The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3)

by Krystal Shannan

  Rain smirked. “También habló español.”

  “All right, boys. Everyone has a big dick, okay?” Nora stepped between them, hands outstretched toward each of their chests.

  Rain kept walking until her hand was on him.

  Her eyes rounded and she whipped her head around toward him.

  That’s right. Don’t forget that magick, girl. He wanted to remind her she wouldn’t feel that with Miami, but he just stood against her hand, relishing the feel of the magick curling around them, drawing them together.

  “How about we cover the mission specs?” said the guy from Chicago. Rain couldn’t remember his name, but he was a big, dark-haired beefcake with a big fuckin’ nose that he needed to keep in his own business.

  Damn.

  He stepped back, breaking contact with Nora. He needed to get his head on straight before he started biting off heads or kicking asses.

  They were a team. They really needed to be a solid team.

  “So, we found the church,” said California girl. “Where do we go from here?”

  “Maggie and I drew up some specs, based on the information we got from Mary Foster’s memories of her escape.” Rain passed out copies of the maps he’d picked up at the airport. He and Maggie had been drawing out routes in the car while Nora had been flirting her ass off in the car.

  At least she hadn’t flirted her dress off.

  Damn.

  He shook his head. Needed to stop thinking about Nora and what was under her dress. They had a fucking job to do.

  “We’re going to do a grid search, out from this location.” He held up his map of Guadalajara and pointed to the highlighted route. “I’ve mapped out the grids. We’ll go in pairs, and my phone number is on the top of the map.”

  Maggie came to stand beside him. “I’ll stay here and keep working on the online searches.”

  Rain nodded. “We think there’s some kind of visual marker to Mary’s memories, so be looking for anything, this first time, that looks like red eyes.”

  The pairs formed without any encouragement. LA girl went with Seattle girl. Texas girl went with Kentucky guy. Tomás Rivera and Chicago Beefcake paired off. That left him with Maggie. And Nora with… aw, hell no.

  “Hey, Miami,” Rain yelled after them. “Since you hablo the Espanol so well, how about you stay here with Maggie. I’ll go with Nora.”

  Nora pursed her lips and crossed her arms. With her weight on one heel, she looked more like a petulant teenager than an alpha’s enforcer. But as long as Miami stayed the hell away from her panty-less ass, she could look however she wanted.

  If he couldn’t fuck her, no one would.

  Chapter Five

  Nora stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders. They’d been wandering up and down these crooked streets for hours and still nothing that remotely looked like red eyes or eyebrows or whatever the shit they were looking for. Her mind was elsewhere—mostly staring at Rain’s ass every time he got a stride or so ahead of her. Which was easy do. She’d been wearing heels all day and her feet were killing her.

  His little show of making sure she didn’t go off with the hottie wolf from Miami was cute, but so far he hadn’t given in to having sex with her since they’d left, and she was feeling it bad.

  Their magick crackled in the air between them, alluding to something more than she wanted. She should be avoiding him like the plague because of it, but Nora enjoyed a little chaos in her life. And, they were safe out here.

  Her father couldn’t do anything to Rain. When they headed back, they’d part ways and nothing would ever escalate past what it was now.

  It couldn’t. She wouldn’t let it.

  But, damn. While they were out here in the middle of Mexico, thousands of miles away from the watchful eyes of her dad, she wanted to enjoy it.

  She quickened her step and bumped her shoulder into Rain’s. Then slid her hand down his back and over the curve of his tight ass. Her inner wolf growled its appreciation. Nora’s body quivered with need.

  The people on the streets had thinned with the oncoming sunset. They only passed a few people, maybe one every few minutes. They walked under a huge red awning and Nora spied a convenient alcove that would hide most of their bodies from passersby. It was better than nothing and she wasn’t waiting any longer.

  Shoving hard, she redirected Rain into the nook and wrapped her arms around his neck, slanting her mouth over his before he could protest.

  “Nor—” he growled into her mouth and pulled away. “We have a mission. We can’t do this.”

  “There aren’t any fucking red eyebrows and I need to have sex with you right now. We’ve been tense and stand-offish all day and I’m done with it. Fuck me now, soldier.”

  “Fucking princess! You can’t always get what you want.”

  “If it was up to my father, I’d be sold to the highest bidder. So you can call me a fucking princess if you want, but fucking slave would be more correct terminology. Now shut up and just fuck me!” She undid his belt and yanked at his pants until they came undone.

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears, but she didn’t have time for that or for his standards of behavior. Sex was her only release. It was the one time she could escape everything that haunted her—depression, fear, anxiety, anger. All of it.

  He got the message loud and clear. No talking. Just fucking.

  His mouth covered hers again and he tugged up the hem of her knit dress, then cupped her ass, squeezing and digging his fingers into her naked flesh. Her pussy clenched, anticipating being filled.

  She pulled his dick free of his boxers and hopped, giving herself just enough momentum to get one leg and then the other up around his hips. Locking her ankles, she rocked against his hard-on, angling herself to take his length.

  Rain’s cell phone fell out of his pants pocket onto the pavement, but neither one of them paused to check on it.

  Nothing mattered except having each other now.

  He pushed her against the brick wall and growled, thrusting hard and filling her with one fluid movement. Rain pulled back and then slid in again.

  The sound of their fucking filled that space. People could probably see them, but she didn’t really care. This is what she needed.

  “Fuck, Nora.” He moaned against her neck, his hot breath dampening the knit fabric stretched tightly across her skin.

  “Yes, fuck Nora. Fuck me. Harder, Rain.” She needed that line to be crossed—the one where it hurt just enough to carry her away from everything chasing her. She rocked in rhythm with his thrusts and moaned, pressing her face into his shoulder. His scent filled her lungs and she clenched down hard on his cock.

  Rain pulled out then drove in again, slowing down, then going harder and faster.

  Sweat beaded on Nora’s forehead and her body vibrated, hungry with desire. “Please,” she begged. An orgasm coiled tightly, waiting for that perfect stroke to set her off like a rocket. Her fingers dug into his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt.

  He slipped one hand between them and gave her exactly what she needed. Her body soared, spiraling through blissful space as she rode his cock.

  If only staying with him was an option. She’d had a mate once, but she wasn’t strong enough to live through losing another. Just the fact that the Fates had sent her a second broke her heart. What were they thinking? Did they just enjoy sentencing good men to death?

  Her father didn’t approve of her previous mate, and he certainly wouldn’t approve of Rain.

  Rain drove hard again and Nora clamped down, pulling him as close as she could. Then he came inside her, filling her. She rested her head on his chest, listening to his heart race.

  A car horn from the street drew her attention. It blared a second time, followed by Tomás’ voice, telling them to get their naked butts dressed.

  “Fuck,” Rain growled, scraping his teeth along the length of her earlobe.

  Nora unlocked her ankles and he let her sink from his waist until her
feet her firmly planted on the pavement. She rearranged her dress and sighed. It didn’t bode well for her future sex life with him that they’d been caught…in public. But if he didn’t want her, she could move on.

  Moving through pain was something Nora Cavanaugh was very good at.

  * * *

  Rain swirled in hazy orgasm fog and tried to process what was happening. The fucking magick that had decided to fuck with him whenever he was around Nora had finally won. He’d ignored her advances for hours, looking for a fucking building with eyebrows that he couldn’t find.

  He wasn’t sure which pissed him off more—the fact that he was sucking ass at this mission and would potentially embarrass his alpha, or the fact that he wanted Nora more than he’d ever wanted another woman, and couldn’t have her.

  Or the fact that he’d given in to fucking her. Or the fact that they’d just been caught by the rest of the team. Again.

  Fuck. This was not his week.

  Rain tried to shake himself out of the heart-racing, magick-swirling gulf of release that threatened to drown him. There was a part of him, down deep, that just wanted to find a bed and take Nora there. Stay for days.

  Nora was pulling up his pants for him and he rolled one shoulder, grabbing the material from her hands.

  “What the hell, Rivera?” Rain didn’t look the Vegas wolf in the eyes. “You were supposed to call in when you found the building.”

  “No one found it,” Tomás said.

  Behind him, a green and white taxi waited, with at least one other wolf in it. Maggie Gallagher. Shit.

  Maggie jumped out of the taxi with a big tablet in her hand. “I had to reverse-GPS your phone, which is why it took so long.” She stood next to Tomás.

  Nora bent over and her long-sleeved, short-skirted dress rode up her ass. He could still smell her sex. He wanted to bury his face between those legs.

  Fuck this magick. He could not think.

  She passed him his cell phone. “We had sex, okay? Not a big deal.”

  “Right,” Tomás’ voice was laced with sarcasm. “Except that you didn’t hear your phone, and we called you when all the teams got back and no one had found the building.”

  “Well, we didn’t find it, either,” Nora said. “And we’ve been out here for a couple of hours.”

  Tomás looked up. “I know. It’s dark already.”

  Rain followed his eyes, past the tall buildings, and up to the sky. It was night. The sky was that rosy black color that cities had. Hot damn, he missed the woods of North Carolina, where life was simple and the sky was black at night.

  “Wait,” Rain said, shaking himself out of his memories. Everyone came back?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. She looked at the tablet. “Maybe twenty minutes ago.”

  “And no one found the building?”

  “Nope. We figured you did.” Tomás stepped back to stand behind Maggie. Rain could see the disappointment in his eyes, and felt it deep. They didn’t respect him. They didn’t respect Nora. This mission was doomed.

  “No such luck.” Nora crossed her arms. “We walked our whole grid and didn’t see it anywhere.”

  Maggie glanced around the dark alley, and back toward the taxi cab. “We left everyone else at the cathedral, because we figured we could find you faster in a cab and we couldn’t fit everyone in.”

  “Right.” Rain shoved his phone in his pocket. He took Nora’s arm and began walking out of the alley. “Well, we can all go back to the cathedral, then.”

  Maggie shook her head. “They’re having Mass. So everyone’s waiting in the gardens. I need to text Dani and Hannah.”

  Rain wasn’t sure who those people were. Damn. He was a bad fucking team leader. “We must’ve encountered an error in the grids, then.” He stepped onto the street, the rest of the team behind him.

  “Or we didn’t go out far enough.” Maggie passed him the tablet. On the screen was a color-coded map. “I had a chance, while we were waiting, to sit down with the map and draw out a second set of grids.”

  “Right.” Rain looked up at the sky one more time. “I think we should call it a night, though.”

  “Agreed,” Nora said, a little too enthusiastically.

  If she thought this meant they were going to fuck all night, she had another think coming. They were going to sleep. The whole team. And start fresh in the morning.

  Maybe it was the tiredness from having been up for twenty-four hours straight and then only getting a couple hours of sleep. Maybe that was why he couldn’t think straight when Nora was around.

  Either way, he needed the sleep, and so did she. So did everyone, really.

  “You didn’t happen to find a hotel, did you?” Rain raised an eyebrow at Maggie.

  She laughed and shook her head, taking the tablet back. “But it’ll take me two seconds.”

  “It took me one.” Nora pointed across the street, over the top of the taxi. A big, ornate sign read Hotel de Blanco. True to its name, the walls were white, ornately decorated with gold filigree.

  Rain shrugged. “I guess one hotel is as good as the next.”

  Nora shot across the street, dodging traffic. “I’ll put it on Daddy’s credit card. No sense everyone taking a hit.”

  He looked at Maggie and saw no resistance. “Don’t forget to text the rest of the group.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Rain winced. He didn’t deserve that title. After waiting for a dip in the traffic, he jogged across the street to follow Nora into the hotel. Someone needed to make sure that each person had their own individual room. None of this sharing beds shit. Everyone needed to sleep. And sleep only.

  “Hey, Rain,” Maggie called out.

  He turned around to see Tomás paying the cabbie and Maggie with her arm in the air, signaling for him. “What?” he asked.

  But something about the building behind her made him look up. The rounded shades on the window covers made the two windows look almost like eyes, and the tops of the shades were an old and faded red, swirled across onto the brick.

  He waved Tomás and Maggie over, turned them around, and pointed at the building.

  The building he’d just been fucking Nora against. The building with red eyebrows.

  Chapter Six

  Rain waited with a tapping toe as Nora passed out hotel keys. The team mumbled about the orders they’d just been given, but Rain was past the point of round-robin-discussion. He was at the minimize-horrific-outcome phase.

  They had actually seen him fucking Nora. This was out of control. So it was time to exert some control.

  “You really think this grid thing is gonna work?” Maggie asked, sidling up to him.

  Tomás hadn’t stopped giving him the evil eye since they’d all returned from the church, but Maggie seemed unfazed.

  “It worked last time.” Rain crossed his arms.

  “Kinda.” Maggie shrugged and pulled out her big tablet again. “Plus, I don’t know why we’re searching for a yellow dog. Mary was here like thirty years ago. What makes you think the dog is still going to be there?”

  “We also have the description of the front of the building she was being held in,” Nora pointed out. “At least, if we can’t find a dead dog, we can look for the big letters on the side of an old adobe building in an alley.”

  “Because that’s not also an exercise in futility,” the black girl from California said.

  Rain really needed to get on this whole remembering-names thing. The Army was so much easier.

  Davis. That was her last name.

  “Look, Davis, I think that if we have mission parameters, we need to follow them.”

  “Do those mission parameters also include not-fucking-the-boss?” She stuck out her chin. and the white guy behind her smirked at the joke.

  Rain was not impressed. “We need to see if there’s anything viable out there.” He ignored her smart-ass comment. “Once you finish patrolling the quadrant to which you’ve been assigned, return here. We�
��ll all meet and report on what we found.”

  “The two of you had better split up, though.” Davis mirrored his crossed arms. “For all our safety and sanity.”

  “Yes, we’ve changed up the teams.” Rain pointed to Miami guy and L.A. girl. “You two, take this.” He handed over the map.

  “Fine. Back when we’re done,” Davis said, and pulled at Miami’s shirt like he was on a leash.

  Good. Rough that bastard up, while you’re at it, girl.

  “Tomás, you take Nora.” Rain handed out another map. “VonBrandt, you’re with the mobster. Professor, you take Seattle, and that leaves me with Gallagher.”

  The guy from Kentucky wrinkled his nose at the Professor jab, but the douche had a stick up his ass a mile wide. He’d conducted a Mexican history lesson in the car.

  Plus, Rain had heard him mention something about an Ivy League education. Asswipe. Rain had an Ivy League education in combat tactics. Douchenozzle would keep the nickname and like it.

  The groups left with their maps, but Rain and Maggie stayed. He waited until the last team member was out of earshot.

  “Look, I don’t know what happened back there, but it was not—”

  “Oh, it was exactly what it looked like.” Maggie smirked, one pixie eyebrow going up like a shot. “I’ve never seen two people who had it worse.”

  “Wait.” Rain flexed his shoulders back. “Had what worse?”

  “Fate.” She shook her head and grabbed the map. “You’re mates, dufus. Don’t tell me you can’t see it.”

  “We are not.”

  “Oh, you are.”

  “Not.” Rain pronounced the t with gusto, but it didn’t keep the little voice from creeping up in the back of his head. I knew it.

  “It’s rare for it to be this uncontrollable, but what did you think it was?”

  He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  “You didn’t know, I get it.” Maggie made for the door and gestured for him to follow. “Come on. We’ve got to get going.”