by T. S. Joyce
Kirk hated the way that made him feel. Expendable. Replaceable. It hurt in ways he hadn’t expected.
“You ever think of settling down?” he asked Mason.
“All the damned time. It’s impossible not to, right? The Gray Backs are all paired up. My best friend started a family.”
“Damon did move on quick, didn’t he?”
Mason chuckled. “No. It took him centuries, and I’m happy he found Clara, but seeing everyone so happy makes me want things I won’t find.”
“So, when Damon finishes rebuilding his house, will you go back with him? Will you be his driver and assistant again?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” Mason relaxed against the couch cushion and picked at the label on his beer bottle. “I’ve been thinking about it, but I don’t know where I belong anymore. I never pledged to anyone.”
“Why didn’t you pick a crew?”
“Because boar-people don’t work like that. We stick with our own kind. The second I register, they would come after me and yank me back to fulfill my duties. I’m happy-ish in these mountains.”
“Happy-ish?”
“Yeah, man. Don’t pretend you don’t feel the ache. Feel the burn of the outside. You’re one of the last singles, too. What about you. What’s the plan, Lowlander?”
Kirk shook his head and set his semi-clean boot down, then started on the other. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? There are worse alphas to put yourself under besides Kong.”
“Yeah, well, Kong isn’t an alpha. My gorilla-people don’t work like that. One silverback per family group. He’s got my animal stifled, and my instincts right along with them. I have my eyes on a female. A woman,” he corrected himself, because Ally wasn’t just some gorilla female ready to breed. She was more. Everything, maybe.
Mason sat straight up. “Who?”
“Officer Holman,” he said through a smirk.
“Dancin’ with the devil, are you?”
“Don’t call her that.”
“She isn’t one of us, and she isn’t just some human, Kirk. She’s one of them. She’s the first wind of the tornado headed our way, and you’re holding your arms out, waiting for her to carry you away. Careful with that one.”
“I thought you’d understand.”
Mason glared at him a half a minute too long. “Have you told Harrison?”
“Nope. Just you.”
Mason cursed and stretched out one of his legs, then sighed. “Do you trust her?”
“Yeah, but it’s different for you and me now, Mason. We have nothing to offer a human woman anymore. Nothing can legally bind us to them.”
“Until they reinstate our rights.”
“And how long with that take? How long do you think?”
Mason looked tired and shrugged one shoulder up. “I don’t know, man.”
Kirk didn’t either, but he did understand the answer to that question could be never. Kirk was prepared to be patient and wait on that slow human timeline until Ally was ready to settle down, but then what? What commitment could he possibly give her that would mean anything? He couldn’t claim her by shifter laws, and he couldn’t marry her by human ones. They’d have to carry on, just like this, until the government got tired of meddling in shifter affairs.
“She was better off without me, and by a lot.”
“You kissed her yet?” Mason asked quietly.
“I’m not talking to you about that.”
“I’m not asking as a pervert so shut your defenses down. I’ve had a mate before, and I know how it feels when you lock on. Heart pounding when you even think about seeing her, wanting to taste her all the time, needing to hear her voice, your animal going nuts when it’s been too long between visits, that bone-deep instinct to breed her and start a family just to tether her to you. Are you there yet?”
Kirk dropped his boot and wadded up the dirty paper towels. He stared out the open blinds to the rainy day beyond. With a sigh, he admitted, “Yeah. I’m there.”
“Then ask me what you really want to.”
Kirk debated not saying anything else. He wasn’t into therapy hour. In fact, he’d always prided himself on being an island that no one could reach. But suddenly, he was having all these inconvenient feelings, and hell, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask Mason for advice on the decision that was doubling him over. Pitching his bad moods left and right sure wasn’t working. “Should I go back to Kong’s Lowlanders? If he stifles my animal, maybe, in time, the instinct to settle her will lessen.”
Mason huffed a humorless sound and scrubbed his hand over the three-day beard on his jaw. When he looked at Kirk again, there was sadness in Mason’s eyes. “That feeling won’t ever go away, Kirk. Not even if you ripped your beating heart from your chest. Kong won’t save you from your mate.”
“I’m not trying to save myself,” Kirk murmured, gaze following the streams of rainwater that raced down the window pane. “I’m trying to save her.”
Chapter Eight
Alison chewed distractedly on the end of her pen and stared out the front window at the drizzling rain outside. At this rate, it would turn her front yard into a weed swamp in no time. Her suitcase still sat packed on the floor of the single bedroom. A part of her had thought her boss would pull her back any minute when he found out how little work there was to do here.
She checked her phone, but nope. Still no calls, no texts, no response to the voicemail she’d left Kirk yesterday. This was the part she’d forgotten about—the insecurity that came after sleeping with a man.
“Read this bullshit,” Finn said from his seat at the end of the desk. He shoved a newspaper across the clean surface as a tiny belch left him.
The article he pointed to was titled “My Five Hour Engagement to a Shifter” by Emerson Kane. It was a five paragraph article about how her wedding was beautiful, but it pointed out the unfairness of being rushed into it due to the shifters being stripped of their rights. Good for her.
When Alison had heard Emerson and Bash had been able to get their marriage in under the wire, she’d been so relieved. And now Emerson had her first article published in the Saratoga newspaper, front page and everything. She should send her congratulation flowers. Er…no. That wasn’t appropriate because of her job. Right?
Finn was glaring. “Why do you look mushy? Please don’t tell me you buy into all this pro-shifter crap.” He let off another burp, and now that she was paying attention to him, he looked terrible, all watery-eyed and red-faced to match his hair.
“What’s wrong with you? Why are you so sweaty?”
He wrapped his arms around his stomach and doubled over. “My stomach is eating itself. One of the shifters came by and brought those welcome cookies,” he said, jamming an accusatory finger at the foil-covered paper plate on the edge of the desk.
Alison lifted the corner of the shiny covering with the end of her pen to expose an array of brightly frosted bear-shaped cookies.
“I think she laced them with laxatives.” He groaned and winced as his stomach made an awful gurgling sound. “She also gave me a red plastic cup of worms and said they were her least favorite. Most of them were dead, and one of them was a roach. And she kept calling me Phlegm.”
Alison snorted and coughed to cover up her laugh.
“It’s Finn. I told her ten times.”
“If you shit your pants in here, I’m filing a formal complaint against you.”
“I hate this job,” Finn muttered as he stumbled out of her cabin.
A week ago, she would’ve agreed with him, but the longer she spent here, the better she felt. Her therapist had always encouraged her to get out into nature, take a break from the job, and work through some of her issues, and here, she could do that. She was doing it. She’d even slept well the last few nights. No nightmares or anything. The one downfall to being up here? She checked her phone again. Being way too close and not close enough to one sexy as hell, infinitely confusing Kirk Slater.
; Alison dumped the plate of cookies in the trashcan and made her way into the bedroom. She turned up the volume of a country song on the old radio plugged into the wall and began unpacking her clothes into the empty dresser by the bed. It was a slow song, one of those that sang to the soul, and she swayed with the beat, twirled when she felt like it as she unpacked. It wasn’t until she put away the last of her bras into the top drawer that she looked up into the reflection in the mirror to see Kirk standing in the open doorway, arms crossed, chin lifted, and eyes dancing with amusement.
She gasped and spun. “What are you doing here? How long have you been here? Why the hell didn’t you knock? It’s rude just coming into someone’s house like this!”
“I’m here because I want to see you. I’ve been here long enough to watch that sexy dance of yours, and I didn’t knock because the sign on the door says Office-Come On In. I can rip that down for you if you want. Bash is good at painting signs. He can make one that says Fuck Off for you, free of charge.”
“It’s been two, Kirk.”
“One and a half, and I would’ve made it eternity if I was strong enough.”
“Wow.”
He twitched his head toward the front door. “Come on.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Kirk narrowed his eyes. “Why are you making this difficult?”
“I’m not! You fucked me, and then you disappeared, and now you’re back making demands? I’m not that kind of girl, Kirk.” Kirk the Jerk—that’s what she was going to start calling him in her head. Maybe out loud if she was feeling saucy enough.
“First off, I didn’t fuck you, and you know it. What we did was more than that. Fucking is casual. You bound my animal to you, so don’t pretend it’s less than what it was.”
Whatever that meant. “But you couldn’t call me back?”
Kirk let off a low, inhuman rumble and glared out the window. “I’m leaving soon.”
“Leaving where?”
“Saratoga. Logging season is almost over, and I’ll be going back to work at the sawmill down there.”
Slowly, Alison sank onto the edge of her bed. “You’re leaving here?” Leaving me?
“It’ll be best for you.”
She huffed an angry laugh. “Who’s running now?”
“Me,” he said, void of emotion. “I’m running for the both of us because we’re headed nowhere good, Alison. You don’t even know me, and from what I know of you, I’m not the match you need. I’m not careful. I can’t fix broken things. I break them worse.”
“I’m not broken!” She drew back, feeling slapped by her own words. Shocked and more than a little relieved by her admission, she repeated, “I’m not broken. I was just bent.”
A slow smile spread across Kirk’s lips. “Good.” His gaze dipped from her flannel shirt over her tank top to her jean shorts and then to her black flip flops. “You off work?”
“What work?” she asked darkly. All she’d done today was sit in the office and hope that someone came by so she could check them in before they headed into the mountains.
“I’m hungry, and I want to feed you because apparently I’ve lost my mind and think of stupid shit like that now. Has she eaten today? When does she take her showers? Mornings? Nights? What does she look like when she sleeps? Did she bring warm enough clothes for the cool nights here?” Kirk twirled his finger around his cranium. “It’s a mess in here.”
“And yet you can’t pick up the damned phone.”
“I was trying to give you an out, woman. I wasn’t just ignoring you.”
“And now you’re here to what? Ask me on a date?”
“No. I’m here to ask you out to eat.”
She offered him a slow, furious blink. “So, a date?”
“I’ve come to the realization that I screwed up,” Kirk said, sinking down onto the bed beside her. “I let us go too far physically before you saw what kind of man I am.”
“And what kind of man are you?”
Honesty pooled in his dark eyes as he admitted, “The dangerous kind to give a tender heart to.”
Oh, she understood. He was warning her off him.
“I don’t want to go on a date with you if you’re just going to push me away again. It makes all of this too hard.”
“That’s why I’m not calling it a date.”
She wanted him. Not just physically, but she wanted to know everything about him. Wanted to possess him. Wanted to be the last set of lips he kissed for all his life. And yeah, she got how insane that was, but her heart had shackled itself to him, and she was in too deep to turn back from the potency of her feelings now. “Kirk, you feel big. I’ve been sleepwalking for so long, just trudging along with the world all blurred around me, out of control of my life and only living it halfway. But then you came along, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, everything seems so clear. And part of it is that I feel so damned relieved that I have the ability to feel after everything that happened. But if we aren’t going anywhere, and if you’re going to pull me in close only to shove me away again, over and over, that’ll hurt me. And I think it’ll hurt you, too. I don’t want that. Go home, Kirk. Think about what you want from me, and next time you talk to me, be real clear because I suck at hints. If you don’t feel like I’m big, too, then cut me loose.”
Kirk scrubbed his hand down his dark, three-day stubble and stood. He paced back to her, adjusted his baseball cap over his head and left. The front door banging closed shook the bones of the house, and Alison closed her eyes against the pain in her chest. That was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, being that direct with a man she cared so deeply about, but he had to choose—in or out—because she wasn’t going to be someone’s maybe.
She needed more.
The front door creaked open and the loud, hollow sound of Kirk’s boots echoed across the floor. His eyes were bright gold when he came to a stop in her doorway. “I’m not going to be any good at this.”
She stood slowly. “I won’t expect you to be any more than you are.”
His chest heaved as he stared at her with those glowing eyes. So terrifying and beautiful all at once. Three more steps, and he pulled her to his chest hard. His heart pounded so fast against her cheek, and she closed her eyes, inhaling his scent. The smell of man and beast clashed. Body wash and fur. God, she loved this, being in his arms, feeling safe. She squeezed her eyes tighter. He wouldn’t let her fall into the darkness. Not like the others. Kirk was too battle-hardened to go soft. He didn’t see it, but she needed him just as he was. He was perfect, and he didn’t even realize it.
“I want to take you out on a date.” His voice was too low, too scratchy. “I’m already in this deeper than you can understand. It happens like that for shifters, and staying away from you is too damned hard. I’ll take you on a date, and then another and another, until you are the one pushing me away.”
“Why would I?”
“Because what can I give you, Ally? What could I possibly give to keep a woman like you happy? I work a labor job, and I’m content staying in one place. I can date you but, legally, that’s where our relationship peaks. I live in a trailer park with a crew of fuck-ups. And I love them. I do. But you won’t understand why we are the way we are.”
“Maybe you should give me a chance to understand.”
He inhaled deeply, then blew it out and buried his face against her neck. “You’re terrifying.”
She laughed because Kirk was admitting that she was scary? He, a freaking massive gorilla shifter with glowing eyes and a rumble in his throat, who could pull bullets from his arm without wincing. She was no threat to him. “No more running,” she whispered.
“I won’t.” Kirk shook his head and eased back. He pulled off his baseball cap, turned it around, and put it on backward, then leaned down and kissed her. He was surprisingly gentle this time, hand on her neck, thumb stroking her cheek as he tilted her face back. He brushed his tongue against the seam of he
r lips, asking to taste her, not demanding it like last time.
She smiled against his mouth and parted her lips for him. His kiss was slow and methodical. It was the knee-melting kind, where she felt like she was sinking closer to the floor and flying all at once. It was sparks on the edge of her vision and warming from the inside out. And right when she thought he would push for more, his erection thick and hard between them, he eased away and smiled at her like she was beautiful. “You should’ve let me run.”
“Why is that?”
The humor dipped from his face, and his eyes were earnest when he murmured, “Because now you’re mine.”
Chapter Nine
Alison had never lived in a small town before, but she had to admit, she liked how everyone seemed to know everyone. Even when she drove around, everyone on the road lifted two fingers off their steering wheels in a friendly wave. Out here, it was more wide open, not as cluttered like her life in Chicago had been. She’d lived and worked in the worst parts of town there, but here, she was awed by the scenery, the people, and even the cabin.
She’d never been much for nature because she hadn’t been around it very much, but it was definitely growing on her. The clean air, the cordial atmosphere, the people…Kirk.
“Are you one of them vegetarians?” Kirk asked, his eyes narrowed into judgmental little slits.
“I eat everything. I just have one of those fast metabolisms. Trust me, I don’t look emaciated because I’m watching my figure.” She swung her legs out of his car and slid her hand against his palm, allowing him to help her out. “I always wished I had curves like one of those pinup girls. You know, big boobs, hips for days, hourglass shape. It wasn’t my dream to grow up to look like a green bean.”
Kirk let off a booming, “Ha!” and shut her door behind her. “Woman, you don’t look like any bean I’ve seen. Your figure is sexy as hell. Lithe and graceful like a cat. That’s what I’m gonna call you. Ally Cat.”
“I don’t know if I like that. A street cat without a home?”