Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  Jake, luckily—or not—was tall enough to reach it easily, and pulled it open. Rickety stairs unfolded, and a blast of absolutely freezing air rolled down, making Mabs shiver from the bones out. "That can't be good."

  "Nope." Jake went up first, which was chivalrous. Mabs stayed on the floor, looking, if she was to be perfectly honest about things, at his butt in the thin sleeping pants, which was a pretty good view. He stopped with his head and shoulders in the attic, so she couldn't follow him anyway, and said a word that Noah would inform him wasn't appropriate for children to hear. He turned and down the ladder a couple of steps, leaning one hand inside the attic and peering down at Mabs with a pained smile. "Do you want to build a snowman?"

  "What? What ?" Mabs climbed the ladder, squeezing past Jake, which under other circumstances would have been amazing, and stopped still more or less within the circle of his arms to stare around the attic in dismay.

  The main, swayback beam of the roof had broken under the weight of more snow than she could even imagine falling at once. Splintered wood poked out of what looked like whole feet of snow inside the attic, its brightness reflecting light from the clouds visible through the hole in the roof. "Oh my God. Oh no." She sank back a little, into Jake's warmth, and fought off a wave of despair mixed powerfully with a wave of desire.

  His hands tightened around the staircase handles as she leaned into him, and he murmured, "Careful," against her hair. "It'll be all right. We'll get it fixed, Mabs. Lemme go get my gear and I'll get up on the roof and seal it off. You can—can you get some buckets? A shovel? To clean up the snow so it doesn't leak through to the bedrooms?"

  "Yeah. Okay." She turned like she'd go down a regular set of stairs, and found herself nose to nose with the carpenter. "Oh. Uh. Hi. Sorry."

  He smiled, almost against her mouth. "Hi. How's it going?"

  "Pretty good." Very good, actually, given how wonderful he smelled, and the sparkle in his eyes, and the thinness of his clothes and hers. Then an icy breeze dropped straight down Mabs's back and she yelped. "Except my butt is freezing off."

  "Well, we can't have that." Jake hopped off the ladder and offered her a hand, which she took despite not needing help. His fingers were warm and strong, and hers were surprisingly cold, given that she'd really only been out of bed for about three minutes. She shivered as she stepped down to the floor and told herself it was probably the cold, and not Jake's touch, sending trembles over her. "You'd better get a coat and boots," he said, which seemed sensible, if not nearly as much fun as other ways she could think of to warm up.

  On the other hand, no amount of fun was going to take care of the hole in her roof, or the giant pile of snow in her attic, so she guessed maybe a coat and boots were the smart choice after all. Jake went downstairs to get his tools. Mabs followed, trying not to think about the various implications tools carried, and wondered why she was so horny in the freezing cold middle of the night.

  Twenty minutes later, shoveling snow out of her attic, she decided horny was better than grumpy, but it was too late by then.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jake felt like an idiot.

  He straight-up hadn't checked the roof of what Mabs called "the parlor side of the house". He'd known the beam was weak, of course: it was visible from the outside of the house. But like Mabs, he'd barely been in the parlor side, concentrating on the half she and Noah were actually living in. Still, if he'd even so much as gone up, instead of just talking about it, he might have realized how weak it was, and done something about it.

  In his defense, it rarely snowed in November, and he couldn't remember an early snowfall heavy enough to break a roof in his whole life. On the other hand, weather patterns had changed dramatically since he was a kid, so he guessed anything was possible.

  Obviously anything was possible. He said it to himself before his wolf could, and got a snort in response.

  I wasn't going to say that. Which was probably true. It wasn't really the kind of thing the wolf did say. Things were, or were not, from a wolf's point of view. Possible and impossible didn't really come into it.

  Jake was, he realized, essentially having an imaginary argument with his wolf, who was, from almost anybody else's point of view, imaginary anyway.

  Not if I bite them, I'm not.

  A low chuckle rolled out of Jake's chest. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. All right." He got the ladder, a snow shovel, vapor barrier, and the staple gun, and went up on the roof to apply them all in the appropriate order. Mabs, inside the attic, had wrestled one of the windows open and was shoveling snow out of it. They worked in relative silence, not wanting to wake Noah, and within an hour or so the roof was sealed enough to make it until morning, and the attic was clear of snow.

  Mabs went downstairs while Jake cleaned up the tools of his trade, and when he came into the kitchen, found her in the kitchen, still wearing her giant boots as she poured cocoa into mugs. "I know it's four in the morning," she said in warning tones. "We're having hot chocolate anyway. We deserve it."

  "I would never argue with the lady of the house."

  "Good." She gave him a smile that was both stern and playful, and Jake's stomach flip-flopped. She was everything he could imagine wanting in a partner: smart, funny, sexy as hell, strong, independent, willing to accept help, crazy-competent, ambitious, gorgeous, able to put in hard work in the middle of the night—

  —which sounded much, much dirtier than he'd meant it to. Mabs put a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of the cocoa and handed him a mug.

  "Trust me," she said at his dubious look, and he sipped to discover that she was, as it turned out, also very good at making hot chocolate. "Toldja," she said, satisfied, and sat down to draw her feet up on a chair and hold her mug over her knees. "So you remember how you thought you should take care of the parlor-side roof and I suggested doing the buttery instead?"

  Jake sat too, eyebrows rising. "Yeah?"

  "I've decided you were right."

  Surprise caught him off guard and he laughed. "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah. Too bad I didn't trust the actual carpenter in the first place."

  "You weren't wrong about the shingles, though. There were just enough for the buttery wing." He pulled a face. "Which I'm going to have to clear off and finish, like, yesterday. I don't want it leaking in the house."

  Mabs sighed deeply into her mug. "There's a lot of things I don't want, and yet here we are."

  "Like what?" His voice softened, but a protective instinct rose in him, as if he could fend off whatever it was that bothered her.

  "Oh, you know. A hole in my roof. An ex-boyfriend showing up in town. A bank account veering toward negative numbers. The usual. Crap," she added, looking tired all of a sudden. "I wonder if I should cancel Thanksgiving. There's only a couple people coming anyway, but I wasn't planning to have snow falling in half the house."

  "Noah would actually implode with disappointment," Jake pointed out, and earned a wry smile in return.

  "That's true. Well, it wasn't going to be a big deal anyway. Maybe if we just really seal that half of the house off it'll be okay?"

  "It'll be fine," Jake promised, and meant it. "Do you need help in the kitchen?"

  Mabs looked toward the Aga like it might suddenly require maintenance. "Not right now, thanks." She slid a smile at him, though, and said, "Tomorrow maybe, though. I have to make a couple of pies before Thursday morning. Noah's gonna wanna help, which will make it take about fifteen times longer, so I might put you to work, but...probably Visqueening the entire right-hand side of the house is more important."

  "Want me to Visqueen Noah, too?"

  Mabs laughed. "No, not at the moment. I make no guarantees about tomorrow, mind you, but not today. Anyway, uh, sorry my house fell apart on us in the middle of the night, I'd give you the day off tomorrow, but..."

  "Oh, don't worry about it, I had a day off last month," Jake assured her. "I even had a date with a goddess."

  "Daaaang. I'd better up my game." Mabs's eyebrow
s drew down a little, like she didn't know why she'd said that, or where to go from there. Then she shook it off, almost like his wolf would do, and smiled. "Right. Do you think we should put up some more plastic upstairs? Over the doors, anyway?"

  Jake wrinkled his face, looking toward the upstairs. "Probably a good idea, if we can do it quietly enough to keep from waking Noah. It'll get pretty damn cold in here otherwise."

  "I have about sixty rolls of double-sided tape," Mabs suggested. "That would probably hold it overnight, at least?"

  "Probably." Jake waited several seconds, sipping his cocoa, then couldn't stand it anymore. "Why do you have sixty rolls of double-sided tape..."

  Mabs shook her head. "It involved a terrible incident with a toddler, an open browser window, and a non-refundable purchase on eBay."

  Jake laughed. "Oh. Oh no."

  "You have no idea." Mabs drained the rest of her cocoa, rose, stretched, and pulled her winter coat back on. "Okay. I'm gonna go get tape, and then you can be strong and tall and handsome and do all the high parts while I go low."

  "I have no objections to being considered tall and strong and handsome, but I'm using a stepladder so my arms don't go numb." Jake stood, finishing his own cocoa, and Mabs grinned.

  "Tall, strong, handsome, and smart. I'm going to have to keep you around."

  Jake's heart thumped and he tried not to smile too idiotically. The idea that she wanted to keep him around warmed him until he thought he might need to take his winter coat off. "We've got renovation plans through next spring. Good luck getting rid of me before then."

  "I wasn't going to try," she promised, then bounded up the stairs like a more grown-up version of Noah, as if the hot chocolate had energized her. The next hour or so was spent taping vapor barrier up, with Mabs swearing more creatively than he'd ever heard, especially when the tape insisted on sticking to itself instead of the walls and Visqueen. He kept whispering, "Shh!" and she would shh! him back, until they both had to stop putting plastic up and sit down, hands over their mouths to contain giggles.

  This, Jake thought, looking at her eyes shining with laughter, at her sleep-and-sweat-mussed hair, at the big bundled coat and heavy winter boots, and the totally inadequate pajama bottoms between them, this was what he wanted. Nothing could be sweeter, or more satisfying, than days and nights spent with her. Even if they were nights of cleaning up snowfall inside a house, nothing could be better.

  Smiling, he looked up at the job they'd done, and said, "This will probably hold until morning. I'll do a better job then. It's late. You should get back to bed."

  "Ugh." Mabs made a face. "Cold bed. I mean, I guess at least it's not snowy, but I was comfy before. Whiiiine." She actually said that, then laughed at herself.

  "Well, I could—" Jake nearly swallowed his tongue and Mabs's eyebrows shot up.

  "You could what?"

  "Um. Nothing appropriate."

  Her eyebrows rose even higher. "Well, now you have to tell me."

  "It wasn't that inappropriate. I just—I was going to say—aaah, no, never mind." He couldn't possibly say what had leaped to mind without it sounding like something entirely different.

  Mabs, though, bundled in her coat and big boots over her pajamas, gave him an amused look. "Gonna say what?"

  "This is going to come out all wrong," he warned her, and her amusement increased toward curious laughter.

  "I promise not to get offended, if that helps. What?"

  "I was going to say I could sleep with you. As a wolf!" he added hastily. "I'm really warm and I have a built-in fur coat. I'd keep the draft off..." By the end of that he wanted to bury his head in a hole, it sounded so awful and self-serving.

  On the other hand, Mabs had turned a delicious shade of pink at his first sentence, and had just maybe been disappointed when he'd added as a wolf! She wet her lips, looked at the weather barrier plastic they'd put up, looked at her bedroom door, and looked back at Jake. "Noah's got Wolf," she said a little hoarsely. "I guess I could use a wolf of my own?"

  "Really?" His voice cracked and he cleared his throat, trying to sound even slightly dignified. "I mean...really?"

  "Really." She'd turned so very pink. Jake wondered how low the blush went, and told himself that was not what he should be thinking just then. He was not trying to flirt with her.

  His wolf woke up and stared at him as if he was the most useless person on the face of the planet, turned around, lay back down, and went back to sleep in obvious disapproval. Mabs, still pink, kept talking, although she seemed to be having a little trouble with words herself. "Really. It'd be nice to have...somebody warm...in the bed? Oh, God, is this too weird? It's too weird, I should shut up."

  Jake held his hands up, smiling. "No weirdness," he promised. "Large good-natured canine, no weirdness. I swear. Look, here." He shifted into a wolf and lay down, chin on his paws and his tail thumping hopefully.

  "Aw, you're so cute." Mabs leaned over to scritch the top of his head, said, "I mean, you gotta admit, this is a little weird," and went into her room with Jake trotting along behind her.

  EIGHTEEN

  No weirdness, because Jake shifting into a wolf before coming into Mabs's bedroom was definitely not weird. And it was probably a good idea, overall.

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  No, definitely good. Even though all she was undressing from was her winter coat and boots, it would have been really strange doing that while Jake-the-human watched. Or maybe not strange. Not sexy, either, though, because she was wearing a winter coat, for heaven's sake, and huge boots. Mabs couldn't think of any scenario where undressing from that was anything other than faintly humorous, at best.

  And really, Jake just acted like a big dog, although honestly, Mabs had never met a dog with as much presence as the wolf had. Even knowing he was human, too, he was so... wild. Self-assured. No one could mistake him for a mere dog, even if true wolves didn't have blue eyes.

  Regardless, he pretended to be a dog, and hopped up on her bed with the confidence of a long-time canine companion. He even turned around on it a couple of times before lying down, politely, with his back to her while she pulled off her boots and coat.

  Not until she got on the bed did she suddenly, for the first time, appreciate how damn big he was. Wolves were big, and Mabs guessed Jake was probably bigger than average, because he was tall and strongly built, and while his clothes shifted with him, his mass didn't seem to change at all when he changed shape.

  His shape did, though, which: obviously. But wolves and humans weren't built on the same frame, and even though he'd curled up tidily like a polite dog, he still took up more than half the bed. Mabs, suddenly grinning, pushed him as she tried to crawl under the covers. "Move over, you big lunk."

  Jake lifted his head and gave her the most positively mournful puppy dog eyes she'd ever seen, and conceded half an inch of bed to her. She pushed harder. "Scoot!"

  Sigh. Siiiiiiigh. He moved another couple of inches, then rolled far enough onto his back to not only take back all the space she'd reclaimed, but to give her upside-down puppy eyes, his front feet flopping loosely in the air.

  "Oh my God." Mabs rubbed his belly, then pushed him to the side again. "Scoot, or I'll make you sleep on the floor."

  "Would you really?" Jake shifted between one push and another, capturing her hand against his ribs.

  Mabs's brain shut down. It was one thing to have a blue-eyed silver wolf in her bed. It was something else entirely to have a blue-eyed silver fox in her bed, as it were, and Jake Rowly was so. damned. attractive.

  "That's not..." Her voice had disappeared, along with whatever brain cells she had to rub together. He was right there, and she was only in pajamas. Not sexy ones, either, but lumpy flannel that kept her warm, but still, pajamas, and he was right there, with an absolutely devastating little grin only a few inches away from her mouth, and his eyes bright and sparkling as he looked at her.

  What was left of her voice broke as she
said, "...fair. That's not fair."

  Sudden dismay crashed across his face and he backed up, all the wicked humor drowned in apology. "No, you're right, it really wasn't. I'm sorry, Mabs. I don't usually—people don't usually talk to me when I'm a wolf. I just wanted to answer. I didn't think. I'm sorry." He'd backed up so far he had to catch himself on the edge of the bed, and all at once he turned to swing his feet to the floor. "I'd better go."

  Mabs reached across the bed to touch the small of his back with her fingertips. The muscle there tensed, and she had to curl her fingers back again to keep from spreading her hand across the warmth of his spine. "You don't have to go." Her voice still barely existed. "Just...pick a shape and stick with it. Please."

  His breath caught and he turned his head, showing her his profile in the dim bedroom light. He was so, so gorgeous, and he looked so, so nervous all of a sudden. His voice was even lower than her own, hardly even a whisper. "Do you have a preference for which shape?"

  Sheer horny adrenaline spiked through Mabs, turning her hands cold and other parts of her tinglingly hot. "Yeah." She swallowed and reached for his back again, hands trembling with the effort. "I like this one."

  "Mabs." Jake turned so fast she hardly saw him move, but she certainly felt the warmth of his hands on her waist as he pulled her up and toward him, almost into his lap. Her pulse skyrocketed so sharply she got dizzy and gave a breathless laugh, one that he almost swallowed without quite closing a kiss. "Mabs, are you sure?"

  "So sure. Very sure. Sure-er than anything."

  He lifted his hands to her cheeks, murmured, "Mabs," and lowered his mouth to hers. Soft lips at first, barely parted, then opening, exchanging breath, exploring shapes, learning how their mouths fit together, until Mabs's whole body was on fire, need coursing through her blood and electrifying every part of her. She whimpered, sliding her hands into his hair, opening her mouth farther to his, and her desire was met by his answering groan.