by Vonna Harper
Maybe she sensed his scrutiny, because she glanced at him but went back to staring out the windshield before he could read her expression. He should be studying their surroundings, but as more and more trees closed in around the narrowing road, his thoughts went back to the last few nights.
He’d spent them curled in a hollowed tree trunk, not sleeping much and thinking a hell of a lot about Rane. Somehow he had to get her to listen to him, convince her to accept him in her world, embrace him and the rest of the Enyeto.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to make that happen. Maybe if he’d spent more time among humans, he’d better understand what went on inside women’s minds. But maybe, even if he wasn’t a shifter, that might not make a difference.
Because he was who he was, he’d spent hours imagining doing whatever he wanted to her. To hell with what civilization said was allowed. No more worrying about slowly introducing her to his world followed by subtle persuasion and the risk of being rejected.
None of that. Instead, he’d step onto her property, break down her door, back her into a corner and throw her over his shoulder. Ignoring her futile and arousing struggles, he’d carry her into her bedroom and throw her onto the bed. Not giving her time to recover, he’d climb next to her, rip open her blouse, and lift out one ripe breast and then the other.
If she fought, he’d tie her to the bed. Then he’d sit back and watch her eyes flash. Moving slow and deliberate, he’d unzip her jeans and tug them off her hips and legs. Desire would heat her. Heat him too. He’d slip a large, rough hand between her legs. Groaning, she’d open herself to him. Beg him to take her.
And he would. Repeatedly.
The pickup hit one pothole and almost immediately bounced over another. Rane leaned into him, jerked away, smacked his arm again.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“I’m not.”
Staring straight ahead, she jammed her hands between her thighs. “No, I don’t suppose you are.”
Songan started to look their way. Just then the driver-side tires dipped. Cursing, the elk shifter yanked on the steering wheel.
Every time Rane’s shoulder brushed his, Ber lost more of today. The past few nights closed back down around him, and he willingly returned to the fantasy that had sustained, aroused and ultimately frustrated him.
She wasn’t in her house, after all. He found her in a meadow next to a stream. Instead of approaching her slow and calm as he should, the grizzly in him ruled.
Each year when breeding season arrived, he ceased caring whether a sow was in heat. Lunging at whichever one he’d been stalking, he brought her to the ground under his greater weight. If the sow was ripe, she’d open herself to him. If not, they’d growl and wrestle and bite until he quit and took his frustration elsewhere.
Watching the Rane who existed only in his fantasy, he decided he wouldn’t force himself on her after all. No, he’d do something else. Use something else.
A soft, strong white rope appeared in his hand. At nearly the same moment, she became aware of his presence. Instead of welcoming him, she bolted. Her pumping legs, gyrating hips and quickened breaths were like fire to his veins. Growling in excitement, he took off after her. The rope snaked out and settled over her, seeming to caress her flesh even as he jerked her to a stop.
His blood racing, he tied her up, restrained her, rendered her his. And when he’d taken the fight from her and tuned her in to her sexuality, they fucked.
Hard and loud.
“I’m yours,” she said afterward.
Windblown pine needles struck the windshield and slid over the truck’s hood. Just like that, Ber again lost his hold on make-believe. Even as the fantasy faded, he acknowledged that the Rane he barely knew would never utter the cliché words he’d put in her mouth.
“There.” Leaning forward, she pointed at something ahead. “If you turn there, we can go a little farther.”
Songan slowed from maybe fifteen miles an hour to about half of that and eased onto a long unused logging road. Within a couple of minutes, it gave out. Songan turned off the engine, acknowledged Rane and then looked past her at Ber.
“What?” Rane asked Songan. “If you’re thinking you can still get rid of Ber—”
“I’m not. We need him.”
“For what?” Ber demanded.
Songan’s gaze hardened. “Keeping her safe. Alive.”
Not replying, Ber opened the door and stepped out. The cold air smelled of snow and pine. When he’d first accepted that he’d be leaving Alaska, he’d never imagined he’d feel at ease anywhere else, but from the beginning, Oregon’s mountains had embraced him. Even before he’d familiarized himself with the Chinook area, he’d felt secure here. Winter might be showing its teeth, but he loved that season as much as the others.
Rane joined him as Songan came around the truck. The elk shifter turned his head into the wind.
“I know,” Rane said. “Not the world’s best timing.”
Songan shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”
Only a few minutes ago, Ber would have given a great deal to make Songan disappear. He still didn’t like feeling as if he was competing for Rane with him, but he couldn’t discount Songan’s commitment to her. What was it he’d said earlier, that it might take both of them to keep her alive? Was he talking about the storm or something more dangerous?
Looking at Songan out of the corner of his eye, he placed his hand on Rane’s shoulder. She tensed.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please.”
She remained on alert but didn’t try to move away. “I wish I could relax around you. I want to. But I can’t stop thinking of what you said.”
“What was it?” Ber demanded.
Rane lifted his hand off her. For a moment, he was positive he saw his fantasies in her eyes. Was it possible his desire to control her had reached her? Wanting the answer, he slowly lowered his gaze from her face to her breasts and then the join between her legs. Despite her layered clothing, he sensed her arousal. A like emotion gripped him as his cock strained against his jeans.
“What’s this?” Songan pointed at his bulge.
“He thinks I’m going to raise his male offspring and then give that little boy or boys up,” Rane blurted. “Go on, Ber, tell him. Explain all about how the Enyeto need human foster parents to care for your children on until they’re old enough to be useful. I’m sure that won’t bother him at all.”
“What are you talking about?” Songan asked.
“What must be,” Ber said. Rane gaped at him.
“No, never,” Songan insisted. “You can’t force her—”
“Can’t I?”
“Stop it!” Balling her fist, Rane shook it at him and then Songan. “I’m not going to have this conversation, understand? We’re going to where my mother was murdered. Do you think anything else matters?”
If not for the smell of wet female heat emanating from her, Ber would have believed her. She was trying to divide her attention between him and Songan, leaning toward one and then the other.
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
Songan nodded. “So do I.”
Chapter Thirteen
Get a grip! Please, get a grip.
Songan, who’d most recently been to Wolverine, led the way, while Ber brought up the rear. Watching the powerful elk shifter’s legs work and aware of Ber’s attention on her ass, Rane walked in the middle. Reality was, she could practically find Wolverine in her sleep, but the more time the three of them spent on the trail, the more grateful she was for the company.
From the moment her mother’s body had been found, she’d known she had to come here. Back then having Songan accompany her had made the most sense, but that was before Ber had, what, become part of her life?
It was so complicated. Excitingly so. More and more arousing by the moment.
Two men. Two virile men. Every step she took pounded the reality deeper into her soul and pussy.
They both wanted her. So
ngan took having sex with her again for granted, while Ber—what had taken place between them?
Goose bumps ran down her spine. Oh yes, Ber was studying her, all right, just as he’d done when they were in the truck. It could have been her imagination. It would be easier if it was, but she suspected that somehow he knew about the erotic bondage dreams. Damn it, he’d probably done more than that. Most likely he’d planted them in her. Was that his way of having sex with her?
Groaning under her breath, she shrugged her pack higher on her back, glad that she was carrying her pistol instead of the heavier rifle. Ber, who still looked impervious to the cold and wind despite his lightweight clothing, had offered to carry it. She’d stubbornly insisted she wanted to be responsible for her own belongings.
Songan’s pack held her mother’s rifle, which he knew how to use, most of the food, flashlights and extra blankets he wouldn’t need if he decided to shift. She was the only one of the three who couldn’t get along without what she saw as necessities.
What was she thinking? Songan wouldn’t shift if Ber remained in human form. Either both of them would become animals, or both would—oh damn! She and two confident, competent, over-the-top sexy men in a small, isolated space…
The cabin had only a single bed.
Cheeks burning and lungs not providing all the oxygen she needed, she pressed her fingers to her forehead. Looking around and beyond Songan, she spotted a rocky outcropping which was less than a mile from the cabin where, according to her day planner, her mother had spent the last night of her life.
She didn’t want to be here! God, what had she thought she’d prove by standing near where her mother’s blood had stained the ground? She couldn’t bring her back to life. She wasn’t a detective or investigator, a vigilante.
She was a woman being torn apart by the two sexiest, most powerful men imaginable.
Songan stopped so abruptly she had to put her hand out to keep from running into him. His heat seeped into her fingertips and up her arm to her breasts. Words failed her, and her legs threatened to give way.
“I have a suggestion,” Songan said, seemingly oblivious to her condition. “It’s going to be dark in what, maybe three hours?”
Determined to regain her equilibrium, she’d dropped her arm to her side. Her chest felt as if it had caught fire.
“Rane,” Songan continued, “I say we first go to the cabin and leave everything there.”
“I agree.” Ber’s voice behind her made her think of a solitary drum. “You need to do this right.”
Stepping back from the men, she tried to look at both at the same time. “Right?”
“Take as much of what’s left of today and tomorrow as you need.”
Tomorrow. Spending the night with Songan and Ber.
“We should have started earlier,” she admitted. “I should have pressed—”
“It’s too late for that,” Ber said and glanced skyward.
Yes, it is. “But tomorrow—what about the storm?”
Ber shrugged. “What about it?”
“Look, I get why the weather isn’t a concern for you. All you have to do is shift and crawl into some cave. Maybe not wake up until spring. What do you care whether I find peace?” Or connect with my mother.
His eyes sobering, Ber stepped toward her. “I care, damn it, I care.”
He did. She had no doubt of that. She also was in no condition to ponder why that was. Things had always been simpler with Songan, who, as far as she knew, had never tried to tap into her emotions.
Desperate for Songan’s simpler and less emotionally invasive view of life, she turned toward him. To her shock, his gaze was a twin of Ber’s intensity.
She could love these men. Or if not love them, care for and about them in ways she’d never imagined possible. Studying them, she acknowledged that only her mother and the wilderness had brought out these emotions in her.
Songan and Ber had called this a place of death, but she’d never felt more alive.
“I’m a little crazy right now,” she admitted. “But I want to thank both of you for keeping me from falling off the deep end.”
Ber took another step toward her. When he held out his hand, she took it. Connected with his energy. “You’re not alone. Don’t forget that.”
“I know.”
Positioning himself behind her, Songan rested his large, heavy hands on her shoulders. She waited for him to say something, but all he gave her was his moist breath pushing through her braid and dampening the back of her neck.
Her legs again lost strength, causing her to grip Ber’s hand with both of hers. If it wasn’t beyond insane, she would have dropped to the ground and begged both men to join her on Mother Earth. Primitive creature that she’d become, she desperately needed a cock buried deep inside her and the taste of another in her mouth.
Songan’s grip tightened. Wondering if he knew what she was thinking, she glanced over her shoulder at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was gazing around with furrowed brows and lifted head. Having seen that intense expression on him before, she knew he was calling on his senses to assess his surroundings. Much as she wanted to ask what had caught his attention, she knew better than to interrupt him right now. Turning her attention to Ber, she wasn’t surprised to see him doing the same.
“I’m not sure what it is.” Ber directed his comment at Songan. “The wind isn’t helping. But there’s something.”
“What did you hear?” Songan asked, still looking left and right.
“Maybe a voice.”
“Maybe.” Songan sounded doubtful.
“You think someone else might be around here?” Even though it was probably too late to matter, she kept her voice low and hopefully calm. Her heartbeat picked up.
“Someone or something,” Ber replied.
“An animal?”
Instead of answering, Ber fixed his gaze on Songan. “What about elk? Your kind waiting for their chance to kill me.”
“No!” Rane gasped, silence forgotten. “I can’t believe—Songan, tell him he’s wrong.”
Songan’s hands continued to press on her shoulders, making her wonder if he was trying to lay claim to her. “Maybe it’s another bear shifter, Ber,” he said. “Two against one is a battle I can’t win.”
“Stop it!” she insisted, even though she couldn’t shake the possibility that one or both of them might be right. “Look, I can’t make you two accept and trust each other, but there won’t be any bloodshed in my presence. There won’t!”
Neither man spoke.
“Are you laughing at me? Is that what this is about? Feeling sorry for the poor dumb human who thinks she can keep bears and elks from trying to kill each other? Maybe I can’t, but there’s one thing I do know—I’ll never forgive you. Never speak to either of you again.”
Done with her impassioned speech, she imagined the echo of her words swirling around Ber and Songan, maybe knocking sense into them. And maybe preventing them from hearing what they needed to.
Cursing herself, she withdrew her hand from Ber’s and placed it over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It doesn’t matter.” Ber faced the woods. “What’s done is done.”
Rane’s mother’s body had been found about a half mile south of the cabin that anchored the area known as Wolverine. The lack of blood on the ground plus a few faint drag marks led law enforcement to conclude that Jacki had been killed elsewhere and brought to what seemed like a random location. Going under the assumption that the killer or killers had deliberately removed her from the kill spot, searchers had tried to backtrack. Unfortunately, the rain that had fallen between the time she’d gone missing and her remains were located had made that impossible.
Rane had asked Gannon why less than a day had been spent at Wolverine once Jacki’s body was located. Gannon explained, not to Rane’s satisfaction, that priority had been given to looking at potential suspects, not running his department’s only tracking dog
into the ground.
The Wolverine cabin had been constructed more than forty years ago by jail prisoners under supervision of Forest Service personnel. Built without electricity and plumbing—there was a nearby outhouse—it had some insulation and a cast iron woodstove. Volunteers periodically replenished the wood supply, and plastic water containers were left outside near the door. When the water froze in winter, visitors brought the containers inside to thaw.
Watching Songan effortlessly carry a five gallon container into the cabin, she imagined her mother doing the same. Ber had a double armload of wood, something else her mother would have had to do.
After putting down the wood, Ber opened the stove and peered inside. “Hardly any ashes.”
“Mother—” Her throat seized, forcing her to wait until her muscles relaxed. “Maybe she’s responsible.”
Memories of her mother’s voice, smell and touch swamped her. Sighing, she sank into one of the two easy chairs in the compact space. A single bed was against the wall opposite the woodstove, and a small table had been placed under the only window. Thanks to the men’s sizes, she felt cramped and claustrophobic, and yet that was better than being here alone.
“Donald Cushing—he was Mom’s supervisor—told me she was a natural for her job, a true steward of the land. I loved hearing that.”
Ber, who was crumpling up newspapers left by volunteers and placing it in the stove cavity, shook his head. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
He actually thought she could turn off her mind? But even as pain enveloped her, she noted the way his jeans strained over his muscles. Sexual attraction practically screamed at her. She had to get a handle on things, she had to!
Maybe oblivious to her scrutiny, Ber added kindling and lit a match. He waited until the flames licked upward before placing several sticks on top of the kindling. When they caught fire, he added two larger logs. That done, he closed the door and slowly, gracefully stood. She marveled at his ability to get to his feet without using his hands for support.