Desperately Seeking Shapeshifter (20 page)

Smiling, I glanced around. “Where’d Ramsey go?”

“Went to get something,” Ellis said. He sat on the floor and grabbed his beer. “I can’t believe there’s no internet out here. That’s criminal. Do you know what year it is?”

“Sorry,” I said with a grin, flopping down on the couch between Joshua and Everett. “Ramsey’s fixing the place up. Maybe we’ll have it next weekend. Electricity was kind of a priority this week. Savannah’s not with you?”

“She’s staying home tonight.” Jeremiah, the quiet, perceptive one, nodded at me. “Are we bothering you guys?”

“Not at all,” I said with a grin, reaching for the control passed to me. I looked to Ramsey, and then realized he wasn’t in the room. “What exactly was Ramsey getting?”

Ellis shrugged and nudged my arm. “You gonna play?”

I stared down at the control in my hands. The Russells were overwhelming and boisterous, and I didn’t mind their teasing. But maybe Ramsey was feeling excluded? Even when he’d been at the Russell compound, he’d never participated in the Saturday night gaming sessions. “I want Ramsey here.”

Austin grinned and offered me a beer. “I scared him off. Told him that if he hurt you, I’d skin him and use him as a fireplace rug.”

I rolled my eyes. “You do
not
scare him, Austin. He’d eat you for lunch and you know it.”

“I know. But I just couldn’t pass up the bearskin rug joke.”

I handed my control to Joshua. “Let me go find Ramsey. Be right back.” I stood and sniffed the air, looking for Ramsey’s unique scent—so warm and different from the now-overwhelming scent of were-cougar in the house—and followed it.

I found him out on the back porch, sitting on the top step and staring off into the woods. I sat next to him, tucking my bare feet close, and slid a hand through the crook of his arm.

“What is it?”

He shook his head, not looking at me.

I took his hand, linking my fingers through his. The breeze carried the scent of paint on it, and then Gracie’s light wolf scent. I heard her laughter as she joined the others in the living room, and I was glad she’d come out to play. The only thing marring my happiness was Ramsey’s obvious discomfort. “It wasn’t Austin, was it?”

He snorted. “Not likely.”

I had figured as much. “Then what is it? Talk to me. I’d really like to know.”

He looked over at me, then glanced back at the house. “You’re . . . easy with them.”

And . . . not with him? Was that where this was going? I smiled at him, stroking my other hand over the corded muscle of his arm. I just liked touching him, and I suspected he liked it, too. “I’m easy with them because they’re easy to be around. It’s like having older brothers.”

“Am I like your brother?” His dark eyes narrowed.

“Not in the slightest,” I said and gave his hand a squeeze.

“You didn’t jump when they touched you,” he noted. “You still jump when I touch you sometimes.”

So
that
was what was bothering him. “I’m a jumpy person,” I said softly. “But I’m getting better every day. And if I jump when you touch me, it’s because I’m thinking about you touching me everywhere.” His eyes darkened as they met mine, and I
watched that possessive, sexy look cross his face and reveled in it. “And I’ve
never
entertained thoughts like that with them.”

He seemed to struggle with saying something. “I . . . don’t want to be like them . . . to you.”

“You’re not,” I said and leaned in to kiss him. His mouth grazed mine in the lightest of kisses. “I certainly wasn’t thinking anything brotherly last night.”

“Good.” He kissed me back, this time harder, more possessive.

“You guys going to make out all night?” someone called from the living room.

“Tell him yes,” Ramsey said against my lips.

I laughed. “We should probably go in before they drink all the beer.” I tugged at his arm. “Come with? It’d be fun if you played, too.”

He seemed hesitant but allowed me to pull him along, and I knew this was part of Ramsey’s discomfort around people. Close but not too close. I’d been able to get closer to the Russell brothers in a few weeks than Ramsey had in the twelve years he’d known Beau. He kept to himself, always. Perhaps his bear clan upbringing instinctively made him hold back.

When we returned to the living room, I noticed Gracie curled up on one corner of the sofa, chatting with an admiring Ellis. She texted even as she talked, and I wondered how many men she was determined to wrap around her little finger. A few others lounged on the floor since we were light on furniture, and I dragged Ramsey to the front, toward
the TV. “Give Ramsey a turn,” I said. “He wants to play.”

A control was handed to Ramsey, and he held it awkwardly. It looked ridiculously tiny in his big hands, and he looked over at me as if pained.

“It’s not hard,” I declared, tugging on his arm and sitting on the floor in front of the TV. “Here. I’ll show you how to aim and shoot.”

He sat down cross-legged next to me, his shoulders nearly blocking out the TV screen. I was amazed anew at his size and, oddly, possessively proud. I liked that he was the biggest man in the room.

He gave me a helpless look when his turn started, then he stabbed at the wrong button.

“The A button,” I said, reaching over his lap to point it out to him. “Hold down the right trigger and tap the A button—”

He dragged me into his lap. “Sit here.”

I blushed, expecting someone to tease us, but Ramsey was apparently tease-free. When Ramsey handed me the control, I took it and began to play while Ramsey’s big hands brushed along my skin.

The conversation started up again as I played, and when my turn was over, I handed the controller to Everett. “So where’s your brother and my sister tonight?”

“They’re at the cabin,” Everett said with a grin, and his comment was met by a chorus of kissing sounds. “Someone’s getting lucky tonight.”

I snorted. “You guys are so juvenile.”

“I think Bath finally figured out how far our
hearing stretches,” Ellis said with a grin. “It’s been a long, dry spell for poor Beau this week. I think it was getting to him. He bought her five dozen roses earlier today, and the next thing we knew, they were headed up to the cabin for the weekend.”

“That’s so cute,” I said, glad for my sister. “You guys need to give them their privacy more often.”

“We give them lots of privacy, but some people are just really, really noisy in bed,” Joshua said.

“Ugh. I think I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing that about my sister.”

“Me, too,” agreed Joshua, still grinning.

Chapter Thirteen

S
unday was a lazy, wonderful day. Ramsey had me shift early in the morning to exercise my muscles. With his calming help, the shifts were coming less painfully, if not any faster. Still, progress was progress, and I’d take it.

He had to check in on a job that morning, so I accompanied him to a small house in the suburbs. I waited in the truck as he knocked on the door. He met a middle-aged woman there, a child perched on her hip. They stood on the doorstep talking, far enough away that I couldn’t hear the conversation, but Ramsey’s expression was grave.

He circled the house and checked the locks on the windows. Next he tested the security settings of the alarm, then he examined the bars on her windows thoroughly, testing them for strength. He didn’t seem satisfied, so he went back over them with a screwdriver. After the house was checked out, Ramsey asked her a few more questions, taking notes on a clipboard. He eventually nodded at her and headed back to the truck, and I watched the woman go inside again.

When Ramsey returned to the truck, I picked up the clipboard and flipped through the notes written. “No sightings in seven days? No attempts at a break-in? What’s all this?”

He started the truck and put it in reverse. “Mrs. Pierce is being stalked. I check on her regularly to ensure her safety.”

“Stalked? By who?”

Ramsey glanced over at me, then back at the road. “A rival clan. Her husband died last year, and another lynx clan is trying to move into the area. They’re encouraging her to cede her territory, but she’s not ready yet, so we’re keeping a close eye on her.”

“That poor woman,” I said softly. “And that’s your job? Protecting her? And others like her?”

“Among other things,” he said. “I serve the Alliance, and she is a member of the Alliance. I’d protect anyone being hunted by others.”

Just like he was protecting me. Was I a job to him as well? Just one with benefits? I didn’t like the thought. We drove home in subdued silence. When we arrived back at his house, he extended a hand toward me.

I placed mine in his quietly.

He pulled me close. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Sara. You don’t have to worry.”

“I know you won’t.”

It was nice to just spend the rest of the afternoon together and relax, and my anxiety soon ebbed. When he sat on the couch and watched TV, I threw my legs over his and stretched out on the sofa, reading a gaming magazine.

Ramsey grilled the steaks I kept bringing home—nice and rare. While he didn’t have the same cravings for raw meat that I did, he understood it. And when I grumbled about my weird tastes as a wolf and how he didn’t have the same, he leaned in and kissed my brow. “Bears like a taste of everything.”

The naughty gleam in his eyes made me blush.

Ramsey’s playful side was buried, but it was there. I was pretty sure he didn’t show it to many people, and it pleased me that he’d shown it to me. When we got tired of watching TV, we played cards. I didn’t know poker, so we played slapjack instead. I lost every time.

“It’s because you have Godzilla hands,” I grumbled, picking up the cards. “We need to play something else.”

He simply gave me a lazy, slow smile that made my heart flutter. “Pick a game, then.”

We moved to hearts next, but I lost that one, too. We spent the afternoon trying different card games and alternately arguing and laughing over them. He touched my skin frequently, his hands brushing over me as if he couldn’t help himself, and I leaned in to each touch. I’d hated being touched before my secret had been let out; now I was starved for it.

Ramsey made me shift one more time that evening, and though I grumbled, I did so. Gracie showed up to supervise but quickly lost interest and returned to texting, wandering back to her cabin. I guess she felt like if I wasn’t going anywhere, she
didn’t really have to supervise me. That was fine with me—I shifted into my wolf form and ran through the woods with Ramsey at my side.

When the second shift was done, I collapsed in the front yard, panting, and then rolled in the grass. “Mercy on me. I can’t take any more shifting.”

Ramsey squatted next to my naked body, where I dramatically put a hand to my forehead as if in a swoon. He studied me with a critical eye. “You’re sweating less. Did it hurt?”

“It always hurts,” I said irritably, but I accepted the hand he held out and hoisted myself up. “But it wasn’t as bad that time.”

“You’re getting better,” Ramsey said. “That’s good.”

I still hated the shifting, but it didn’t seem as terrible a punishment when Ramsey shifted to bear form and ran with me. I didn’t feel quite so alone then. “Guess this means I won’t die as early as everyone thinks.”

Ramsey’s hands clamped down on my shoulders, and he turned me to face him. “You won’t die,” he said, the low growl edging into his voice. “I won’t let you.”

He pulled me into his arms, and the next thing I knew, he was kissing me hard, fierce. My naked legs wrapped around his torso and I clung to him, exhaustion forgotten in a surge of lust. Ramsey’s tongue thrust into my mouth, stroking deep. I moaned in response.

He carried me up the steps of the front porch,
then into the house and up the stairs, toward our room. Our mouths were still locked as he thrust the bedroom door open, stepped in, and then slammed it behind him.

Then we were on the bed, kissing hotly, and I tugged at the shirt covering his muscles. I wanted his hot skin against me, his body deep within mine. I lifted my hips. “Please, Ramsey. I need you.”

His tongue licked at mine, then lightly down my throat, down my naked breasts and my flat stomach. I quivered with anticipation as he tasted my belly button, then pushed my thighs apart. “Ramsey,” I breathed as his fingers parted my folds for his gaze. “You don’t have to—”

He gave me such a fierce look that the words died in my throat. “I want to taste you again.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I said shakily, then keened when his mouth went immediately to me and began to suck. “Oh. Oh, God. Oh, Ramsey,” I moaned. He’d gone straight for the gold this time. My hands fisted in the blankets and my hips raised against his mouth. A string of needy words fell from my lips as he continued to lick and suck at my slick flesh. I heard the low rumble of pleasure deep in his throat and knew he enjoyed tasting me as much as I was enjoying it.

An orgasm ripped through my body and I cried out, raising my hips even higher. I needed him deep within me and told him so.

Something hard and thick nudged at my core. His mouth continued to suck and lick at my clit, and then his fingers thrust into my body. Once, twice. I
keened and nearly came off the bed with the force of the second orgasm, building high on the first one. My body was wracked with shudders for long moments, until Ramsey lifted his head and brushed his fingers over my leg.

I held my arms out for him, waiting for his big body to cover mine, to sink over me, sink into me. Waited for him to take control of the situation—and of me.

But he kissed my knee one last time and then stood. “Thank you, Sara.”

I sat up, trying to tug him down on top of me. For heaven’s sake, he was still fully dressed. “Don’t thank me until you’re deep inside me.”

He shook his head and then leaned in to kiss me, his mouth tasting like . . . well, like me. “Not tonight,” he said softly. “You’re tired.”

“Not that tired,” I pointed out, but he shook his head.

“Rest. I’ll be back later.”

And he got up and left the room.

Well, damn. I threw a pillow at the door, confused and hurt. Ramsey loved kissing. He loved touching me, licking me—but when it came to actual sex, he stopped and left.