Ranger Trent (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 2)

by Meg Ripley

  “Can you shift at will?” he asked.

  The question was barely out of his mouth before the bear disappeared and the girl was in his arms once again. “I’ve been practicing for the past week. Every day and every night. What do you think?”

  “You’re amazing—that’s what I think. You’re amazing and I have to kiss you.”

  “Oh, please do.”

  Dean didn’t need to be asked a second time. While he was in the hospital, he didn’t let himself linger over the memory of her soft, inviting lips, but he couldn’t do anything about his dreams. The few kisses they had exchanged fueled a thousand dreams—but the fantasy was nothing like the reality. The taste of her, the feel of her, the heat and pressure and solid reality of her made him ache and rejoice at the same time. The way she held the back of his neck, her nails pressing into his skin with the force of her hunger, only made him want her more. Within seconds, his hunger was whipped into a passionate frenzy.

  His hands roamed freely over her naked body, learning every inch of her sweet curves. Her skin was flushed, her body warmed with passion and by the sun. She smelled so good. Dean’s nose was always sensitive, but her scent was overwhelming as it imprinted on him. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he broke away from her mouth and continued his exploration with his lips, kissing her jaw, her throat, her neck, her ear. She dropped her head back, fingers clutching at his shoulders as he continued traveling down her body. When he reached the twin globes of her ample breasts, he dropped to his knees and buried his face between the mounds, pausing for a moment to truly enjoy the beautiful bounty at his fingertips.

  “Please don’t stop,” Mari whispered, running her fingers through his hair.

  There was no chance of stopping. He was all out of willpower and all out of excuses. There was nothing in the world he wanted the way he wanted her, and it seemed like that had been true for his entire life. He couldn’t get enough of her taste, of the silky texture of her skin, or the way she moaned his name. He cupped one breast while he licked and kissed and suckled and nibbled the other, his dick getting harder with each second that passed.

  “Please, Dean...I need…” She wasn’t able to finish the sentence, but her hips thrust forward and that was all the direction he needed. He pulled away from her breasts to move over the swell of her belly and bury his face in the fragrant heat between her thighs. He lapped at her flesh, gathering up the sweet nectar of her arousal, pushing his tongue between her thick lips to find her clit. It trembled beneath his tongue, and even the lightest pressure had her gasping and jerking her hips. Her fingers twisted in his hair, and he welcomed the tingling in his scalp—it served as a minor distraction for the intense throbbing between his legs.

  In the back of his mind, he recognized that this was probably Mari’s first time. He wanted her first time to be on a big, comfortable bed, unhurried and perfect, not out in the open where anybody could see them, fueled by raw passion and desperate need. He wanted her to have the best of everything and he wanted to be the one to give it to her. He lifted his head to try to tell her as much, but she sank to her knees and pressed herself against him, kissing him with the same fervent passion he had for her.

  “Please...I’m going crazy here,” Mari said against his mouth. “I need you.”

  She reached between their bodies, fumbling with his fly, and pulled his cock free. Dean tried to say something, but only a low, whimpering moan escaped him as her hand wrapped around his shaft. She gave him a slow, almost languid stroke, and his balls pulled tight almost immediately.

  “Oh God,” he gasped. “Wait...let me…” Somehow, he managed to fumble his wallet from his back pocket and locate the condom he kept tucked away there. It was almost a relief to slide it on—at least it provided a small barrier between his burning flesh and her silky skin. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes. Very sure.”

  He gently lowered her to the grass, and she hooked her legs around his waist. He paused, staring down at her, almost incredulous that she was there like that, with him. She was so open, vulnerable, and giving, and soon she would be his completely. He took a deep, steadying breath and aligned himself with her body, the tip of his cock nudging her opening. Dean eased himself into her, taking his time. She was so slick, wet and ready for him, but she was so, so tight. His fear of hurting her intensified and made him hesitant.

  Marisol didn’t have the patience or the time for his fear, though. Instead of letting him set the pace and keep it slow, she thrust her hips up to meet his, sheathing him completely. They both gasped as she took in every inch of him, and before Dean could even choke out her name, their bodies were doing what they were built to do, following a rhythm older than time itself.

  “Tell me...if I’m hurting you.”

  “Doesn’t...hurt. You’re perfect.” She dropped her head back and arched her spine, meeting him stroke for stroke. “Oh God...perfect. It’s perfect. Feels...feels…” As she spoke, she moved, quickening the pace. He didn’t want to go any faster, but he couldn’t help himself from getting caught up in her tempo. The friction, the heat, the glorious reality of her body was too much to withstand. “Oh...Dean.”

  He felt her shake apart the moment his world exploded. They clutched at each other, entwined and frozen as they rode out the force of their mutual pleasure together. It felt like an eternity before he had the strength to lift his head and gaze down at her. She smiled back at him, shy and alluring—and satisfied.

  “Mari...God, I love you.”

  Her smile widened. “You do?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I love you, too.” She pulled him into a slow kiss. He lost himself in the caress, caught up not in raw passion but in the pure, sweet pleasure of her mouth. During his stay in the hospital, he felt like a man without a purpose, but now he understood how foolish that was. He had the money from all the purses he’d won over the past several years, he had his life and his health, and most importantly, he had Marisol. The brightest light in his world. The axis on which his entire universe rotated. The heart on which he could place his faith, his hopes, and his fondest dreams.

  THE END

  Rogue Wolf: Wild Forbidden Mates

  Two rival shifter clans.

  One relentless and forbidden love that breaks all of the rules.

  In the small town of Spring Lake, the long-standing rivalry between a pack of werewolves and a clan of were-panthers erupts into full-scale battle. Raul, an ex-Navy enforcer of the Wolf pack, is forced to take sides in the conflict when a group of panthers—who have been raiding werewolf businesses for weeks—is finally captured, and the order given by the Pack's Alpha male is to execute them without trial.

  He can only save one: Keira, a voluptuous panther female who only consents to let him rescue her after she nearly beats him in personal combat.

  But the war between the two groups is more complicated than either of them know. As they begin to unravel the two Alphas' motivations in attacking each other, Raul and Keira's rivalry develops into a hot, heavy, and forbidden romance, sparking further reprisals and deeper battles between their people.

  With threats of death—or discovery—hanging over their heads, Raul and Keira must find a way to bring their communities together, or risk losing each other in the chaotic war.

  “Raul, we’ve got another one,” the voice on the other end of the line began as soon as the call connected. Raul groaned, scrubbing at his face. It was still dark outside—but it was nearly four in the morning, and he had been looking forward to finally going to sleep.

  “Bastards keep slinking off before one of our guys can catch them in the act,” Raul said bitterly. He could feel the frustration of his pack-mate on the other end of the line, sense it as an extension of his own irritation.

  For weeks, he, Gary, Cameron, and Adeline had been tracking a group of vandals; their scent marks at the scenes of the crimes were easy enough to read, but all traces of the assholes responsible for the graffiti and broken wind
ows—not to mention a few petty thefts—disappeared within a half mile of the site. It was just like a bunch of sneaky panthers, Raul thought bitterly. The town of Spring Lake had fewer than five thousand residents; and yet, Raul and the other enforcers for the Pack hadn’t been able to track down what they’d counted as five panthers. The other members of the Pack had started looking at him doubtfully, and the Alpha—Reginald—had put more and more pressure on Raul as the Pack’s number one enforcer to get the job done.

  “Someone was asleep at the wheel,” Cameron said, his voice full of brittle irritation. Raul growled low in his throat; he had asked for the Pack’s participation in staking out the various businesses that might come under attack. He, Cam, Gary, and Adeline simply couldn’t watch over all of the businesses that the members of the Pack owned in the town. They needed people to be vigilant, and they had needed to have a way to track the shifty, good-for-nothing panthers to their den, wherever it was.

  There were just enough people in the town for it to be impossible for any of the members of even the large wolf pack to know everyone, to know all of the addresses. Spring Lake was home to a thriving supernatural community—and even Raul, in his position of relative authority within the Pack, didn’t know all of the shifters in the area. There were even some, he was fairly certain, who lived outside of the town proper—in the woods that surrounded the town, closing it off superficially at least from the rest of the country. He had done what he could, asked who he could, about the whereabouts of a group of panthers and had come up empty.

  “Which business was it?” Raul put his phone on speaker and set it down, standing up from his seated position on the couch to get ready to leave the house. If another one of the Pack-owned businesses had been vandalized, the Pack would expect him to be there before daybreak, working the scene, trying to find a clue that might not have been at the other raids. Eventually those fucking panthers are going to get sloppy, he thought. And when they do, we’ll track them down and put the bastards on trial.

  Even with scent marks at the scene, there wasn’t a whole lot of information to be gleaned about the vandals. Raul knew that one of the panthers involved in the crimes was a fertile female—he could smell it in the rich honey-moss smell of her scent mark, buried in the deeper, sharper musk of big cat that the males left behind. He knew that there were five of them. He knew what they were. But until I know who they are, I am going to have this goddamned albatross around my neck, pulling me down.

  He had been a natural successor to the Pack’s previous lead enforcer; Reginald had groomed Raul for the position for years, even mentoring him through the Navy when Raul had enlisted. Reginald had told Raul more than once that the best thing he could cultivate beyond ruthlessness was the ability to lead, and Raul had taken that seriously. If Reginald retired—or if he fell in a challenge, or met with an accident that cut short his time as Alpha of the Pack—then Raul would be the first in contention for the Alpha position within the Pack. He would need to have the skills that it required, whether or not he ever took on the job.

  “Alicia’s bakery,” Cameron confirmed on the other end of the line. “And get this: they’re escalating, the fucking cats.” Raul felt Cameron’s barely-controlled rage and reveled in it, breathing in and out slowly. The low-level telepathy that members of the same Pack shared was sometimes a joy—but more often a pain. He didn’t want to feel heartbroken just because one of the younger members of the Pack had been rebuffed in his romantic advances to some girl or guy. But when it came to hunting down prey—or even fellow predators—it came in handy.

  “Escalating how?” Raul pulled a shirt over his head and glanced at himself in the mirror, smoothing his hair down against his skull. As soon as he had left the military, he’d let it grow out into a full, dark-brown mane, in defiance of the strict military grooming standards he’d subjected himself to for years. No one in the Pack thought that a man with long hair was anything to be laughed at, and members of the town who weren’t of the supernatural persuasion learned quickly that to laugh at his long hair was to court almost certain disaster.

  “There was a fire,” Cam said. “We managed to put it out with minimal damage, but someone still called 9-1-1, so there’s going to be an official investigation if we don’t sort this out quickly.”

  Raul groaned, throwing his head back and cursing long and fluently. “The last fucking thing we need is the cops on this,” he said. He took a quick breath. “Who’s coming to the scene?”

  “We’re trying to get ahold of Tanya and Jeremy, see if we can’t get them to take the case, keep it quiet.” Tanya and Jeremy weren’t Pack, but they were shifters—were-foxes. They could be trusted to a certain extent to slow up the investigation if they could get themselves on it, give the Pack a chance to handle it.

  Everyone in Spring Lake knew and didn’t know that there were supernatural humans living in the area; there was plenty of local lore about not going into the woods and scrublands surrounding the town during the week of the full moon, with vague implications of what happened to people who did. But nobody directly said that there were shifters, even elementals living amongst perfectly normal humans.

  Whenever possible, the two-natured community tried to police themselves, along with the other supernatural elements of the town. The elementals intervened only when they had to; otherwise they kept to themselves, and Raul preferred it that way. “Text me the address, and I’ll be there in fifteen,” he told Cam after a moment’s thought. “Maybe they’re getting sloppy. Maybe we’ll luck out this time.” Raul checked his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, and when Cam said goodbye, he slipped his phone into another pocket, checked for his keys. He could feel the animal nature—the part of his brain that was always the wolf—shifting, fidgeting inside of him. He wanted to be on the hunt. He wanted to track down the assholes who thought it was a good idea to harass the wolves. He growled low in his throat and headed for the door, picturing the panthers in their animal forms, slinking away from a burning building. Raul stepped out of his house and strode towards his car, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. I am going to catch them this time, even if it kills me.

  ****

  Keira’s heart pounded as she, Lachlan, William, Blake, and Floyd sped away from the scene of their most recent raid in the scent-blocked car that Noelle had contrived. She smiled to herself, worried and exhilarated, terrified and proud of what she and her clan-mates had done. “The fire was a stupid fucking idea,” Blake told Will as they put distance between themselves and the scene of their crime.

  “It wasn’t exactly an idea,” Will said defensively, shifting in his seat. “It just kind of happened.”

  “We can’t have things ‘just kind of happen,’” Lachlan told the others, glancing at them each in turn. His gaze lingered on Keira’s face and she looked back blandly, keeping her expression neutral until he looked away. There was an uneasy power dynamic going on between the members of their clan, and while Keira was not by any stretch interested in going for the Alpha, she wasn’t about to let Lachlan—or any of her clan-mates—push her to submit when she had no reason to. “We have to be more careful,” Lachlan added, turning his attention back onto the others.

  “How can something like that be an accident, anyway?” Keira looked at Will. “I mean, you don’t accidentally light a match. You don’t accidentally drop it on the ground.” She crossed her arms over her chest as Floyd navigated the darkness. Keira could feel the tendrils of almost-thoughts from the rest of the members of her clan in the car with her; she could feel their excitement, the adrenaline pumping in their veins.

  “It wasn’t a match or anything,” Will said sullenly. “I tried to do something with the breakers and the fire started that way.” Keira watched her clan-mate intently for a few moments in silence, trying her best to take in as much information from him as she could from the slightly telepathic bond they shared. From what she could tell, Will was being honest; at the very least, he believed what he was s
aying. It had been an accident.

  “Then yeah, we need to be more careful,” Keira said, glancing at Lachlan. “It’s one thing to raid these assholes’ businesses, it’s another to get sloppy about it.” Keira hadn’t been entirely in favor of the raids herself—but once the clan had voted on it, she and the other four were the natural candidates for the job. All five of them were fast, difficult to trace—especially with the car that Noelle had worked over, masking the usual scent marks—and skilled.

  “The wolves will keep the police out of it if they can,” Lachlan said thoughtfully. “But we can’t have any more fuckups like this. The goal is for them to know who’s raiding their businesses and that we’re serious about keeping them in check.” Keira pressed her lips together, looking around the car. She wasn’t actually sure what the true goal of the raids was; in the clan debate where it had been decided, it seemed to her that for the most part people just wanted to get back at the wolves, to get some kind of revenge.

  The wolf pack and the panthers had been rivals since long before Keira had been born; she had grown up knowing that the wolves were untrustworthy, and that they looked out for their own—proud, overambitious and exclusionary. She had known by the time she had made her first transformation that if she encountered a wolf in the woods, she was likely going to be in for a fight—and that she should never be alone in the woods during the full moon, lest she find herself surrounded by the vicious jackals.

  But why they had chosen to begin raiding the wolves’ businesses in the past few months, Keira had no idea; she had heard vague reports that one of the panthers’ homes had been raided by some of the wolves—but nobody in the clan seemed to know who it was who had been affected, or who hadn’t been affected. As soon as it starts to be about wolves, everyone has a grievance, Keira thought wryly as the car made its way back to the clan’s headquarters on the outskirts of town. She had to wonder: did the wolves feel the same way about the panthers? Keira knew that the wolves thought that the panthers were little more than scavengers, that they were not good enough to ally with—unlike the foxes or the bears that lived in Spring Lake, the wolves didn’t think anyone was truly good to ally with. But did the wolves have the same tendency to jump at shadows when it came to the topic of the panthers? Or were they so confident that they couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to crowd them out?