by Lynn Red
I nodded. “Promise? I could use a vacation.”
“I promise,” he said. “Come on.”
That time when Dax grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, I knew that something had changed. Some fundamental shift in the universe took me down a path I never would have guessed, and I was different. I don’t know exactly what it was really, or even how to explain it, but... whatever it was, I liked the new Raine. “Do I get a gun?” I asked. “I mean, if I’m gonna be your sheriff I should probably pack.”
“Er,” he cracked a grin. “Got a shotgun in the car, that do you?”
“Just fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”
-17-
Hasta La Vista
“What are we doing?” it occurred to me to ask as we were about to enter the north side of Kendal Creek. I was fiddling with the safety catch on my unloaded sawn-off twelve gauge and trying to judge exactly how crazy I’d gotten in the last two weeks. “I mean that in a bigger-picture sense. I know we’re driving to town, but I don’t think I’m following exactly why.”
Dax’s eyes were fixed in a hard, steel glare out the front of his truck. “Creighton’s gonna follow us. He probably already is. And I gotta be real honest with you Raine, I’m not entirely sure we’re gonna make it through this.”
“Through what?” I asked him, grabbing a hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought there was just some guy trying to get you thrown out of town. I didn’t realize this was going to turn into some kind of weird Home Alone scenario. Do we need to, I dunno, call the National Bear Guard or something?”
He snorted a laugh. “There’s a thought. Bunch of rowdy, pissed off bears ripping out of their uniforms and making a mess.” He laughed again. “It’s complicated. Everything with us is complicated.”
“I’m figuring that out. So, putting together the pieces, you had the brother of some important politician in your town and he was a screw-up?”
“Sorta.” Dax winced slightly as we bumped over something in the road. “Hope that wasn’t alive. Anyway. When I took the alpha’s seat, there was some confusion over how legitimate my claim was.”
“It’s like some old medieval thing?”
“Sorta. The family is chosen by a vote, and then they stay around until you run up against a cub who is either too corrupt or too stupid to run the town, and then they get violently deposed. The whole thing goes on and on.”
As I listened to him recite the succession rules, I just gazed out the side window, watching the mountain-forest background whizzing past. I thought about Dan and what felt like a million miles between Boston and the Creek. Not just physical distance, but the mental space we’d created, the safety I felt for the first time in memory... it was all overwhelming but it was also all incredible. I squeezed his hand again, I thought at least as much for his benefit as for mine.
He continued, spelling out the intricacies of bear politics, and I felt the pulse in his wrist speeding up. His attention was heightening, the tension in his wrist going taut.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked, when he seemed to finish. “We don’t have to do this. Or I mean, I don’t have to... I mean, if I’m really what’s causing the trouble, I can just go with them, or leave or whatever. I don’t want to make you and the town suffer because I’m too scared to leave.”
Dax pulled the truck to the side of the road and killed the engine. I watched him in confusion as he pushed open the squeaky driver’s side door with the toe of his boot and stepped out. Slowly, patiently, he trekked around the front of the car and then to my side. He stared back at me, those dark brown eyes burning against my neck as he clasped the handle and opened mine.
There was another squeak of aged hinges straining to get themselves open and not break right down the center. Even after everything that had happened in the past few days, I was still struggling to understand exactly what I’d done to be here. How I deserved not only this strange insight into a world I didn’t know existed, but also what I’d done to deserve this man who was taking my hand, then kissing it softly with velvet lips. The stubble on his face rasped against the thin skin on the back of my hand.
“I’m okay,” he finally said, answering my question from what felt like an eternity before. “But I’ll tell you this right now. If it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t have come back here from that concert. I was at the end of my chain, I was so far past caring about much of anything that I probably sounded a lot like a pissed off college student who just learned about either Communism or being a libertarian.”
I cracked a smile and then a second later, I allowed myself a laugh. “That’s a thought,” I said.
“I’m serious, Raine.” Daxon’s eyes were stormy, dark and strikingly beautiful. “You saved me from my own rage, from my own hatred. I can’t really explain anything past that, but without you I don’t particularly want to keep on going. So, no, I won’t just let you leave to please some asshole politician.”
Hearing that warmed me from the core to my fingertips. Little tingles of electric pleasure worked their way down my back and the backs of my arms all the way to the tips of my toes. In the shimmering, silvery light from the moon, I stared at his face for a moment and let myself smile. He kissed me once, softly, on the lips, and then again behind my ear.
I felt a trill of pleasure creep down my neck and work its way through my belly and down my legs. “I’ve never felt like this before, Dax,” I admitted. “I don’t know if,” I trailed off, falling silent.
He swept a tendril of fallen hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “You don’t know what? You can feel safe telling me whatever you want.”
Taking my hand in his, Dax began to walk into the woods. I followed close behind, looping a finger through one of his belt loops as we went. “I don’t know if,” I started again, and once again faltered. He squeezed my hand, giving me strength. “If I’ve ever actually loved anyone who loved me back.”
He looked in my direction, but kept walking. His feet crunched softly over the fallen leaves and shed twigs. “What about your ex?” he asked. “Was that sour from the start?”
My stomach hit my toes and then shot all the way back up to my throat. Trust me, it isn’t a pleasant sensation to have your guts roll in quite that way. I had known from the beginning that eventually I’d have to breech this subject, and I had to decide whether to tell the truth or...
“He left me,” I said, making the decision to keep up the charade. I couldn’t risk it, not just yet anyway. I told myself that as soon as we were safe, I’d tell the truth, no matter how much it hurt or what it did to us as a couple. I’d come clean. At least, that’s what I told myself. “One day, instead of coming home from work he just... left. Took his truck and split. After all those years of him keeping me locked inside the house, a prisoner to my own husband. He just up and left. I didn’t know what to do or even the simplest things about taking care of myself.”
Dax’s jaws were clenched tight and hard. His eyes were hard and still. “If I ever see him, I’ll gut him.”
Normally, that would have just been some theatrical male posturing. But from him? I believed it. “I doubt that’ll be an issue,” I said, cleverly avoiding the truth while not exactly lying. “He apparently disappeared for good. They found his truck in the woods about an hour from our house where he liked to go camping, but didn’t find him.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah, I think,” I said. “Or maybe not. They never did find a body.”
My discomfort with lying became a physical pain. I could hardly keep myself from cracking up and openly weeping as I fed this man who loved me more than anyone ever had, line after line of bullshit. I kept repeating inside my head that the lie was only going to stay until it was safe to tell the truth. I was only going to keep up the charade until I could let him in and give up on the last of my defenses; until I could open myself and bare everything to him.
The scent of aspen and pine filled my nose when I inhaled deepl
y.
“I’m sorry that I brought it up,” Dax said with a hand on my shoulder. He twirled one of my curls around his fingertip and rubbed it softly. “It’s not my business.”
“That isn’t true,” I said. I looked away from his gaze so he wouldn’t see my façade begin to crack. “Where are we going?” I asked, to take my mind off of the monstrous lie I’d just blabbed.
“Scenic route,” he answered. “I figure if we don’t even really know what’s going to come of all this, we should at least take a few hours to see my favorite place.”
“Really?” I asked with a slight scoff of laughter. “I thought we were in a major hurry and the Creightons were behind us.”
He shrugged. “Things are almost never as urgent as they seem.”
I sensed tension in his voice. Something was straining in the background, even as he spoke with the same even, flat, soothing tone that I’d fallen so deeply in love with. I knew he was putting on a brave face, and I knew that he was scared of whatever lay ahead. But at the same time, showing me his courage gave me a little shot of confidence, and that was probably what he was going for in the first place.
“Not far now,” he said, pushing a tree branch out of the way and deftly avoiding a large, protruding root.
We were going higher into the mountains, which I knew from the burning in my thighs and the weird itching I felt in my ass cheeks. “I need to exercise more,” I said, joking about the sensation tickling my backside.
“You’re perfect however you are,” Dax said in such an offhanded, unpracticed way that I actually believed him. Whenever people told me that before, I always suspected some kind of ulterior motive, which was usually them wanting to get in my pants.
But with him? He didn’t need to do any flattering to get at me.
The din of ever present forest sounds – frogs croaking, night birds chirping and owls on the hunt – died away very suddenly as we crested a hill. In front of us I saw a small, sparkling pond that seemed to sprout up from nowhere. A gentle, meandering creek ran off to the east, carrying water toward the town below us.
“Look over there,” Dax said, pointing into the distance. “See those specks of light? That’s Kendal Creek.”
“Why Kendal Creek?” I asked.
“Because that’s where it is,” he deadpanned.
I socked him on the arm. “Thanks, dumbass. I mean why is it named that? Who is Kendal?”
“Oh, it’s an old clan thing; town is named after the first alpha. Wolves live in packs, bigfoot live in clubs, bears live in clans.”
“Are you serious?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Well, I’m a bear and we live in clans—“
“No, I mean about Bigfoot. Is he real?”
“Would you really doubt it after everything you’ve seen? And yes, they live in clubs. I don’t know why they call them that, but those things almost never come out of the woods anyway. What people don’t realize is that the ones they spot are either babies or very old. They also don’t realize that they’re mercenaries.”
My eyes grew wide. “Bigfoot mercenaries?”
He nodded. “In clan wars, especially between smaller clans, they’ll rent themselves out to the highest bidder to fight. It’s honestly a pretty amazing sight to see. Two massive bigfoot slamming into each other. I’ve only wrestled one of them once.”
“You’re joking,” I stated, rather than asked. “You fought a bigfoot?”
Dax looked down at me and boomed a laugh that echoed off the trees and skimmed over the top of the water. “Someday I’ll introduce you to one and you’ll realize just how big they are. If I ever got in a scuffle with one, he’d probably rip my arms off. Not saying I wouldn’t mess him up pretty good too, but, you know.”
“Right,” I said, sliding my fingers deftly in between Dax’s. “I’m sure you couldn’t resist at least a little shot of hyper-masculine bullshit, huh?”
He shrugged. “I mean, if the truth is the truth, you gotta say it right?”
The two of us laughed softly, both obviously lost in thought about something or other. Dan was still swimming through my mind. I could see his truck parked near the edge of that drop off, I could see his flannel-clad body floating sickeningly in the water fifty feet below. Dax must’ve felt me shiver, because he pulled me close and put an arm around my shoulders. The heat radiating out of him lulled me into resting my head on the hollow of his throat and then nuzzling his neck. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, as much convincing himself as me, I thought. “We’ll figure out what Wyatt wants, and we’ll send him packing one way or another. But for right now is it okay if we just sit here, and I hold you, and we pretend like the world isn’t coming to an end?”
I lifted my head reluctantly from his chest. “There isn’t anything in the world I’d like better.”
“Good,” he said, relaxing to the ground and taking me with him. We lay there for what felt like eternity, but probably wasn’t longer than a half hour, without a single stir. I was draped down his body, my legs falling between his, and my head resting on my interwoven hands, on top of his powerful chest.
“I could stay like this forever,” I finally said, breaking the long silence.
“Trust me,” he said. “I promise you that after tonight, we’ll be coming out here all we want. And I promise you one more thing.” There was a glint of mischief in his eye.
“What?”
“I promise you that what we did back at Creighton’s cabin? That won’t be anything compared to what I do to you when this is all over with.”
I swatted playfully at Dax’s hand as a heavy flush crept up my chest and prickled my nipples stiffly and seductively inside my bra. “Yeah, and this time I’m gonna get my hands on you,” I whispered, nipping his chin with a gentle chomp. “And when I do, you’re going to think you shot off into space.”
With surprising quickness, Dax flipped the two of us over, ending up on top of me, propped up on his elbows. I felt the thickness in his jeans pressed against my belly and immediately felt myself quail slightly. “I think,” I whispered, “you win.” I tapped the ground in a one-two-three and he laughed. I can’t explain it, but just being there with him, playing around like teenagers in love was just what I needed.
God, how long I’d needed it. I felt like I skipped that whole part of my life. I walked into high school and walked out a married kid with a rebellious streak. Then that fell apart and I lost myself in a relationship with a guy who wanted a prisoner, not a wife. Six years later, I walked out of Dan’s house wounded, broken, and a little scared of reality.
“And then I ended up here,” I whispered, not realizing that I was saying it out loud.
Dax cocked his head a smidge to the side. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I said, smiling and pushing a curl out of his face. “I was just thinking about how the hell I ended up here, after everything else that happened.”
“That’s a funny thing,” Dax said. “Life does that sometimes, you know? The weirdest, stupidest, wildest series of events will end with you in a place you never imagined being.”
“Like a sheriff in a small town full of bear-shifters? Is that an unbelievable enough change to count?”
He answered me with a smile. “The other funny thing?”
“The other funny thing,” I cut him off, “is that however the hell we ended up here, somehow we managed to be exactly where we’re supposed to be, with exactly the person we’re supposed to be with.”
He kissed me softly on the forehead. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
I took another deep breath, inhaling the scent of trees and crisp, clean water not ten feet away from where we lay in a patch of grass. I closed my eyes, not to sleep, but to try and remember every single detail of how we were, at just that moment. I never knew if I’d feel like that again in my life, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to forget it without a fight.
-18-
Rocky Mountain High
&nbs
p; Turns out, the fight came to us.
“Son of a bitch,” Dax grunted as he rolled away from me, taking his warmth and my comfort with him. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it would be bears coming into my territory and acting like they own the place. And to have the balls to come up my mountain to my creek and come at me by surprise when I’m just cuddling my old lady? Sunzabitches.”
“I’m sorry,” I rolled to my knees, then grabbed my shotgun on the way to my feet. “Did you just call me your old lady? Pretty sure I didn’t sign onto a biker gang, old man.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Neither could he. Flashing white teeth sparkled against the starkly dark background of a moonlit night. Everything was a particular grayscale shade. The moon gave the surroundings the look of an episode of I Love Lucy from before anyone bothered to make TV in color. Different hues of black, white and gray dappled the world, and as strange as it is, I thought that I was hearing things in black and white, too.
“What is it?” I finally asked, after not actually hearing or seeing anything that was apparently attacking us. “I don’t see—“
“Stay down,” Dax ordered with a pass of his hand. “Get over to that brush.”
We crept silently, our breathing slow and deliberate. The babble of water over the small break in the creek covered our gentle rustling capably enough. The tall, waving watergrass was cool and calm as I settled into it, clutching my gun close and waiting for Dax to say something else. He had a look of absolute concentration on his beautiful face. I noticed then that his eyes had gone yellow.
“Can you hear anything?” I whispered, curious but not wanting to get us in any deeper than we already were. “How did they know to come this way?”
He shrugged. “I’m hoping that Creighton didn’t get too eager. If he got anywhere near town before we did, they could have nabbed him. He’s wily and he’s clever as all hell, but he isn’t one to suffer for the benefit of someone else. Plus, I’d rather deal with Wyatt out here anyway where I know the land so well.”