by Milly Taiden
ALSO BY MILLY TAIDEN
Sassy Mates Series
Scent of a Mate
A Mate’s Bite
Unexpectedly Mated
A Sassy Wedding
The Mate Challenge
Sassy in Diapers
Fighting for Her Mate
Federal Paranormal Unit
Wolf Protector
Dangerous Protector
Unwanted Protector
Black Meadow Pack
Sharp Change
Caged Heat
Paranormal Dating Agency
Twice the Growl
Geek Bearing Gifts
The Purrfect Match
Curves ’Em Right
Tall, Dark and Panther
The Alion King
There’s Snow Escape
Scaling Her Dragon
In the Roar
Scrooge Me Hard
Bearfoot and Pregnant
All Kitten Aside
Raging Falls
Miss Taken
Miss Matched
Fur-ocious Lust - Bears
Fur-Bidden
Fur-Gotten
Fur-Given
Fur-ocious Lust - Tigers
Stripe-Tease
Stripe-Search
Stripe-Club
Other Works
Wolf Fever
Fate’s Wish
Wynter’s Captive
Sinfully Naughty Vol. 1
Club Duo Boxed Set
Don’t Drink and Hex
Hex Gone Wild
Hex and Kisses
Alpha Owned
Bitten by Night
Seduced by Days
Mated by Night
Taken by Night
Match Made in Hell
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Milly Taiden
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503941564
ISBN-10: 1503941566
Cover design by Eileen Carey
For my girls: Tina and Julie. Your unwavering support is priceless.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Charli Avers sat in her SUV and shook her head at the scene before her: two morons behind the barn trying to drag something big and furry out of the back end of a horse trailer. She couldn’t believe she got out of bed this early. Some emergency. She was kicking Fred’s ass for this. Thank god it was Thursday. One more day.
Charli watched with disbelief as Fred backed a tractor to the trailer’s open gate. What the hell were they doing now? Jed wrapped a rope around the tractor’s hitch, then tied the line to the animal’s leg sticking out. This would not end well.
The tractor’s engine gave a low, grinding whine and the machine inched forward, pulling out the biggest black bear she had ever seen. Her jaw dropped. It was magnificent and scary as hell. For the two men’s sakes, she hoped Fred was right about it being dead. If it wasn’t, it could wake up and eat them in two bites.
Fred looked up from the tractor and waved her over. Charli reached into the backseat and grabbed her small veterinarian’s bag, then heard screams outside the truck. She whipped her head around to see Jed circling the tractor with a black mass of fur and white teeth chasing him.
“Shoot it, Fred! Shoot it!” Fred stood on top of the farm equipment, laughing his ass off watching Jed run around. Charli groaned and got out of her truck. This was going to be a long day.
Fred had jumped down and claimed his rifle when she came around the barn’s corner. She about choked. “Fred, put your gun down! Don’t shoot.”
“I’s got to, Doc. It’ll eat Jed, and I ain’t doin’ his chores for the rest of my life, dagnabit.” He fired a shot that ricocheted off the trailer’s fender and slammed into the chicken coop. Feathers and a parade of cackles erupted from the pen.
“Fred, stop. You’ll kill someone!” And never hit the bear.
Jed, wide-eyed and screaming like a little girl, headed toward them in a dead run. The bear was close enough to swat at him. Fred lifted the rifle.
“I said no.” Charli rushed the shooter, determined to have no deaths today, animal or human. She knocked the gun off target as it fired, but it wasn’t enough and the bullet sank into black fur. The bear stopped and turned murderous eyes toward them. He roared, jaw flashing wide. Charli turned fully to the deadly animal and gave it a calm look.
The creature quietly stared at her, then its nose rose into the air and it took in a long breath and gave what almost sounded like a sigh.
Charli looked over her shoulder at Fred, whom she wasn’t happy with. “Now, sit. No more shooting.” Fred planted his butt on a stump, looking like a scolded puppy. She turned back to the bear, also sitting. She noted the fur on its back leg was slick and shiny. She couldn’t tell from here, but hopefully the bullet had missed the bear’s artery and there wasn’t too much bleeding.
She slowly approached the injured animal with her hands out in front of her in a nonthreatening manner. “It’s okay, Mr. Bear. I just want to look at your wound. I won’t hurt you.” The bear lowered his head and laid it on his paws on the ground. Charli hadn’t expected that, but she’d take it. Until she could physically touch him, she couldn’t really “talk” to him, not with her mind. That’s how her gift worked. If she wanted to communicate mentally with an animal, she had to be in physical contact.
Crouching as close as she could safely get to the site of the wound, Charli could see the injury wasn’t fatal, but the bullet did need to be surgically removed. She didn’t have those tools with her. She was supposed to be here to verify that Fred and Jed had caught a bear and to take its measurements for the records, and make sure it was dead. So much for needing to check the latter.
She heav
ed a sigh. “Fred, any ideas how to get this creature back into the trailer so I can take him to the clinic for minor surgery?”
“Shoot, Doc. You’d need a tranq gun.”
She hadn’t brought one since she hadn’t planned on taking a bear home with her. The animal gave a grunt and pushed onto all fours. Charli quickly stepped back and Fred readied his rifle. The bear turned, and to everyone’s amazement, loaded himself into the back of the horse trailer and lay down.
“Huh,” Jed snorted from where he lay panting on the grass. “Butter my butt and call me a biscuit. How’d he know to do that?”
What puzzled Charli more was how these two yokels captured the beast in the first place. “So, Fred, how did you and Jed get a live bear?”
Fred glanced at Jed, then smiled at her right nicely. “Well, Jed ’n me had been tracking this monster all mornin’.” Charli raised her brow, but kept silent. This should be good. “He shor was one sneaky bastard, yes’m. We cornered him up on the ridge north a here, then he jumped from behind bushes an’ attacked us—”
Jed ran up and threw a fist in the air. “Yeah, I punched him in the face—”
“Wait,” Charli scrunched her brows, “you punched the bear, or Fred?”
Jed popped his hand onto his hip. “For bein’ a doc and all, Doc, you can be slow as molasses in winter.”
She smiled. “You’re right, Jed. Of course, you got right up into the bear’s face and punched him. Probably saved Fred, too, right?”
Jed’s eyes popped wide. “Yeah”—he turned to his brother—“I saved your ass.”
Fred jumped to his feet. “You did not. I saved yours.” Wait for it. “I found the tree we climbed to get away.”
And there it was. Charli had all the story she needed, except how the bear had become unconscious. “Okay, guys. How did you knock out the bear to load him?”
“Oh,” Fred said as his cheeks blushed crimson. “When the tree went over the edge of the steep bankside, it dumped us in the crick and caused a rockslide the bear fell with. We had to dig him out first.”
“Then I punched him in the face,” Jed added.
Fred shoved his brother. “Stop tall tellin’.” Charli walked toward her truck to bring it around and hook up the trailer. The boys kept arguing as she went. “We’re busted already. Quit jawin’—”
“You started it . . .”
Charli just shook her head. Such was life in Shedford, Oregon.
CHAPTER TWO
Charli watched the truck’s side mirrors as she backed the horse trailer with her patient to the large stalls at the back of her clinic reserved for horses and cows. She had laid hay on an old horse pad to soften the stall’s cold concrete. With the bear’s thick fur, none of that was really needed, but her love for creatures big and small wouldn’t let her do anything less.
Back inside the building, she stepped into the aisle separating stalls and leaned the pitchfork against the wall. She didn’t want something to happen and have the bear end up injured more by falling on the three tines.
Opening the trailer’s gate, Charli looked around it to see what the lying bear would do. He’d gotten in on his own. Would he come out also? From his prone position on the metal floor, one black eyeball looked up at her, then closed. Guess that was a no.
Sighing, she shuffled through the stall toward the interior hallway. There were a couple of steaks in the fridge she could use to wrap medication in to lure him into the stall and knock him out so she could pull the bullet from his hindquarter. Then a big—no, huge—cup of coffee would be called for. She’d be lucky to get to the office in time for the morning meeting. Being late was not part of her style, but the animals came first.
Oh shit. She’d forgotten to close the stall’s back gate, leaving the bear loose if he decided to get up. She spun around and slammed into a broad, naked, muscular chest. Her defensive training kicked in and she spun him and pinned him to the floor in two seconds flat.
She pulled his arm farther back, bringing the shoulder socket close to popping out. “Who are you and why are you in my barn?” She hadn’t asked the most important question: Why was he naked? Because, hot damn, he looked good enough to eat. Not to mention he smelled divine. Musky and woodsy.
He jerked under her. “Shit, lady. I don’t know who you are or where I am. I woke and saw someone walk out of the stall. Did you bring me here?”
Charli eased up her hold. “No, I didn’t bring you here. And you weren’t in the stall. I put hay down in an empty pen. So tell me the truth.” She yanked on his arm.
“Oww, fuck, lady.” He bucked hard, but she held on. “Get off me.”
“Not until you tell me who you are and why you’re here.”
“I just told you. I don’t know who I am.”
Whoa, he hadn’t said that. “How can you not know who you are?” She jumped off his back and reached for the pitchfork along the wall.
He slowly rolled to sit up. He must’ve realized then he was naked; his face flooded red and his hands quickly covered his junk. From the little she saw, he had nothing to be ashamed of. Her mouth suddenly felt dry. She pushed all that business aside. Now wasn’t the moment to think of the last time she’d had sex—she couldn’t remember when, anyway.
She raised onto tiptoes and peeked over the gate to the stall. Damn, the bear was gone. Shit, shit, shit. Maybe he wouldn’t go far and she could find him and take care of his injury before it became infected. If the animal died because this asshole took her attention, she’d put a bullet in the guy’s ass and push him out the door.
After pivoting his front side away from her, he ran fingers through his soft brown hair. “Look, lady . . .” Dark circles marred the skin under his eyes. “I have a hell of a headache and . . . do you have anything I can put on? Shorts or sweats?”
“I have a lab coat in the office, but I’m not leaving you here by yourself while I get it.” She waved the pitchfork to make sure he knew she had it.
He rubbed his hands over his face. “Let’s go.” He stood, keeping his front side turned away. Which was fine with her. His backside looked pretty damn nice, also. She wondered how he kept in such good shape. He wasn’t a spring chicken. Probably her age, lower thirties. She noted a tattoo on his bicep, but couldn’t tell what it was from her distance.
As they walked up the hall, he kept his hands in front, probably covering himself. She smiled, thinking what his reaction would be if she made him put his hands behind his head. Shit, tingles started in her lower belly; something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Her prisoner stopped and took a deep breath. His head tipped back and a growly groan escaped his throat. “Lady, you can’t—” His tongue swiped across his lips.
She waited for him to continue and when he didn’t, she prodded. “Can’t what?”
He turned his head enough for her to see his profile. Again, perfect. Straight nose, strong jawline, high cheekbones. Her tongue wanted to glide over his day-old whiskers, wanted to feel their roughness. Her heat pooled lower.
The man gasped, throwing a hand against the wall, tightening it into a fist. “That, woman. You can’t do that.”
Charli frowned and jabbed the pitchfork at him. “Keep walking, dude.” What did he mean? He couldn’t read her mind, could he? After accepting a position with the pack fellowship, she’d learned an entire species had been living side by side with humans that few knew about. And she understood why their secret needed to be kept. If the world knew supernatural beings existed, everything would go to hell in a handbasket really damn quick.
She directed him to her clinic office, where a white coat hung on the wall next to the door. He slipped it on and realized it was barely long enough to cover what needed covering. He took it off and wrapped the sleeves around his waist, tying them at his back. His hands felt where the coat lay against the sides of his thick thighs and he smiled. “Well, looks like you get to keep your view, at least.”
She gasped and her entire body burst with emb
arrassed heat. Of course, she enjoyed her “view,” but she sure as hell wasn’t letting him know that. Trying to cover her shame with an indignant expression, she pushed him forward. “Get inside and shut up.”
He exploded into a deep laugh that rolled over her with longing. Shit, that was so not good. Why was this stranger having such an effect on her? She’d been around good-looking men before and hadn’t felt the need to hump their leg. Fuck.
He opened the door and she pushed in behind him toward her desk. “Sit down and be quiet.” Charli took a key from her desk and opened a small drawer to the side. She pulled out a gun, then set the pitchfork behind her. After gingerly rolling her chair from the desk, she sat and laid the gun close to her.
She smiled. “So, we were discussing why you’re naked . . . I mean, why you’re here.” She shook her head. “Forget the naked—of course, being naked is part— I mean, I need to know . . . you’re, you’re naked.” Shit. She shut her mouth before she could say something worse.
CHAPTER THREE
He burst into laughter watching the beautiful woman on the other side of the desk flounder with her words. Fuck, she was stunning. Mine. Where had that come from? He glanced at her face and the word sprang into his mind again. Mine!
What in the world? He couldn’t understand this primal need to take her, tear her clothes off, and slide into her, claiming her as his own. Fucking hell, she smelled unbelievably delicious. More than anything, he wanted to snuggle his face into her pussy and lap at her hot center. He dropped his hand onto his lap as the coat started to rise in the center. He shifted to one ass cheek and crossed a leg over the other.
Now wasn’t the time to get hot and bothered. He had more important things to figure out, like his name, for starters. He’d have her later.
She flipped her long, honey-colored hair over her shoulder. “Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Charlynne Avers—Charli, preferably. And you?”
He racked his brain for everything he could recall, which was alarmingly little. He dropped his look to his hands. “I . . . don’t know. In fact, I don’t remember much.”
Charli’s expression was a mix of concern and disbelief. “Okay, tell me what you do remember.”
He sighed and stared out the window at the yellow-and-brown field leading to the snowcapped mountain in the distance. Beautiful. Something else he didn’t remember. “I was . . . dreaming a very weird dream, woke up with a very bad headache in a horse trailer in the back of your stall, then found myself on the ground with my face shoved into the concrete.”