At the head of the street where they stood, a long foldout table held down a large amount of real estate with three fold-out chairs on one side and two orange cones in the front. Several plastic trays lined the front with dozens of little shot glasses filled with the same substance her sister dangled in front of her nose.
One team on one side and a place for another opposite them, she assumed. Above it, a single large banner stretched from either side with stark blue lettering, and Christmas lights cast a cheerful glow on the words: Annual Rum Run.
“Right. Yeah. Sure. An everyday occurrence. Got it.” Her brows pinched in confusion, and she caught the sleeve of her sister’s coat before she could escape to tell the judge she’d lured her in to fill her sister’s spot. Not that a six-month pregnant lady could do more than waddle in snow up to her knees if you veered off the shoveled path.
“Did you say naked? As in commando, nada? Not even panties and pasties.” Her voice hit a couple of notes higher than she intended. In a bob and weave fashion, Sabine dodged in and out of Cherry’s line of sight to check if some alien hadn’t kidnapped her strait-laced sister.
“Yep, you’re still Cherry but you don’t sound like my sister. Since when did streaking become a wintertime sport?” Leaning forward so no one overheard, she whispered, “I can at least keep on the panties and bra? Right?” Some facts you didn’t leave to chance and miscommunication.
“As long as it’s not your scrubs, you’re good to go. Tradition among the townsfolk is you do their version of the polar bear run, you do it naked and drunk. It’s seventy years in the making. Human and shifters are welcome as long as you can shoot back homemade hooch and don’t mind your tatas grabbing some winter air.”
“It sounds like someone got bored and horny and came up with a drinking game in the dead of winter.”
Cherry laughed. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Or at least that’s how Elder Wylde put it when he told me all about ‘the tradition.’” Cherry threw up air quotes as a smirk played at the corner of her lips.
Sabine had made promises to visit her sister over the last year Cherry had made Claw Ridge her new home… and hadn’t. She’d skipped out on every promise. Flaked out for one reason or other. Local crazy customs should have made at least number three on that list but she’d failed to do all her research. And her new guidebook riddled with facts about Alaska failed to mention anything about snow streaking.
A wicked grin played over Sabine’s lips. She just might survive this trip after all. She bounced on the tips of her toes in time with the Jingle Bells that blasted out over the crowd. “Scrubs. Nope. Left them back at the office.”
Permanently, she thought wistfully. Dropouts didn’t need scrubs. But she kept the real reason she braved an Alaskan winter to herself. For now. Busting her sister’s bubble with bad news seemed pure evil on a day like this when everyone around them smiled and cheered with an astonishing amount of holiday spirit. “But I am armed, you could say.”
The midday temperatures easily dipped below holy shit Fahrenheit and settled in for a very long haul. It felt twice as cold with the wind chill factor, and Sabine thanked her new lucky leg warmers she’d decided on more layers rather than the opposite.
“Your nose is scrunching up like it does when you want to say something but don’t.”
Damn. Time for deflective tactics. “Well, I wouldn’t call them scrubs, per se. They’re really cute, though, and red if that counts for something. With little bitty mistletoe all over them.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to show the actual size.
“Oh, sexy!”
“Sure. Sexy booty warmers.” And Sabine left it at that with a wiggle of her brows. “You know this is past crazy and straight into batshit zone, right?”
Cherry patted her cheeks and stepped back from the cleared path down Main Street. And Sabine really got her first look at what lay ahead of her. Her hearted tumbled to the ground and dragged her stomach with it. Main Street was better described as her strip of doom.
“Holy shit I’m screwed.”
“You always did like to tell it like you saw it.”
She shot a sideways glance down Main Street’s or Claw Ridge’s frozen version of a slip and slide.
Two teams barreled down the street in their birthday suits, tied at the leg. Human or shifters, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t seem to matter. Ice was ice. She cringed as the team on the left took a nosedive and crossed the finish line on their asses.
Oh man. She couldn’t do this. Not and actually manage to cross the finish line. But if she managed to win, maybe telling her sister she’d quit med school would go over easier.
She could hope. The only reason Cherry had come to Claw Ridge was to help her pay the mounting school debt she’d racked up.
Her teeth threatened to clatter, so she raised her gloved hands and cupped them around her face. “Remember that time I tried ice skating. You know that double date I ended up saving you from?”
Cherry set the metal canister down on the table and waved to someone over Sabine’s shoulder. “Oh my God, whatever you do please don’t do a repeat. When you fell on that ice you somehow tripped everyone. There had to be thirty people on the rink!”
There were four times as many lining the streets watching the Rum Run.
“Well, it’s not like I meant to.” With another long look down the icy lane, Sabine let out a heavy sigh and fisted the material of her coat over where her heart wanted to pound out of her chest.
Her date had been a great guy but the ice skating had led to mountain climbing, which led to her twenty thousand feet above jagged peaks contemplating survival probabilities with a questionable parachute strapped to her back. And that was where she drew the line. Nerdy girls with book fetishes didn’t do extreme sports and this sat at the top of her oh-hell-no list.
She took another gander at the street and scrunched her nose in horror. This would easily turn into a game of human bowling in less than five seconds. She paused, fingers clutching her sister in place, only long enough to grimace at the possibility of a total wipeout in front of the entire town. NAKED.
Men clad in loincloths with lumberjack physiques dotted every snowy surface her eyes touched.
She shuddered long and hard. And Cherry wanted her to strip in front of them?
“No. Freaking. Way. Nope.” A cluster of the sexy guys in question walked by and she really tried to keep her eyes north of the nipples, but when five, yes FIVE naked, men built firmer than a freight train walked by you smiling, what was a girl to do? “Cherry, when you said I needed a change of scenery you didn’t say anything about mountain men with dimples and no clothes?”
“Thought I’d leave that as a surprise.”
“You dirty slut!”
“Only on Christmas and twice on Sunday if you know what I mean.”
Right. Her sister, the straight-laced high school teacher and now the meaty dish between two scrumptious and deliciously hot male specimens. Some girls had all the fun!
“It’s about to get very cold for me, isn’t it?”
“Only if you think about it.”
Everyone from the small mountainside town gathered on the edges of the street. “It’s like they’re taunting my inner klutz and she’s greedily rubbing her hands together in anticipation of embarrassing me. They’ve all unwittingly positioned themselves to fall prey to my tendency to have the worst luck ever.”
“Look at it this way. You’ll meet everybody at once and kind of break the ice. Would make one helluva meet and greet, huh!” The excitement on her sister’s face tore her between giving in and giving up. She pinched the bridge of her nose to hide the laugh that wanted to break free.
With her best deadpan look, she eyeballed her sister without cracking even a sliver of a smile. Her glasses slipped and she edged them back into place with her chunky mittens. “Not. funny.”
Cherry twisted her mouth into a grimace, and it was game over.
“That’s all right. Mayb
e next year then.” Her sister pulled out the old poor me routine.
It worked. “Damn you, woman. If it weren’t for that little baby bear in you, I would be stripping your ass naked instead.”
“Human, Sabine. Remember? No half werebears in here. So you’ll do it then? You’ll race in my place?”
Sabine caught her sister’s smug expression and she narrowed her eyes. “You’re so gonna owe me for this.” Okaaay. So this was happening. Sabine shucked off her heavy coat and tossed it in the bin her sister pulled out from under the table.
“Anything you say, sis.” Those berry red lips of hers peeled back into a big grin. “I see the ugly sweaters have made their appearance.”
God, she was such a softy. Sabine kicked off her not-even-broken-in boots and then started work on her Christmas sweater. “What? You didn’t think I would leave my Rudolph home alone, did you?”
Sabine loved tormenting her sister with her tacky sweaters year after year. No sense in breaking tradition. This one happened to be her favorite. Solid white with a huge reindeer face hand-stitched on the front with a large red nose.
She glanced up and caught the scrunched expression of horror and smiled with satisfaction.
“Let me make sure I have this straight. You guys do this run every year?” Freaking crazy people.
“Like clockwork. Every December twenty-first.” Her sister laughed and shook her head. “Damn girl, how many sets of socks do you have on?”
Sabine choked out a gurgled laugh of surprise. “Did you read the thermometer?” she asked in disbelief as a gust of wind played hanky-panky with the ruffles of her clothing.
Gray clouds swallowed crystal blue sky in vast swaths to settle over the snowy peaks in the distance. Puffy fingers reached, ready to rake over the growing crowd gathered to see the spectacle. A few rays of sun beat back the inevitable, but before long another downpour of snow was due to hit Claw Ridge according to the news report she’d caught back in Fairbanks. Hopefully, not for a little while, though.
“By the way. You’ll have a partner too.”
Sabine buried her hands in the snow for balance as she toed off her boots and shimmied out of her snow pants to reveal a pair of jeans. “Who would that be?”
She couldn’t help but think maybe the impromptu trip here wouldn’t be so bad after all. Now that she didn’t have to worry about pristine records, a little pre-holiday fun wasn’t such a bad idea.
Sabine rolled her eyes at herself. Geeky to a fault, she wouldn’t approach a man that good-looking to whip up a ‘date’ if her life depended on it.
Clear of the outer layers of her clothing, she set to work on the rest. How did anyone manage to move in this brutal cold? She popped the button of her pants and looked up to see her sister smiling again. “Rone.” Red lips curled into something that looked somewhere between mischievous and oh this is gonna be fun.
Her stomach dipped. Uh-oh.
“You know the owner of Wylde Fire and the most eligible werebear bachelor.”
Drop a hint much? Sabine chuckled. “Yeah. Got it. I also got your little hints in your last email, and your last phone call and the phone call before that.”
Cherry pressed a hand to her lips.
The little sly faker.
“But…what ever do you mean?” Cherry snatched Sabine’s boots up and gasped, her red lips in the form of a very convincing O.
“Right,” she drew out with an arched brow. Sabine didn’t buy the good little Southern girl act for a second. Cherry wanted her sister hooked up and settled down right alongside of her by any means necessary. Sorry, but that wasn’t about to happen. Especially in Noname, Alaska where her tatas would freeze before she could get a guy interested in warming them up for her.
“Rone? The broody one, right?” She scrunched her nose. That didn’t sound too fun.
“Hey, Doc, nice long johns.”
Derriere in the air, Sabine froze. Goosebumps prickled the length of her spine until Sabine stood ramrod straight.
Her eyes slammed shut. Right on cue, her bad luck showed up like an unwanted crazy uncle.
A whiskey-rich baritone warmed her from the outside in and had her wishing for warm blankets, and deep kisses and a rumbling fire. In that order.
“Sabine, this is Rone and your racing buddy. I trust you two will win.” Cherry provided like a chirpy little cardinal.
Damn her. She smelled a setup. Cherry’s eyes lit with an I-told-you-so glow and made Sabine want to grind her teeth.
Sabine did a slow one-eighty and the thick wool of her socks dug into the plastic grass carpet that acted as the only barrier between frostbite and her toes. Locked in like Velcro, it was all she could do to keep her balance as she stood, chin raised. Then raised a notch higher. Reaching up, she used a finger and pushed her glasses back in place.
Sweet baby Jesus, he’s like a freaking Amazonian. She shivered from her pinky toes to the roots of her hair.
Was there such a thing as Amazonian men? Broad-chested, dimples on either side of his cheeks and taut pecs. Naked, tattooed pecs with pebbled nipples and a light dusting of snow on his shoulders. A marble god, she corrected herself as her gaze raked over perfection. Her guidebook did not warn her of such wintry beauty. No shirt, nothing to protect him against the cold and he owned it as if ice laced his blood and he thrived in it.
In place of pants, only a scrap of brown leather with four slashes burned into the front like claw marks protected his essentials from the cold like the others she saw gathered on the opposite side of the table.
“Did you know it takes as little as five minutes for a body part to die of frostbite and fifteen for hypothermia to take hold?”
Smooth, Sabine. Real smooth. You’re going to be dead before you see any action.
Eyes wide and her mouth slack Cherry offered up an introduction and Sabine couldn’t help the sudden urge to tuck her head into the nearest snow bank. She needed to get a life outside the freaking library and hospital.
“Rone, this is my sister. Sabine, meet Rone. He’ll be your werebear for the day.”
Tall, hard, and very much all male. Rone. She rolled the name around on her tongue. Fitting, she surmised. Rock solid and cocky with a stubborn angle to his chin. He stood, arms at his sides and a half grin claiming one side of his mouth as his eyes drank in the flush of heat brushing her cheeks.
Another team lined up at the starting line all smiles and full of taunts. The sound of the gun went off and cheers erupted.
Her heart did erratic things in her chest. They were next.
“I see I’m not the only one that likes facts. Nice. I did know but it’s still good for the refresher. When working with humans, a shifter can forget the more delicate skin of a human.”
As she stripped off another layer of socks she considered his words.
Smooth like silk. He was good. Heat returned to her extremities little by little as her mortification faded.
Sabine tried to act nonchalant, but that was hard to accomplish with her pants down around her knees. A harsh swallow worked her throat and that caught his gaze next.
Her werebear? All day? Christmas wishes did come true. Her inner vixen whipped out the cuffs and whipped cream ready for the party while, on the outside, Sabine worked her expression into cool and calm.
Besides, who was she kidding? Her land him? Nerdy doctor dropouts didn’t get the sexy shifters. Three days, a week, or a month wouldn’t change that little fact. Not for her. Just how it was and she accepted it as fact.
Quickie hookups and one-night stands never suited her anyway. Or rather no one ever really considered the quiet girl in the corner of the library poring over research books as sexy. Long hours in the library and her six-week rotations at the hospital kind of bit into her non-existent love life too.
Oh, how she wished, though.
His smile broadened until the yellow of his eyes stood out with a warm glow.
Beautiful. Love at first sight was a myth for idiots, but damn
, lust at first sight… totally a thing.
One more layer.
“Looks like your sister bribed or conned you too.”
Air failed to enter her lungs ash she searched for something to say and rethinking her whole decision against a quick roll in the hay. Technically, a whole day wasn’t considered a one-night stand. Nothing in her rulebook about those. She gave herself a swift kick in the pants. Well, she was in the process of taking those off. But with three days on her schedule, she didn’t have time to maul a werebear with her sex-deprived needs and wasn’t that a shame.
She took in the shape of his lips and the way his dark hair brushed his shoulders. Asgardian, as clear as the snow in front of her. How else could she describe the god-like jaw line and honey-colored eyes framed with thick black lashes?
“I sighed like that when I first spotted my mates too,” her sister quipped close to her ear, and Sabine nearly died in her long johns.
Rone choked out a laugh as he ducked his head.
What the hell did her sister just say? “Uh, yeah. I don’t think so. Just caught me off guard,” she reassured them. Come on, Sabine, get it together.
Sabine turned and threatened every cell in her body to the terrible death of frostbite if they dared to make her blush. Of course, her body betrayed her.
A thick finger tucked a strand of her hair back with a smoky laugh, the kind you heard in jazz rooms that left you wanting to slow dance all night long.
“Sorry,” he offered with a shrug. “Your hair has a mind of its own and it looks like you have your hands full.” He looked pointedly at her hands clutching the materials of her pants. Around her knees. She quickly peeled them off. Gah. Seriously! Could this day get any worse?
Bear Their Secret: Wylde Den Three (Alaskan Den Men Book 12) Page 13