The bikers shifted into ghouls with dog ears and teeth, biting Ridge across his bear spine, legs and chest.”
Ridge growled as the were-shifters attacked, feasting on his soul.
Gus broke through the trees from an enclave and pointed his gun at the were-beasts. “I had ancestors here, too. And you don’t, poke, the bear.”
‘Baby’ fired.
A bullet sliced through the smaller were-beasts and it howled. Its banshee screams wailing in the night. Orion froze. Gus slid a lead bullet into the chamber and smiled. “This one is for Sheriff McAvoy.” The lead soared through the snow that began to fall again and split the monster in twain from head to toe.
Ridge raced to Felicia’s side, reverting to his human self. She lifted a hand and touched his lock of hair that had turned from brown to blond. “I knew we’d see each other again. If not in this life, the next.”
“Felicia,” Ridge felt her body turn cold.
“Felicia!”
******
Shots rang from the distance as Griff and Jo got to Felicia, but they were too late.
Ridge held the lifeless body of Felicia in his arms.
“This is my doing,” whispered Joanna. “If I had never come back, she would still be alive. I should never have come back,” tears filled her eyes.
Gus joined them. “If you hadn’t there wouldn’t be a soul alive,” he knelt next to Ridge and felt Felicia trying to and find a pulse. She was cold. “She’s gone, boy,” he touched Ridge’s naked arm. “Boy, she’s gone.”
“Get away from her!” Ridge rocked her cold body in his arms.
Jo and Griff exchange a glance. They looked at Gus.
“Do not tell anyone what you’re about to see,” she said.
Joanna morphed into her bear form and rubbed her body behind Ridge. He refused to move, so she nipped him at his nape and tugged him gently away from Felicia. When she transformed back into a human, Ridge slumped against Griff as Gus rubbed his eyes.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” The pact his ancestors had made had been true. “When you said you might need my help one day all those years ago, I didn’t think it was because you were one of those gifted ones.”
Jo looked at him as Griff led Ridge to the villa. “I don’t know if I would call what I am a gift,” she admitted.
Gus shook her shoulders. “You listen to me. There’s been a plague from here to Washington for the last umpteen generations. “You came because something called to you, didn’t it?”
Slowly, Joanna nodded.
“It called me back too,” Gus said. “That’s why I agreed to help you share your aura with the objects people brought to the town meetings.”
“They don’t know about me, do they?” Joanna asked.
“No,” said Gus. “I promised you if you needed me, I’d come, and here I am,” he smiled, his Santa-like eyes crinkling at the corners. “But there’s just one thing?”
Jo nodded, “Yes?”
“How is the town gonna be kept safe if there are more of those beasties around?”
“There is, one way,” Jo said quietly. “But I believe the Matheison men are the only ones who could help me to protect it.”
“Anything you can, do,” Gus said. “You want me to speak with them?”
“No, it’s something I should try and explain.” Though she wondered how she could ever convince two perfectly sane hunk of men that Smugglers’ Cove needs a coven of bear shifters to keep its residents safe.
“That’s the thing about sleepy coastal towns. You never get out to see the oceans much,” Gus said ruefully.
Jo asked what Gus he meant. Then he said he’d bring some townspeople to help take care of the remains of the fight. When they saw Felicia’s body dissolve like it was made of snowflakes.
Jo agreed she hadn’t seen much of the coast either.
“That’s what I mean,” said the chubby cheeked saloon owner. “All the damned Were-shifters.”
Chapter Nineteen
How Jo would explain she was responsible for creating two blood-born shifters was a little more than Jo could wrap her head around at the moment.
She’d gotten involved with not one, but two Matheison men, who happened to be siblings.
Brothers.
Could she make a bear problem for herself, or what?
If the snow hadn’t begun to fall, and she hadn’t made a promise, she would’ve seriously considered a new town without any entanglements to it, personal or otherwise.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor, remembering there was plenty more renovation work to do. The third floor was planned to have a satellite and an observation deck. Which would take the better part of spring to sort out all of the work. Then there was the gold.
Jo had discovered more than one chamber filled with it over the years. She wondered if she should strike a vein, stake a claim on it, and retire like one of those dotty aunts or filthy rich spinsters who followed their own tune. She’d tried that once. when she was younger—look what it had gotten her—life as an immortal and she’d never grow old. Which presented another challenge. She would never be able to stay in one place any longer than a few generations. Jo also had been very careful not to let herself be photographed.
Pictures, if they were documented, could reveal she something other than, ‘normal’.
It was something she would have to prepare Griff and Ridge for too. They had discovered their bear form and now there’d be the temptation to explore its limits. And would they believe her if she said she didn’t know if there were any?
Then again, she had watched Ridge reach his bear shifter form in record time. It had taken Jo a century before she had started to feel comfortable in her own “skin”.
*****
The memories of losing Felicia hit Ridge hard. He’d lost her to the icy depth in a car accident. Then he’d lost her again, after finding her alive. Life could be cruel. He rolled onto his side, the ache from bear shifting, gone. Was this what Jo had meant? Having these gifts meant he would never suffer from mortal pain, and never grow old. It was certainly one hell of a Christmas present.
“Ridge, can you hear me?”
He thought his answer to Griff.
“One more thing,” Ridge said telepathically. “You owe me a new jacket and two pairs of jeans.”
Griff laughed, “Bro, you got a deal. Think we could both use some sleep before, you know.”
“Yeah,” thought Ridge. He’d heard the other conversation, too.
*****
Jo entered the second story bedroom, after checking on Griff and she saw Ridge sprawled on his back. His head rested in the crook of his bicep as he snored peacefully. Jo laid beside him and put her chin on his shoulder. Listening to the soft rumble of his breathing.
Wishing she slumbered as easily. The last few days had been nothing short of breathtaking. Discovering everything he had, Jo wouldn’t be surprised if he slept for days.
Watching his chest rise and fall gently, she touched the dark hairs that edged below his abs. She let herself play with the lighter curls around his hard-on while he slept. Reminded by how fully he had almost filled her before she had the chance to ride him and bring both of them to ecstasy.
She’d been embarrassed and shy when he had let her see him naked. She had wanted to make him scream her name. However, she’d keep the notion as part of her wildest dreams.
He’d gathered her into his arms and he’d made her feel safe. Like he had when he’d saved her from the biker gang who had attacked.
No one had put himself in the line of danger for her like Ridge and Griff. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t get involved any deeper than she had. Yet, their wicked grins and sexy saunters had melted her resolve. The longer she was with them, the more she craved having them around.
Jo tugged at Ridge’s cock for just a moment, making it twitch. Slowly, it stretched and lengthened like she’d seen it do before—when she felt a rustle near her side and looked up and
saw Ridge staring at her.
“You just can’t get enough, can you?” His eyes danced, and Jo smiled, because each of them knew that the other was hardly finished with the other.
“And what if I do?” Jo replied.
The door she’d partially closed, slowly opened. Filling up the doorway with his massively hunky bod, stood Griff. A taller and blonder version of his brother Ridge. “Then you’ll have to share both of us,” he said with a low vibrato.
Jo couldn’t hide her excitement as she watched Griffin’s cock stand up at full salute. He was longer than his sibling, and the head of his penis curved to the mass of blond hairs between the trunk of his thighs. Her moan caught in her throat as the two men circled her on either side.
“Did you mean what you said, about there being no turning back,” Griff asked.
Jo felt the heat rush to her face. She said what she did to Gus in confidence.
Did they hear her thoughts?
Bear shifters could only communicate telepathically with each other when there was a pure blood bond. She hadn’t tried to think to them since the battle at the mill. They couldn’t possibly have heard her sharing so intimate.
Could they?
She devised a telepathic task.
She thought Ridge’s name. ‘Tug my ear.’
Suddenly the younger Matheison was at her side. She felt a playful tug on her left earlobe. Jo instantly became wet at the knowledge Ridge had heard her bidding.
Jo glanced at his ably and impossibly hung brother. ‘How old are you?’
Griff closed in near her other ear. “34 and a half. Ridge and I will turn a year older New Year’s Eve.”
“I’m thicker”. She heard Ridge humblebrag.
“I’m lengthier and I last longer,” Joanna turned to Griff, as he wriggled his brows.
Gracious. The men were not only blood-born; the three of them had blood bonded!
Jo knew they would never get old, by human expectations.
They were virtually immortal.
But, could they grasp how important protecting the town where they would live was?
They did plan to stay, didn’t they?
Griff and Ridge flanked her on either side, their noses touching hers as they rolled their tongues from her lips, down to her breasts. She gasped as her nipples budded taut and peaked.
“Tell us more about the Covenant,” they said softly and in unison.
‘The Covenant’ was a pact made only when shifters who were of pure blood had bonded and their souls mated for life—or in the three of their cases, eternity.
“Indeed,” said Griff.
“Who would have thunk it?” Ridge winked.
Jo asked if they understood the importance of their joining.
“Yes,” they said aloud and in unison. Then they pulled her down onto the covers, one brother lapping hungrily her breasts, the other slipping three of his fingers into her pussy.
Jo came apart as she groaned, calling out their names as they brought her to climax multiple times.
“So we’ll protect the city,” said Griff.
“And share the same bed every night,” promised Ridge.
“I’m on top this time,” Griff staked.
“I get her fanny on my lap,” Ridge grinned.
“Excuse me?” Jo thought loudly and watched each brother get quiet.
“Don’t think it’s either of you who call the shots,” Jo smiled wickedly.
Both Matheison boys grinned.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Don’t poke, the bear!”
“Unless we do the poking.” Jo swatted Ridge’s chest for his impertinence as he and Griff traded positions.
Jo couldn’t imagine anything better than being with the two men she had begun to treasure. Nothing would keep them apart. As they made her come apart, driving her to heights of orgasm.
“Merry Christmas,” the brothers smiled.
Jo covered her face, blissfully sated and a tinge embarrassed.
Epilogue
The crest of the surf ebbed as a lone wolven emerged from the sea. He paddled to the sandbar, weak and panting. His body close to frozen as he crawled up onto the shore.
He flipped over onto his back. Grateful to the Mistress and that she had found a way to help him fully transform. Will got to his feet when he saw the specter. It floated across the sand under the haze of the half-clouded moon.
Will called out to his brethren, but remembered he could only share telepathic thoughts now with those who were completely blood-born. He’d reached out and thought to Felicia, but he couldn’t hear her.
*****
The skeletal ghoul followed Will, closing the gap, its body mangled and torn. He stopped his pursuit when the light from the moon fed his bruised and battered shifter soul. Strengthening him so he could find the ‘witch’ who had let him change into a ghastly shifter, a were-shifter, and perhaps the last of his kind.
She would pay.
McAvoy looked at the cliff side where the ranch style villa somewhere laid. Home to the bear shifters.
“Soon,” McAvoy, said into the cold dark of night.
Soon...
THE END
Dirty Secrets
Chapter 1
Amy marched through the dark city streets, moving forward as though on a mission. Really, she had no particular destination in mind. She wished she had somewhere to be, but sadly did not. She simply needed to be out right now, out of that suffocating apartment she shared with Steve, away from his stupid, perfect face as she made a desperate attempt to clear her head. It seemed, however, as though nothing she could do could empty thoughts of him from her mind, and she kept on walking faster and faster, as though speeding up might somehow rescue her from her demons.
God, she needed a drink...
Truth be told, she didn't really know what it was she needed, but alcohol sounded about like the closest thing to a solution right here and now. She was so torn, so conflicted in her options. The choice she had to make didn't feel like a choice at all. It was pure torture to try and even consider it, even on a theoretical level. The fact that she would, in the end, have to act in one way or another on these hypothetical thoughts made matters about a million times worse for her. Her head began to pound with the anxiety of such a decision, and the craving for intoxication welled up stronger than ever inside her.
She put in her earbuds, and cranked her mp3 player up to nearly deafening levels. Music, perhaps, could soothe her, as often it could in ways that little else managed. Of course, the demons she was battling right now were especially formidable ones, and trying to find a song to drown them out was no easy task. She flipped through several tracks by any number of artists, hoping one of them would do the trick. Half of her playlist consisted of modern pop heard on the radio, music that made her feel connected to the people around her. This didn't serve her well at the moment, however, as she didn't want to feel connected to anything or anyone. She needed a refuge from it all, to feel alone to herself and recover enough to take in the blow of her circumstances.
She flipped through several more songs, until at last she settled on a playlist that hit the spot. A sentimental playlist, music she remembered hearing at her grandparents' house back when she was a kid. She might have outgrown it had it not been genuinely great stuff, and now it stirred something within her, deep and sentimental, in accordance with the tone of the low male voices in her ears.
She took in a deep breath, feeling soothed, and thought for a moment that she might yet be able to make it through this intact. She emptied her mind, and tried not to think of anything. The notes in the music hit highs and lows, made her chest tremble with emotion. The cold night air kissed her face as she moved along on her way through the streets, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, rolling down along her cheeks.
It was all too much for her...
She began to sob, unable to put thoughts of Steve out of her mind. There was simply no point in trying to hide it...
She kept moving as she wept openly in the streets, oblivious to the fact that she was being watched- both from the ground- and by an even more unexpected pair of eyes peering down on her from above...
The whole reality of her circumstances presently bore down upon her, and for the hundredth time she found herself playing the whole thing over and over in her head.
It had all caught her so unexpectedly. Things had been going so well, her day seeming like such a bright one. She'd been going to meet her friend Julie at a cafe for lunch, completely oblivious as to the bombshell she was about to have dropped unceremoniously upon her head.
From the first moment she'd lain eyes on her, she'd been able to tell that something was up with her best friend since college. When they hugged in greeting, as per their habit, Julie's body had been stiff and awkward, as though her heart wasn't truly in it. Still, she tried to pretend to be happy to see Amy, and Amy didn't see it within her rights to pry for what was wrong. If Julie wanted to open up to her about whatever was on her mind, then certainly she was more than welcome to. But for now, Amy didn't want to overstep her boundaries by demanding an explanation.
Winter is Coming: Complete Series: An Epic Tale of Love, Lust, Jealousy & Betrayal Page 28