He abruptly dropped the soap between her legs and turned to the door, grabbing his coat on the way out. He heard her say, "wait," as it slammed shut behind him. He planned to sniff out a way to get rid of her.
The snow pack was still knee deep. Even if her ankle were better, she probably couldn't hike twenty miles in this deep of snow. Damn. There had to be a way.
No matter how much he detested the idea of having Forest Service on his land, he regretted chasing off Ashton. He should have asked his younger brother to send someone to take her away.
Ronan trudged through the snow to the overhang and peeled off his clothes. The cold bit into his skin, and he began to shake violently before he got down to his boots. When the final garment lay over his wood pile, he turned. His body contorted and changed in the gasping span of a sharp breath.
He stood in his feline form, grinning over sharp teeth. He stretched his back and clawed at the ground. How good it felt to be a beast again. His claws grated the frozen soil, giving him a keen sense of release.
Swiftly, he pounced into the wood beyond his cabin, sniffing the frozen air with his big black nose. The world was muffled in a blanket of white. Sounds and smells were muted by the heavy layers of snow. Above, the sky was piercing blue. A hawk glided over the forest, shrieking for a kill.
Ronan growled at the other predator. No matter if the bird flew high in the atmosphere, the land below belonged to only him. He would defend his domain against anyone man or beast. Or woman.
The mountain cat urged the human inside him to go back to the cabin, grip the female with his sharp claws, sink his teeth into the vulnerable flesh on the back of her neck, while he pumped into her with his dripping member. The human inside him refused. He'd never been so at odds with himself in his entire life.
How could his cat disagree? Both man and beast had sought the solitude of the forest. Both man and beast had rejected the advances of would-be mates in the past. Now they disagreed over one woman, a woman who had stumbled into his life and turned it instantly upside down. No one but Ashton had been anywhere near his cabin for years. Now it had been taken over by her.
In disgust, Ronan's human mind pushed the lion deeper into the wood. Enticed by the scent of a hare and the rapid beating of its heart, the lion forgot the woman and hunched into a prowl. He followed the scent until it smelled fresh and recent. Pulling the odor into his nose and mouth like liquid, he let it wash through him and down his throat.
He could sense the rabbit had scurried under a downed log. He put his nose to the ground and prowled through the low undergrowth. Crouched behind a log, downwind of the rabbit, he waited for the twitching creature to emerge from its hiding spot. A loud crack cut through the still, frigid air. A second crack came with a bite. A bullet hit Ronan's foreleg, grazing the muscles of his upper leg.
He stumbled backward. He hadn't sensed the humans. Stupid oversight. The smell of the hunter's gun powder stung his keen senses. Blood dripped from his wound and stained the white snow crimson. Turning away from the scene, he loped toward his cabin. In an instant, he shifted, not knowing what would be worse—to be shot by a hunter while in lion form, or to be seen naked running through the forest as a human.
He made it back to the cabin with blood running down his bicep. It had been a grazing blow. The bullet only nicked him. If it had been a few inches to the right, it would have pierced his heart.
When he reached the overhang, he pulled on his clothes and stormed inside. Makayla sat on the bed wrapped in blankets and towels. Her wet clothes hung, draped over the back of a chair in front of the fireplace.
"You're bleeding!" she exclaimed. She had an astonishing way of stating the obvious. He ignored her and went to his work counter. Using a similar poultice as he had with Makayla, he cleaned and patched up the wound on his arm. It ached, and it pissed him off. He'd run from the hunter like a coward. He should have gouged his eyes out.
Part of him wanted to find the hunter and surprise the man with an up close shift, grab his neck, and watch the life fade from his eyes. But Ronan was no murderer. Killing a human was a far cry from killing a rabbit or deer. No, he would sit in the cabin and seethe.
"What happened?" Makayla asked behind him. The whining tone of her voice grated his nerves. The sound pressed against him as if the walls were closing in. The cabin felt stifling and small. Trapped inside like a rabbit in its den, Ronan had never felt so powerless, or so angry.
"Nothing," he barked.
"I'm just concerned about you. You don't have to be a jerk. If you get hurt, I'll never get out of here."
He let out a deep breath. It wasn't her fault. He turned and looked at her, his mood still dark.
"It's a flesh wound. Nothing to be concerned about."
"Can I help?"
"I doubt it. Just stay out of the way."
She made and exasperated noise and rolled her eyes. "When will I be able to leave this place? My ankle hardly hurts at all anymore. I walked across the cabin with no problem at all. I need to get home. People will be looking for me. I have responsibilities."
"Believe me. I don't want you here a minute longer than necessary, but I doubt you can walk back in this snow."
"Do you think I'm weak?"
"I know you aren't accustomed to trudging through deep snow. I know you have only tennis shoes. I know that your ankle will give out after about a mile."
"Then go for help. I don't want to stay here any longer."
"I can't."
"Why? You can walk, or prowl, or whatever you do."
Ronan's heart thumped. What did she say? Did she know?
"What are you talking about, Makayla?"
"I saw you. I saw you outside in the snow, fighting with the other mountain lion. You hurt it and then shifted into human form. I thought maybe I was hallucinating from the head wound, but now I know it was true."
"How?"
"That's a bullet wound. I'm not so much a city girl as you think. Why would someone shoot at you? Either there is a terribly unlucky hunter out there, you're on the run from the mafia, or what I saw outside was real."
"Aren't you terrified?" he asked. He wanted to run away in anguish because his secret had been revealed to a human. Mocking her was the next best thing.
"Not particularly, no. I was at first. I thought you might eat me. But then I realized if you were going to eat me, you would have done it already."
"What makes you think I'm not just keeping you around for an easy meal?"
"Don't be disgusting. You aren't a murderer."
"How do you know?" he asked, letting his eyes glow yellow and his fangs protrude from his mouth. Her face contorted in shock and fear. She recoiled further into the corner of the bed and pulled the blankets around her neck.
Her reaction reminded him of a cornered animal; it excited him. He wanted to pounce. But the lion inside him did not want to sink his teeth into her skin in order to tear her apart. No. The lion wanted to sink inside her to bring her pleasure. He turned away, making his animal-self fade.
He was ashamed of frightening her. It had been a baseless game. They were both trapped together in the cabin. Fighting with the woman or terrifying her would lead nowhere good.
"I'm sorry," he grumbled.
"How? How did this happen to you?"
"What?" he asked.
She bared her teeth and made a clawing motion with both hands. His mood shifted at the ridiculous sight. He made a grunting laugh at her lion impersonation and sat down at the table to face her.
"I was born this way."
"Are there others?"
"Many. The lion you saw yesterday was my brother Ashton. He is the reason you ran off the road. He has a sick sense of humor. I have no idea where he gets it. Our parents are serious people."
"People?"
"Shifters. Mom and Dad are both mountain lions. There is a whole community of shifters and other paranormals over in Mystic Harbor."
"Why doesn't the world know about them?"
"The human world believes what it wants to. Our kind can stay hidden in plain sight."
"What am I supposed to do now?” she whined.
"Sit. Stay. Don't make a mess. Stay out of my hair."
Chapter 7
He was being a bastard. She couldn't take being in the cabin with him for a moment longer. To think, she had believed he had some decency underneath his irritable exterior. Now she saw just how wrong she had been.
Makayla stared at Ronan, narrowing her eyes and looking as fierce as a human possibly could, staring down a mountain lion shapeshifter.
Reaching to the chair by the fireplace, she grabbed her clothes and began pulling them on. They were still slightly damp, but she didn't care. She was getting out of here. One second longer with the insolent hermit would break her. She was not used to being spoken to this way, and she wasn't about to start accepting it now.
She pulled her socks on and slipped her feet into her tennis shoes, then slowly limped across the cabin to tug on her parka.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm leaving."
"You're insane if you think you will make it to the road."
"Just point me in the right direction, and I'll be out of your hair."
"Makayla..."
"No. I won't stay here to be treated this way. You have no right to talk to me like that. If you didn't want me here, you could have taken me back to the road and waved someone down to call an ambulance. No one made you bring me here. That's on you. I'm leaving."
"I can't let you kill yourself," he said standing in front of the door. His face showed serious concern. She didn't care. He had gone too far. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
"Get out of the way," she said in the most menacing tone she could muster.
"Fine. It's your death. Go ahead. It's ten degrees out there. Your clothes will freeze before you lose sight of the cabin."
She harrumphed and brushed past him. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was making a mistake. At that moment she was so angry, she would rather die in the cold than listen to his insults.
Makayla opened the door and was struck with the sharp cold air. Damn. It was cold out there. She pulled the parka hood over her head and shoved her hands in her pockets. As she trudged through the snow, freezing clumps crushed against her ankles.
The chill air crept up her leg, and her damp pants began to stiffen. Shit. This was going to be intensely uncomfortable. She shoved her chin in the air. Makayla Phillips was not a woman to back down from a challenge.
She'd graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oregon in three years and completed her master's degree in Journalism by the time she was twenty-three. She'd become the youngest editor of Portland Living in the magazine's twenty-five year history, and she'd grown the magazine's readership from fifty thousand to over two hundred thousand during her tenure. She wasn't a woman who would let a little snow stop her.
No matter how determined and competent Makayla might have be, she couldn't keep her clothes from freezing. With each step she forced her aching ankle through the deep snow and her pant leg stiffened just a bit more. By the time she had covered what felt like a mile, her breath rasped in her throat and her teeth chattered loudly in her ears.
She noticed a flash of yellow fur out of the corner of her eye. Her body shook so violently, she couldn't be sure if she was seeing an illusion. If it was the reprehensible panther she wanted nothing to do with him.
A snarling growl pierced the sharp air. Makayla whipped her head in the direction from which it had come. Her heart pounded. Suddenly she very much wanted the flash of yellow to be Ronan.
Her breath blew out in front of her like crystallized fog. She panted in the harsh air, letting her fear get the best of her. Should I run? Her pants were stiff and her ankle almost refused to keep her standing.
She set her mind, ignored the pain, and kept walking. Ronan or not, she was going back to the road. Nothing would stop her. She continued in the direction he had pointed, putting one foot in front of her.
Another mile of death march behind her and she felt her fingers and toes turn numb. Now she knew she had made a mistake. Hypothermia and frost bite could kill her or steal a finger or toe. She'd seen the effects of frost bite. It was not a pretty sight.
The worst part was she felt terribly tired. Why was she so very, very tired? All she wanted to do was lie down and have a nap. It wouldn't hurt would it? She'd just curl up under a tree trunk and close her eyes for a few minutes. After that she could keep going.
She dropped to her knees and laid down on the packed snow, her hands stuffed in her pockets. This is better. No more worry. No more stress. She would just rest here until she woke and move on. It will be fine. Just fine.
She felt arms wrap around her, lifting her off the ground. Her dazed mind whirled. She opened her eyes and gazed up at Ronan. He was naked. His golden blond, tousled hair waved around his rugged face. She'd never been so pleased to see a man in her life.
He ran and Makayla felt herself fly over the forest as if on the wings of a gliding bird. The trees blurred past. Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, she was back inside the cabin. Warm air bit into her frozen skin, and she cried out in pain.
Ronan pulled her stiff clothes from her body until she was bare and placed her beneath the thick blankets on the bed. The warmth was both inviting and painful. She shook so violently she nearly bit her tongue. He slid under the blankets with her and covered her with his arm and leg, pulling her into his heat.
"Don't run off on me again," he chided.
"Nah, nah, nah..." was all she could manage to say. She wanted to say, 'not a chance,' but it wouldn't come out coherently. She sank her head into his hard chest and listened to his heart beat slow and steady beneath her ear. The sound was both comforting and mesmerizing. It helped her soon fall into a deep sleep.
When she next opened her eyes, darkness had fallen outside the windows. No candles or lamps were lit. Only the light from the fireplace flickered across the cabin, casting a warm glow and deep, penetrating shadows.
She stirred and Ronan wrapped his arms around her more tightly. His heavy leg was curled over her thighs, pinning her under his mass. He pulled her into him, his body hard against hers. His chest was hard, his arms were hard, and his... Makayla's eyes snapped wide open. She'd seen his cock briefly through the foggy window, but erect against her thigh, it felt enormous!
Her heart fluttered and she felt herself sweat against the heat of him. Moisture trickled between her legs and her nipples pricked even in the intense warmth of his embrace.
For all his faults, Ronan Harding had saved her life twice now. He hadn't been obligated to do it either time. The second time had been purely her own fault. He was exasperating, but not enough to freeze to death over.
A flood of gratitude mixed with her very palpable arousal. Without thinking, she tilted her hand toward his long, full member. Her fingertips grazed the shaft. It twitched against her, and he moaned slowly in her ear. The soft breath against her ear caressed her excitement and trickled down her spine until she shook.
He drew his arm back and his big, rough hand grasped her swollen breast. Makayla groaned, squeezing her eyes closed, forcing out all thoughts of the rest of the world. She was naked in bed with a backwoods, mountain man, shapeshifter. Not only was he some kind of mythological being, he was also totally not her type.
Ronan moved his mouth to her neck, his lips soft and wet against her skin. A breath caught in her throat. His hand worked at her breast, pinching the nipple between his long dexterous fingers. Darts of pleasure shot through her body, moving through her nerve endings and causing blood to gush toward all her most sensitive parts.
His hand moved to her face. He rubbed his thumb over her mouth and pressed it between her lips. She sucked his thick thumb as he pushed in and out of her soft, wet mouth. He pulled it out and replaced it with his tongue.
Makayla went limp under his touch
as he leaned over her to press his tongue further in her mouth. Familiar yet completely new. They kissed like lovers who'd memorized each other's deepest pleasure. He ran his hand down her plump stomach and dipped his fingers between her legs, pausing at her entrance.
With light fingertips, he caressed her pussy. He teased out her wetness, pressing one thick finger deep inside. Makayla moaned. He pressed his wet thumb against her clit, rubbing as he thrust his finger.
"Oh God, Ronan," she moaned into his mouth. She pulled away, gasping with pleasure and with growing fear. What happened if you did it with a shapeshifter? Did you catch it? How did new shapeshifters get made? "Should we be doing this?" she whispered in his ear.
He grunted and slowed his fingers. "Why not? I can smell you like it. Thought this was what you wanted."
"I do. I'm just. You know. You're a cougar, and I'm a human. Is it, you know, safe?"
Ronan slid his fingers from inside her and threw his head back in a full bodied laugh. His body shook with mirth. Makayla began to feel as if his laughter was at her expense.
"What?" she asked indignantly.
"Nothing," he said, catching his breath. She had never heard him laugh so hard about anything. "It's just that my brother Ashton has a new human every week. Hasn't been a problem for him."
She sat up in bed, her mood shifting from excited to annoyed. She wanted to understand what shapeshifters were all about before she opened her legs for one.
"But where do you come from? Are you an alien?"
That question brought about another burst of rolling laughter. Ronan sat up in bed and grabbed his stomach. He settled down, slapping his hand against his thigh. "Woman, you are a funny one."
Makayla rolled her eyes. "What are you then?"
"I told you. We've always been here. There are plenty of myths about werewolves and shapeshifters. Haven't you ever heard one?"
"Sure but those are fairy tales. There is a reason they're called myths."
"All those stories exist for a reason. Most of them are true."
"Like dragons?" she asked, her eyes widening with expectancy.
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