Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears Book 3) (8 page)

Kirk paced a small dining area, hands on his hips, and a terrifying sound rattled from his throat. He jammed his finger at a sizeable puddle of water on the floor. “Leaky roof, waterlogged ceiling, the insulation in the walls has disintegrated to nothing, and I have to rewire this place so it doesn’t burn to the ground.” His eyes sparked as he glared at her.

“I’m really sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

“You know what I’m doing this all for?” he asked, spreading his arms out.

Alison scrunched up her nose. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Logging season is almost through, and I’m not a Boarlander. Not officially. I’m supposed to go back to the Lowlanders, but that means leaving here. Leaving you. Fixing up this place is me toying with the idea that I can have you.”

“It’s a nice trailer,” she said, trying to hide a grin. “Any woman would be lucky to shack up with you here.”

“Okay,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Enough. I know this old singlewide isn’t a big deal to you, and yeah, I know this place isn’t exactly a castle, but I thought if I fixed it up, I would have a better chance of tempting you to stay.”

“Where else would I go?”

“Ally, you and I both know your job here isn’t permanent. And I can’t give you my last name or a claiming mark. Not anymore. So this is what I have—a refurbished, thirty-year-old singlewide and a crew of dipshits. Contain your excitement.”

“Well, I just turned away a van-load of pretty girls who would sell their fingers to have a shot at hooking up with you, so maybe you have more to offer than you thought.”

“Oh, yeah?” His eyebrows lifted, and humor danced in his darkening eyes. “Like what?”

“Like that sex-mobile you drive around.” She approached slowly and murmured, “Vroom, vroom.” Alison wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her chin on his chest, looking up at him with an apologetic grin. “And in the words of one of your groupies, ‘you’re sexy as fuck,’ and though she was probably dumb as a brick, I happen to agree with her. I’m going to need a copy of the gif Bash used on your profile for my lady spank bank.”

“What gif?” he asked, looking troubled.

“No shirt, slow motion smile as you strode by. It was hot.”

“Oh, geez. Bash probably took that while we were swimming at Bear Trap Falls the other day. He means well but, damn, he meddles.”

“It’s a horrible invasion of privacy and also a form of identity theft, but under all that, it’s kind of sweet. He wants you to be happy.”

“It’s true!” Bash yelled from outside the trailer. “I do want you to be happy!”

“Bash, we need space to talk,” Kirk called out.

“But I can hear you from inside my house. What’s a lady spank bank?”

Oh, well that was just great. Shifter hearing was much better than she’d realized. That or the gutted walls in Kirk’s trailer were giving zero sound barrier.

Kirk twitched his head toward the back door and pulled her hand until they were outside. She was apparently hiking too slowly through the piney woods behind his house because he bent at the knees and gave her a piggy-back ride through the ferns and brush.

After a few minutes of nothing but the sound of the birds in the canopy, Kirk said, “It really bothers me that you didn’t trust me.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, Kirk. It was scary hearing you tell me about the family group you grew up with, how there was one dominant male and a bunch of females, and now your people are having to figure out whether to pick one mate or stick to family groups. And I researched it, the dynamics of the family and all that. Maybe female gorilla shifters are okay sharing a mate, but I’m not.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding troubled. Kirk set her down and ran his hands through his hair, then nodded and repeated, “Okay. That’s fair, and it makes sense, but like I told you before, I’m not one of the family group males. Not anymore, and maybe I never really was. I didn’t like that my mom only got a fraction of my dad’s attention. I didn’t like watching her light up when he paid her a compliment, but delve into depression when he was giving other females more attention. She lived and breathed for time with him. Growing up knowing that I was going to have to manage time between a lot of females was completely overwhelming. I didn’t like it, but that’s all I knew. And most of the time, the females seemed to genuinely care about the male that took care of them. So as I got older, I came around to the idea. I decided I would do it better. Have less females, care for them better, protect them better. But then this dominant female rose in power, and she changed everything for the worse. Fiona started pulling females from groups and moving them around, giving them to males they hadn’t chosen for genetic advantages. She wanted to make stronger gorilla shifter children because she was convinced our people had gone soft. And eventually, she began choosing the females for each male. She created these huge groups under one male, and the other males were given guard duties. They were in charge of making sure the silverbacks she chose to father the next generation were kept out of trouble, and were kept clean and pure.”

“You were a guard?”

Kirk nodded once. “I was dominant, bigger than all my half-brothers, and had come to an age where my animal instincts called for a family. A female and babies to protect. It’s all I could think about. All I wanted. Fuck.” Kirk clenched his jaw and shot a hard look up through the branches of the trees. “Let’s walk, or I won’t be able to do this.”

Silently, Alison kept pace beside him. She knew she shouldn’t touch him right now because Kirk’s voice had gone deep and feral and his entire body rigid. His eyes were glowing that sunny gold, and he made the air feel like it had weight, but she couldn’t
not
touch him when he was letting her in. Hesitating only a moment, she slipped her hand into his and bumped his shoulder.

Kirk gave her a slight smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Fiona chose me for guard duty, along with this asshole named Rhett, and she assigned us to her prize silverback, Kong.”

“King Kong,” she said softly as it clicked. “Of the Lowlanders.”

“Yeah, and he’s a brawler. He’s the first silverback I ever met who felt more dominant than me. And so I did the job Fiona assigned me. And I watched him fall for a girl in town. Layla. He tried to keep her at a distance. She was feeling something for him, too. I never believed in fate or anything like that, but those two were on this collision course, and I couldn’t stop it. After a while, I didn’t even want to. I wanted Kong to be happy, and he wanted a single mate and children he could raise himself because, deep down, that’s what I wanted, too. And the more I covered for him with Rhett, the more I let him slip into this relationship with a human, the more I knew Fiona would kill me for failing her.” Kirk shrugged, then pulled Alison against his side, draped his heavy arm around her shoulders. “I felt empty. Kong’s gorilla stifled my instincts to want anything for myself. My whole life was devoted to keeping someone I respected unhappy. Fiona was going to off me. Everything had gone sideways, and there was no way out of it.”

“So what did you do?”

“I made a stand with Kong. I didn’t have anything to live for, but I liked Layla, and I wanted Kong happy. Our people were so fucked up, but he had this chance to be okay with his mate, and I was grasping onto anything that gave me purpose.” Kirk kissed her hairline. “We’d chosen right when we moved here. We found unexpected allies. Kong killed Rhett, and when Fiona and all her guards came for her prize male, Kong and I didn’t face her alone. The Gray Backs went to battle for him too, and that dragon the humans are so afraid of ended Fiona and her reign. She’d been building an unwilling army with the silverbacks she wouldn’t allow to breed, but Damon freed us. Freed me.”

“But…you pledged as a Lowlander. You still pledged with your people.”

“With Kong. He’s a good man, and he and Layla are trying for a baby. And Kong’s mom, Josephine, is in the group. It might not be the life I wanted, but I got to be around good people. It was okay for a while. I was almost happy. I worked at Kong’s sawmill and even stayed in a spare room of his and Layla’s, but it was like watching the life I wanted through a window. Only I didn’t have the drive to actively find a mate because Kong’s animal keeps mine in check. I don’t think he even meant to. I started breathing easier when he released me to come up here and help out the Boarlanders for a logging season.”

“That’s the decision Damon was talking about,” she murmured as it all clicked into place. “You are struggling with the decision of whether to move back to Saratoga and rejoin the Lowlanders.”

Kirk huffed a breath and pulled her to a stop at the edge of a sandy beach on a river bank. To the right, there was a path up a cliff and a gorgeous waterfall tumbling over the edge. This was where she’d seen him and the Boarlanders for the first time when she’d come to retrieve Emerson.

“He’s been calling me.”

“Who?”

“Kong. I’ve been avoiding the talk. I know he wants me to come back to the sawmill. To his family group, but I don’t know what to say. Not yet.”

“What do you want to do? What do you imagine your future like, Kirk?”

She could see the moment he shut down. It was there in his eyes. The spark of conversation was snuffed out as the instant his face closed off. She hated that—his ability to push and pull so easily. Instead of answering her, Kirk pulled off his shirt and kicked out of his work boots.

She watched sadly as he shucked his clothes completely and strode into the waves, then disappeared under the dark water, aimed for the waterfall. And as he cut gracefully through the waves, it struck her for the first time that she loved him.

She’d never loved anyone. She hadn’t allowed herself to, but Kirk—hot and cold, sweet and hard, strong, protective, scared-of-affection Kirk—had drawn it from her. He hadn’t asked for her heart. He’d simply plucked it from her chest and held it gently, then dared her to come take it back from him. She didn’t even want to because at least she was capable of deep emotion. Of deep adoration. Of deep love.

It had taken someone who was damaged like her to give her this completely normal moment. This insecure, breathless, hope-filled, human moment that took a shifter to create.

Alison peeled out of her clothes. She was ready for him to see all of her. He’d tried to share all of himself, but he wasn’t strong enough yet, and that was okay. She would be patient. But she was already there—ready for
all-in
.

Alison stepped into the waves and stood on the sandy bottom for a moment, water lapping at her bare thighs as she took in the roiling dark clouds over the mountains. In the distance, lightning flashed through the sky in blinding veins of electricity. The storm would be here in half an hour, she guessed.

She held her breath and dove into the water, then swam toward the falls as long as her lungs could stand it. When she broke the surface, she was right by the pounding water. She inhaled deeply and ducked under. It was beautiful beneath the surface. Muted rays of light illuminated the underwater world, and bubbles danced toward the surface. Alison swam deep enough to avoid the harsh falling water on her back, then came up for air on the other side. Kirk sat on a ledge just under the water’s surface, chest heaving as he stared at the underside of the waterfall.

With a slow blink, he lowered his lightened gold eyes to hers. “I see you.”

With a frown, she cut through the water to where he sat. She rested between his legs, kicking at the waves languidly. “What do you mean?”

“You asked me how I imagine my future, and I see you.”

“That scares you.”

Kirk ducked his chin to his chest and snorted. “Nothing scared me before you came along, and suddenly I have this huge thing to protect.”

“You don’t have to protect me.”

“No, I mean, I have a shot at happiness, and it’s terrifying to think it’s up to me to keep it intact. I have this beautiful woman, and all my life I’ve screwed up. Couldn’t keep things together. Couldn’t do what I was supposed to. And I can’t bind you to me, Ally. I can’t put my last name on you or claim you. I’ll just have to stomach this feeling that you’ll really see me and leave when I disappoint you.”

“You silly man,” she murmured, pressing her breasts against the rock he sat on so she could be closer to him. “You’re the only one who has ever fit me. Where am I gonna go? This place,” she said, rolling her gaze over the rocky cliff face behind him, “feels more like home to me than any other.”

“How?”

“Because you’re here. And that bullshit about me not having your last name or not claiming me...” She pressed her finger against the bullet hole scar on his shoulder. “You already bear my mark.”

With a slight frown, Kirk looked at his shoulder. “You shot me. That’s not a claiming mark.”

“Says who? I gave it to you. I’ve told you you’re mine. I’ve chosen you. I marked you, and I’m not going anywhere. Rules be damned, we’re bound. Now, ask me what I see in my future?”

Kirk traced the intricate tattoos along her collar bone and whispered, “How do you imagine your future?”

She smiled up at him. “I see you, too.”

“You do?” He said it with his head cocked like he didn’t believe her.

She laughed. For an intelligent man, he could be dense when it came to matters of the heart. “Obviously, Kirk. I came up here ready to roll some heads because I thought you were looking for another mate. I felt like a jealous psychopath.”