Josie disappeared inside the dark gaping doorway.
Jaguar retrieved a pack from her saddle and followed her.
Not the best of situations. Josie could take care of herself. But Jaguar has no idea that she could rip off his tail and cram it down his throat. I'd have to intervene or pay the price for losing one of my Shifter charges. Or at least his valuable nuts. The human race would die off without every Shifter in full form to donate genetic material for the greater good of the species.
****
The young Shifter retrieved the other bag of ammo and placed them on a long wooden table strategically placed positions on one side of the large central room.
Like a gentleman. "Thank you." I wasn't about to be rude even though they'd quickly decide I am, by reputation alone, once somebody inquired about my name.
"Augustus sent you?" The young male descended onto the bench flanking the opposite side of the table.
No sense acting mysterious. "Yes."
"Long ride," he noted, somewhat contemplatively.
More than outright blurting he couldn't believe a female rode two days alone. "Yes." What next? Am I mated? Or did I have any trouble on the trail?
"You heading back tonight?" he asked.
Interesting way to see if I feared nightfall and being preyed upon by alien monsters. "I thought I'd ask for sanctuary." I shot him a firm glance, challenging him to think otherwise. "Avoid Bounders one night." Why not? The alien creatures could dine upon my carcass tomorrow night. This game of cat and mouse could be pretty entertaining. I'd just play along to see how long it took for us to get around to introductions. Then the fireworks start.
"Then?" he asked.
The door creaked.
Jaguar spun to the doorway.
One filling with an extremely large form. Shadows draping his features. Shifter though. Too big for a Normal. Apparently, Augustus had enough sense to keep an adult around to keep the hormonal antics to a minimum here.
"Shouldn't you be guarding the gate?" a familiar unsettling voice asked.
My whole being shuddered and quaked.
In fear. I think. Hostillian.
My gut actually had the audacity to do somersaults.
Run? Shove the Big Bad Beast out of the way? Escape? Or survive another confrontation? Risk him pulling his Wolf into his ears and listening to my tattling heartbeat. Surely he'd guessed already. Knew of my infatuation with him. Or he wasn't smart enough to keep on hand back at the lab and was assigned this remote command of teenagers. Maybe Augustus is wiser than I gave him credit for? Maybe, just maybe, my grieving is getting the best of me.
The youth rose, nodding a straight-lipped smile my direction, threw his weapon's strap over his shoulder, and pressed through the sunlit gap between the doorframe and Hostillian's body that now leaned against one side of the doorway.
Smugly. His arms crossed over his broad chest. The bastard. The Big Bad Beast thought he'd caught me fucking with one of his men. Young men. Like I'd choose someone a good seven years my junior who barely had enough meat on his bones to toss at a Bounder. Just what would the enormous jerk say? I straightened my spine, faced him squarely, preparing for the worst.
"What are you doing here?" His voice never wavered from the deep commanding tone that always hit me low in my belly.
Unnerved every corpuscle of my being.
Left my knees trembling with the threat of dumping me into a puddle of goo on the floor at his feet.
Not today. The ass. What am I doing here? Like I don't have a reason to be here! Why does he have to be so damned caustic? I grabbed a heavy saddlebag, dragged it two inches so I could unbuckle the buckle, and tossed the flap open to show I'd been sent with the goods. "Augustus asked me to deliver these."
"Augustus?" he asked incredulously.
Like I wasn't capable. Merely female. Because Big Bad Beast couldn't see the value in others unless they were unstoppable. Or controllable. Me, I'm simply the weak female in his eyes. Impossibly chained to a life of boring things like being barefoot and pregnant mated to someone like him for protection. Therein nested my value. Since he couldn't begin to fathom why I bothered stopping, here, that I'd only been in the general vicinity of this place because I was leaving the community, that I had no idea where I was going or how long it would take for me to reach nowhere, that everything I had is gone, and with his whole bastard approach to this inquisition, he'd never truly know. I just needed to get on Marine and ride out of this nightmare. "Yes. I'll be leaving now." I strode toward the sunlit crack Jaguar had used to vanish.
To sit my stallion and high tail it out of here.
"It's late," he rumbled at my approach.
If I hadn't been desperate to escape, I'd probably have stopped and enjoyed the amazing echo of his male words. Stood close to him. Maybe stare at those broad hands that surely touched some female somewhere. Some woman who begged him for protection. Who gave her flesh to him because he was so gloriously perfect. Thank the stars he had his shirt on. Or I'd melt merely from the sound of his voice surrounded by all his fucking muscles. Why am I thinking this again?
How does he always unravel my self-control one thought by mind-numbing thought?
Hell, he'd made his disgust for me perfectly clear.
And nobody would ever call me dense. I just need to leave before the commanding look from his brown gaze had me pulling my clothes off. Offering myself to him. I took two more steps to the gap in the door.
His massive towering form glided sideways to consume the gap.
So he wants to fight? I squared my jaw and slid my gaze up from the patchy cloth covering his wide chest, along his shadowy thick neck to the rounded protrusion of his chin, to the grim flat line of his challenging scowl, across the black moustache outlining that scowl even more, to the yellow glow of his Wolf in his eyes.
So he analyzed me his heightened Shifter senses.
Fine.
Good thing he ticked me off. "Look, if I knew you were here, I'd have told Augustus where he could stick his bloody bullets. But he neglected to inform me who I'd see on his little errand. You know, with one of those wicked little winks of his. So, I played his chump. Unknowingly. So, I'll just be leaving now. You've got your ammo. And I'm gone. We're both happy."
He just stared at me, Wolf eyes burning like banked coals.
****
Wolf writhed in agony because she was even more beautiful when she hissed words through grated teeth. But I'm unlike the Shifter Tacitus who seeks challenges. No. I prefer my females docile and safe at home. Josie will never be either.
Mine, Wolf growled.
"Gods-damn-it, Hostillian. Don't growl at me. Just let me pass." Her pale blue eyes glinted like they had a Shifter glow of their own.
Play, Wolf begged.
Sit. Quiet. Let me think.
Her heart thrashed like she faced a grizzly.
And she'd said Augustus had that damned wink when he gave her this assignment. He sent her on purpose. Hell, I can't let her go out with the curfew a few hours away. Not that tight little ass and those pouty lips. What kind of Guardian would I be if anything happened to a female? "There's nowhere you can go this time of day. You have to stay here." Hopefully, I sounded calm. But she has a way of working from every angle to pry my flesh from my bones. A way of forcing every one of my blood cells into my swelling cock.
"You're kidding. Right?" she snarled. "You and me in the same space until morning?"
She's right. But I'd be damned if she got the best of me in any discussion. "If you behave, everything will be fine," I managed calmly.
"Me?" she crowed, pointing at the floorboards with obvious rage reddening her cheeks. "You're the one who accused me of coming here on purpose. I offered to leave too."
Unfortunately, I couldn't allow her to win. "You will behave. I have seven teens here learning to grow wheat. But they're highly impressionable--"
"How dare you suggest I'd seduce them!" She thrust up a finger and stabbed
the pointed tip into my chest. "I don't know when the last time was I even looked at a youth the age of the one that just left. He's scrawny."
The solid fingertip jabbed harder with each of her words.
Not hard enough to soften Wolf's cock. "You're not leaving this cabin until sunrise." I turned my back to her, leaned an elbow against the biting doorframe, and stared at unfolding grassy prairie beyond the gaping gateway.
Movement even farther out noted my loping students in their Wolfskins were returning to prepare for the evening meal. "You'd better find something to do, Josie. The boys are back. In were-form. And they'll be shifting shortly. If you don't want to mislead them by staring at their nude bodies, you'd better back away from the door and find something to do."
****
What an asshole. First implying I can't behave appropriately around these children. Then daring me to go stare at their nude bodies. I pivoted and planted my tail on the end of the bench farthest from the doorway and Hostillian's glowing Wolf stare.
Banked coals never warmed a space as much as they did now. Or I'm about to explode from pent-up frustration.
"Just a minute," Hostillian said with his authoritative timbre.
Not to me. To the teens. Or he would have been as asshole.
The floorboards creaked behind me.
Under the weight of his six-foot-five steely mass of perfectly-chiseled muscles. Why, oh, why, can't I be normal? Just be a woman who makes men fall at their feet? Not gush into puddles. Men don't gush. But just have them writhe at my boots. Just Hostillian. Why? Is it too much to want something so desperately? I'd wasted half of my life on that stupid desire. Trying to prove I wouldn't be in his way. That I'd be safe walking across the compound if he wasn't around. That he wouldn't have to worry about me. But he still doesn't want me.
My heart sank.
Foolishly betraying my warrior façade if Hostillian had his Wolf in his ears.
My cousin planned this. Yes. Stuck his snout in my business again. But I'd leave in the morning. Beat Augustus at his game. Survive this night.
The floorboards creaked again.
More softly though. Farther away.
The door snapped shut.
Hostillian probably took pants to his boys.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My pulse in my skull. Pounding out a death march. Beat by agonizing beat. Ticking off the moments before they'd all come inside. Stare at me like I'm the main course. Or worse. He probably told them who I was by now. Oh well. I'd just pull myself together. Make due till morning. Prove all those years I studied how to survive hadn't been wasted. Maybe on a foolish fantasy about Hostillian. But not with learning to defend myself.
No. I hadn't wasted a moment on self-defense. And nobody would make me think I had. Not Hostillian. Not a pack of wet-behind-the-ears youths. My sire might have wanted me to be more of a daughter than a woman who could stand up to Hostillian. But he never once told me I was a failure or an embarrassment to the clan. So, to hell with Hostillian's lack of interest. I'd show this lodge of mangy wolves that I deserved respect.
The door creaked.
A floorboard answered.
One by one, they trickled through the doorway, silently, except for the bitching planks. Hostillian must have told them to be respectfully quiet. Or threatened them with their lives for any misbehavior. I remember the days in school when all the young males feared Augustus. Knew there would be hell to pay if anything went wrong. Hence, their accepting me and my little need to prove myself to whoever doubted I could take care of myself. So, my cousin taught the males of his clan how to demand the same respect from youths.
A final creak of flooring and one snap of the door noted the noisy parade's end.
Surely he stood behind me. Literally? Yes. But what did his presence indicate?
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Werescape 5: SEDUCING BEAUTY {The Gathering}
Chapter One
Post-apocalyptic Earth, AEI, 2065 A. D., Bitterroot Forest, Montana Territory, The Wild
When will Willow show, Boa wondered and scanned the steadfast tree trunks that held up the clear blue sky with full green canopies as he fingered a tiny piece of smooth pink topaz carved into a flower, an open bloom resembling that of the Montana Territory's Bitterroot plant, he had tucked inside the hip pocket of his camouflage pants. A pendant the size of the fingernail on my smallest finger, he noted. Almost miniscule. Yet a treasure. What I'd give to see a far greater treasure slipping through the shade cast beneath the cottonwoods.
Not a flutter of wings. Not even a falling leaf.
But she'd come. Probably with the breeze. She'd promised. Willow never lied. And ten years passed since the day she spied me in my striped camouflage standing in the forest. When I'd scared the shit out of the thirteen-year-old beauty. The way she'd frozen like a mule deer, tense, ready to run. But she didn't and kept returning to meet with me. Kept coming back all the years ever since.
Play, my inner Wolf snapped where he lurked deep inside my chest in the chasm where Shifters keep their inner beast.
No sneaking up on her today, Wolf.
Shadows shifted among the tree trunks.
Movement.
Wolf leapt into a whimpering series of pounces.
Not good. I sucked down a deep breath, shoving him down again.
Sunlight bore through the blanketing canopy, catching something white.
Her straight long loose hair. Purest white, the color of feathery cirrus clouds high in the stratosphere. But that silk wasn't ice. Quite the opposite. Soft and almost nonexistent in the way the strands had whispered across my fingers in early spring when she'd finally allowed me to touch it. After the snow melted. As if something else sprouted between us to blossom into more than friendship--the only thing I'd craved since I'd seen her wandering through our forested valley without a care in the world.
Carefree. That's Willow. Wild and free. A part of nature. And I'd thought of nothing since but the buttery whisper of her hair against my flesh.
Wolf scraped his claws along the underside of my ribcage.
Antsy. Determined. Okay. Wolf hadn't allowed me to think of anything other than marking her.
Calm down if you want your mate. Prove you're more than an animal. Because Willow doesn't need another crazy Shifter in her life. I'd spent too many years working to convince her we were destined to be together without actually saying so. I'd make that declaration today. It's time. She has to think me more than a mere friend after she'd ridden through the snow twice during the brutal winter, to spend time telling stories and laughing around a warm campfire with me.
Mine, Wolf whined.
Foolish beast. If I let him loose, let him have his way, I'd be no better than the fools we have for sires. Well, mine is just a victim of her sire's anger. Still, she could crave nothing from our meetings other than quiet moments where the blood feud faded into the surrounding peaks and hushing wind. Nature. Calming peaceful nature. Why else would she remain at a safe distance all these years? Because she's wiser than the lot of our fractured clan. So young and wise. Seven years younger than Wolf and I. But so damned aloof. Never sparing Wolf the agony of whining and begging for a chase. To play. Or to sleep contentedly curled around those sweet curves she uses to taunt us.
She knows I love her. Has to. Must laugh at the fact that she's driven me mad with need.
Her gray stallion suddenly snorted breaking the serene ambiance of the forest's silence, tossing his darker gray mane, reporting he'd detected my scent where they worked their way through the tree trunks my direction on the other side of a small sunlit stretch of grassy meadow.
She pulled back on black reins in a shaft of downward-cutting sunlight and scanned my general area. "Boa?"
Can't see me, eh? Good to know my pathetic adoration for her hadn't affected my ability to hide. But teasing her with my woodsman skills would only irritate her. I st
epped over a fallen cottonwood's crumbled bark to reveal my location.
Her gaze snapped to mine. "Father was hustling when I left. He received a secret telegraph message on The Wire. And wouldn't share a word." Her sweet lips curved down in an unforgiving scowl. She kicked her horse into a walk and continued toward me.
Loving Lucius (Werescape) Page 27