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

by Meg Ripley

  I flicked the tip of my cig in the ashtray and looked behind the bar. Sophie was in perpetual motion, taking stock of her supplies, closing out tabs, opening tabs, going into the back for whatever it was anyone needed. Queens of The Stone Age, “No One Knows” came on through the system and I saw her hips beginning to move in time, as she scribbled something down on a pad. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but it seemed like she got hotter every time I saw her; when I’d picked her up to drive her to work about an hour and a half before, it’d been all I could do not to drag her back into her apartment and convince her to let me make her late. She’d pulled her hair back into the spiky, small pigtails I’d liked so much the first night I’d seen her, but she was wearing a pair of shorts that barely covered her ass, along with a thin, almost transparent shirt that draped across her shoulders and clung to her tits.

  “Want another shot?” Sophie leaned in closer to me over the bar, and I shrugged.

  “Might as well,” I replied. “Not like I have anywhere to be.” It had been a week--and none of us had gone back into the studio, because Mark refused to respond to anyone. Either he told them to fuck off, same as he had me, or he just didn’t answer. Things were starting to get desperate; the record label wasn’t happy with the fact that we were stalled out on the album, especially since they’d given us the biggest budget we’d ever had. We were going to have to come up with something soon, but no one in the band seemed to have an idea of how to move forward.

  I couldn’t help but feel more than a little guilty about it; I couldn’t make myself believe that Mark’s tantrum was all about Sophie, but obviously, that had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. If we couldn’t figure out how to move forward, then it was going to be bad for all of us. Not that Jules won’t just bounce back. He’s already got that side project. Alex could go solo. Nick… I sighed, pushing the thought out of my head before I’d even finished it. In a certain light, I could understand where Mark was coming from; at least, where he’d been coming from before, the night we’d met Sophie.

  But knowing where he was coming from didn’t really seem to help all that much. I still didn’t have an answer for what to do about the situation. My phone buzzed on the bar top and I turned it over to see the screen flashing. I had a text. I unlocked my phone and stubbed out my cigarette, taking the shot from Sophie without even looking. Meeting tomorrow. Ron’s office. Mark won’t be there. It was from Nick. I knocked back the shot and considered the message.

  Is Ron going to be there? What’s the deal? I took a sip of my beer and lit another cigarette. This was certainly getting interesting--I knew that it would eventually come to some kind of meeting; some kind of sit-down. The fact that it was Nick messaging me about it instead of Alex was a little unusual.

  I had to wonder if the rest of the band thought it was my fault that Mark was throwing such an epic tantrum. After all, the spark for this had been him finding out about me and Sophie. You have to admit that you were pretty pissed about the fact that he and Sophie were supposed to go out after she’d already said yes to you, I reminded myself. And it was true--and Nick had pointed out how stupid it was for me to be so touchy about it. And then, too, it’s not like he knew. Obviously. I finished off my beer and signaled to Sophie. At least for a little while, I had enough money not to worry too much about running up a huge tab, and how I’d pay for it. We were still getting quarterly royalties from the first few albums, and since things had gotten so good with everyone else in the band drawing more and more attention to us, those checks were bigger.

  Ron’s not going to be there. He’s letting us figure this shit out. But the label is pretty...the polite way they put it was ‘concerned’. I almost laughed out loud at Nick’s understatement. The label was pissed. They’d dropped money on the studio of our choice, and they were bleeding that money for however long we went without working, since--unless we contacted them and told them to suspend the album--they couldn’t just quit the lease on the place. My phone buzzed again. Noon, Alex says. You going to be there? Sophie cracked another beer and slid it in front of me.

  I sighed. I knew I didn’t really have a whole hell of a lot of choice. I’ll bring pizza, I texted back. There was no real getting around it--I’d need to be there. Especially since Mark apparently wasn’t going to attend, it was a good idea. There was no doubting what we’d be discussing: the future of the band, and how we were going to deal with the situation.

  “What’s up?” I looked up and saw Sophie standing across the bar from me, hands resting on the bar top. I shrugged.

  “Meeting tomorrow with the boys--except Mark, who apparently won’t talk to anyone,” I told her. “At our manager’s office, but he won’t be there.”

  “I assume you’ll hash everything out?” Sophie looked doubtful.

  “Jules will bring some dope, I’ll bring some pizza, we’ll talk about whatever everyone wants to talk about,” I said, shrugging. Sophie stepped back and grabbed her pack of cigarettes from where she’d left it, next to the register.

  “What do you think the outcome is going to be?” I wasn’t the only one who felt guilty about the situation between Mark, the band and me. Sophie had admitted that she hadn’t quite known how to say no to Mark’s date invite; she also hadn’t known how seriously I’d meant it when I’d asked her out first. But at this point, none of that even completely mattered. It was obvious to me at least that Mark wouldn’t throw such an epic tantrum without there being more at stake than a girl.

  “No idea,” I said. Sophie lit her cigarette and took a drag. “That depends on what they’re thinking.”

  “Do you think they think it’s your fault?” I shrugged again and drank down some of my beer.

  “Nick doesn’t seem to, but it’s hard to say for sure what Jules and Alex have concluded,” I told her. “Even though he’s got a girlfriend now, Jules is still a morose bastard--so he’s probably likely to think it’s fucking everyone’s fault. Alex just wants things to keep trucking, as far as I can tell.”

  “So it might come to an argument?” I pressed my lips together. Sophie held her cigarette between her lips and poured me another shot of Jameson with a wink. I always made sure to pay my tabs, and after her comments about dating guys in the local scene I had made sure not to even think about asking her to comp me anything, but sometimes she tossed me a shot for free.

  “It might,” I said, gesturing for her to pour herself a shot as well. “I’m paying for these--period.” Sophie shrugged and poured herself a shot from the bottle before putting it away. We both knocked back our alcohol; I chased mine with a gulp of beer and Sophie chased hers with a mouthful of some cocktail she’d mixed for herself. “Anyway, if it comes to a fight, at least it’ll be a change.” Sophie laughed.

  “Change is better than nothing at all, right?” I nodded.

  “I don’t think it’ll be a fight,” I admitted. “I think it’ll be...tense, but I think that we’ll figure something out. I sure fucking hope that we do.” I scrubbed at my face. I hadn’t realized how much it would bug me to be out of the studio for a week straight, with the record label breathing down our necks. I’d never had an argument with Mark that had lasted longer than maybe a couple of days, at the most. Usually by the day after, we’d more or less forgotten what we were mad about.

  “Here’s hoping, right?” I raised my beer and Sophie raised her cocktail and I hoped that I wouldn’t massively regret agreeing to go to the meeting.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You’re sure you’re going to that meeting tomorrow?” Sophie glanced at me from the driver’s seat; I’d somehow managed to get too tipsy to drive back to her place between getting the messages from Nick and the time Respects closed down for the night at four.

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t I go?” Sophie reached over and grabbed her pack of cigarettes out of the center console. She turned onto the entrance ramp for I-95 headed south and kept one hand on the wheel, her palm contr
olling the turn while her other hand tugged a cig free of the pack. I watched with fuzzy-headed wonder as she lit up with one hand and maneuvered the looping ramp effortlessly, merging into the almost-nonexistent traffic.

  “You’re drunk right now and it’s eight hours away,” Sophie pointed out.

  “I’m not that drunk,” I countered. “Just drunk enough that it’s better that you drive us than that I do.” Sophie gave me that knowing little grin, the one that drove me crazy, that had made me determined to win her over.

  “You’re going to be hungover,” she pointed out. “Is that the best frame of mind to talk about the future of the band in?” I laughed.

  “It’s the absolute best frame of mind to do it in,” I told her. “If I can’t manage to support the continued existence of the band when I’m hungover, then it’s not worth keeping the band together.” But the thought of the band breaking up--and over some stupid bullshit problem that Mark was having about me ending up with a girl he wanted at that--sent an irrational surge of anger through me. “I’ll be fine by the time I have to be at Ron’s office.”

  Sophie raised an eyebrow with more than a little doubt in her eyes, but didn’t try and argue with me about it. I took control of the stereo, hooking my phone up to it and pulling up an old Silverchair album: Freak Show. I started it on the first track, “Slave,” and glanced at Sophie; we’d talked about music a few different times, and of course since I was a musician, it was important to me that someone I wanted to date more seriously had decent taste in music.

  “Oh, god,” Sophie said, shaking her head and grinning.

  “What?” I looked at her with interest even as I lit a cigarette.

  “Fucking eighth grade of middle school,” Sophie told me cryptically.

  “What about eighth grade?” Sophie’s cheeks lit up in the orangey glow of the safety lights on the highway as we passed under them.

  “That’s when I listened to this album for the first time,” she said, sighing. She flicked the butt of her cigarette through the crack in the window and shook her head again. “I used to have such a crush on Daniel Johns.” I laughed.

  “Is the only reason you dated me because I’m a fellow Daniel?” Sophie rolled her eyes.

  “You play a different instrument,” she said tartly. I snickered.

  “I can play guitar too, you know,” I pointed out. “One of these days I’ll serenade you with ‘Ana’s Song’.”

  “No!” Sophie shook her head. “No--that’s all about mental illness. Do ‘My Favourite Thing’ instead.” I grinned and took a drag of my cigarette.

  “I might at that,” I told her. Sophie gave me a look through her eyelashes and we continued on the highway as one song changed to another. I’d spent the whole night watching her work, enjoying the curves of her body, all but staring at her whenever I wasn’t forced to talk to someone else. I wasn’t sure whether Sophie had chosen her outfit because it was comfortable or because she knew it made her look like a little sexpot--but I didn’t care.

  We’d made an agreement, after our second date: while we’d wandered around the Norton, we’d talked about the fact that with me being a musician and her being a bartender, we’d have to either be okay with each other flirting or just never, ever let the relationship get serious. I wasn’t even sure just yet that I wanted it to be serious, but I knew that I wanted Sophie in a way I hadn’t wanted very many other women I’d met in my life. Pretty soon, we’d have to make some kind of decision about whether or not we were going to be an actual “thing”--but with the band in such a weird place, I didn’t want to make more drama in my life, and Sophie had told me flat out that she wasn’t interested in jumping the gun. So, for the moment, we were just seeing each other. Of course, the date at the Norton had ended up with me at her place, ordering pizza from an Italian place up the street just before it closed for the night, and us racing to see if we could fit in one more orgasm before the delivery guy got to her apartment.

  By the time Sophie pulled into the guest spot next to her building, I’d sobered up a little bit; enough that I was sure I could get it up, at least. I climbed out of the passenger seat and hurried around to where Sophie emerged from my car, taking my keys from her hand and wrapping my arms around her waist. “I have been waiting all night to have the chance to actually do this,” I murmured, kissing her on the lips.

  “You--mm--you could have done it before,” Sophie replied, bringing her arms up and wrapping them around my shoulders. I pressed her against the side of the car, feeling the heat of her body through her clothes. All night, I’d watched the filmy, almost transparent material of her shirt sliding and shifting on her body, occasionally slipping off of her shoulder, hitching up to reveal a flash of one of her tattoos just above her hip, or otherwise showing tantalizing glimpses of her body. Then there were the shorts: the sight of her ass in them whenever she turned around, or walked past and away from me to take care of another customer or to get something from the back, was almost more than I could take. I’d stayed until closing not just because I’d given her a ride in and didn’t want her to have to catch a ride from one of the other members of the staff, but because I couldn’t stand the thought of not having sex with her after all that buildup.

  I rocked my hips against Sophie’s, rubbing up against her, and she moaned against my mouth, holding me tighter. The next minute though, she was pulling back, breaking away from my lips, panting but definitely not lulled. “Something wrong?” Sophie gave me a sharp look--not the dreamy expression she got whenever she was seriously turned on, but the knowing, penetrating look that made any thought of how cute she was almost a lie.

  “We are not going to have sex in the parking lot,” she told me. I frowned, wondering where she could have gotten the idea that I wanted to, and then realized that I’d been trying to get my hand down her shorts; I hadn’t even thought about it, I’d been so lost in the moment.

  “Sorry,” I said, giving her a quick kiss on the lips again. “Inside?” Sophie nodded. I took a deep, shaking breath and stepped back. My knees felt rubbery; all I wanted was to get all Sophie’s clothes off--and mine too--and just keep at it until neither of us could stay awake for even a moment longer. I took her hand and we walked across the parking lot to her unit. I held myself back, even though I was already hard enough that my cock was starting to throb, and waited for Sophie to get her door unlocked.

  Drogon came out of the bedroom as soon as we stepped into the apartment, and I made myself wait patiently while Sophie greeted the black cat and checked on his food and water. It should have been a total buzzkill, but watching her kick off her shoes, hearing her murmur to the cat, somehow made the whole situation that much hotter. Sophie looked up at me from where she crouched and raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t we start in the shower?”

  I nodded, already starting to reach for the bottom of my tee shirt to take it off. “I’m game,” I told her. She laughed and opened the sliding glass door to her porch just enough for the cat to be able to come and go as he pleased, before turning towards her bedroom. I stripped off my shirt and followed her into the bedroom, straight to the bathroom.

  Sophie hauled her shirt over her head and the sight of her full, heavy tits, barely covered by the lacy bra she wore, was enough to bring me back to fully hard. I stopped her hands, leaning in to kiss her on the lips. I found the fly of her shorts by touch and unbuttoned and unzipped it, and Sophie followed my lead; she began working on my jeans. We stripped each other naked bit by bit, and I let my hands wander wherever they wanted to go on her body, touching and teasing her. I cupped her tits as soon as I got her bra off, teasing her nipples until they hardened into firm little nubs between my fingers, and Sophie moaned, reaching down and wrapping her hand around my cock, stroking me up and down slowly.

  We stumbled into the shower and I turned the water on, pulling Sophie out of the path of the first cold burst to press her up against the wall, to kiss her again and again while my hand slipped down between her legs
. She was already wet, the heat of her coating my fingers, slick like silk, and I grinned, pulling back from the kiss. “What do you want to bet we end up wasting all the hot water?” Sophie snorted, giving my cock a lingering stroke before disentangling one of her arms to check the water flowing through the shower head.

  “I’m betting nothing on it, because I’m going to at least get clean first,” she told me tartly. I snickered and watched her step under the torrent of water, tugging the hair ties out of her hair and tossing them blindly into a caddy on the showerhead. In an instant, she was drenched, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to step up behind her, to let my hands slide over her slick body and touch her everywhere. Sophie turned around in my arms to face me and I kissed her, pressing my body against hers so she could feel how hard I was, how much I wanted her.

  She broke away from my lips after a few moments and looked up at me through her eyelashes. “The sooner I get clean, the sooner we can get to the main event,” she murmured, raising an eyebrow. “Want to help out with that?”

  I grabbed a bottle of shampoo and held it up to confirm that it was what Sophie wanted me to use. She nodded and I got to work, lathering up her hair and then scrubbing her down, making sure to soap up every inch of her body--especially her tits--while she worked conditioner through her hair. “Fuck,” I said, shaking my head as I watched her rinse off, the water gliding over her body, glittering in the soft yellow light of the bathroom. It was all I could do not to pin her to the wall and take her right then and there.