Hector: Outback Shifters Book One

by Chant, Zoe

They were both wearing too many clothes, she decided, at apparently the exact same moment Hector came to the same conclusion; the next few minutes were spent fumbling with each other’s buckles and buttons, yanking up shirts and pulling down pants, exposing skin.

  Myrtle gasped as Hector’s body was revealed to her: his smooth, tanned skin, the broad, flat plane of his pecs, his sculpted abs, the hair that dusted his chest and stomach.

  She couldn’t stop herself from staring, as wetness gathered between her thighs. Hector clearly had no intention of making her wait, however – he lowered his head to her breasts, teasing a nipple between his teeth, making her cry out. Myrtle threw her head back, looking up at the perfect blanket of stars above them as Hector pressed her down onto her back, his body covering hers.

  Arching her back, she pressed herself against him, feeling the hardness of his erection pressing against her thigh. She wanted him so badly, and she couldn’t restrain the gasps and moans that left her mouth as he moved against her, teasing her with his lips and teeth. Tingling electricity thrilled over the surface of her skin.

  She slid her hand down his body, wanting to feel him. He was hot and desperately hard against her palm, and his groan as she ran her hand over his length sounded like it had come from the very depths of his soul.

  “Please,” she whispered, knowing they were going fast but unable to wait any longer. “Please, I want you so badly…”

  She didn’t know what had gotten into her – she only knew she had never felt this way about a man before. She’d never responded to a man like this before. Hector’s every touch seemed to drive her wild; every movement sent her head spinning with desire. She had never thought of herself as a particularly sexual person before, but it was clear that she was going to have to reassess that opinion. It was as if something had opened inside her, something that had previously been locked away, even from herself.

  And right now, the only thing she wanted to do was discover more.

  She could feel Hector’s thigh muscles twitching with every movement of her hand, his mouth on hers hot and demanding. His hand slid down her side, over her hip and between her thighs. She cried out into his mouth as his fingers pressed against her, finding her core, and sending a wave of pleasure through her so intense that she couldn’t hold back her cry.

  Myrtle dug her fingers into the small of his back, urging him onwards as his thumb slowly circled her clit, sparks dancing along her veins. His fingers were good, but right now, the only thing she wanted was him. She squirmed, bucking up against him as he teased her, gasping into the kiss he pressed against her mouth.

  “God, please, Hector…”

  His low laugh told her that her message had been clearly understood. She missed his hand immediately as soon as he withdrew it, but then she felt the hot, hard head of his cock pressing against her, and she forgot everything but that – everything but the feeling of him slowly, carefully, pressing inside her.

  Myrtle’s toes curled as he moved inside her, her back arching, fingers clutching at his sides. She had never felt so perfectly, completely full before – he felt perfect inside her, like they were made to fit together.

  Perhaps we are, Myrtle thought, dazed, as he made his first thrust inside her. Maybe this is part of being mates. We’re made for each other, right down to our DNA…

  Myrtle cried out, thighs cinching around his hips as he moved, sending desperate waves of pleasure through her body, taking her higher and higher with every move he made. His mouth found hers once more, his tongue sweeping between her lips, bringing them even closer together.

  Myrtle could feel her climax building inside her, ecstasy surging along her every nerve. Shocks of electricity danced through her, blooming over her skin. She closed her eyes and threw her head back, crying out every time he thrust into her, seeming to go deeper and deeper every time.

  Oh, God…

  She couldn’t tell if the stars that swam across her vision as her climax finally exploded within her were real or just her imagination, but in the end she decided it didn’t matter. Wave after wave of pleasure coursed through her, making her muscles clench and her back arch, her head rising and falling on the blanket beneath her. A moment later, she heard Hector cry out too, deep and throaty, and he shuddered, his cock pulsing inside her as he came.

  Myrtle wasn’t sure how long she lay still, her breath panting in her throat, limbs feeling heavy and boneless. She had never experienced anything like that before. Nothing had ever felt so perfect, so right, in all her life. Hector was heavy above her, but for now, she couldn’t bring herself to care. She played her fingers down his spine, savouring the feel of his skin beneath her touch.

  Eventually Hector sat up a little, and Myrtle couldn’t hold back her slight protestation at the lack of contact as he slipped from her body. But then he settled by her side, wrapping his arms around her and holding her against his chest.

  Closing her eyes, Myrtle listened to the sound of his heartbeat, and wondered how she had ever lived without it.

  “That was… Myrtle, that was…”

  His voice was a low rumble in his chest. Myrtle smiled.

  “Yeah, it really was,” she said. “Wow.”

  Hector laughed softly, before pressing his lips against her sweaty forehead. “Too bad we won’t be here for long. Right now, I feel like I could stay here forever.”

  Myrtle let his words wash over her. Today had been one of the most frightening, bizarre and amazing days of her entire life. Trying to put all of the pieces of it together in her brain seemed totally impossible now. How could so many things happen in the space of just a few hours?

  There was one thing she did know with complete certainty, however: that right now, there was nowhere else she’d rather be but here.

  Yawning, she snuggled sleepily against Hector’s chest, feeling exhaustion welling up to claim her. She still had about a million questions she needed to ask, and she still wasn’t sure what to make of the strange new world that had just been opened up to her.

  But for now, she decided, all of those questions could wait until later.

  Chapter 8

  Hector drifted slowly back into consciousness with the kind of languorousness he hadn’t let himself enjoy in years.

  Sure, there were tiny sticks and rocks poking into his back, and his arm had gone numb overnight, but all of that paled into insignificance when compared with the feel of the warm body sleeping beside him, the gentle rise and fall of her chest against his with every breath she took.

  My mate. Mine. Ours.

  Inside him, his griffin stretched, arching its back and spreading its talons, its tail flicking from side to side.

  She is ours. We have claimed her. Finally.

  Hector suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at it. The griffin had very black and white views on these things. When you met your mate, you told her who she was to you, you courted her, and then you claimed her. It was all very straightforward, as far as it was concerned. It didn’t want to hear it when he tried to explain the human world was often a little more complex than that.

  She’s not ours, he explained to it. She’s hers. She’s human. She could still reject the bond.

  The thought sent a chill through him. Myrtle had seemed to accept everything he said last night, but he knew there were still a lot of obstacles in their way. A lifelong commitment might seem daunting to a human, especially since, Hector supposed, they hadn’t actually known each other all that long.

  Plus, she probably has a life and a career back in the States.

  He’d heard how committed she was to her work in her voice. Hector wasn’t about to ask her to give up something she cared so deeply about to stay here with him.

  Then we will go to her, his griffin said, shaking its head. It is a simple answer, is it not?

  Hector supposed it was, in the end. He loved his work – it gave him purpose, and there was no feeling like tracking down a criminal and finally putting an end to whatever it was they we
re up to, satisfying his griffin’s need for the thrill of the chase – but in a choice between his work and his mate, there really was no choice to be made at all.

  I might miss Rhys, Eve, and Dad, though, he thought. He’d always been close to his brother and sister, and while his relationship with his father was a little more contentious, Hector knew they loved each other. His father had been against him and Rhys leaving the farm, but in the end, he hadn’t forbidden them from going, the way an alpha griffin could if he wanted to.

  He’s probably happy about it now, Hector thought. Eve’s got the place in hand. Better than me or Rhys could’ve done it.

  Well, as long as the farm was in good hands, he was pretty sure he could live with only seeing his family once or twice a year. It wasn’t like they saw each other so often these days – Rhys was assigned elsewhere in the agency and Hector never knew where he was half the time, and it wasn’t like running a farm gave you many days off, so his contact with Eve and his father was mostly over the phone.

  There you have it, his griffin purred. You can go with your mate, and she need not give anything up.

  It was hard to argue with it. When confronted with your mate, things tended to seem a lot simpler. Maybe it was the griffin in him, but he’d never really thought of himself as a particularly complicated person, anyway. He liked his work, he liked eating, he liked being outdoors. He liked taking care of things. He liked knowing that what was his was well looked after. And that was about it.

  Beside him, Myrtle murmured in her sleep, turning over slightly. Hector waited until she had settled again, before dropping a soft kiss on her forehead and easing his arm out from beneath her.

  She will be hungry. We should provide food for her. His griffin was insistent, and at once Hector felt an urge to shift and to fly out over the flat plains below in search of something to hunt. Frowning, he had a sudden image of himself returning, landing on the outcropping in front of Myrtle and dropping a dead snake at her feet, with the air that he expected her to eat it.

  He quickly squashed the urge.

  She’s not going to want that, he told the griffin. I’ll just make her something normal, all right?

  The griffin huffed a little, but it seemed to accept it.

  In any case, he needed to check on Ruby, too. It was still very early in the morning – the sun wasn’t quite fully up yet – but he wasn’t sure how long baby pegasi slept for. But if they were anything like baby griffins, when they did wake up, they were hungry.

  Standing, Hector found his jeans and put them on, before heading over to the small shed.

  Ruby was very much awake when he opened the door – in fact, she was perched on a small shelf up by the ceiling, looking down at him with a kind of imperious indignance Hector was sure he hadn’t done anything to deserve.

  “You learned to fly better overnight, huh?” he asked, looking up at her. Clearly, Ruby was a fast learner. She’d been walking within a few minutes of hatching, and now it was clear she already had the fundamentals of flying down.

  “You going to come down for breakfast, or are you just going to sulk?”

  Hector wasn’t sure if Ruby could understand him, but she certainly cocked her head a little at the word breakfast.

  “Mee-eeeh?”

  The small, soft sound she made was definitely a question.

  “That’s right – baby pegasi who hide up by the ceiling don’t get apples,” Hector informed her. “If they want to get fed, they come down and be social, like polite little shifters.”

  Ruby didn’t move an inch. She tossed her head and folded her wings.

  Is she already in her teenaged phase? Hector wondered as he looked up at her. That’s all we need – a pegasus with teen angst.

  “Fine, fine,” Hector said, crouching down to where he’d left his sports bag yesterday. He’d filled a cooler bag with all the bottles of apple puree he’d had in the fridge back at the now-abandoned base, and he pulled one out now, uncapping it.

  Ruby’s nostrils twitched.

  “Yeah, too bad no one’s here to help me eat all this delicious apple puree,” Hector said, opening a drawer and finding the one single spoon that lived in it. “I’ll just have to eat it all by myself.”

  He hovered the spoon over the open bottle, looking at Ruby out of the corner of his eye.

  “Mee-eeeeh!”

  In a flurry of silver and white, Ruby launched herself off the shelf, wings fluttering and struggling to keep her airborne for a moment, before she evened out, finding the right rhythm, and came in to land smoothly on the counter.

  She raised a dainty hoof, looking at Hector expectantly.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, placing the bottle down in front of her. She immediately stuck her head inside, slurping up the puree with gusto.

  “All right, now I just gotta find something for us.”

  Opening the cupboards, Hector found a bag of flour, a sealed jar of honey, an opened jar of Vegemite, a small packet of salt, a chipped bowl with a teaspoon in it, and a large drinking glass. Clearly, this place was not stocked for luxury – but then again, he supposed it wasn’t meant to be lived in for very long.

  All right. We have flour, we have water, we have salt. We can make damper.

  It wouldn’t be a fancy meal, but it would definitely take the edge off their hunger.

  “C’mon,” he said, turning to Ruby and jerking his head toward the door. “Let’s go wake your – uh, Myrtle.”

  Hector frowned as he stepped outside into the new sunshine of the day. He’d almost said your mum just then. He and Myrtle might have been Ruby’s temporary guardians and caretakers, but they weren’t her parents. It wouldn’t do any of them any good to start thinking like that.

  Especially not Ruby, Hector thought. He hoped she’d understand when it came time to part with each other. The thought sent an unexpected pain through his chest, and he took a deep breath, trying to ignore it.

  He turned in time to see Ruby fluttering lightly down from the countertop, landing on the floor before trotting after him, her movements strong and confident. She still wasn’t any bigger than a small puppy, but it was clear she was growing up fast – and she’d managed not to get quite so much apple puree all over herself this morning.

  “Enjoyed your breakfast?” he asked Ruby as he crouched down to place the damper ingredients on the ground.

  “Mee-ehh!”

  At the sound of Ruby’s whinny, Myrtle stirred and then sat up, blinking in the light, and looking around her as if she had absolutely no memory of where she was or how she’d gotten there.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Hector said. “Sleep well?”

  Myrtle looked at him, her eyes going wide as she took him in, before they darted to Ruby.

  “Oh,” Myrtle said softly. “Oh, right. That all happened yesterday.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head, before scrubbing her fingers over her face. “Sorry, I was half-expecting to wake up and find out I’d dreamed the whole thing.”

  “’Fraid not,” Hector said, opening the flour. Warmth flooded his chest as he looked at Myrtle, who was wrapping the blanket around her breasts as she searched for her clothes. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Myrtle glanced at him, eyes wide.

  “Oh God, no! I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant that – God, how could anything so – so –”

  Hector watched, entranced, as Myrtle flushed, lowering her beautiful blue eyes.

  “It just all seemed too amazing to be real,” she finally finished. Her eyes darted up, and Hector saw her tongue move over her lips, leaving them shining. “All of it,” she said, and the expression on her face left him in no doubt what particular part of the evening she was referring to now.

  Our mate is pleased with us!

  His griffin preened, all but prancing in its joy at having made its mate happy.

  We should have brought her the snake. It would have been good manners. She would have liked it.

  No, Hect
or told it firmly, she wouldn’t have.

  “Are you hungry?” Hector asked her, as much to silence his griffin as anything else.

  “Starving,” Myrtle said as she pulled on her singlet. “Has Ruby eaten?”

  “Yep. She just about demolished her breakfast. I’m glad we brought plenty with us.”

  He glanced down at Ruby, who seemed to have sensed she was being talked about and was listening intently.

  “Though I suppose we should be careful she’s not over-eating.”

  “Meeh!”

  It was clear from the small, dismissive sound she made what Ruby thought of that idea.

  Myrtle slid on her shorts under the blanket, and then stood, coming over to where he had opened the flour and was tipping it into the chipped bowl.

  “What’re you making?”

  “Damper – bush bread,” he said, as he sprinkled some salt into the flour. “It’s not fancy, I’m afraid, but it’ll fill you up for a bit.”

  Myrtle shook her head. “I don’t need fancy – I’m used to eating crappy instant meals while I’m out in the field. Can I do anything to help?”

  “You could mix this together while I run ’round the side and get us some water from the tank,” Hector said, passing her the teaspoon. “Doesn’t need much. Just for the salt and flour to be mixed up.”

  There was plenty of water in the tank when Hector checked it, and he scooped some into the drinking glass before heading back around to where Myrtle was mixing the flour and salt.

  Smoke from a fire might give away their location, but Hector figured they could risk it – a quick hunt around the shack revealed some matches, and in no time they had a small fire going.

  “So, show me what this damper is,” Myrtle said.

  “It’s not too exciting, I’m afraid,” Hector told her as he began adding the water to the salt and flour, mixing it in before kneading the paste slowly into dough. “It’s something my father taught me, my brother and my sister to make during overnight trips to move the cattle to new grazing areas. It was the most fun I had as a kid, to be honest – sitting around the fire with my family, cooking bush bread on sticks.” He glanced at her. “I feel like I’ve told you a lot about me, but I haven’t asked you much about you or your family.” He remembered her implying she had a large family back in the car, when she’d said that her mum was determined to name all her kids after plants and flowers, and that at some point she’d started to run out. “I take it you have a lot of brothers and sisters?”