Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears Book 4) (8 page)

Lowering his weight on top of her, he slowed his pace and ground out her name. “Beck. My Beck.” His voice sounded too low, too feral to pass as human, and she loved it. Loved this feeling he filled her with.

He moved inside of her until every last aftershock had subsided, and then he rolled over and cradled her to his chest. Mason’s heartbeat drummed against her cheek, and Beck’s face crumbled. Her eyes burned with tears because, God, it felt so good to be cared for. To not be used in the bedroom. To feel accepted and adored and coveted.

“Shhh.” Mason stroked her hair, and his arm around her shoulders went gentle. He rubbed soothing circles right next to her spine, and his lips lingered in her hair.

Was that soft sob hers? Mortified, she squeezed her eyes closed and inhaled his scent, anchored herself in this moment as a tear streamed from the corner of her eye and made a tiny splat against the pillow.

“Please tell me these are happy tears,” Mason murmured in a worried voice.

Beck drew her arms into his stomach and snuggled closer. Mason reacted immediately, hugging her up safe and warm in the circle of his strong arms.

Softly, so she wouldn’t ruin the magic of this moment, she murmured, “I’ve been waiting all my life for you.”

Mason’s heartbeat raced faster, and he swallowed hard. When he spoke, there was a smile in his voice. “You’ve got me now, Beck. You run, I’ll just follow. Beautiful, fierce… woman, you just drew my boar up and bound us.”

“No, Mason.” She smiled and laid a soft kiss against his chest, right over his heart. “We bound each other.”

Mason had gone quiet beside her, tracing the vertebra in her spine as she lay relaxed on her belly. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but the kind that was comfortable. It was the quiet that said he was as lost in this moment as she was.

As his gaze locked on hers, Mason’s lips curved up in that slight smile he’d been giving her for the past half hour. He dragged his fingertip up her back to start at the top of her spine again.

Curiously, she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

He lowered his lips against her ear and whispered, “I never thought I would get a second chance at this feeling.”

Fluffing the pillow up under her cheek, she said, “Claiming marks don’t mean the same to boar people.”

A frown marred his brows for a second before his face relaxed again. He shook his head and pressed his lips to her shoulder, then rested his cheek on his palm, elbow on the mattress. “I thought owl shifters were extinct.”

“Very rare. Not extinct.”

“Mmm,” he rumbled in that sexy, deep timbre of his.

“Are there lots of boar shifters?”

Mason dipped his chin and traced her shoulder blade. “We number near a thousand.”

“And you were supposed to rule them all?” She frowned. If she had other owls she could talk to and raise her child around, she would’ve done it, but as far as she knew, it was just her mom, Beck, and Ryder. “Why did you leave?”

The smile dipped from his lips, and his eyes went dark and serious. Mason lay on his arm right in front of her and searched her eyes. “Don’t run.”

“I won’t. I just want to know you.”

“We live in groups of ten to twenty called Drifts. Each is run by a dominant boar, but there is one Drift that governs the rest.”

“That was your Drift?”

“My family’s, yes. Bash was right about boar people coveting money. We live well, and there is pressure to find high-paying jobs because paychecks are deposited into the same account for the good of the Drift. It is an honor to be an earner. To be able to provide for your Drift, as well as your mate and offspring.” His eyes darkened with some emotion she didn’t understand. “I was a very good earner. I had a brother, and we competed because, someday, we would battle for dominant boar over all our people. We had to excel in everything. To hold a top position, I had to be perfect. I had to have a high-paying job and a good mate who bore me offspring. Only I fell in love with an intern at the security company my family owned. I ran the company, had a good head for business, and I hired Esmerelda because my boar chose her the second she walked into my office for that interview.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “She was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, gorgeous Spanish accent. My human side had nothing to do with it, or I would’ve slowed us down.”

“Why?”

“Because she was human, and boar shifters tend to stay together. I brought her into my Drift knowing she would be treated second-rate. My animal didn’t care about that, though, because every woman I’d been raised around was strong. Tough. Thick-skinned. I assumed Esmerelda was the same.” His lips pursed into a thin line before he murmured, “I was wrong. Her depression presented itself immediately. She swore it was seasonal and tried to hide her mood swings, but within the first few weeks we’d been mated, I got this sick feeling deep down that I couldn’t make her happy. That nothing could. She started feeling the pressure of her station in our Drift. She was supposed to give me piglets and enable me to fight for the dominant boar position. She felt pressure to be perfect. She said having a baby would make her happier, so we tried. And tried and tried, and nothing happened. And the sows in my Drift were awful to her, because boar shifters procreate easily. Fertility problems are rare, and they blamed her for hurting my standing with our people. They wanted me to leave her, like I could just break the bond, and I started to hate them. My brother, Jamison, was the worst. He dug in, hounded her, because he could see hurting her was the best way to hurt me. He was after that dominant boar position, and our trouble conceiving gave him an edge because his mate was not only a sow, but she got pregnant right away. I was losing, but somewhere along the way, I stopped caring as much because I loved Esmerelda.”

Heartbreak slashed through Mason’s eyes as he ran the tip of his finger down Beck’s cheek. “I worked a lot. My instinct to provide for Esmerelda and our future babies kicked up so hard, I couldn’t stop pushing myself. More time at the office, more weekends ruined, and I couldn’t see it, but Essie saw it as me pulling away from her. She couldn’t understand shifter instincts because she wasn’t one. I thought I was being a good mate, setting up a nest egg because I knew that someday we would get pregnant, but to her, she thought I resented her. She thought I was abandoning her. She was crying all the time. Arguing over nothing. She didn’t want me to touch her. Stopped wanting to sleep with me. She would say, ‘What’s the point? I’m broken.’ I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty when we first paired up, young, stupid, head-strong, didn’t understand depression, didn’t understand her. She quit my company, didn’t want to work, didn’t want to get dressed, didn’t want to brush her hair or go out or talk to people. I watched her wither. She became obsessed with these apple trees in our backyard. Just…babied them. Maybe they were her babies while we tried, I don’t know. She was always out there with them, talking to them, pruning them, reading under their branches, obsessing over the fruit and any dead leaf. And one day, I came home from work dog tired, my Drift had been on my ass about offspring, had to fire someone that day, just in my own little world when I walked through the door. I couldn’t wait to unload all my burdens on her because she always made me feel better. So I called her name, and when she didn’t answer, I knew something was wrong. Just
knew it
.” Mason’s voice hitched, and he took a few seconds before he continued. “I found her in the backyard, hanging from one of the apple trees.”

“Oh, my God,” Beck murmured, pressing her hands over her mouth. “Mason.”

“I went mad after that. Just…” Mason shook his head for a long time, and his eyes went hollow. “I didn’t care about anything or anyone. I blamed my Drift for pushing her over the edge, but mostly I blamed myself for not knowing how to save her. My people started calling for me to prove myself if I still wanted to be in the running. I needed offspring, a mate, something. I was earning, but Jamison had pulled far ahead, and my dad wanted to step down as dominant boar. So he gave me two sows and told me to earn my keep.”

Bile rose in Beck’s throat. She hugged him tight and buried her face against his warm chest. She was a coward and couldn’t watch the phantoms in his eyes anymore.

Mason’s voice dipped to a ragged whisper. “I cared nothing for them. I just wanted Esmerelda back. But I’d stopped feeling somewhere along the way, and it was nice to escape into a rut and focus on breeding them just so I didn’t have to think about how damned broken I was. So I didn’t have to spend nights alone, listening to those goddamned apple trees creaking in the wind outside. By the end of that year, Jamison had me declared The Barrow. Rutting had made me weak. I hadn’t been thinking about food, Changing, fighting, or anything. Just sex. Just this single-minded desperation to prove I wasn’t worthless—for me, for Essie, for my Drift. I wasn’t in any shape to fight and I knew it, but I went ahead and challenged Jamison just to put an end to all the pain. He was the only one who could match my boar. The only one who could send me to Essie with honor.”

Beck’s shoulders shook with her silent crying, and she gently traced the long scars up his ribs.

“Damon found me.” Mason smoothed her hair from her face and hugged her close. “I was lying out in the woods, my people all around watching me bleed out. I’d been split open by Jamison’s tusks, and I remember staring up at the stars, wondering why it was taking so damned long to die. And there was this wind, chaos and fire, and then everything went dark.” Mason kissed her hairline and sighed. “And then I woke up in the dragon’s lair, newly freed from my people.”

“How did he find you?”

Mason shrugged. “I ask him that from time to time, and he just tells me he saved me because he was supposed to save me. The old dragon is full of riddles. I worked as a bodyguard, watching over his daughter, Diem, when she was in college as a favor to the man who had dragged me from the mud, and then when I came back here, I worked for him for different reasons.”

“What reasons?”

Mason eased back and smiled sadly. “Because somewhere along the way, Damon became my friend. And even though he was quiet, reserved, and emotionless, I saw glimpses of the man he could be. I suspected he was just as broken as me, but I wanted to be there when the dragon rose again.”

“And you were,” she whispered, proud of Mason for overcoming such tragedy and turning into the incredible, loyal, strong, caring man he was today.

Mason ran his fingers through her hair and agreed. “And I was.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.

“I want to know all your secrets.”

Beck drew his knuckles to her lips and laid a soft peck on his skin. “None of that made me want to run.” She wiped her damp cheek on the pillow and braved a look in his eyes. “It only made me like you more.”

Beep, beep, beep, beep!

Beck cracked her eye open just in time to watch Mason’s giant hand arch through the air and smash the alarm clock into tiny pieces. The poor contraption made a pathetic last attempt to wake them with a strangled
beeeeeep
, but then died completely, the glowing green
6:00 am
fading to darkness.

Beck pursed her lips to hide her shocked laugh. Apparently Mason wasn’t fully awake. She could tell by the fact that he dragged her body closer to his chest, big-spooned her like a pro, and told her, “I’ll keep you safe, babe.”

From the alarm clock?

Beck turned in his arms and buried her face against his chest, then inhaled his scent. He smelled different when he slept, more like Mason and less like the manly sexpot body spray he used in the mornings. And she freaking loved that she was the one who got to experience this.
Mine, mine, mine,
her owl hooted possessively.

Mason lifted his powerful leg over her hips and trapped her in his embrace completely, and this right here was her favorite place in the world. Partly because she was pretty sure it was impossible to feel safer than in his big, muscly arms, and two, he had some serious morning wood that conjured all the fun memories of last night.

Beck wished she could stay in bed with him longer. It was summer, but nights were still cool in the mountains, and he was like a big sexy furnace. She had to get ready for the long day ahead though. The more she fell for Mason, the more determined she was to help the shifters—not just for her and Ryder’s future, but for the future of Damon’s mountains and the incredible people here, too. She’d been here almost a week and had managed to meet with all the crews here thanks to Bash being happy to drive her after Mason had quit. She loved them all—the Ashe Crew, the Gray Backs, the Boarlanders, Damon and his beautiful family. She’d even met Kong’s Lowlander family group in Saratoga when she’d done a grocery run with Audrey. Her heart was throwing out lifelines to each crew, each member, tethering her here to this place. How silly that she’d thought she could leave, like her time here had meant nothing. She was changed. She was stronger somehow, which was insane because she’d always been proud of her toughness, but these people here made her want to get battle-ready. They made her career more than just a job. They made it fulfilling, but only if she succeeded in helping them.

Everyone had a role to play here. The mates that had been brought into the Boarlanders didn’t sit idly by and watch their men defend themselves alone. Audrey was in town every chance she got, being friendly, signing autographs, because the white tiger she hid inside was also rare. And Bash’s mate, Emerson, was writing pro-shifter first-person articles full-time for the
Saratoga Hometown News
. And on top of that, she hadn’t balked an inch when Beck had asked her to write blogs for Cora’s website and open a forum on the bangaboarlander page. Already they were getting a great response from the public who were curious about life in Damon’s mountains. And Kirk’s mate, Alison, who had asked Beck to call her Ally, had made ballsy moves with a video interview that made international news. She had silenced IESA completely after they tried to kill her a couple months ago. Her outspoken and public vitriol for the rogue government group had civilians picketing and raging against the injustices done to the shifters.

It was time Beck stepped up and pulled her weight, too.

Beck laid a kiss on her mate’s chest, hugged him tighter, then wiggled out from under his heavy arm and leg. His hand clamped on hers the second her feet hit the cold floorboard.

“Nooo,” he drawled softly. “It’s too early.”

She giggled and pulled her hair into a high messy bun. “The early bird gets the worm.”

“Mmm. That statement right there would break Willa’s heart.”

Beck laughed. Oh, she’d met the worm-lovin’ Almost Alpha of the Gray Backs. “The photographer for the calendar will be here soon, and I need to get ready.”

“How soon?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

A naughty smile stretched Mason’s lips. He pulled her back into bed and over him until she straddled his hips. His lightened gaze dipped to her bare breasts, and he ran his hands up her ribs, then lifted his shoulders up off the bed and drew one of her nipples into his mouth. As he laved his tongue against her sensitive skin, Beck closed her eyes and arched her back, encouraging him.

Mason relaxed back and rolled his hips under her. “You’re sensitive, woman. You come easy for me.”

“Your point?”

Mason sat up again and cupped the back of her neck, laid a nipping kiss at the base of her throat. “I could have you in five,” he murmured.

Beck gave a private grin at the headboard behind him because, damn, she should really be getting ready, but that was one helluva pretty offer from her man. Teasingly, she lowered her lips to his ear and whispered, “Or I’ll have you in five.” Slowly, she lifted off his hips and positioned herself right over the head of his hard cock.

She slid over him slow and easy, then pulled off him quick. Down slow, up quick, and Mason’s hips jerked as a soft rumble vibrated in his chest. Big, powerful man, allowing her the dominant position in their bed. Mason’s arms wrapped around her back, and he pulled her closer, buried his face at her neck as she gripped the back of his hair and lost herself in the erotic friction they were creating in the first rays of dawn light that filtered in through the window blinds.

When her skin chilled from the sensations taking over her body, Mason pulled the blanket to her back as if his instincts had told him exactly what she needed. Beck rolled her hips faster as the pressure built between her legs, and Mason drew his knees up, cradling her as their bodies crashed against each other. Her insides tingled, and the pressure was too much. She threw her head back and cried out as she came. By the second pulse of her orgasm, Mason clutched her hard and went rigid, growled out her name. His shaft throbbed as he shot warmth into her. God, she loved this. Loved him filling her. Loved this connection. Loved his instant reaction to her body. Loved him.

Loved him?

She slowed the pace as it hit her that this was something monumental. She’d accepted she would live a life void of love from a mate, but here she was, giving her heart to someone who was worthy. To someone she could trust with it.

“I love you,” she whispered against his ear, too scared to look in his eyes when she admitted it out loud.

Another deep pulse from Mason’s dick, and he relaxed. Easing back, he lifted those beautiful inhuman eyes to hers. Honesty pooled there as he smiled and said, “I love you, too.”

“Really?” Beck said, chest heaving with emotion.

Mason drew her into his strong embrace and rocked them slowly from side to side. He rubbed her back gently and said, “Yeah, really, but I was planning on telling you first.”

“Competitive,” she accused him through a laugh.

“Nah, I just had it in my mind that I was going to take you out and tell you at a nice dinner. Make it special. But you know what?”

“What?” she asked, squeezing his shoulders tight. She couldn’t believe he was really hers, and that she wasn’t dreaming this.

“Your way was better.”

“Naturally.”

Mason tickled her ribs and asked, “Naturally? Woman, that’s cocky.”

She was giggling hard now because he’d found her most ticklish place on her stomach and had dug in. “You’re the cocky one now. Stop it, you monster.”

“Mmm, I’m
your
monster, though,” he rumbled, flipping her over and pulling her beside him on the bed. “Five more minutes.”

“No! I only have forty minutes to get ready now, and I have to look professional today.”

Mason was nibbling at the back of her neck with those sexy nipping teeth of his. And oooh, now he was sucking on her, and the pull of her skin between his lips made her arch her ass against him instinctively. His grip on her waist was hard as he angled her farther back against him.

“Mason!” she yelped. He was getting riled up again, and as fun as it sounded to fool around with him all day, she really had to stop them at some point. Beck abandoned the covers and scrambled from bed.

Mason grabbed for her backside and missed, then grunted and lay limp, half off the bed with a sexy little pout on his bottom lip. She couldn’t help the giggles that bubbled up her throat. “You owe me an alarm clock, by the way.”

Mason frowned at the destroyed appliance.

Beck bustled into the bathroom and called out, “And also breakfast since it’s your fault I’m running late!”