Shifters Forever The Boxed Set Books 1 - 6 (34 page)

S
ara exhaled
. “It’s a place. A bad, bad place.”

“Is it a town?” Joe fought to keep his voice level, sure that she could sense what her proximity was doing to him. His nostrils flared as his cock strained against his pants. His body yearned to make her his. Surely she knew what she did to him. Surely her bear knew. It was all he could do to not kiss her, to not claim her as his mate.

His mate? What the hell? When had he started thinking this way? He didn’t do what his shifter friends did. Or did he?

How her bear felt was no secret. Was she fighting her bear? Or was something else going on?

“It’s a hospital. I guess that’s what everyone thinks it is.”

“So if that’s what people think what it is, but it’s not a hospital, what is it?”

“It’s hell.” Her uttered words were followed by a growl. Her eyes glowed an amber fire, her bear rising up, fury evident. “You have to let me go. Ivan and I can’t be found here. It’s too risky for you.”

“So the solution is to run? Who will protect Ivan if something happens to you?”

Her eyes widened and turned to a molten golden hue, the color of rage. “Nothing can happen to me.” A growl underlined her words. “I can’t let anything happen to me. He has no one else.”

“Something did happen to you and Ivan was unprotected.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“Let me and the rest of the Bear Canyon Valley shifters be your family. Then he’ll have someone else, and so will you. You’ll have backup.”

“You don’t understand—”

He interrupted her with his lips on hers. “No. You don’t understand,” he said against her lips. The fury in her eyes turned to a different kind of flame, a very different type of fire. The amber glow within yielded its spirit to his, giving him what he wanted, but not the flesh he craved.

He lowered his head with the fierceness of a predator, claiming her lips. His kiss was volatile, spurred on by the passions of their mutual attraction, fueled by the danger that threatened her and heightened by their senses, their emotions and the adrenaline of what they’d been through.

His mouth overtook hers. He savored the taste of her while devouring her. Her lips were soft, crushed beneath his, while her tongue succumbed, yielding permission he didn’t ask for.

He knew her son and his friends were only a few rooms away. He knew she had something going on that was pulling at her, and pulling her away from him.

They both knew it, but it stopped mattering.

Time tarried.

Emergencies halted.

Danger waited.

The entire universe felt like it had paused and was spinning around them in a holding pattern while he took control of her. His hand twisted in her hair, crushing her lips tighter against his. His other hand swooped under her generous, curvy ass and pulled her closer to him, maneuvering her onto his lap. Her hip was pressed against his throbbing erection.

She wiggled. He groaned, and she drank his groan away with a kiss. Suddenly her aggressiveness became his aggressor’s competitor, both wanting control, both needing each other.

Both demanding.

Both yielding.

Neither giving.

He pulled away from her lips, the sensation as destructive and painful as pulling a scab off a large wound.

“You’re mine. Say what you want, do what you want, but make no mistake…”

He leaned close, his lips against her parted ones, and he spoke the words into her mouth.

“You. Are. Mine.”

She moaned a whispered word.

He could have sworn that whispered word was “yes.” But he wasn’t willing to take any chances. Not with this independent firebrand.

“Now tell me about Crossroads.” He slipped a hand under the blanket, letting it rest just above her knee, but on the inside, where sensitive flesh made his fingertips yearn for more.

“What do you want me to tell you?” Her voice was breathless. Her pulse beat in her neck, visible.

Sexy.

He touched his lips to that telltale pulse, enjoying the rapid beat, the witness it bore to the way she was reacting to him.

What do I want you to tell me? That you want me. That you need me. That you’ve got to have me in you, with you, around you.

He swallowed that answer back while his fingers traveled upward along her inside thigh, a slow, tortuous inching that made him mad with desire.

She drew a breath in, making a slight whistling sound as it passed over her teeth. Her eyes closed, and the blanket over her breasts swelled with her captive breath.

He could. He knew he could. He could make her his right here, right now. Joe fought back the desire to give in to something that was far more powerful than he.

“Tell me about his place called Crossroads.” He placed his lips against her neck, letting the pulse there beat primal against his lips.

She breathed in deeply, against his chest, her body expanding, as if she was preparing herself for battle. He felt the muscles in her legs tighten under his fingertips as she flexed. More preparation for battle?

I
nstead of continuing
their single-goaled pursuit, Joe’s fingers stopped and waited patiently on her thigh. Sara fought back a sigh. She wanted him as badly as her bear did, but one of them had to be the voice of reason.

Her bear grumbled.
I know, it sucks.

Sara listened for Ivan’s voice. It had a content tone to it. Even happy. He was enjoying his time with the other shifters—and humans. Damn Joe for doing this, a part of her thought. The other part of her rejoiced that Ivan had something he’d never had before.

She looked at the man whose lap she sat in. She knew there was a question on the table, and she knew he was waiting patiently for an answer to that question. She studied his features. He wasn’t thickly built like his shifter friends, but he lacked no muscle, lacked no definition. Half the time, his hair had been pulled into a ponytail, the other half it flowed loose, reminding her of his Native American heritage.

His full bottom lip under the more spare upper one, his high cheekbones, the intensity of his dark gaze. She swallowed her desire back, though her body pulsed for him. Her channel was flexing and clenching, needing him as she’d never needed a man before.

“Sara.” That one word, her name, as it passed over his lips was a blessing, a curse, an order, a demand, and a plea. “I’m waiting,” he hissed.

He adjusted slightly, a reminder of the length of hardness that was pressing against her hip—making no demands, but taking her prisoner nonetheless.

“Crossroads is the place I’ve spent the last few years.”

“It was your home?” He raised his head, his lips leaving the pulse on her neck. His eyes pierced hers, seeking understanding.

“No.” She let the word out with all the vile vehemence of the emotions that she felt. “I was taken from my family home after all of them were slaughtered in a territorial dispute. Every single one, killed. I wasn’t there when it happened. When I came home, I found total devastation.”

Her bear sensed his reaction, smelled his anger and dismay at the helplessness of her plight. Yet he didn’t say a word; instead, he waited for her to finish.

“Except that the marauders weren’t gone. They took me captive.”

Sara paused and listened for Ivan. She heard his sweet giggle, heard the baritones of the other shifters in the room with him and knew she could continue her recounting safely.

Ivan was in good hands, better than hers, her bear reminded her.

“I was sold to a hospital.” She shook her head as the memory of that first day came back to her. She’d shifted into her bear, and fought, but they’d drugged her. They’d shot some kind of drug into her with a dart. She’d fallen and her bear had gone deep inside her. From that day on, they’d kept Sara on some kind of drug that kept her from shifting.

Sara realized she’d drifted into her own memories and stopped talking when Joe began to stroke her hair.

“After the hospital…” he prompted her.

She needed to sum it up and not dwell on it, for her own wellbeing.

“There was no ‘after the hospital,’ not for a long time. The hospital had a laboratory. I was kept on some sort of drug that paralyzed my body. It kept me from shifting, but I was fully awake.”

Awake when they took my virginity. Awake when I became pregnant with Ivan.
She bit back the bitter tears that threatened.

Ivan was the only good thing that had come from that place.

“And Ivan?” Joe wasn’t slow putting things together, it seemed.

Sara nodded. “I was drugged. Every day.”

Joe clenched his jaw, his muscles working, the tendons in his neck drawing tight, the pulse in his temple throbbing. She didn’t have to tell him more. He understood.

“How did you get away?”

“Something happened when I became pregnant with Ivan. The drugs became less potent as each day passed. Or maybe my immunity changed while I was pregnant. All I knew was that my bear was finally able to come out. She’d been locked away for so long.” She bit back a sob.

Joe wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, murmuring sounds of comfort, sounds that reached into her so deeply that her bear was embraced.

“Joe, it was like she was under many, many inches of ice. I could see her, but I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t talk to her. For all my life as far back as I can remember, my bear had been a part of me. She was my best friend and my sister. Then they did that to me, and I couldn’t bring her out. I couldn’t talk to her. Not even in my mind.”

Joe squeezed her, keeping her and her bear ensconced in his muscular arms, his long dark hair making a curtain that cocooned them from the world.

“That’s one of the reasons I don’t mind being in my bear so much more than my human skin. It’s her turn.”

Joe nodded, the side of his face pressing against her head. She inhaled his scent, let her bear relish the scent of him, the man of him, and the mate of him.

Her bear breathed a sigh of relief deep inside Sara. Tears formed in Sara’s eyes. Tears of joy, though she couldn’t figure out why she was happy.

“And Ivan?” Joe’s breath was warm on her cheek. “The escape?”

“My bear. She came to help us. I was pregnant with him, heavily so, but by then the drugs couldn’t contain her. So when the time was right, she came to our rescue.” Sara rubbed her face with the blanket, brushing the tears away with the soft fabric. “She killed—we killed—three men. I must not be found. I’m wanted for murder, I’m sure.”

“So you stay in your bear form. And you gave birth to Ivan? Alone?”

“No, not alone. My bear was there. She helped me make it through. And Ivan was born like that. A bear cub. And there was no reason to teach him to shift. There was every reason not to.”

“He’s about four. You’ve been on the run since then?”

Sara straightened her posture while still in his arms. “We’ve managed.” She was proud of how far they’d come.

“But you’re being hunted? Why else would you keep going from place to place?”

“We were found once, two years ago. We stay on the move.”

“Where is Crossroads?”

“Canada.”

“Where in Canada?”

“How would I know exactly? I was incapacitated. I couldn’t move. I didn’t have access to a map. To anything. I know I went south and east. So I guess it’s north and west from here. More north. And I did travel along the coast.” She’d blocked so much of this. She didn’t want to remember this stuff at all. She wished Joe wouldn’t pry. It wasn’t like she’d ever planned on returning.

And now for the bad news.

“Joe, I need to go. I’m healed. I need to get on the road. I have to do a lot of training with Ivan, now that he knows how to shift. I have to prepare him for new things, new instances or dangers that might arise.”

His hand, formerly resting against the inside of her thigh, curved around her leg now, gripping her. Not tight, but not casually. The hand under her ass tightened as well. The tendons in his muscles became rigid as his body flexed.

“I can’t let you do that, Sara.” His whispered words elicited fear and joy. Fear that by not being on the move she and Ivan were in grave danger. Fear that Joe would be risking his life. Joy that she mattered to him.

A sadness crept through her. She mattered to a man she couldn’t have. She had to go. Immediately. She had to take danger away from him. She had to keep Ivan safe. If Crossroads got their hands on Ivan… She didn’t let her mind go there. She couldn’t think of that now. She couldn’t live with that kind of knowledge.

She might have killed one of the doctors, but there were a panel of them that ran Crossroads. More than half a dozen doctors had come in regularly to monitor their testing and her reaction. They drew blood, tested, poked, prodded, and took slivers of flesh from different areas of her body.

She’d asked them more than once what they were doing.

“Perfecting your species.” That was all they ever said.

“Did you hear me?” Joe took his hand out from underneath the blanket and put it on her chin, turning her head to face him. “Did you hear what I said? Did you?”

She put her hand on his, wrapped her hand around it—only his was so much larger, she couldn’t cover it. She moved his hand off her face and put it on her knee, lacing her fingers with his.

“You can’t keep me here. You can’t keep me prisoner. I’ll never be a prisoner again.” She leveled her gaze on his, let him see her bear, let him hear her words. “Are you saying you’ll try to keep me captive?” She knew the answer to that, but she had to let him see how his words could affect her.

“Never.” His words were a low hiss. “I’ll let you go.” He helped her off his lap.

J
oe helped Sara up
. She was being foolish. Leaving the protection that Bear Canyon Valley shifters could offer her was folly, but he understood her perspective, and she’d been captive, essentially tied down for too long. She couldn’t stay.

Sara held the blanket’s ends tight, her hand a fist just above her left breast, clutching the material. He studied her face, rememorizing it for the thousandth—no, the millionth time.

He swallowed hard at the dryness in his throat. He watched her take a breath and hold it. Her chest swelled, her nostrils flared. Her eyes dilated and turned a gold color.

She turned his way, facing him, and dropped the blanket. “I can’t go without knowing.” She exhaled. “Just once in my life.”

“Knowing?” He had to hear the words. He needed to hear every word she was going to say.

“I have to know what it’s like to have the man I love inside me. I have to know what it feels like to make love. To be made love to. If only once.” Tears highlighted the golden amber.

Joe cracked. Just fucking cracked, right down the middle. He had an animal side to him, no less than she did. He couldn’t shift, he couldn’t adopt an animal’s skin or ways, but he was no less connected to the elements than she.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her against him. He slid his hands down her bare arms and lowered his head. He locked his lips with hers and let her see the passion, the hunger, the eternity of him.

His tongue demanded the same of her.

S
ara moaned
. His breath mingled with hers, his tongue danced around hers, pulling her deeper into an abyss where there was only her… and him… Tongues tangling, sharing breath, she kept her eyes open, focused on his, reaching deep into the windows of his soul.

His groan was captured by her mouth, but still it took her to a place where she wanted to go.

There was too much between them. Too much fabric. His clothing. She and her bear couldn’t be passive. They couldn’t be submissive and wait. Not now. Now was the time that Sara wanted to claim him.

She unbuttoned his shirt while her mouth stayed locked on his, their tongues rubbing and twisting. She grasped his shirt and tugged. Understanding what she wanted, he moved his arms and she helped him out of the sleeves. The garment fell to the floor unheeded.

She reached for his pants. With an unpracticed and fumbled yet quick twist, she had the button released and the zipper down. She tugged them off his hips. His pants fell to the floor, and he stepped out of them.

Her body quivered with longing for him. A furnace burned in her core. Only he could quench the molten need that filled her.

How had this man reached into her and pulled her soul so close to his in this short time period? Was it short? It felt like she’d known him for an eternity. What resonated with Sara the most was how fiercely her bear was in love with him. Sara had no idea—had never thought this was possible—to feel for him, and to have her bear love him so deeply.

It was wonderfully thrilling. And if she wasn’t worried about the danger that Crossroads presented, she could yield to the emotions and take what Joe had to offer.

But she couldn’t let her guard down. She had to keep moving. She’d take everything she could right now, and keep it for an eternity.

Joe’s hands slid down her shoulders, lowering and cupping her ass, pulling her tight to him. She put her hands on his stomach, his abs tight under her fingers. She ran her fingernails over the flesh of his chest, the fullness of his pecs, up to the wide set of his shoulders.

Joe groaned. He pulled away from the kiss. His hands lowered, cupping her full breasts just beneath the mounds. His thumbs resting on her nipples, and he rubbed circles on the pebbled, dark brown tips.

The moisture deep within her pussy began to make its journey downward. It would only be a matter of seconds before the proof of her lust for him was a mess between her thighs. She smelled his desire, smelled the drop of pre-cum that had already presenting itself on his thickness and been rubbed onto her belly when he’d pulled her close. She lowered her hand to her stomach, found it, ran her thumb over it and put it in her mouth.

“Ah, fuck, Sara,” he growled.

“I had to see how you taste. I have to know.”

“Christ.” He squeezed her breasts with his hands, then pinched her nipples between his fingers and rolled them, then pinched them flat. The pain was perfect, exquisite, and rolled through her body like thunder.

“I want you,” Sara admitted. “I’ve never wanted a man. I’ve never known this could happen.” How could she possibly explain to him that she’d never so much as gotten wet over a man? That life had never even presented that opportunity? She’d never had a sex drive.

And now? It was like she was in heat for him. She wanted him. All of him. Every inch of him. He occupied her mind, her body. She wanted him in her with a ferocity that was scary.

“Touch me.”

She lowered her hand. Touched the hard length of him. Felt the hotness of his flesh. She held him tight in her hand, then moved her hand up and down his cock. At the base of it, she wrapped her hand around it and squeezed.

He groaned and pinched her nipple with renewed fervor.

She ran her fingertips up his cock, let her thumb find the slit at the end, slick with his pre-cum. She rubbed it over the head of his cock, making him catch his breath, a low growl coming from deep within his chest.

She lowered herself to her knees. His eyes were focused on hers, then on her lips, his gaze not wavering. She licked her lips and wrapped her hand around him. She felt unsure, but let her emotions guide her. Her body shook, her ache for him rocking her, turning her inside out. She parted her lips, then opened her mouth wide, letting the underside of his cock lay on her tongue. She marveled at the heaviness, the thickness, the rigidity. She closed her lips, feeling the velvety texture of him against the roof of her mouth and her tongue. Pushing her head forward, she let him slide further in, wanting as much as she could take of the smooth length of him.

His eyes narrowed, and a mask of pure lust flashed over his features, making her need for him greater. Her pussy flexed, and her juices ran down her thighs. She flicked her tongue side to side, licking him while he stretched her mouth.

“Ah, Sara. Fuck.” Joe’s words were an aphrodisiac, the tone so low, the desperation so evident, as if he’d been waiting for this for an eternity. His fingers glided into her hair and he gripped her locks, pulling back, pushing her head forward at the same time.

His groans, the way his head was thrown back, and the tensing and flexing muscles on his stomach were the encouragement she needed that he liked what she was doing. She moved her head back and forth, his length slick with her saliva.

He pulled her up, her body going upward as his spit-slickened cock left a trail on her chest, then her abdomen. He kissed her while she wrapped her hands around his cock, pulling on him, jerking on him, imagining that this would be what her pussy would be doing to him if they were fucking.

He put both hands under her and raised her upwards while turning at the same time. Her back was against the wall, her chest against Joe, her legs wrapped around him and hooked on his hips.

“I can’t wait. I fucking need you. Now.”

She wanted to tell him she felt the same way. She couldn’t tell him that; it would be her undoing. It would put her in a position where she’d have to follow through on her emotions. So instead, she tugged him closer with her legs.

With one swift drive, he plunged into her. She gasped from the way his width stretched her. He pressed his lips to hers, drinking her gasp away. It felt like he was touching every part of her, from her pelvis to her throat. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself closer, latching onto his lips, driving her tongue into his mouth the way he was diving into her. Her pussy clenched around him, her muscles contracting with pleasure.

Joe stopped. Froze. He grabbed her ass tighter, pulling her onto him until their joining was seamless. Completely still, he breathed her in.

“Don’t move,” she said. “I want to remember this moment forever.”

He frowned as if absorbing her words and picking up the meaning.

“Forever. That’s how long you’ll be mine.” He groaned and began to pump, stroking in and out. She clawed at his shoulders, raked her nails down his biceps, scored his chest as she flailed, unable to control the spasms taking over her body.

“Be still, Sara, or you’re going to make me—” Joe pulled away, but Sara’s bear and Sara both reacted, holding him, ramming her back onto him, fully, totally, completely impaled.

He reared back and pulled away, just enough to partially come out of her, and turned toward the bed. Sara grasped his shoulders, pulling herself up, and sliding back down on him. The friction between them, the adrenaline, the emotions were too much.

Her mind was muddled. Her breath came out in bursts and pants. She clawed at his shoulders, searching for purchase while her body began to come undone, falling further and further into a chasm that was exploding with tiny pinpoints of light, more intense than the fireworks she’d seen when she was a child.

“No other man will have this. It’s mine. You’re mine.”

His words touched her, grabbed her, and threw her over an orgasmic cliff. She opened her mouth to scream for him, and he swooped down, catching her scream, taking it into his lungs.

While she was still in the middle of contractions and aftershocks, Joe held her tight, carried her to the bed, and flipped her over.

He ran his hand along her spine, his fingertips burning a trail into her flesh. She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind was short-circuited from one aftershock after another. She’d never imagined that sex could ever be so intense and freeing.

Joe’s hand slipped around her hip, over her waist, cupping her sex, sliding his fingers between her already slick and still spasming folds.

“Fuck, you feel incredible.” He grunted the words out, raw and sexy, as his fingers parted her lips and rubbed fast circles on her clit.

Sara moaned, unable to put the words together to tell him how he was affecting her and how she felt about him.

With a quick thrust, he plowed into her, stretching her again, filling her completely, and pressing against her already heightened G-spot.

She shoved her hips back, taking him in as deep as she could, and rolled her pussy. Joe groaned, pumping his shaft, ratcheting up the level of arousal, pushing her closer and closer to the place she’d never been to with anyone else.

He pulled back, taking away the heat of his body, leaving her wanting more. When he drove into her again, she pushed back, enjoying the give and take of his thrusts. She moaned low with every thrust, while he slapped a hand on her hip.

His powerful plunges increased in tempo. All she could hear was the sound of her breathing, her low moans, and the slapping of his skin against hers. He angled his hips and fucked her with sweeping strokes.

“Christ.” He held still for a moment.

“Don’t stop.” The words were ripped from her very core.

“If I don’t, I’m liable to—”

She didn’t care. All she knew was that she wanted him fiercely. She began to push her body back and forth, impaling herself over and over.

With that, Joe’s self-control seemed to vanish. It felt like he grew more engorged, filling her while a part of her snapped. She felt his orgasm, hot and fluid, deep within her. She bit her lip to contain the screech of her own orgasm while her pussy milked the cum from his shaft.

He collapsed on her. His teeth sank into her, just where her shoulders met her neck.

She lost sensation in her legs and collapsed. He lay on her, his body heaving from the exertion and the climax.

A rumbling sound caught her attention.

It wasn’t her bear.

It was his stomach. It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten either.

“I want you to meet everyone, anyway,” Joe said.