by T. S. Joyce
The mechanic shop was an old, small, red-brick building with cracks up the side wall. Both of the garage doors were open. Inside were two cars, an SUV and one of those sporty, old trucks with the restored engine exposed. A familiar pair of legs in holey, grease-stained jeans and shit-stomper work boots was hanging out from under the belly of the truck. One of his legs was bent, the other straight, twitching with the movement of whatever Barret was doing under the truck. There was a strip of bare stomach exposed that said he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and now her nethers were warming again. He had to have some kind of magic panther mojo that brought the girls to him or something. Like a man-siren, calling her to his sex appeal.
She should run away.
I want to see his nipples.
No! She wanted advice on Lynn. Yes. Advice. Nothing more. And then she would run away. Or fly.
Blowing out a sharp breath, she shoved the door of her black Ford F150 open and hopped out. The second she shut it, Barret slid out from under the truck, his eyes narrowed on her.
“No,” he said so loud it echoed down the street.
“No, what? I haven’t even asked you anything.”
She came to a stop right in the middle of a treasure trove of greasy tools, which she didn’t have a guess at, peppering the concrete. Barret was frozen, hunched over like he didn’t know whether to slide back under or stand up. The position made his eight-pack abs extremely defined. A little perverted part of her wished she could straddle his hips and rest her hands on the twin grease marks across his chest. And then roll her hips against his and see if she could get a man like him riled up. She bet he was a large man everywhere.
What the ever-lovin’ hell is wrong with me?
“Um, I came to you for advice.”
“Okay, yes, you should leave Red Havoc territory. Advice given. I got work to do.”
Irritating man. Eden clenched her fists at her sides and tried again. “Advice about Lynn.”
Barret growled and slid all the way out from under the truck. He sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands and angled his face as he squinted against the sunlight. His pupils constricted in the light, making his eyes look even brighter and greener. “How do you know Lynn?”
When Eden kicked the nearest wrench lightly with the toe of her sneaker, it made a soft metal sound across the asphalt. She didn’t like telling strangers anything personal about herself, but Barret’s snarl had ceased and he looked genuinely curious. Plus, it was the first time he wasn’t scowling at her, so it felt like progress. She pulled up a rolling creeper that looked like the one Barret was sitting on and sat down. With just a second of hesitation to find her courage, Eden scooted closer to him until their ankles were almost touching. It was a test, but he didn’t flinch away. Another victory.
Barret dragged his eyes slowly over her body, pausing on her chest, then down between her legs, her knees, her ankles. With hungry eyes, he flickered his attention back to her face. “You don’t have very good instincts, Bird Brain.”
“My name is Eden.”
His eyes tightened at the corners just slightly. “You aren’t registered.”
“Have you been researching me?”
“No. Stalking you. Again, your instincts suck big hairy balls.”
“Well, I’ve been stalking you, too. I found your shop, didn’t I? Maybe you should be the one who’s scared.”
Barret snorted. “Of a flight shifter?”
“Maybe I’m not afraid of you because I grew up with monsters way bigger and meaner than you,” she said primly.
“Like Lynn?”
“Lynn and I grew up together, yes. She was adopted when she was four by a couple that lives right outside of Damon’s Mountains.”
“Bullshit. Lynn’s a panther, through and through.”
“Yeah she is, but she was raised by tiger shifters. They kept her unregistered. Our parents kept as many of the kids unregistered as they could get away with.”
“Why?”
“Safety. Probably the same reason you aren’t registered.”
“You don’t know me,” Barret muttered, shaking his head and staring out across the parking lot of his shop.
“Enlighten me then.”
“No panther shifters register unless we’re forced. There isn’t that many of us anymore.”
“Anymore?”
Barret gave her an empty smile. “Other shifters killed us off.” He jerked, like he had a tick, but after he settled, he gritted out, “Fuck talking about this. What do you want?”
“How do I help Lynn?”
“Easy. You don’t. She’s screwed. I can see her panther eating her up from the inside out. I’ve fought that battle before.”
“But you’re still here. You won.”
Barret huffed an angry breath. “I won part of the battle. Somebody should’ve put me down. It’ll be better for Lynn if Ben takes care of her.”
“Takes care of her? You mean if he kills her?”
“Yep.”
“Do you have no concern for your crew member at all?” she asked, her eyes prickling at the thought of a world with no Lynn.
“You have it wrong. I care about her a lot. Fuck.” He twitched again. “Don’t tell anyone that.” Barret snatched a dirty rag off the floor and stood, then paced away from her and back, wiping his hands on the stained fabric. “My crew. My crew.” He jammed a finger at her. “Lynn’s mine, and so are the others, and I care enough to want her to escape what’s happening to her. You ever seen a broken mate bond, Eden? Huh? I have. My dad went through it. My mom was human and left me and my dad in a crew full of mated panther pairs. My dad’s bond was the only one that failed, and you know what he did?”
Horrified, Eden whispered, “What?”
“Nothing. He withered. He stopped working, he stopped eating, he stopped drinking. He…fuck.” Twitch. Barret grabbed his hair and gritted his teeth as though in pain. He choked on the next admission, as if the words clogged his throat. “He stopped laughing, stopped hugging me, stopped tucking me in, stopped looking at me. He stared out the fucking window and got quiet for two years before Marney came along.”
“Who is Marney?”
“Can’t talk anymore.” Twitch.
“Barret—”
“No!” He picked up a greasy carburetor and threw it against the wall so hard it got stuck in the sheetrock. Barret threw up his middle finger at the carburetor, just hovering in the wall, and then he strode through a side door next to it.
Eden sat there frozen, unsure what to do. His mood had changed so fast she should be terrified right now. The air had grown instantly heavier, clogging her lungs, and even though he was out of sight, the pressure of his dominance remained.
She should’ve left, but her inner animal screeched in rebellion at the thought.
Barret needed a friend. He needed someone to make him steady again.
Determined, she stood and kicked his discarded creeper out of the way, then made her way through the door where he’d disappeared. Inside, there was a checkout counter, a small waiting area, and a hallway. She was met with complete silence, but she could feel him. With each step she took toward the hallway, the air became thicker until it was like trying to breathe water.
The office door creaked as she pushed it open with her fingertips, and there he was. Barret wasn’t pacing like a caged animal as she’d imagined he would be. He was crouched in the corner with his back to her, hands linked behind his head, shaking, resting the crown of his head on the wall. From this angle, she could see his only tattoo. It encased one shoulder and was so dark she had to squint to make out what it was. The artwork was some type of bird with its wings stretched. The flight feathers curved around his collar bone on one side and around to his shoulder blade on his back. The tattoo artist had been very skilled.
A constant snarl sounded from his throat, but the second she rested her palm lightly onto the back of his neck, the noise ceased. She thought he would flinch away and h
ole into himself, the way dominant males tended to do when they were cornered or hurt, but he shocked her to her bones when he reached up and rested his palm on her knuckles, keeping her hand in place on his skin.
“I like touch,” he croaked out.
“Because of your panther?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because of your human side?”
“I don’t know.”
He was done giving her answers, apparently, so she knelt behind him and rested her cheek against his back, relaxed against him completely until he eased onto his butt and leaned into her. Slowly, she sat too, slid her arms around his middle, and encased his hips with her knees. And then she held him. She hugged him. She embraced this stranger in a moment that was becoming the most intimate she’d ever experienced. Eden didn’t know how long they sat like that, but eventually, he sighed and relaxed against her completely. She brushed his skin, right over his abs, and a soft purr rattled up his throat. He didn’t cut off the sound but let it happen. Behind his back, she smiled. Barret might be a tough guy, but he liked being petted.
She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, committing his scent to memory. Oil, cologne, fur, and a hint of sweat that made her hormones do backflips.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” she whispered.
“I didn’t tell you what happened.”
The smile dipped from her face. “What do you mean?”
“That wasn’t the bad part,” he rumbled “No more. Talking doesn’t help. Not ever. Talking lets out my demons.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t be in cages. Maybe you should just keep them on leashes.”
He turned in her arms and settled his back against the wall. She thought he was shutting her out, but he grabbed behind her knees and dragged her whole body forward until they were almost connected at the hips, her legs bent over his, her ankles on either side of his waist. She loved this. It was as if she’d known him in no time at all and forever all at once. It made her dizzy and excited and scared and happy. Inside of her, the falcon was watching him quietly, possessively, as if he was already hers.
“You speak of demons like you have them, too,” he murmured in a deep, raspy voice.
“Not me. I got lucky, but I was raised with shifters who were full of monsters. Damage is what I know.”
“Things went wrong when I was young,” he murmured. He flipped her palm over and stroked a finger along her life-line. “And when I think about how things went wrong, I panic and try to escape the bad stuff.”
“By acting out?”
Barret shrugged up one shoulder. “If I don’t get rid of the memories, the panther takes me.”
“For how long?”
“Longest was three months.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “Three months? I can’t even imagine how much your body must’ve hurt when you Changed back to your human form.”
Barret’s lips twitched into a blank smile. “You think I don’t care about Lynn, but I’ve seen her panther take her when she was trying to avoid thinking about Brody and Amberlynn. And it’ll get worse. Sometimes it’s best to put an animal down if it’s suffering enough.”
“I won’t let it get worse for her.”
“You won’t have a choice.” He looked up, and his eyes were a thousand years old. “Lynn’s full of demons now too, and she isn’t strong enough to lock them away.”
Her heart felt like it was breaking inside of her chest cavity, as if being seared in two. She’d known Lynn was bad off, but she hadn’t realized it might be too late to save her.
“Help me then. Help me help her. Help me save her.”
He huffed a small laugh. “I’m Murder Kitty, not Rescue Kitty.” He studied her face for a few moments before he said in a low voice, “You don’t quit on people, do you?”
“Not ever,” she answered truthfully.
Barret cocked his head and studied her, licked his lips and then pursed them in thought. “Spending so much time away from her crew isn’t doing her any favors.”
“Oh, I tried to get her to visit Red Havoc. She freaked out and Changed and nearly clawed my face off.”
Barret’s eyebrows jacked up in a challenge. “I gave you the advice you came for. I didn’t say it was going to be easy, or even doable. You want a shot at saving her? Give her something to fight for again. Give her the crew.”
“Is that what you did to save yourself?”
His smile turned wicked. “I. Don’t. Know.”
Walls. Barret was all walls. He was cinder block barriers that kept him separate from the outside world. Maybe it was a defense mechanism to protect his heart from further hurt, or perhaps his panther was so broken he required distance to stay steady. But here he sat, rubbing her palm, his legs relaxed under hers, gaze steady on her eyes, not running from her. He just refused to let her past the wall that shielded his soul from the world.
Barret was dangerous because he could pretend he didn’t care, and it was believable. She’d assumed he didn’t have any sympathy for Lynn, when the truth was he cared so much it cut him on the insides, more than he would admit.
Barret was a complicated mess. But for reasons she didn’t understand, he felt like her complicated mess—one she wanted to unravel slowly until he would let her shoulder the burdens of his past with him.
He didn’t trust her yet, but suddenly, she wanted to be the person who stuck around long enough to earn it.
Eden wanted to earn his story.
She arched her attention to his tattoo, to the wings, but he covered it with his giant hand and shook his head slowly. Wall.
Disappointment swirled in her chest. He was the type of man she would take one step forward with, but two steps back. That was his kind of dance. A sensible woman shouldn’t want to keep pace with a man like him, but she already felt connected in some strange way. She should get up and walk out, leave him alone to his demons, forget him, focus on Lynn, go back to Damon’s Mountains, be safe.
Safe. That had been her entire life since Mom had beat it into her head to keep her eyes on the skies and stay out of the talons of the Welkin Raiders. She’d lived her entire life for safety, dated only safe men, made safe friends, worked a safe job crunching numbers for Damon Daye in his mountains where the falcons wouldn’t dare to come because they would risk the blue dragon burning them to nothing and devouring their ashes. And here she was, out in the open, exposed, in the territory of panthers, her attention utterly taken by the most dangerous kind of man to fall for—a dominant, broken one.
“You want to run,” Barret accused her. “You’ve got one foot out the door already. Not surprising. I’m not made for a mate, not made for a woman, can’t make one happy.” He gave her a wild-eyed, feral smile. “Run, little bird. Don’t let the big bad cat get you.” Wall.
“Don’t do that.”
Barret rested his head back against the wall and looked down his nose at her. He was still covering his tattoo, his fingers digging into his skin, his abs flexing with each slow breath, his eyes blazing too bright a green to be human.
Before she could chicken out, Eden climbed onto his lap, straddled him until their pelvises touched. She rested her hands on either side of his neck and searched his eyes for a moment of hesitation before she leaned in and pressed her lips to his.
He jerked at the kiss, his lips stiff under hers for the span of three breaths before he grabbed the back of her hair and pushed his tongue into her mouth. Oh, he wasn’t going to let her keep the kiss sweet. Wall.
When she rocked against his erection, he moaned softly into her mouth. Warmth unfurled in her middle. She rolled against him again, and he hit her just right, even through her jeans. God, this felt so good. She could come just like this.
Eden wanted to feel him, just one tiny touch. She brushed her fingertips into the waist of his jeans and felt the swollen head of his shaft. A drop of moisture at the tip clung to her fingers, and she smiled against his rough kiss. Sexy, sexy man. Now he was the one rock
ing his hips, chasing her touch, so she popped his button and slid her hand inside his pants, gripped his dick, and rubbed him to the hilt, slowly.
“Fuuuuck,” he moaned.
She stroked him again, and he gasped and gripped her hair tighter when she got down low enough.
“I wanna fuck your mouth,” he gritted out, guiding her head down. Wall.
Eden yanked back and dug her nails into his forearm. “No. I’m not sucking you off the first time we’re intimate. We come at the same time or not at all.”
His eyes flashed with intensity, and then before she knew it, she was on her back on the floor and Barret was ripping her jeans down her thighs. He shoved her shirt up over her head and unsnapped the front clasp of her bra like he’d taken damn lessons. His hand dug into her hip as he leaned forward and drew her taut nipple into his mouth, sucked hard enough to get a groan out of her. She gripped his hair to keep him there. Now this was more like it. Or at least she thought until he started kissing his way down her stomach to her panty line.
Wait. She’d made a rule. Right? Some sort of rule about them coming at the same time, for some sort of reason. Oh, God, he was pulling her panties down now and ohhhh, there was his tongue. He pushed her legs farther apart and plunged his tongue into her deeper and, holy hell, she was already close. The pleasure was so intense she would’ve done anything to make him keep going. Gripping his hair, she dragged him closer and rolled her hips against his mouth, arched her back against the floor and cried out.
His purr rattled against her sensitive sex as he gripped her hips hard, dragging her against his face every time he pushed into her with his tongue.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” she yelled. He groaned against her, pushed in faster, and she shattered around him like glass. Orgasm blasted through her body, pulsing around his tongue as he licked her. He kept at it until she was too sensitive and twitching, until every last aftershock had been drawn from her body. Until she whispered his name and closed her eyes, relaxed against the floor.
Wait… In the haze of satisfaction, something pulled at the edges of her blown mind. “We were supposed to go at the same time.”