Ranger Knox (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 1)

by Meg Ripley

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m so, so sorry Jason. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry for what I said and I’m sorry you got shot.”

  “No, you’re fine,” Jason said, so relieved that he was alive and that Mary was with him that nothing else mattered.

  “No, that wasn’t fine. That wasn’t fine at all.”

  “Mary, you had your reasons. I accept your apology but really, you’re fine.”

  “I was...so scared when we realized your own father was holding you and how much danger you were in.”

  “My father...where is he?”

  “Tandy has him.”

  “Tandy?” Jason sat up. “Call him. Get him on the phone right now.”

  “Jason, you need to rest. You can talk to him in the morning.”

  “No, if he has my father in custody, I want to talk to him now. I was never in any danger from my father. He was just trying to get Vincent cornered.”

  “But he shot you!” Mary protested.

  “If the bullet that hit me came from his gun, it was my own fault. I saw Vincent shoot and I was trying to protect him.”

  “You jumped in front of your father?”

  “Yes. He didn’t do anything wrong. Please, get Tandy on the phone.”

  Jason was already feeling woozy and tired, but he held himself up until Mary pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Is he awake yet?” Tandy asked, cutting straight to the chase.

  “I am. Is my father with you?”

  “He’s cooling his heels in an interrogation room.”

  “Let him go.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let him go,” Jason repeated. “He’s not guilty of any crimes. Release him, apologize for wasting his time, and let him go home.”

  “I don’t know who you think you are, Mr. Cross, but that’s not how it works. We’re looking at charges of kidnapping, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit two more counts of murder, and god knows what else.”

  “No, you’re not. He didn’t kidnap me, or try to murder me, and there was no conspiracy. He was trying to out the actual guilty party. Bring him to the hospital and I’ll tell you everything.” He disconnected the call and fell back against the pillows, the world wavering around him. “I’m going to pass out now. Thank you for waiting. You’re the best thing I ever saw.”

  ****

  Jason was allowed to go home three days after he woke up, his nurses and attending physician shocked by the speed of his recovery. His scar was barely visible, and there had been no infection or complication. He was ready to get right back to work, but Damian insisted he take a small vacation, no doubt so he could continue to manage the damage control. There would be no trial due to Vincent’s death, but that was a mess within the Darkblood Society. One Jason was happy to avoid.

  He thought about Mary often, and in hindsight, her hospital visit felt like a dream. It probably was a dream. What were the chances she’d be there so conveniently to tell him everything he ever wanted to hear? It was unlikely, at best. At any rate, she never returned, and since his phone was broken, he didn’t have her number. He considered driving to her bar, but if his vision of her had been nothing more than that, then he wanted to respect her wishes and not contact her.

  But he really missed the sound of her voice.

  He missed it so much that he thought he was hearing things when he heard it outside his office door a week after he returned to work.

  “No, I don’t have an appointment. I didn’t realize one was necessary. Is he really that busy in there?”

  Jason shot up from his desk and hurried to the door. “It’s fine, thanks, Frankie. Come on in, Ms. Simmons.” He shut the door and added, “It’s great to see you.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know. You weren’t answering any of my calls and I couldn’t get a hold of you here.”

  “Your calls? My phone got busted that night. I got a new one and I didn’t have your number.”

  “Oh. Oh, is that all? I thought...I thought I really blew it.”

  Jason swallowed. “No. I wanted to come and see you, but I wasn’t sure if it was just a dream. It seemed like it.”

  “They released my father’s body since the case was closed. I had the funeral and—”

  Jason cut her explanation off with a gentle kiss. She moaned and parted her lips, the tip of her tongue glancing over his. The delicate touch sent a shock through him, and his arms tightened around her, his chest and groin both throbbing. She returned his embrace, her body fitting so wonderfully against his. Their tongues became more bold, their hands exploratory, each of them searching for skin, absorbing heat, raising goosebumps. They both came to the same conclusion at the same time, working together to tear away the barrier of their clothes.

  He fell backward into the nearest chair, pulling her onto his lap. The position was perfect, giving him the best view of her gorgeous body as she positioned his hard cock between her thighs. He sought out her sweet, velvet heat, thrusting his hips forward, and she shifted to meet him, guiding him deeper and deeper.

  With her hands on his shoulders, she met his gaze and began rotating her hips, grinding down on his dick, her juices making him slick, coating him from the tip to his balls. She groaned with each rotation, her muscles clenching around him, pulsing and fluttering, driving him crazy. His hands slid over her hips and up the curve of her back, then over her breasts. He cupped them with gentle pressure, teasing the nipples until they were hard and throbbing. With a moan, she cupped the back of his head, guiding his mouth to one pebbled peak. His tongue darted out, rolling over her skin before tugging the nub between his teeth. She keened her approval, arching her back and driving her hips down.

  The more pressure he put on her nipple, the harder she fucked him, her nails raking over his shoulders and down his arms, her shouts getting louder and louder. He was sure everybody on the floor knew exactly what they were doing, but he really didn’t care. Nothing sounded as good as her shouts of pleasure, nothing felt as good as her body clenching around him, holding him down, taking and giving everything she could, everything she had.

  His other hand slid between their bodies, finding her engorged clit. He pressed his finger to the throbbing flesh, moaning her name as he felt the first constriction of her impending orgasm. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and he pulled his tongue from her nipple, lifting his head to find her mouth. He kissed her hungrily, with the full force of his desire, his hunger, and his love. He did love her. From the moment he saw her outside his door, he knew it for a fact.

  She broke apart, shouting his name as she shattered in his arms, which obliterated the last of his self-control. His cock jerked deep inside of her, and all he could do was hold her as he shuddered through the waves of pleasure.

  “Oh, I missed you,” he sighed.

  “I missed you, too. And I have something for you.”

  “Something else?”

  “Yes. I really can’t wait to show you.”

  “Do I have to let you go?”

  “I need my briefcase. I’ll be right back.”

  With a sigh, he reluctantly released her. She crossed the room to where she’d discarded her brief case, pulled out a folio and returned to his lap, exactly as she promised.

  “I had a friend of mine draw these up. They’re just suggestions. I’m not saying we have to go with any of them but I thought you might be interested, and well, here.”

  At first, he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing. And then he didn’t quite believe it. It was Adventure Isle—now Dragon Isle—and each page held a new design; all taken from his original ideas, but expanded and perfected. The new rides, the Reptile House, the concert venue and park were all brightly, beautifully illustrated.

  “What do you think?” she asked once he reached the last page.

  “I think that’s a damn fine park. But I thought you weren’t interested in that market?�
�

  “I want to honor my father’s memory and build the amusement park of his dreams. Will you help me?”

  “It would be my honor. In the meantime, can I take you out to dinner?”

  “What about round two?”

  “Let’s eat and then we can have rounds two through eight.”

  Mary grinned. “That’s what I like about you. You always have really good ideas.”

  He kissed a line down her neck. “Is that all you like about me?”

  She sighed, her head dropping back. “Among other things.”

  “I could spend hours telling you about what I love about you.”

  “Oh good. We’ll have something to talk about during dinner.”

  Jason laughed and pulled her closer. During dinner, and then, for the rest of their lives.

  THE END

  Claimed By The Werebears Of Green Tree

  PART ONE

  Claimed By The Wild Alpha Werebear

  Sasha, Alpha of the Nita Werebear Clan, is in the midst of a quandary; his brothers are becoming restless in the absence of mates, and he himself knows that he needs to find a woman to claim soon. One night as the clan is foraging in the forest outside of their hometown, Green Tree, fate brings a strange opportunity to work towards solving the thorny problem.

  After her car breaks down, Alexandra soon finds herself lost deep in the woods. Her predicament rapidly grows dire when a pack of wolves decides that she is prey and descends upon her. She awakens in a daze in an irresistibly handsome stranger’s home. Her host graciously introduces himself as Sasha and fills her in on some of the details of her rescue, all the while seemingly withholding key pieces to the puzzle.

  What really happened the night her car broke down? Will she be able to resist Sasha’s charms and convince him to reveal the truth?

  Sasha’s nose twitched as a foreign scent caught his attention. He looked around the woods, grunting to himself as he tried to identify the person that the scent belonged to. Female, human, fertile; the thoughts were more impulse than thought in his ursine brain, and Sasha struggled to bring his human consciousness to the forefront. The scent did not belong to anyone he knew from the town of Green Tree; that much Sasha was able to bring himself to think. He opened his mind, finding the warm and comforting presences of the rest of his clan, scattered through the woods on their own solitary errands—hunting, enjoying the cool, moist air of springtime or the glowing moon, some of them foraging. Stranger, he thought—the one word a huge effort. As his human consciousness began to assert itself, Sasha found thinking in words easier. Stranger—in the woods. Steer clear. The Nita clan had managed to avoid detection from both the town itself and the people of the area—hikers, conservationists, and loggers—by avoiding them; it was one of Sasha’s many responsibilities as the Alpha of the group to warn his clan brethren whenever something like this happened. With any luck, the stranger was simply lost, would find her way out of the woods and into town, and that would be the end of it. Someone just passing through; that was the hope that flickered in Sasha’s mind.

  He went back to foraging, thinking in the human part of his mind about the state of his clan as a whole. Bears—of all of the types of shifters—had special problems; they didn’t breed quite as ably as the wolves, or as plentifully as lions, who seemed to constantly be bearing twins. While they were human, or at least half-human, it seemed to Sasha as if some of their trouble was the fact that their animal natures were not as easily reconciled with human living. Bears in the wild were solitary creatures, males mating with females and then leaving shortly afterward, the young going off on their own after a few seasons. Werebears like himself and the other men of his clan were much more social than their strictly-animal counterparts; but they were still insular. We will have to reach out to other clans, Sasha thought. Fights had started to break out amongst his brothers—it was time for many of them, particularly for Sasha, to find a mate, and tensions were high, especially now that spring had arrived. Sasha had had to send away the few females born into the clan over the years since he had assumed the Alpha title; they were too closely related to the other members of the clan, and if mating urges held sway, they would have a high rate of miscarriages and birth defects in the offspring. Where wild bears mated in a system of serial monogamy, werebears mated for life, bonding with their mates. It would have been a disaster for the clan as a whole if Sasha had not sent the women away as they reached the proper age for mating.

  He wandered through the woods, sniffing and snuffling, considering the problem even as he contemplated what he wanted to eat. If he wanted to keep the clan stable, he would have to find mates for his brothers; and in the back of his mind, Sasha knew that some of his temper in recent weeks had come from his own need to mate. The spring brought it on in all of them—the drive from their animal minds to take advantage of the lengthening days and the safety that summer and autumn provided. It wasn’t something that anyone could avoid, and Sasha knew that sooner or later he would come up hard against the realities of the situation, if he didn’t take action now.

  As he was contemplating which of the other clans to approach, the foreign scent filled Sasha’s nose again—stronger this time, with an undercurrent of fear like burned gunpowder. The scent disrupted Sasha’s thoughts and he looked around in the darkness. If the woman had come this deep into the woods, she was lost indeed; he would have to take some kind of action, and perhaps steer her in another direction, back towards the town. Has anyone seen the stranger? Sasha called out mentally. He needed to place her—whoever she was—in order to know how to handle the situation. The fear that Sasha could smell on the woman’s scent was more intense than the simple anxiety of being lost in the woods, and Sasha had run afoul of wolves in recent weeks, taking advantage of the improved weather and the better hunting. No wolf pack would challenge a bear without good reason, but a human was another thing entirely.

  Flickers of thought reached him; Sasha realized that he had to be the closest to the woman of the members of his clan. He felt a rising sense of irritation that his time in the woods would be marred by the necessity of attending to a human woman who didn’t have the sense to avoid getting lost and exposing herself to the dangers that wild animals presented. Sasha lumbered in the direction of the scent, grumbling to himself in little growls as he made his way through the thick underbrush and tightly packed trees. The last thing he needed on a night like this was to have to steer some woman back to the road—she’d probably be frightened and scream at him the moment he showed up. In the distance, Sasha heard the telltale sound of a howl carrying through the air; the local wolf pack was nearby. He had to get to her quickly. She’s about to blunder on wolves, Sasha thought, projecting his mental voice to the other members of his clan. I need some backup. Armand, James, Holt—fall in with me. Sasha hurried his movements, torn between the impressive presence that his bear form would make—a better guarantee of deterring wolves—and the nimbleness and speed of his human form. Even if the human stranger irritated him, he didn’t want her to be attacked.

  ****

  “Good God, could I be any stupider?” Alexandra looked around in a state of barely-suppressed panic at the anonymous woods that loomed around her. She no longer had any idea whatsoever of where her car was; the light of a nearly-full moon had seemed enough to guide her steps through the thickly-wooded area back to the town, but somehow, she had managed to thoroughly lose herself in the black-green depths. Right, great idea, talking out loud where the wild animals can hear you, she thought, staggering to a stop on the clinging, draping underbrush of the forest as she thought she heard something like movement. Alexandra turned in a slow circle, thinking fretfully that even if she wanted to get back to her broken-down car, she wasn’t likely to be able to retrace her steps.

  It had seemed so straightforward when she had left home that afternoon; Alexandra found an uprooted tree in the silver-tinged light of the moon and sank down on it, sighing. She had decided that instead of pa
ying the obscene rate for a train ticket, she would just drive. Her car was only a few years younger than she was—but it had been behaving itself well, and it wasn’t as though the drive was across state lines. Alexandra had noticed the old Volvo beginning to run a little hot in the stop-and-go traffic a few towns back; but she had hoped when she stopped for dinner that the cool-off time would help it get through the trek.

  She had a job interview in two days’ time; she had already called ahead to the hotel to let them know that she was running late, but Alexandra was now feeling as though the possibilities of even getting there were completely hopeless. The car had overheated right in the midst of the woods, just a mile or two south of the closest town. While Alex had not been exactly thrilled at the idea of walking two miles or more to get to the nearest gas station—and therefore arrange a meeting with a roadside assistance guy—she had decided that there was nothing else for it, and that she would rather not spend the rest of the night locked in her car in the middle of nowhere.

  Alexandra shivered in the slight chill of the air as the light breeze dried the sweat on her arms and legs. The woods looked—and felt—so very forbidding. Every few moments, it seemed, there was the sound of something moving, and in the distance, she had heard the unmistakable howls of a pack of wolves. As she sat, attempting to figure out what she should do next, Alexandra heard the sounds of the forest around her starting to rise up a little more: creaky chirps and buzzing of bugs, an inquiring hoot from an owl—and in the distance an air-splitting shriek from another nocturnal bird. She swallowed against the tight dryness in her throat, looking around in the gloomy, pale light. If I tried to get back to my car, I’d probably only get even more hopelessly lost, Alexandra thought bitterly. But if I keep going forward, I’m only going to get more lost, too. Congrats, ‘Lex. Your options are: lost or lost. She hugged herself, trying to find something—anything—she could use as a landmark.