Hearts Unleashed: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by C. D. Gorri

  You have room service, right?”

  “Of course!” Echo assured her “I’ll be right back!”

  As Echo retreated, Smoke slipped into the seat he’d vacated.

  “So, Echo told us about your run in with a real estate fraudster,” he told her, “I’m sorry that happened to you! I’ve known of other cases, but mostly having to do with the sale of private homes that are not actually on the market…

  These are strange times we live in. And Echo probably didn’t tell you this, but this isn’t the first time someone showed up prepared to buy the Winterborn Cascades!”

  Cadie immediately sat up straighter.

  “Are you kidding me?” She said, “I felt like a horse’s ass—I mean this must be a ring of criminals defrauding folks. I asked for plenty of credentials, copies of driver’s license, etc. from the realtor that I thought was acting as your representative. I thought I was covering my tracks.

  I should have known it wasn’t actually on the market, but I’ve been looking for months for a place to invest in our West, someplace with skiing and hiking and beautiful scenery, especially since I’ve been considering relocating myself.”

  “Well, we have friends in the real estate business,” Largo said at her ear. Turning on her comfortable bar stool she saw that Largo was seated on her other side, “Please take my card and let me know if you are serious and either of us will be glad to hook you up!

  And I guarantee it will be someone legitimate this time!”

  At that moment they noticed that Echo was returning, a look of consternation having replaced his happy and slightly buzzed demeanor from earlier.

  “Uh, we have a slight problem,” he announced in an apologetic tone, “I know you noticed that we were having quite a crowd of folks deciding to stop here because of the blizzard…

  I told the front desk to reserve your suite, and I assumed they had. But when they saw you leave, they took the hold off the suite.

  “I’m afraid it was rented to a family that was passing through, hours ago.”

  Before Cadie could find her voice, Largo spoke up.

  “There HAS to be something!” He commented, “How about the haun—I mean Room 11?”

  As Cadie watched, Echo’s brows immediately knit together as he glowered at Largo.

  “Hells to the NO, Largo—how much have you had to drink?” He thundered.

  Turning his attention back to Cadie he asked quickly, “Would you be interested in staying in a room where no less than four people in the last 15 years have committed suicide?

  …Thought maybe not!”

  “Well, she can bunk in with ME if she would like,” Largo said in a voice that sounds a little too eager, “Mi Casa Su Casa and all that!”

  “She doesn’t want to do that,” Smoke interjected, “when Largo says bunk in he means that literally. He has a bunk bed set, so that would be a choice of top or bottom…

  Knowing Largo as I do, if I were YOU, I would go for the top bunk!”

  Both Smoke and Largo were cracking up and Echo shot a glare in their direction. As they instantly quieted down, he turned his attention back to Cadie.

  “You’ll have to excuse my brothers, Cadie—I can’t take them anywhere! But as far as making you comfortable…

  I have a suite of my own, and its huge. The maids put fresh sheets on the beds every day and I have a master and a guest bedroom.

  You can have your pick!”

  Cadie seemed to consider all the offers, biting her lip, averting her gaze from any of them and looking pensive.

  “Do you happen to snore?” She asked, looking directly up at Echo.

  “No,” he lied, sending a telepathic message to both Smoke and Largo to zip their lips.

  “Okay done deal!” She told him, “I’ll take the master bedroom!”

  Echo made sure that Cadie’s bags followed her to his suite, which was on the main floor level and took up literally the back of the first floor of the Winterborn.

  His quarters even included a private porch area, so he could sit out there in the evening, have a smoke if he wanted to and look up at the moon as its silvery light that tinseled the nearby mountaintops.

  It was just as well that Cadie wanted to turn in early, because he had scheduled a pack meeting later. As the Alpha of the Winterborn Pack, he was the strongest, and it was his responsibility to preserve their territory, take absolute control of the pack, lead them on hunts as well as accepting new members into the pack. Not all the members were his relatives—the three half Ute Indians and Timberwolf shifters had been deserted by their original pack after most of the members, including their parents, were slaughtered in a pack battle. Somehow, they had managed to survive to adolescence, and Echo immediately recruited them into his own pack. They were strong, determined, and ferocious fighters as members of the wolf pack, and during the daytime they were employed by the lodge in various capacities.

  Smoke, his youngest brother, was his Delta, and was scheduled to conduct training exercises including sparring practice that evening. His brother Largo was his Beta, and right-hand wolf. He also took command of the pack and reported any problems directly to Alpha Echo. Cisco, his fourth brother, was Lead Warrior, reporting to the other three.

  After first stealthily letting himself into his suite and checking to make sure Cadie was comfortable (he had to chuckle when he noted that she was snoring softly, especially after asking him if HE snored!). He sent out a seemingly silent, urgent Pack Alert. It was on a frequency above that of human hearing and let all members know that they had less than 15 minutes to convene on their usual meeting place, a hillock that was too vertically challenged to be a proper part of the Rockies, but that was far enough away from the Winterborn Cascades that their howling wouldn’t bother the sleeping guests of the lodge.

  He was not pleased to note that he was the first one to show up. The first thing he noticed as he did a perimeter check was that the snow was only falling lightly, and that the mantle of snow that covered the hillock was pristine. The only prints were that of smaller forest animals—squirrels, raccoons, rabbits and so forth.

  It was a beautiful view, and sacred to the Winterborn Pack. How many generations had enjoyed the same view he wondered? It was a relief to relinquish control to his wolf, enjoy the cool crisp refreshing atmosphere that was as soothing to his senses as it was to his ravaged soul.

  His Alpha Wolf didn’t carry the same sense of hidden gloom and tragedy as his human form did. His past haunted his human, and even though he stayed so busy that his permanent sadness was relegated to background noise, somehow it shadowed all his moments of joy or pleasure.

  It was only here, in the wild of these pristine wide-open territories that he felt a true sense of relief. In this environment he could feel his power. His heightened senses stirred his blood and with the silvery moonlight as his mantle he sensed the magnificence both inside and outside his wolf form.

  Spontaneously he threw his head back and howled. From not too far off he heard the answering howls of his pack members, not only reassuring him that they were on the way to join him, but also declaring the beauty of the night, and the strength of the pack.

  This was their territory. Here they were completely free, ruling both the mountains and the violet shadows that they cast, answerable to no one but themselves and the Regional Council.

  As he watched his pack members approach, their dark and somewhat menacingly large shapes emerging from several directions, a large snowshoe hare scampered quickly over the snow cover several yards away, followed by some smaller versions of itself.

  That reminded him that he should try to reconnect with his raccoon shifter buddies at some point—Rocko and Rubin owned a luxury car dealership in Boulder, and often came by. The brothers were hilarious and the best of drinking buddies as they were easygoing and never got “mean drunk” or tried to start fights. Echo looked forward to the Spring, because that was the time of year that they came to the Winterborn for a week at a tim
e, trying to get in some righteous fishing time.

  A predator scent seemed to waft around him then, heralding the arrival of most of his pack. To his consternation, Smoke arrived last of all, comically shifting into human form as soon as he trotted up to the fat, mesa area at the top of the knoll known as Cobweb Hill.

  “You’re going to freeze your ass off,” Echo told him frowning, “And we need your WOLF to whip the rest of our pack into shape.

  “This is so refreshing!” Smoke told him with a wink, “You should try it sometime big brother! But I guess I will—I don’t want to freeze my cock off before I bang your new girl, Echo!”

  He was still laughing as he shifted, his powerful wolf emerging from his (mostly) non hairy human form, his jaw elongating and his emerging paws and haunches causing him to drop on all fours with a short authoritative bark.

  Echo was pleased with all of his Pack Leaders, and especially surprised at how serious, focused and compartmentalized Smoke could be. In human form he was the least serious and most affable of his brothers, but once his wolf took over, he became a fierce and humorless taskmaster, exactly the kind of trainer the pack needed.

  He never had any trouble with most of them. The newest recruit Kibu had a long way to go and a lot to learn, but Echo could see improvement every week.

  The pack training always began with a quick two-mile run, dodging between trees in the forest and trying to outrun other wolves in the pack in the huge roughly oval shaped circle they make around Cobweb Hill.

  Feeling restless after the training run was over, and still too excited to sleep, Echo fixed a drink and shored up the dying fire in the fireplace until his was blazing again.

  It always took a while for his Wolf to completely withdraw from his human form, even after he had completed his shift, and his still heightened sense of smell brought the loveliest waft of feminine musk to his nostrils.

  Ah yes, Arcadia Pines was here, sleeping in his bedchamber.

  Without even an additional thought he felt his penis hardening and stretching upward. He had tried to keep so busy that he didn’t think about sex since losing his mate two years ago. She had died in childbirth, and so had his son, the one he had wanted to name Fortis, from the Latin word for “strong”. His darling mate had agreed, and they decided they would call him “Fort” as a nickname.

  The day that Delphine went into labor had been both the best and the most tragic of his existence. He had never understood why or how he ended up mated to a human—or as the Wolfshifters called them, “Mollys” a slang term derived from the Lain word for “Soft”. Even though years had gone by before he recognized her as his mate, he had never anticipated hooking up with a Molly.

  He’d always hoped that he would find another Wolfshifter as his mate. It just made more logical sense to him. Why would he want to weaken the family DNA even further by mating with a Molly?

  In the end it turned out he’d been right. Delphine, although she was part Indian and an amazing and strong female, had faded from earthy existence soon after giving birth to their stillborn son.

  He’d been tortured for months. Why hadn’t she fought stronger to stay with him? Although his grief was profound over the loss of the infant, they could have had other children.

  The conclusion that he finally came to was that she hadn’t WANTED to stay—she had died to be with their son in the afterlife, rather than fight to stay on the earthly plane with her mate.

  Although he said nothing to his brothers or any member of the pack, he made a promise to himself that he would never love another full-on human. Humans were too delicate for the harsh realities of shifter life, even if there wasn’t a Pack War going on. Even as a shifter, his wolf knew that only the strongest could hold their territories for centuries, as they were always under threat from other challengers for their territory.

  Celibacy didn’t suit him either, but his wolf got laid a hell of a lot more than he did in the subsequent months. Fucking was actually a wonderful diversion. Whether he was mounting a she-wolf while the envious members of his pack surrounded them, whining for a turn that would never come, or putting one of his drunken female guests to bed and being unable to leave her after she grabbed his huge cock and refused to let go until he fucked her. It was the only time he was able to escape the primal pain of losing both his wife and child in the same day.

  As he swished the Bourbon around in the glass, lost deeply in thought, he didn’t hear Arcadia come up behind him as he lounged shirtless on the leather couch placed before the fire.

  “Oh,” he said, turning around, “I thought you were sleeping! I trust you are comfortable. Can I get you anything?”

  “I don’t think so,” she told him as she yawned and stretched, “I had the oddest dream—I always do when I am sleeping in strange places, and it woke me up.

  No idea why. The bed is awesomely comfortable, and I wondered if this place is sound proofed? I can’t even tell that we’re surrounded by other guests!”

  “Very cool,” Echo told her, smiling, “I was hoping you would be comfortable.”

  Cadie sniffed the air.

  “Do you have a dog?” She asked, “There’s just a slight smell of dog in here—I have very sensitive olfactory nerves.

  Oh please! Don’t take offense! It’s not overwhelming or anything! I just noticed it!”

  “As a matter of fact, we do, but I made sure to have them taken to Smoke and Largo’s room. Don’t worry, I’ll have the maids give this suite a once over tomorrow!”

  “Seriously it’s not a biggie!” Cadie protested, “See? I wish I hadn’t said anything! I’m still a little hungover from earlier.

  This place is amazing though. I don’t think I thanked you enough for all you’ve done! I’m afraid I’ve been in “bitch on wheels” mode since I was made a fool of.

  You may not believe me now, but I am usually a smart business owner. The high-end realtor I was dealing with claimed to be affiliated with the premier name in the business. He had all the bells and whistles including an impressive virtual tour website and appeared to be totally legit.”

  Echo looked up into her violet eyes, tilting his head.

  “You really need to let it go—you got most of your money back, except for some wire charges, right? And if I don’t know the right people, I certainly know other people who know the right people.

  Don’t worry, you’ll be able to find something fabulous!”

  “Thanks,” Arcadia told him. As she watched, Echo turned around a bit more and then winced, grabbing the back of his neck with his hand.

  “Ouch,” he commented, “I was outside earlier running and caught a tree branch to the side of my neck. I’ve been rubbing it, but it still hurts!”

  “All this luxury and you don’t have a heating pad?” Cadie asked, “I bet it would help.

  Here,” she continued, placing her hands on the top of his broad shoulders, “I used to be pretty good at getting the kinks out of an achy neck, at least my dad always thought so! Let me try!”

  “Sure,” Echo told her turning around to face the fireplace. He wasn’t about to refuse a free neck massage, and as her small but strong fingers dug into his neck deftly, he couldn’t stifle a moan, it felt so good.

  “Told ya!” Cadie said smugly, continuing to knead his overly firm flesh, “You are super tense Echo!”

  Echo could hardly restrain himself from agreeing with her. His cock felt as though it was about to burst through the confines of his clothing.

  Something had to give, and so it did.

  Without premeditation he turned and flipped her over the back of the couch and into his lap. The warmth of her voluptuous bottom seemed to sear through the crotch of his jeans, and before he covered her mouth with his own he groaned as he gave into his feral passion.

  To his complete surprise she put up no resistance, but seemed to fully relax in his arms. She never protested even when he ran his massive hands greedily over her entire body as they kissed. She was only weari
ng a thin peignoir make of silk, and she felt nearly naked as he touched her.

  When her own moans mingled with his and he felt her nimble fingers at the zipper of his jeans he knew that something momentous was about to happen.

  She only pulled back from their endless kiss to exclaim, “My GOD Echo!”

  It was the most familiar tone she’d ever taken with him, and no wonder—he watched as her eyes widened at the huge appendage she was holding in her small white hand. His penis was throbbing as she stroked it. For a moment he wondered if it might be too much for her. She was short and curvaceous but small boned. In his human existence, when he was in college, he’d had girlfriends who complained that he was too big.

  But when she squeezed his cock hard and said huskily, “Take me to bed, Echo Winterborn!” He obeyed without another thought.

  He carried her to the bedroom, still kissing her as his unzipped jeans, helped by good old gravity hit the floor and he kicked them away. Cadie’s silk nightclothes peeled off easily, and her entire body was on display for his perusal.

  He stood back to admire the scenery. It was everything he desired in a woman.

  Her breasts were a bit too full and her rose colored nipples were stiff and straining toward him. She had a small waist that eventually widened to substantial hips, a soft belly, and a mound of Venus that was plump and felt just perfect in his hand. When not being able to resist he reached between her generous white thighs and grabbed it every bit as hard as she had grabbed his penis.

  As he squeezed her, he lowered himself onto the bed, running his tongue over first one taut nipple and then the other, making slow sensuous circles as she moaned.

  “I love a big pussy,” he told her, “and for such a little girl, you have a big pussy, you know?”

  She looked up into his eyes with her own deep violet ones.

  “Fuck me, Echo,” she said, “please fuck me hard!”

  To his credit, Echo tried to ease himself into her, fearing his girth might be too much, and desperate that she enjoyed him the way he was enjoying her. To his surprise, she lifted her hips to force his shaft further into her.