The deep chuckle on the other end made him smile and lean back in his seat. Austin Tarben was always filled with humor. “You do realize the absurdity of that greeting right?”
Isaiah snickered too. “You dialed my number. I assume you knew who you were going to get.”
“Uh-huh, except everyone in your entire plant has the surname of Arthur, so…”
Isaiah laughed harder. “Whatever. What’s up?” The two of them had been friends since they were about fifteen, when they ran into each other high in the mountains one day. Both had been in a snit about something at home and had bonded in spite of their ridiculous family feud.
“Besides, I was hoping maybe a certain female would answer instead of your sorry ass, and I’d get to hear her voice.”
“Who?” Isaiah teased. “You mean my mom?”
“Ha ha. You’re so funny. Now, tell me about her.”
“You’ve met my sister lots of times. She’s sweet, kind, funny. I think you two would get along splendidly if either of you was willing to admit it.” Isaiah was still steering the conversation in a totally different direction than Austin intended, but he grabbed the opportunity to intentionally misunderstand his friend anyway.
“You’re so witty today. I’m impressed considering it’s been like two days since I heard you carried an injured woman out of the woods. Word around here is she’s yours.”
Word gets around. That’s for sure. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? She is or she isn’t.”
“Yeah. She is, but we haven’t made it official.”
“You mean you haven’t made an announcement? Or you haven’t bound her to you yet?”
“Neither.” Isaiah sighed, rubbing his forehead. “She isn’t ready.”
“Wow. That’s risky.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to rush her and risk her feeling trapped. My family has stepped in to help guide her, and it’s not like I plan to sleep alone.”
“Do it, man. Don’t wait.” Austin’s voice lost all humor. He was rarely this serious. “I don’t like the rumors. You need to bind her to you.”
Isaiah sat straighter, gripping the phone tighter. “What have you heard?”
“Some people are talking about claiming her for themselves. Others are talking about eliminating her. She’s a sitting duck until you bind to her.”
Isaiah rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, I get that, but do you really think someone would kidnap her or kill her? That’s absurd.”
“Dude, worse.” His voice lowered to nearly a whisper. “I think people are watching you right now. Waiting for a chance to pounce.”
Isaiah stood from the desk, his entire body on alert. “Here? At the brewery?”
“Everywhere. They’re following you. They’re being very hush hush about it in order to not piss off the council. Everyone heard about what happened yesterday with the Arcadians. But that doesn’t mean they approve of the council’s decision. Trust me, Isaiah. Do not fucking wait.”
“Who are we talking about? My pack? Yours? Others?”
“I haven’t heard of anyone from your pack being involved, but yes, mine. And the Osborns, and the Gerbens. You know how hotheaded my damn brother is. I’ve heard Antoine on the phone with his cronies several times. They aren’t right in the head, but I think they know stuff.”
“Jesus. Seriously?”
“Sorry, man. I was hoping you realized it.”
“No.” Isaiah shook his head. “I had no idea.” He wanted to find Heather immediately. She would just have to sit in his office until he finished working. The thought of someone getting to her made him livid on multiple levels.
Knowing if they were separated by any distance, she wouldn’t even be able to reach out to him telepathically for help drove him to an entire new level of insanity. The only reason he figured she could communicate with him at all so far was because they were obviously meant to be together. Besides the Arcadian Council and himself, he doubted she could communicate easily with anyone else. “Gotta go. Thanks for the info.” He hung up the phone without waiting for a response. Austin would understand.
As if the building were on fire, he jogged down the hallway to the observation room and yanked the door open. He was breathing heavily as he stood in the doorway.
Heather and Joselyn spun around to look at him, both laughing, but their faces fell when they saw his expression.
“What’s the matter?” Jos asked.
“Nothing. But come to my office. You can chat there. I need to finish.” Was he being unreasonable?
Heather jumped down from the stool she’d been on and glided across the room until she could set her hands on his chest and tip her head back to meet his gaze. “For once, I’m reading you. You’re so upset you can’t even block me. What happened?”
He grabbed her hand and led her back down the hallway to his office, Joselyn right behind them. When they were inside and the door was shut, he finally spoke. “People are watching you. I don’t like it.” There was no way to keep it from her, nor did he want to. She was much better off armed than in the dark. She needed to be diligent. Not naïve.
Joselyn gasped.
Heather, on the other hand, was surprisingly calm. “Okay. Who? Where are they?” Her voice was steady. Soft.
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Anywhere. Everywhere. Following us. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Still so steady. Matter of fact. Calm.
He tried to pull his shit together. He wasn’t this guy. This irrationally nervous man scared out of his mind. He stared down at her, holding her biceps tightly as if she might disappear if he let go. “An opportunity.”
Joselyn interrupted the stare off. “Isaiah, who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that someone I trust tipped me off. We need to be careful. Diligent. Always.” He continued to look at Heather while he spoke.
If he wasn’t half mad with the desire to own this woman, he would wonder when the hell he became this crazed boyfriend who knew she was his other half and wouldn’t survive intact if anything happened to her. But he knew exactly when he’d turned into crazy, lust-filled Isaiah Arthur—the moment he stuck his head inside her car to grab her jacket two mornings ago.
A slow smile spread across Heather’s face. She leaned closer, lifted onto her tiptoes, and kissed his lips, not giving a shit that his sister was watching. “I’m right here. Not going anywhere. We’ll handle this. Get your payroll done, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
Damn, he loved her.
He flinched.
Loved?
Was that a reasonable emotion for someone he met two days ago?
Fuck yes, it was.
The sanest thing he’d ever felt.
Chapter Seventeen
Heather could sense the increasing stress level that wafted off Isaiah as the day progressed. As soon as he was done working, they returned to his parents’ home, ate dinner with the family, and then made their way to his cabin.
He closed his eyes for a moment before exiting the SUV, rounded it quickly, and lifted her down to the ground. She had to jog to keep up with him to get to the house.
He didn’t seem to breathe until they were inside with the door locked.
She knew members of his extended family were outside. He’d communicated multiple times with several people. She didn’t know who. And it most likely didn’t matter. She’d never met any of them. But she could read him enough, especially in his agitated state, to know they weren’t alone. Others were guarding them.
As much as she would prefer not to discuss the shit-storm that was her current life, she needed information. He’d spoken out loud to his parents and his brother and sister over dinner, but he’d also exchanged communication he didn’t want her to hear. Was he trying to protect her?
She broke the silence. “How many of your people are out there?”
He shook his head. “Nothing gets by you.”
He dropped his keys on the end table by the couch and let his hand drift down to grasp hers. Without a word, he led her down the hall to the master bedroom and shut the door. After kicking off his shoes, he sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and reached for her.
She went to him, stepping into the spread of his legs and inhaling his scent. Immediately she lost some of her resolve. She shook her head to clear her mind. “Talk to me.”
“Just so you know, not much would change if I completed the binding. You would still find yourself blocked from any conversation going on around you that you weren’t invited into. It’s kind of strange to an outsider, I suppose, but we’re used to it.
“When we’re at the kitchen table ten things happen at once without a sound. My mom communicates with my sister. She also communicates with my dad. Both of those are separate and unrelated and blocked from the other. Meanwhile, I might be talking to Joselyn and Wyatt at the same time in an open three-way.
“It’s not really rude in our minds. It’s just how we compartmentalize. No one wants to hear my chat with Wyatt about the payroll or my mom’s talk with Joselyn about eye makeup.”
She nodded. “I get that. But you do realize I’m involved in no conversation except the one I’m having with you.”
He sighed and threaded his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. “Eventually that will change. I’m sure of it. Over time, you’ll be able to speak with the rest of my family too. In the meantime, I don’t mean for you to feel alienated. But I also know there’s a lot of information being thrown at you all at once.”
“You can’t protect me from everything, Isaiah.”
“I get that. And I don’t mean to. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I just wanted to get back to the house where everyone wasn’t shouting into my head at once so we could speak in private.”
“Okay. Talk.”
His fingers were stroking her scalp in slow circles that soothed her. “Two of my cousins are roaming the area. Just keeping an eye out.”
“Don’t people need to sleep?”
He smiled. “They’ll figure something out. Don’t worry. They’ll trade in the middle of the night. No one is put out, if that’s your worry. We protect our own with our lives. It’s how we were raised.”
“But I’m not one of your own. They could be frustrated to be helping out a stranger.”
He shook his head. “No one feels that way. First of all, you’re one of us now. That’s already been established. It has nothing to do with you and me binding ourselves together. Even if we didn’t, it wouldn’t change your new status as a member of the Arthur pack. Not every shifter in the pack is a blood relative. We take people in for various reasons from time to time.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t realized that. “Okay, so what about the others? You think other shifters are following me?”
“Unfortunately yes. If I had gotten my information from anyone else, I would doubt the source, but not this guy.”
She was sharp enough to read between the lines. He had an ally in the neighboring family. He’d already told her that. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together. And she understood perfectly why he would keep the person’s identity to himself. Probably his own parents didn’t know. “Austin Tarben,” she whispered.
He exhaled slowly and nodded, his hands sliding down to grasp her fingers. “Yes.”
She gripped his hands. “The bottom line is that I’m endangering myself and making everyone in your pack work overtime while I stubbornly refuse to bind myself to you.”
He shook his head rapidly and hauled her body against his. “Please don’t think that. No one else does. It’s not irrational for two shifters who met two days ago to hold off on the permanence of a binding even if they are totally head over heels. When you add the fact that one of them was human until two days ago, it would be absurd to expect them to bind.”
He kissed her cheek and nibbled a path to her ear, making her shudder. “No one expects you to make that monumental decision right now. Hell, no one expects me to, either. So relax. Stop worrying about it. Let me remind you how good we are together.”
She felt him smile against her neck. “Right, because that will make it so much easier to fend you off,” she joked.
“Mmm.” He nuzzled the very spot she knew he would bite eventually. “Never said I was going to play fair. I just asked you to let me make your world spin.”
She shivered, grabbing his waist and angling her lips toward his. “Can’t turn that down.”
His hands went to her sweater and up under the thick material to cover her waist. When he slowly eased them up to her breasts, he froze, his lips no longer moving over hers. “Damn. You’re full of surprises.”
She smiled against his mouth. “You said you weren’t a fan of bras.”
“I did indeed.” He cupped her breasts, holding them loosely at first as though weighing them in his palms, and then he thumbed her nipples until she arched into him. Her lips broke free as she tipped her head back. Every time he touched her, he lit her on fire. Just the simple act of stroking her nipples beneath her sweater made her horny.
“I love it when your mouth parts like that,” he whispered. “Makes my cock so hard watching your face open up. The joy. The pleasure.”
She tried to focus on his words, but his fingers continued to toy with her nipples, driving her higher until she thought she might come from their attention alone.
When he released her breasts to drag her sweater over her head, she whimpered before she could stop herself.
He smiled. “Baby… You’re so damn responsive.”
“Only with you,” she shared.
“Love hearing that.”
His hands went to the button on her jeans while she did the same to his. Simultaneously they popped buttons and lowered zippers. The only problem was he was sitting and she was standing. In moments he had her jeans pooled at her feet. She had her hand twisted backward inside his pants, cupping his cock.
He stood long enough to shrug out of the jeans without dislodging her touch.
The silky smooth feel of his length in her hand made her stroke up and down the skin. He let her, for about ten seconds, and then he grabbed her hand and pulled it away. “Climb onto the bed. Get in the middle. On all fours.”
She hesitated, considering how demanding he was and whether or not she should be so turned on by it every time. Was she setting a precedent she wouldn’t be able to escape later?
He stroked her arm up and down. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“It bothers me that your dominance goes straight to my clit and makes me so hot. Every time. Like I’m not even me.”
He set one hand on her butt and pressed her pussy against the mattress between his legs. “It’s just a new you that you’ve never met. You weren’t with the right man.”
“Is it the shifting?”
“Nope. It’s always been in you, this need to have a lover with a dominant tendency. You just didn’t know it. Until you meet someone who can make your body scream, it’s hard to be aware of the need.”
“It’s consuming me.”
“I know, baby.” His words were soft. Gentle. So understanding. Even though he’d given her a command, he wasn’t angry she’d hesitated. He simply took the time to talk to her.
She also knew full well when they were done talking, he would still expect her to do as he said. That thought made her shudder.
“A couple of forces are at work. One is your need to be controlled a bit in bed. It drives you so much higher than vanilla sex ever will. The other thing is the magnetic pull of our bodies to each other. I know I said Fate was a silly notion, but I’ve changed my mind. Nature indeed has a plan for us. I know it in my soul. She will be relentless in Her quest to ensure we do
Her will.”
“And you’re convinced Her will is for us to bind together.”
“I know it with every ounce of my being. But,” he held up a finger, “I am patient, and I absolutely won’t rush you. There’s no reason to rush. Just because I’m sure of us and what we’ll be together for the rest of our lives doesn’t mean it has to start today.”
She bit her lower lip. Was he right? Or was she being ridiculous? And who said she had to wait for him to decide when they finished the binding? He’d said himself either party could do it at any time.
“You’re entitled to your own timeframe. I won’t rush you. I’ve said that before, and I mean it. We’re on your calendar, not mine.”
“But I’m endangering myself and others.”
He set a finger on her lips. “You’re not. Stop it.”
She lowered her gaze to his lap, the location of his bobbing erection. Even in the midst of this serious discussion, he was aroused. Of course, she was too. Wetness leaked between her legs, increasing with every touch of his hands and every gentle word from his lips.
He changed his tone to seductive. “How do you feel when I order you around in bed? When I hold you down and make you come?”
She shivered, unable to stop the response as his fingers toyed with her butt cheek, inching their way closer to her tight rear hole. An unbidden moan escaped her lips.
“Oh baby, that’s what I thought. Now, climb onto the bed on all fours.”
She crawled over his thigh, intentionally teasing him with as much contact with her body as possible. She let her breast graze his arm on the way by and seductively crawled like a feline to the center of the mattress.
“Taunting me won’t ease your need.” His voice was deep, gravelly, firm. She affected him, even though he may fully intend to withhold gratification. His delay would only make her arousal grow.
“Spread your knees wider.”
She complied, biting her lip again to keep from moaning at the exposure.
“You can put your elbows on the bed. I like your ass up higher anyway. Plus your tits will drag across the sheet.” His description did nothing to dampen her desire. Every word was carefully calculated to tighten the ball forming in her belly.
Grizzly Mountain (Arcadian Bears Book 1) Page 18