by Thalia Eames
Jules came close to shooting when the boar’s tusks gouged Daz’s arms, digging bloody streaks into his skin. Still the man stood tall, forming a wall between them and the beast. As long as he stood, Jules wouldn’t have to kill the boar shifter in front of the two Grace children. But more than once Jules nearly stopped caring about her promise to Mariel. If she had to she’d shoot the beast’s leg off to give Daz a chance to rest.
A snuffling roar sounded, scaring the older of the two children. He started to scream, tears covering his face in blotchy redness, his small legs kicking the backseat. A blur of fur about the same size as the truck flew past the windshield as the little boy wailed. Sheriff Stan’s colossal brown boar had charged in from the trees. He slammed into Willie Mae, goring her in the side, as he flipped the smaller animal over. Pausing only to grunt his displeasure, the sheriff’s boar advanced on the other shifter, flipped it again, and roared in its face. If Stan hadn’t been the prime of the boar clan he might not have won so easily. Willie Mae had been known to take down grizzly bears. As it was, Willie Mae recognized her place as a submissive, even among alphas, to the boar clan prime. She shifted back to human, her ribs a bruised and bloodied mess.
Stan shifted as well. The portly but solid sheriff picked up the clothes he’d strapped to his boar’s back and put them on. Daz’s watchful stare and occasional growl made sure Willie Mae didn’t move during the transformation process. When Stan put his specially made cuffs on the crazed shifter, Daz relaxed and smiled at Jules like he’d just had a dustup with a neighborhood kid rather than one of the most ferocious boar shifters in the Carolinas. Unbelievable.
Jules went boneless. Sighing, she put down her shotgun, checked on her passengers, then got out to greet the sheriff. He hugged her and she bopped him one on the chest. “I thought Willie Mae moved to Winston-Salem, Stan.”
“She did. She must be here for a visit,” Stan said, his voice contrite. “Bad timing. You know I wouldn’t have called you if I’d thought you’d have to kill to protect yourself.”
“I know.” She hugged him back.
Stan rested his chin on the top of her head and stiffened. “Is that Daz Warren, The Wolverine?” he choked out in disbelief. The lawman left Jules in the dust. “Are you Daz Warren?” he said to the man in question with excitement he didn’t bother to hide.
More than a little bothered by being forgotten, Jules got back into the truck and left the two men to talk about Daz Warren, The Wolverine’s SMMA League fighting career, and “the day he bashed that one tiger’s face in”. Blah blah skippy.
Wow. Not only were men amazing in their ability to shift gears faster than race cars, from a life threatening situation to sports talk, but Daz amazed her on his own. He hadn’t thrown a punch, but his faceoff with Willie Mae Grace had to be the single sexiest thing Jules had seen in her life. And Mariel didn’t help matters when she said, “Damn. Your boyfriend is a hot donut with sexy for filling. I wanna dip him in my coffee.”
“So’s your mother,” Jules said.
Mariel giggled. “He’s not yours yet, is he?” she said with more glee than
necessary. “And you’ve got panty puddles for him.”
“So’s your mother,” Jules said again.
Which only made Mariel laugh harder. After she’d gotten it all out, Mariel squeezed Jules’s shoulder. “Thank you, Juliana. Seriously. I needed someone to push me. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to rebuild myself but I’m gonna try to be stronger for my kids. Maybe one day for me too.”
Jules grabbed the other woman’s hand and squeezed back, but Mariel wasn’t done. “I learned something from your boyfriend today too.”
“Just when this conversation was starting to pass the Bechdel Test,” Jules mumbled. Mariel shrugged. Jules waited; whatever the woman had yet to say intrigued her. She lifted her gaze to meet Mariel’s in the rearview mirror. “Go ahead and tell me,” Jules said.
After a sigh, Mariel finished her thought. “He showed me that men don’t have to stand in front of their women. He formed a shield between my sister-in-law and us so you didn’t have to shoot her. All my life men have stood out in front and I’ve been under their boots, but your boyfriend showed me what the care of a real man looks like.” Mariel must have noticed Jules’s expression, a sort of half-dreamy romantic hopefulness. “Pump your romance brakes, chickie.” Mariel held up both hands. “I don’t want another man anytime soon. I don’t know if I ever wanted a man as much as I wanted children.”
It made sense for Mariel to take a break to redefine herself. Perhaps after she’d done that she could try a new approach to her love life.
“I might’ve used Kirby to punish myself for what I really wanted.”
Jules squeezed the hand on her shoulder once more. “Stop now. Maybe it’s time to seek the love of a good woman. I’ve seen you look at Clara down at the Peach Pit.”
Mariel took a moment to think Jules’s suggestion over. She shrugged again. “I have been having a lot of naughty dreams about tits and peach cobbler lately.”
Ha! They shared a fist bump with a finger wave explosion at the end. In the quiet that followed, Mariel breast-fed her baby while her toddler slept. Their earlier conversation set off a chain reaction of thoughts Jules didn’t want to have. The word “deserve” wasn’t one she gave a lot of weight to. Jules hadn’t deserved what Adam Cross, Rock God, Asshole, and his fans did to her. At another point in her life she’d been in a horrific train crash. Had she, or the people who hadn’t survived that day deserved it? Whether they had or not didn’t stop the train from jumping the rails and crashing into the mountainside. Even if she deserved to be cared for by a guy who had earned the title M-A-N (not via some trick of gender but because he lived up to the promise of everything a man could be) that didn’t mean she’d ever have him as her own. Her gaze found Daz and she shook her head.
Stan’s deputy came by to pick up the sheriff along with the angry Willie Mae Grace and drive them back to town. Jules and Daz dropped Mariel and the kids off at a special shelter for abused women, men and children. Unlike the world and its social, economic, or religious circles, abuse left no one out. Feeling lighter now that she’d gotten the Grace family to safety, Jules was free to go back to Averdeen Manor and check on Gran.
She tried to keep her eyes on the road but her gaze kept drifting to Daz as she drove. The gashes on his arm had begun to heal but blood and dust remained stuck to his skin. He rubbed at the grime absently while watching the sky. When a steady rain started to pelt the truck in a series of metallic pings he asked her to pull over. She did and the moment his boots touched earth the skies opened up. Unbothered, Daz lifted his face to the storm and pulled his shirt over his head with one arm. Using the T-shirt and the downpour, he washed off the blood and dust. Jules watched in awe of his complete gorgeousness as tiny jewels of water caught on his thick eyelashes. Rivulets ran between his pecs and cascaded over the rigid muscles on his stomach. Their bond tugged her toward him, so she slid over to the passenger side and delighted in him enjoying the rain.
His voice vibrated through her when he spoke, making her crave that mouth on her body, to have him hum while he tasted her. “The rain re-energizes me,” he said. “For other people it clouds things over but for me it makes things clear.”
She knew what he meant. Rain allowed her to quiet down enough to think. She’d sit in her apartment window or, in the times she stayed with Gran, at the balcony door in Averdeen Manor and stare up into the drops as they fell. The rain transported her in those moments and when the storm ended she came out of it with a better understanding of what she wanted and where she wanted to go.
“I want to get wet with you,” she whispered.
Daz tossed his shirt on top of the truck. It thudded, sending vibrations through the cab. The intensity of his aura zinged into her, ripples of anticipation dancing in her belly.
“Friend
s don’t get friends wet, Blue,” he said, his eyes turning into dark glittering pools. The playfulness in his reply didn’t hide the raw sexual energy he radiated. His teasing only amplified his masculinity.
She sucked in a breath. “Just once.”
Daz rushed over, arriving at the truck window so fast she didn’t blink. His claws unleashed and his big hands crushed the door until the metal shrieked. “Did you not hear me when I said I don’t know when to stop? I dominate, Juliana.”
His gravel-roughened voice licked across her skin in pure sensuality. The intensity slayed her. So fierce. So sexy. So crushingly masculine. If fear was the appropriate response then Jules was fucked up because fear was the last thing flooding her system.
Water glistened on his taut copper-bronze skin and her thirst kicked in. Jules got on her knees. Pausing for the barest moment, she leaned fully out of the window and slowly, while holding his gaze, raised her hands and flicked her thumbs across both his nipples. Then she climbed his body and licked the rain off his bottom lip.
Daz snarled at her. They faced off for several heavy breaths. Then he turned, shifted into his animal, and disappeared into the storm.
Chapter Nine
Daz let the wolverine take over. The animal tended to drown out the man’s thoughts and he needed the complete abandon of the shift. It worked for a while. He tree-jumped through the woods, taking reckless leaps between branches that were almost too far apart. At one point he lost his grip and fell into a camp. His big body took out one pole of the tent when he landed and the two college students inside mistook him for a black bear because of his size (if the huddling and teeth chattering and screams of “oh God, a bear” were any indication). And neither Daz nor his Wolverine felt bad about making a show of stomping around the camp. Afterward he gorged on wild berries and chased a few nocturnal animals. But none of his antics worked. He kept thinking of her.
It didn‘t make sense the way everything about Jules burned through his self-control. He’d been in lust with women before. Desire was nothing new. This wasn’t that. He’d never felt anything so intense, so overwhelmingly focused to the point it erased all sense of everything else and made him want only one thing: Juliana Perlas. Daz craved her. He needed to be buried bone-deep inside her, not just in her body but also inside her heart and mind. And it scared him.
That made this situation crazier, Daz had no concept of fear. Nothing had ever scared him. Hurt. That he understood. Pain had been his constant for life. From being left in a trashcan by his first mother, to truly getting thrown away by his second mother when she decided she wouldn’t raise the wild thing she’d accidentally brought into her home. Only when his mom, Ruth Warren, had come for him, pulling his three-year-old self into her arms, only then had his pain subsided.
But it came back.
Pain followed him with little daily reminders he’d been unworthy. It caught up to him when he fought other shifters beyond the point of sportsmanship and teetered on deadly. And pain had owned him on the day touch became a form of torture.
Through it all, fear hadn’t factored into his life. Daz had learned to control himself through every painful event. He’d had to. But somehow Jules unraveled his control. She changed things. Instead of pain, her touch brought a constant stream of pleasure. But the sensations she caused went beyond physical contact. From her laugh, to the sunniness in lying back and talking to her for a while. From the sensual awareness of every move she made, all the way to the fact that knowing her made his life better.
Jules’s presence diverged so far away from pain that Daz had no mechanism to deal with her. That confusion took him wildly out of control and it scared him. Because the one thing he knew without doubt, had always known, is the pain would return. Life made damn sure he didn’t forget it.
If fate fucked him over and someday forced him to compare life before Jules to life without her, unlike every other trial in his life, Daz would not survive. Not as the good man he worked so hard to be.
That fear drove him deeper into the woods. The wildness of the realization brought out a feral side he hadn’t seen in years. The wolverine hadn’t taken over his mind the way he’d hoped his animal side would, and the man wondered if he preferred the pain to the fear. The answer came easily. If he had a chance to choose, he knew exactly which life he wanted. And the fear took over again.
Jules searched for hours but her wolverine eluded her in the darkness of the Carolina night. She went back to her room at Averdeen Manor and threw herself onto the bed, forgetting about her muddy feet and wet clothes. The tears that followed made her angrier with herself.
How could she do that? How could she disrespect Dashiell? She’d ignored his choice and basically sexually assaulted him. No basically about it, she had assaulted him, and her motives for touching Daz—whether loving or cruel—didn’t matter. She’d taken advantage of him; putting her own desires above his. She, Juliana Perlas, a woman who rescued people who’d been victimized and stripped of their choices, had ignored consent. And that knowledge made her sick.
Nausea swirled in the back of her throat and Jules made a break for the toilet. After emptying her stomach she rinsed her mouth out and dragged her feet back to the bed.
A few minutes later, Gran came in and stroked her hair to comfort her. Cooing a bit, Gran made her sit up so she could toss a cable knit blanket over Jules’s still wet and shivering body. And knowing exactly what Jules needed, Gran handed her a mug of hot apple cider. Jules sighed, melting back into her padded headboard.
The whirring of a buzz saw shattered the quiet moment. Jules looked to Gran for an answer. Gran shrugged her thin shoulders. “He came back a half hour after you did and went to work on that hole in the house. I took one look at him and came up to check on you.”
Sliding her feet off the bed Jules tried to get up to go talk to Daz. Gran grabbed her arm and shook a finger at her, then stroked her head a final time. “I think you better take this phone call first.” Gran handed over the cordless house phone before leaving the room. “Give him some time,” she said, closing the door. Jules put the receiver to her ear but stayed quiet.
“Jules? Jules. Talk to me.”
“Lennox. Aww, Leni.” Jules broke down completely, her body shaking with shame. She rescued women, and sometimes men, from abuse every day. How could she do that to a man she cared about? She wanted to say those things to Lennox but couldn’t get them out, so her best friend sat and listened to her cry.
“I’m a fucking predator,” Jules finally managed to say.
“Not true. But I can’t argue the points with you if you don’t tell me why you think so.”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Deal. Outside of the thing that broke you down tonight, you okay?” Lennox’s voice cracked. “I kinda need you to tell me the answer is yes. Otherwise, I’m on a plane from São Paulo right now.”
Jules loved her best friend so much. Lennox had a way of getting to the root of things and saying what needed to be said.
“Brazil is too nice to leave so soon. And I kinda need you to talk about mundane things first,” she told her friend.
“I’m not pregnant yet.”
Jules gripped her mug a little tighter.
Lennox paused. “Garrett is upset. We’ve been to the shifter fertilization specialist here. Garrett is okay. I’m okay. So…the doctor can’t figure it out.”
A question came to mind but Jules didn’t quite know how to ask it. Something bothered her about Lennox not getting pregnant but exactly what eluded her. “I know you want children. You told the world you want fat furry babies at your wedding but—”
“Why’d you say it like that?” An edge of tension came through the line.
“You’ve always been very good at avoiding the things you don’t want to do, Lennox.”
Her friend made a noise of dissent deep in her throat. “I wa
nt Garrett’s baby.”
“I know you do.” Jules sat up straighter in bed. Maybe she could admit what she’d done wrong if she could get Lennox to admit what was going on with her.
“I want Garrett’s baby,” Lennox said more emphatically.
“You’ve said that. But?” Silence. “Is it that you’ll have to stop traveling and come home?”
“No.” The truth rang in that single word. “The life we live… Well, it’s not like we have a boss to report to and we have so much money, we could travel with the baby for a couple of years.”
“You definitely live the glamorous life.” Jules shuddered.
“I know, right?” Lennox pepped up. “Did I tell you I met the President the other day? Me, Lennox Averdeen, chilling in my sundress with the President and the First Lady. Crazy talk. Oh, she loved my shoes. She’s a footwear addict like me. Can you believe my life?”
Although Jules cheered her best friend on, she couldn’t fake much enthusiasm for Lennox’s lifestyle. “It’s crazy,” she said.
“It is.” Jules could hear the smile in Lennox’s voice. “And you’d hate it.”
Jules exhaled. “I’d hate it so hard. The paparazzi, people tweeting about you, speculation about your marriage, observations on how fat you look in that dress.”
“I did not look fat in that dress,” Lennox shouted. “I looked like a brown curly-haired Marilyn Monroe.”
Jules snickered. “You are a goddess.”
“Nope, that’s you.” Lennox sighed. “I’m a pinup girl. I understand my place in the world.”
Had she mentioned how much she loved Lennox lately? “I love you like whoa, Leni. Do you know that?”
“Yup. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
Jules ignored that bit of overconfidence. “But I couldn’t stand all those eyes on me all the time. It makes me want to hurl just thinking about it.” She’d already thrown up once. Which reminded her why Gran had wrapped her in a blanket and called Lennox for her. She’d been in the middle of a breakdown. “That’s why I have to stay away from him.”