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

by Meg Ripley

  Somehow Johan was shifting her around, even as they continued to move together, even as he thrust deeper and deeper inside of her, and Chelsea found herself on top of him, straddling his waist. Johan’s hands rested on her hips, slid up to her breasts, and Chelsea rode him hard and fast, taking him deeper, moaning and crying out in pleasure as she came closer and closer to orgasm. Johan sat up slightly, pulling her by the shoulders down against him, kissing her hungrily, and as their bodies rubbed together, Chelsea couldn’t hold back any longer; the last of her self-control dissolved as every muscle in her body flexed and then released, wave after wave of pleasure washing through her, obliterating any thought of pain or fear. She barely heard Johan’s moans of pleasure as her inner walls flexed around him, but as he reached his own climax, the hot stickiness of his come rushing into her, her climax intensified. Chelsea barely held herself up as Johan managed a few final hard, fast thrusts, before she collapsed against him, panting and gasping for breath.

  ****

  Chelsea was still coming back to herself, basking in the hazy glow of pleasure, when she felt Johan’s body tense underneath her. “What?” she asked, something about his tension triggering an internal alarm.

  “You need to get out of bed quickly,” Johan said, his voice little more than a murmur. “And you need to get dressed. Now.”

  “What’s going on?” Chelsea pulled herself up to look down at Johan. He lifted her off of him in a quick, deft movement, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up seemingly all at once, with a grace that Chelsea envied.

  “I hear people outside,” Johan told her. He picked up his clothes. “Quickly, Chelsea,” he said, giving her a firm look to underscore the urgency. She scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the twinge of pain from her bruised buttocks, and darted into the living room area of the suite, quickly retrieving her panties, her bra, her skirt. She pulled and tugged to get them on; in the living room, she could hear the sound of movement in the hallway.

  Johan came into the room behind her, the keys to the car in his hand. “Take these,” he said. “If it’s them, you’re better off making a getaway in the car on your own.”

  “Where the hell am I supposed to go?” Chelsea asked him, though she took the key chain instinctively.

  “There’s money in the glove compartment,” Johan told her. He moved, and suddenly there was a gun in his hand. He shifted again, his hand going down to a subtle bulge along his hip, and produced a knife. “There’s also a spare phone in there. The only number in it will connect to my phone.”

  There was a loud, shuddering boom at the door and Chelsea jumped back, yelping in surprise and alarm. Johan put the knife into her hand, bringing both hands around the butt of his pistol. “Get yourself out of here, get into the car, and drive like hell,” Johan said sharply. “I’ll take care of everything else.” Four men poured through the door into the room, and Chelsea staggered backward, gripping the hilt of the knife tightly.

  “Found you, Princess,” one of the men said, sneering. The four were all dressed in nondescript clothes: jeans, tee shirts, and work boots. Chelsea thought wildly that they must have gotten into the hotel by pretending to be workers, part of the staff. Their hair and faces looked greasy, and Chelsea thought fleetingly that the men had obviously not had the benefit of luxury hotels in their pursuit.

  Everything became a blur, and Chelsea went almost deaf at the air-ripping report of the first shot Johan fired. She glanced at him quickly and then rushed forward, even as reinforcements came in behind the first four men. Pivoting on her heel, she looked around frantically for an alternative exit; there was a balcony attached to the suite, but the thought of the long drop down made her stop. “Go, Chelsea!” She darted towards the door to the suite, ears ringing as another shot from the pistol echoed through the room. One of the men went down. Chelsea darted through the opening the hired man’s fall created, slashing with the knife to attempt to fend off the grabs his comrades made for her. She made it through the door, but one of the men was hot on her heels.

  Before she could get down the hallway, she felt a heavy weight collide with her back and she was falling forward, holding her arm out to the side instinctively to avoid stabbing herself as she hit the floor, covered by the heavy man. Chelsea screamed, struggling and squirming, and stabbed blindly with the knife Johan had given her. There was a sharp jolt of pain across her back, another against her shoulders, and she could hear—dimly—shouts and shots coming from the room behind her, thuds and thunder of the struggle. Chelsea thought wildly that they had certainly racked up a huge bill for themselves. She shouted incoherently, heart pounding in her chest, blood roaring in her ears, and stabbed down at the lump of black, pink, and blue; once, twice, three times, until he went still, groaning. She got to her feet and staggered towards the elevator, trying to ignore the misgivings she felt at leaving Johan behind.

  In minutes that felt like an hour, Chelsea found herself in the parking lot, the blood-reddened knife still in one hand, the keys to the car in the other. She ached all over—sharper aches that told her she was injured indeed, though the adrenaline of the fight made them seem like a minor consideration. She limped to the car, shivering and shaking, and unlocked the door. She could only hope that she would be able to get to wherever she needed to be, and be able to get in touch with Johan when she did.

  PART THREE

  Chelsea pulled into an empty parking spot at a rest stop in what seemed—to her—like the middle of nowhere, exhausted. She hadn’t seen Johan in twenty-four hours; the only sleep she had gotten was a brief nap at a hospital. An hour into her panicked flight away from the hotel, the adrenaline had begun to ebb out of her system, and Chelsea had slowly realized that she was bleeding in a few places, with pain throbbing in many more. Thoughts of Johan—worries about whether or not he was still alive, concerns about where he was, if he was alive, and how she would get in contact with him once more—distracted her enough to keep going until she saw a sign on the highway with the H indicating there was a hospital nearby.

  She had decided that two hours away was far enough, if Johan had indeed taken out their assailants. Chelsea had finally checked the glove compartment to find the phone and the money; much, much more of it than she would have guessed that Johan would have felt comfortable just leaving in the car. Her fingers had trembled as she attempted to count the contents of the envelope, but there was at least a thousand dollars in it. Chelsea had stuffed the envelope into her purse, slipped the phone in her pocket, and limped into the hospital.

  After waiting for what seemed like an eternity—but was, she found out later, only an hour and a half—Chelsea had been called back. In addition to the cash, she’d found a note in the card to submit any bills to a particular agent, and had provided that person’s contact information to the hospital; they must have called and confirmed it, because they were more than happy to x-ray seemingly every inch of her body, run a full panel of blood tests, and examine each injury in minute detail. Chelsea had a badly sprained ankle, a partially torn ligament in her knee, a bullet graze on the back of her shoulder, and bruised ribs, all of which she had struggled to explain with as little detail as possible.

  Against medical advice, she had simply let them put an air cast on her sprained ankle, a brace on her injured knee, and a bandage on her bullet graze. There was not much they could do about the bruised ribs, but the hospital had prescribed her pain medication, which the on-site pharmacy had filled. Chelsea had stuffed that into her purse and went on her way, in spite of the encouragement of the attending doctor to stay for a few hours of observation, and warnings that she might injure herself more if she was too active.

  She had managed to stay on the road in spite of the gnawing pains that seemed to come from all over her body, stopping every so often to get coffee. Chelsea hadn’t even wanted to find a hotel to stay at; she had no idea where Johan was, had no idea where she should be going, no idea if the people after her were on her trail once more
. She also knew that if she stayed alone in a hotel, she wouldn’t be able to get decent sleep anyway. She would toss and turn, likely sending twinges of pain through her legs and torso every time she moved, worrying about the lack of contact with Johan, wondering what she would do with herself if she found out that Johan was dead.

  Chelsea had called as many times as she had dared, using the odd phone with its singular number in the address book. Each time, for the first twelve hours of her flight from the hotel, she received a message that the person she was attempting to call was unavailable; that they had not established a voice mail, and she should call back later. Chelsea reasoned to herself that if Johan had been killed, most likely the people who’d attacked them would have gotten the phone; they would have tried to convince her to meet them somewhere. She refused to think that it was just as likely that Johan was dead, the phone left behind, nothing for her to do and no one for her to reach. Eventually, Johan would call her back.

  After they had been separated for almost twenty hours, Chelsea had begun to lose hope. She made one final call to Johan as a Hail Mary, and was shocked enough to nearly trip over the hose to the gas pump as she walked back and forth as the call connected. “Where are you?” Johan had asked immediately.

  “I have no idea,” Chelsea had said wryly. “I’ve been driving steadily for…I don’t even really know how long anymore. Ten hours at least.” She heard Johan sigh.

  “You didn’t even stop to sleep?”

  “Coffee and fear, they do a pretty good job of keeping a person awake.” Chelsea wanted—almost needed—to ask Johan how he was, if he was injured, if he had slept.

  “The longer you go without sleep the more likely you are to do those assholes’ work for them by crashing into a pylon,” Johan said sharply. “Are you at a gas station or something?” Chelsea started to ask how he had guessed, but realized it was one of the few sensible places for her to be, if she was sticking to the road; she wouldn’t be calling him if she was driving on the highway at the maximum legal speed. She admitted she was. “Is anyone there with you?” Chelsea had glanced around. There was one other person, two pumps down. “Ask them what city you’re in.”

  Suppressing the embarrassing feeling that she would definitely come across as a complete idiot, Chelsea followed the instruction. The woman at the other pump told her that she was in a town called Green Tree. When Chelsea passed that information to Johan, she heard him cluck his tongue against his teeth, considering. “Hold on,” he said, and Chelsea heard the sound of something rustling, movement on the other end of the line. A few moments later, Johan spoke again. “You’re about two hours west of me, unless you’ve really made good time and are in a totally different Green Tree,” she could hear him smiling. “Turn around, come east, we’ll meet at a rest stop and I’ll get you to a hotel.”

  “What rest stop?” Chelsea thought longingly of the pain pills in her purse; but while she had to drive, she couldn’t let herself take the risk of having one, or even half of one. Johan gave her a highway exit number and told Chelsea to call him when she arrived; he would probably already be there, but he wanted her to confirm it before she got out of the car.

  Now, finally arrived, Chelsea picked the phone up from the passenger seat, unlocked the screen, and found the only number in the contact list. She yawned as she held the phone to her ear, listening to it ring once, twice, and then stop—the call connecting. “Are you here?” Chelsea nodded before realizing that obviously, Johan couldn’t see her over the phone.

  “Yeah, I’m here. I think. Exit 96B, right?”

  “I’ll come to the car.”

  Chelsea tilted her head back against the headrest, letting the phone slip from her fingers. She couldn’t remember ever being so exhausted in her life. Her ankle, her knee, her ribs, almost her whole body, it seemed, throbbed with pain. Chelsea wanted nothing more than to soak in a hot bath for about an hour and sleep for ten hours following that. Preferably under the influence of hospital-grade opiates.

  She almost fell into a doze, and jumped when she heard the soft tapping at the window. Looking out, Chelsea saw Johan—unmistakably it was him—standing at the driver’s side door, peering in with the faintest trace of a smile curving his lips. She summoned up the strength to unlock the door and Johan opened it, quickly reaching across her to unbuckle her seatbelt before pulling her out of the seat with only a small show of effort. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her eagerly on the lips, his hands tightening on her. As he brushed against her bruised rib, Chelsea yelped, clenching her teeth as she broke the kiss. “How badly are you hurt?” Johan asked her, concern in his bright eyes.

  “Bruised rib, torn ACL, sprained ankle. There’s a bullet graze somewhere that they bandaged up for me, and I accidentally cut myself while I was stabbing one of those guys to death—at least I hope he’s dead.” Chelsea sighed, smiling wryly. “What about you?” Johan shrugged.

  “Bullet graze on my shoulder, a few bruises here and there, one of them got me with a knife across the leg, but it’s stitched so it’ll heal.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I take it you stopped at a hospital somewhere?” Chelsea nodded slowly.

  “I gave them the contact for the billing, so they subjected me to every test they could justify,” she said with a sigh. Johan laughed.

  “Yeah, I’d expect that.” He hugged her gently. “Come on, get everything you want out of this car. We’re abandoning it.” Chelsea was too tired to question it; with Johan’s help she got her purse and the few possessions she still had in the car with her when she’d fled the hotel. “I got your luggage out of the hotel in one piece,” Johan informed her as he led her towards yet another anonymous—yet subtly luxurious-looking—car.

  “Oh, that’s great,” Chelsea said, only then realizing how much she had left behind. “Probably a huge bill.” Johan shrugged, wincing slightly.

  “It’s paid for.” Chelsea nodded again, too tired and in too much pain to argue or even press the question that had been plaguing her from the beginning of their flight from her home town. “Do you want me to carry you?” Johan looked at Chelsea as she limped.

  “You’re injured too,” she pointed out tartly. “I’m hurting, I’m not half-dead.”

  “I hope they gave you good pain pills.”

  “They did. The best. I think.” Chelsea shook her head slightly to clear it. “I haven’t been able to take them because I’ve been driving, but I want to say it’s Vicodin. I’m really thrilled.” Johan chuckled.

  “I’ve got a hotel for us. In about thirty minutes you’ll be able to take one of those magical pills and drift away for a while.” Chelsea nodded, too exhausted to speak. Johan opened the passenger side door and collected everything but her purse from her, stowing it in the back seat as Chelsea gingerly climbed in and fastened her seat belt. Within a few minutes, they were driving out of the rest stop and towards their destination.

  ****

  “Chelsea, you should get up long enough to eat something.” Chelsea groaned, burrowing deeper into the warm, soft pillows and blankets that surrounded her in protest.

  “Eating is for suckers,” she proclaimed, raising her voice to be heard over the muffling effect of the bed linens. “Sleep is where it’s at.” She heard Johan laugh, and felt the blankets pulling away from her, felt Johan’s strong hands tugging aside the sheets, the pillows, she had cocooned herself in shortly after the Vicodin had begun to take effect. She groaned again in frustration, trying futilely to pull them back.

  “If you want to take another Vicodin, you need to eat something or you’re going to puke all over the nice clean bed and I’m not cleaning it up,” Johan said firmly.

  “But if I eat there will be more to puke,” Chelsea pointed out. She gave up on the idea of sleep, letting Johan pry the sheets and blankets out of her hands until she lay, fully exposed and completely naked, looking up at him. “You’re mean,” she said, sticking her tongue out as she crossed her arms over her chest. The pressure sent a
jolt of pain from the site of her bruised rib and Chelsea winced.

  “I let you sleep for six hours. You need to eat something, take a bath, and take another Vicodin.”

  “Wait, wait,” Chelsea said, frowning. “You’re hurt too, you can’t just stay up and—what have you been doing for the past six hours?” Johan smiled.

  “There was a marathon of Bones on TV,” he told her. “I took a little nap. I’m not as badly injured as you.” Johan frowned slightly. “Maybe I should have given you the gun and kept the knife for myself.”

  “They would’ve just killed you,” Chelsea pointed out, shrugging. “Okay, I’ll eat, and all that other stuff. I’m feeling a little bit better anyway.” She carefully pulled herself up, grunting as pain flared up in her various injuries; she could easily believe it had been six hours—the Vicodin she had taken within minutes of arriving at the hotel was starting to wear off.

  “Before you go off into painkiller mode again,” Johan said, helping her out of the bed and leading Chelsea into the living room area of their suite, “we need to discuss a few things.” The room was every bit as luxurious as the ones they had stayed in before—but the hotel was obviously more secure; Johan had apparently learned from his mistake, or the person masterminding their flight from the people pursuing Chelsea had.

  “Like what?” Chelsea cinched the sash of her robe tightly around her waist and sat down slowly on the couch. She looked over the food that Johan had ordered them with real interest; the hotel had three chefs masterminding the room service menu, and Johan had apparently opted for the Asian fusion specialties. There was a selection of sushi, some noodles, a big bowl of fried rice, and other things that Chelsea couldn’t identify; but which looked absolutely mouthwatering.