DuBois, Edith - Rugged Glimpse [Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  “What did he do?” Brother Johnny asked.

  Caleb growled, feeling his bear-fur ripple, wanting to smack both of them with the rough underside of one of his great paws. But that was one of the strictest rules of their bear clan. Never, not under any circumstances, were they to strike a fellow bear in human form if they were in bear form. Not even in a joking manner. A playful swipe from his great bear-claw could knock Brother Jeremiah flat and could end up injuring his man-brother.

  “This idiot,” Brother Jeremiah said, wiping salty-eye-water from his face after the strongest laughter had passed, “has gone and burned little Elena’s scent into his mind.”

  Brother Johnny looked at Caleb, his man-eyes wide. “And you haven’t even fucked her yet?”

  Caleb pawed the earth-ground, wanting to defend himself but not willing to shift back.

  Brother Johnny burst into loud, unrestrained laughter. “You idiot!” He threw back his head, laughing good and long.

  With a low, tail-tucked growl and a grunt, Caleb nipped up some man-clothes and left the two youngest brothers Greenwood, slinking off into the place-of-trees.

  After shifting, he headed back into town, and back to where Elena would continue to resist his advances.

  And if he was honest with himself, he couldn’t deny the truth of the Greenwood brothers’ words.

  He was a damn fool idiot.

  Chapter Four

  Rubbing her eyes, Elena glanced at her clock. She’d been uploading and editing photos, making notes, for close to five hours, and it was nearly one in the morning.

  As her awareness became more acute, she realized that her eyes were sore along with her shoulders, her back, and her butt cheeks. She needed to get out of the room and fast. She’d been cooped up for far too long.

  Grabbing a sweater, a water bottle, and a granola bar, she headed out. She walked fast, not letting her body or her mind linger too long in one place. If she did, she would see only Caleb’s black eyes burning down into hers, tempting, beckoning.

  Spending a good deal of her evenings at the Den, she’d seen hikers coming and going on a trail that would take them to a place called Adam’s Point, as indicated by another wooden sign. Those wooden signs were all throughout the town, she’d noticed.

  As she approached the trailhead, however, she came upon a couple, probably in their mid-twenties, close to Elena’s age. The man had an arm over the woman’s shoulder, and they wore identically frustrated expressions. When they spotted Elena, the man called out, “Trail’s closed tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s a sign. Says the trail’s closed.”

  “Oh no,” Elena said, pausing.

  “Yeah. It’s ridiculous,” the woman said. “We’ve heard a lot of good things about the trail at night.”

  “A lot of good things,” the man said, more to the woman in his arms than to Elena.

  The woman looked up into his eyes. “We could always find another trail. I’m sure there are plenty around here.” They continued walking past Elena, not really paying her much mind.

  “Well, have a good night.” She waited until they had walked back up the deck and out of her eyesight before continuing on toward the trail. When she reached the trailhead, a chain with a metal sign had been hung quite obnoxiously between two wooden posts where the trail began. Elena frowned as she read it.

  ATTN VISITORS: Trail closed temporarily for maintenance and upkeep. Absolutely NO HIKING. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thanks, Management.

  At first, she turned to head back to the lodge, but then a wave of rebellious irritation swept through her. She took a swig of water, glanced around to make sure there were no witnesses, and then stepped around one of the posts onto the trail. How much upkeep did one trail need anyway?

  Only a few minutes after she set off, she noticed how dark it was. The moon above was barely bigger than a sliver, and she had a hard time keeping track of the trail. Even though it felt like cheating and kind of killed the ambiance, she industriously used her cell phone a couple times for its light to make sure she was still on the trail.

  Surprisingly, even though she was the only hiker and not a noisy one by any stretch of the imagination, there weren’t very many forest noises around her. She could hear the wind rustling through the boughs of the trees, an occasional low hoot from an owl, and the steady swelling and retreat of cricket-song, but no unidentifiable noises, nothing to spook her.

  She put her head down and let her feet take her mindlessly up the mountain, encountering no one and nothing along the way.

  After about half an hour of walking, after she’d worked up a little bit of a sweat, she reached Adam’s Point. It was a simple outlook with a wooden deck and a rail, a few benches, and some chaise lounges for people to rest in while taking in the view. When she walked across the deck, she could barely make out the lake through the darkness. The moon’s light wasn’t quite bright enough for her to see much more than a dark blob in the distance, and the forest was only a dark smear that stretched for miles.

  She took a deep breath, though, and liked the way the crisp night air seemed to revitalize her synapses. Immediately she felt refreshed, stronger, more in control.

  Unfortunately, at the same time her body got a zip, her mind did as well. Suddenly, all the thoughts that she’d been attempting to keep locked up deep within her brain came bursting quickly into sharp relief. Her attraction to Caleb. Her memories of the past. Her attraction to Joseph. Her doubts. Her lack of self-confidence. The precarious nature of her career. God, Caleb’s eyes. Joseph’s eyes. Their big hands. Their big bodies.

  Their cocks had to be huge. They just had to be.

  Elena’s pussy liked that thought. It began to send out tiny waves of pleasure, pulsing and redolent, from deep within her womb up through her belly and down her thighs. She shook her head, trying to waylay the path her mind was following, but she couldn’t ward off the way she imagined the Kinman brothers’ cocks to look—big and hard and swollen and waiting for her touch.

  Bloody hell, she thought to herself, gripping the wooden railing quite suddenly. It wasn’t enough that she was imagining one cock, her naughty mind had to envision two. What a strumpet!

  She smiled to herself at that thought. She was the furthest thing from a strumpet that she had ever come across. She’d slept with a total of two people in her life and had sex in a position other than the missionary a total of eight. She wore loose-fitting clothes, her hair in a bun most of the time, and hardly any makeup. She also had a strong suspicion that she’d missed some vital assembly at school in her teenage years because one day she had friends, and the next day she knew a lot of people with boyfriends.

  It was like they all suddenly knew how to flirt. They knew just how to bat their lashes or giggle at just the right pitch or say all the right things. Elena on the other hand, never really got the knack of it. When a man came onto her, her go-to tactic was to put her head down and say nothing until he went away.

  The first boy she slept with had been her first weekend at university. She’d gotten completely tossed and ended up in bed with another first year student. After that night, she rarely got close enough to alcohol to even smell it.

  And with Peter, he’d been unresistingly persistent. When she didn’t answer his questions, it didn’t seem to bother him. He stood next her until, finally, she got used to his presence. He’d been willing to take it slow, to let her set the pace. In her inexperienced mind, that meant that their personalities were well suited to one another. Point in fact, however, Peter was just one patient bastard with a wicked streak of envy.

  And in Savage Valley, it seemed as if the Kinman brothers had some kind of abnormal effect on her body. Even when her mind shied away from talking to them, her body urged her on, demanded that she stay nearby and bask in their presence.

  Suddenly, Elena felt very tired. Her limbs and her eyelids were heavy. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep a dre
amless sleep.

  She ate the granola bar that she’d brought along, hoping it would give her a little jolt of energy, at least enough to make it back down to the lodge.

  She made it five minutes down the path when the hairs on her arms stood on end. Stopping, she scanned the darkness, trying to make out anything unusual in her surroundings. But the moon was too dull, and what light it did shine down had been blotted out by the foliage of the pine trees that towered above her.

  Continuing her progress down the mountain, she kept her ears alert. There was no owl, no crickets. Nothing but the wind in the leaves.

  Elena quickened her pace.

  The wind died. The silence swallowed her, and Elena stopped.

  Her muscles tensed.

  An animal growled low behind her.

  Her stomach muscles clenched.

  Turning slowly around, she saw nothing on the path, but she heard the growl again and realized it came from a tree. She looked up and, with a startling lurch in her gut, noticed a mountain lion standing above her on a branch. It watched her with bright blue eyes, muscles rippling powerfully beneath its fur.

  All of the blood in Elena’s body froze for a moment.

  Then the lethal cat opened its mouth, exposing its razor-sharp teeth, and emitted a roar so loud it hurt her ears. The sound pushed through her ribs and her lungs. It went straight to her heart and sent an answering scream ripping through her throat.

  Backing slowly away, unable to tear her eyes from the growling, feral animal, she forced the muscles in her legs to move, to put one leg behind the other.

  “Bloody fucking hell.” She cursed aloud in a panic when her foot tripped over a stone on the loose gravel of the trail, and she fell backwards onto her bottom, scraping her palms.

  She didn’t move, knowing the lion would pounce on her in her vulnerable state. Instead it flicked its tail once and then leapt from its branch to another and then to another, disappearing into the dark depths of the forest.

  Scrambling to her feet and not looking behind her, Elena forced energy into her leg muscles. She ran and she ran and she ran. After about five minutes, she realized that the lion wasn’t following her. But she kept running anyway.

  She chanced a peek behind her, and to her overwhelming relief, saw no animal following her. She turned back toward the lodge, not slowing her pace. When she whipped her head forward again, she ran smack into a man, her nose smashing painfully against a very hard, very muscled chest.

  * * * *

  “The sign said, ‘No Trespassing.’ And in very clear lettering. I know you had to have seen it. And so what I’m not getting, what I’m not understanding is why you thought it was okay to deliberately”—Sheriff Kinman shot her a hard look from his dark eyes—“take it upon yourself to disregard the warning and go hiking anyway.”

  “It said ‘maintenance,’ for goodness’ sake. I apologize for not realizing I should have read ‘maintenance’ to mean ‘great, ferocious cats.’ I didn’t realize that’s how things were done here in America.”

  “Oh!” Joseph spouted, his face mottled with emotion. “Not only do you disrespect my town by disobeying its rules, but now you want to disrespect my country by insulting it.”

  Elena sat in the sheriff’s office downtown while the sheriff stood behind his desk, ranting and pacing back and forth. He’d been at her for almost half an hour, and Elena felt a yawn coming on. She fought it, she really did, but what with elk births and mountain lion encounters, she just didn’t have enough strength to fend off its undeniable pull.

  “Excuse me, am I boring you?”

  She peered up at him, at his furrowed brow and his heaving chest. “Yes, a little, if you must know.”

  She fought back a giggle as he exploded into another tirade against her thickheaded refusal to adhere to the law and her general lack of manners and couth.

  “We take animal attacks and sightings very seriously in Savage Valley if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Apparently,” she muttered under her breath, thinking of the town’s slogan.

  “Damn it, Elena.” He glared at her, and for the first time, Elena did feel a little inkling of fear at his wrath. He rarely used her name, and when he did so and looked at her so intensely with those black eyes, it sent a shiver down her spine. “That sign is there to keep people safe. The rules here…” He trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words for a moment. “When people don’t follow the rules, the consequences can be severe. Do you understand me?”

  Elena felt as if she was a child in the midst of a scolding, and it had been so long since she actually had been scolded that the feel of it was uncomfortable. She frowned up at him, feeling a bit petulant. “Are you quite finished? I’d rather like to go to bed.”

  His lips pressed together tightly, the corners turning white, and his black eyes momentarily flared with anger. Then his features softened somewhat, and he eyed her with what Elena almost would have described as tenderness. “I just want you safe.”

  Elena jumped, physically startled by his words. “Why—what—you…” She took a deep, steadying breath. “What would that matter to you?”

  He rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I care about all of the inhabitants of Savage Valley. It’s sort of my job.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” she said, staring at her folded hands but knowing that her cheeks blazed a bright red.

  His anger seemed to have dissipated enough for him to handle filling out a report on her sighting, though he seemed grouchy about it the whole way through. Afterwards he rummaged through a few drawers in his wooden desk, searching for something.

  “Aha,” he said, placing a small, rectangular metal object on the desk before Elena. “Now, it’s not much, but it would make me feel a little more comfortable knowing you’re out on the trail with at least some small form of protection.”

  Elena picked up the pocket knife and let it dangle delicately between her fingers as if holding up a dead fish. “I’ve never seen one of these, much less used one. What exactly am I supposed to do with it in the off chance that I do encounter another mountain lion?”

  “Well, now, for a lion to actually attack around here…that would take a lot of pestering. I really don’t think that’s an issue, but if one does come at you, try to get it to latch on to your arm and then stab it in the jugular with that knife. The same goes for a wolf or any other attacking animal really.” He took the knife back from her and showed her how to open the blade and close the blade with ease. It was a simple skinning knife with a single blade about three or four inches long. She’d seen pictures of pocket knives with a number of handy accoutrements—screwdriver heads, scissors, tweezers, and the like—but this one had only the blade. Its simplicity was, surprisingly, a comfort. It was clean and neat.

  As he entered a last bit of information into the computer about the attack, Elena rose from her chair, stretching her limbs and yawning. “Are we done?”

  “Yes. I’ll give you a ride to the lodge in my cruiser.”

  Elena was tempted to refuse him just to be contrary, but she had better sense than that. What she wanted most was to collapse in her bed and sleep for a good twelve hours with no sunlight, no chirping birds, and no unwanted thoughts about tempting men with black eyes to bother her in the morning. The fastest way to get this result was to swallow her pride and accept the sheriff’s offer.

  Elena waited for Joseph to grab the keys before she followed him to the door. When he reached the door, however, he turned quickly around, almost causing Elena to crash into him again.

  “What the hell?”

  “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

  “And what page would that be exactly?”

  “The one that says I better not show up at the diner tomorrow morning for my coffee and hear about how you almost got mauled by a mountain lion.”

  “Why? Worried about your reputation? An animal sighting is only one small step from an attack, you know.”

  “Trust m
e, Elena.” He leaned down until his face was only inches from hers. “You don’t want to push me on that.”

  Elena choked out a laugh. “You don’t scare me.”

  His eyebrows shot upward, but before Elena could say anything else, he grabbed her shoulders and whipped her around until her back was pressed against the door and his body pressed up all along the front of hers.

  Her breathing became hitched, and Joseph smiled. “Are you sure about that, little miss?”

  “Abso…”

  She couldn’t finish the word as she watched him move his lips to her mouth, a teasing smile curling up the corners of his. When he kissed her, she sucked in a deep breath. His mouth felt so right. His lips held hers in just the right way.

  With her breasts pressed up against his chest, she felt her nipples harden at the feel of his muscles. Joseph put one hand on each of breasts, and his thumbs played with her nipples. Unconsciously her hands rose to hold his elbows as her body arched toward his.

  She didn’t think. She didn’t contemplate. Her body reacted, and she let her mind disappear into those sensations.

  “God, Elena, you smell so good.” He pressed his nose into the crook of her neck and inhaled, growling low in his chest as he did so.

  “Really? It’s been a while since I showered.” She cringed at that thought, thinking she probably smelled rancid, but when she tried to pull away from him, he held her tight.

  “No.” He breathed in deep again but then pressed his mouth to her neck, ran his tongue along one of her collarbones, tasted her skin. “No, you don’t smell like perfume. Nothing sweet or flowery. You smell like the trees, the river, the earth. You smell like home.” He moved his mouth back to hers and kissed her deep, his tongue pushing through her lips without hesitation to take over her mouth. Elena sucked, wanting to swallow his flavor.

  When he pressed his palm against her pelvis to cup her pussy, she gasped against his mouth. His smile tugged across her lips, and he squeezed his fingers against her again and again. All the while, the palm of his hand dug into her clit.