion removed a bandana from his forehead. He shook it, and Jo paused, amazed at the arrogance.
She’d wipe the smug smile off of his face and he and his goons would think twice before they thought about harming anyone, starting with the runt.
Ridge moved to the door.
“And what do you think you’re going to do?” Griff crossed in front of him.
Oh, I dunno. Find a phone. Call up the townsfolk and round everybody up like it’s ‘Frankenstein’ and announce we’re having a bear lynching. Or maybe you could start explaining what the fricking hay is happening in this town, thought Ridge.
His brother turned on him when he heard ‘lynch party’. “Keep those bigoted thoughts to yourself!” He’d grabbed Ridge by the nape of his neck, while Ridge realized Griff had spoken to him without uttering a sound.
“So, you’re a bear and you’re telepathic, snorted Ridge.
&n
bsp; “Mouth off again, and you’ll see,” said Griff.
Shifters in the Shadows Page 6