Page 28

Harper

I stared at the side of Kieran’s face, willing him to open up.

He’d hustled me into the toilet block and let me do what I needed to after inspecting each cubicle, which wasn’t creepy at all. First, I had to deal with my bladder, but now we were on our way home, I needed to deal with this.

“You need to tell me what that was about.” If I closed my eyes for a second, I could see those three creepers. I didn’t know what kind of shifter they were, but they were the most animalistic I’d ever seen. “Kieran.” He shook his head, flicking the indicator on as he changed lanes. “Kier?—”

“Mack’s gonna kill me if I tell you.”

“So this is something to do with Mack.” I might not be a genius, but my mother didn’t raise no fool. Dating men meant being a part-time sleuth just to make sure you got home in one piece. I grabbed my phone out, my fingers flying across the screen. “What’s his last name again?”

“Harris… Shit, Harper.” He glanced over to see what I was doing, then steered the car over to the parking lane. “Harper…”

“Just a sec.” I started scrolling rapidly through the results of my search, scanning the hits, when he reached over and covered my hand with his.

“Harper, they’re bad guys.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

I had run into more than my fair share of dodgy men at work and in my personal life. The ones that had your hair standing up on the back of your neck, some primal part of you saying nope, not him. Each one of those… whatever they were, had me feeling all sorts of things I never wanted to feel.

Right after they smelled me.

“And what the hell does me smelling fertile mean?”

“It…” He shook his head. “Look, none of that matters. What matters is you can’t go anywhere near them.”

“Have no intention of doing that.” He blinked, obviously expecting a fight.

“I’m sorry, those guys had ‘I will do bad things to you, then desecrate your corpse afterwards’ written across their foreheads.

I went through my whole bad boy phase, but I am completely over that now.

” When I crossed my arms, Kieran seemed to pay way too much attention to my chest. “Eyes up here, Bear Boy. Who are those guys?”

“Mack—”

“Mack’s not here right now. I am.” My hand went to the door handle. “For now, so fess up.”

“Mack has good reason not to want to form a mating bond.” It was like Kieran was unloading some terrible secret, but I had Mack pegged already.

A moody avoidant that started chasing the moment I showed no interest. Sometimes it felt like that was guys’ default setting.

“His dad didn’t treat his mum right. Not all wolf shifters are freaking psychos?—”

“But some of them are.” I settled back in my seat, trying to work out how the hell Mack grew up with dickheads like that and failed to become just like them. Surely little baby Mack would’ve been bossing them all around, making them question their life decisions.

Unless he only got bossy once he managed to free himself from a dysfunctional family.

“I think I get it.”

“No, you don’t.” Kieran unclipped his seatbelt and turned in his seat.

“Humans’ awareness of shifters is growing by the day, but you don’t know…

” His hand gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Some of us don’t follow the ways of our forefathers.

They don’t treat human life as precious because our mothers, our mates, come from that community.

Because we share blood with them. Some of them…

” His fingers flexed and I could see the nails turn to claws and then back again.

“Some of them are no better than animals. No, worse. A wolf might thrill-kill a flock of sheep, but at least the end comes quickly to those animals. A real wolf wouldn’t… ”

It felt like someone dropped a bucket of cold water over me.

I had blithely started messing around with creatures far bigger, stronger, and faster than me, but I never really thought about what that could mean.

When I looked up, meeting Kieran’s steady gaze, it wasn’t the usual look of reassuring warmth.

“OK, got it. Keep the fuck away from wolf shifters. I think I want to go home now.”

He let out a sigh so soft I nearly missed it, then turned the key in the ignition, restarting the car. We travelled all the way home in silence, my fingers tracing the shape of the trophy.

“So I want to say I had a good time tonight…” Plastering a smile on my face was my usual way of dealing with awkward situations, but when we pulled up the front of my place, Kieran got out, walking around to my door. He wrenched it open, then held out his hand. “Ohh-kay…”

“I need to make sure you get inside safely,” he growled.

“See, you could’ve made that all hot and sexy.” I pulled my hand free, then started taking the steps to my apartment two at a time as I adopted a low, growly voice. “I’ll protect you with my life, Harper. I’d die for you.”

“I would.”

That bald statement had me pausing, then turning around, only to catch him striding past. He scanned the veranda out the front of our apartment and down the line, past other people’s front doors before plucking the keys from my grip.

The lock and dead bolt were disengaged and then he stood in the doorway, sniffing the air.

“Checking what fabric softener I use, Bear Boy?” I asked. “Or is there something you’d like to share?”

“We’re going to need to be careful for a while,” he told me. “Just until we’ve got this situation sorted.”

“One you’re not giving me a lot of details about.

” I marched inside, as if daring the wolf shifters to emerge out from under my couch.

My hands went to ward off his protests. “Not until you’ve talked to Mack.

I’m tired, Kieran. Apparently, being a bear jockey is hard on the body.

I want to go to bed and sleep forever, or at least until my alarm goes off.

” But as I walked down the hall, he followed. “Or did you have other ideas?”

Suddenly, I wasn’t so cranky. These guys had been blue balling me with these sexy dreams for days, but that didn’t replace that electric feeling that came from actually touching someone else’s body. That was exactly what I felt as he brushed past me, pushing open the door of my bedroom.

He filled the space, seeming to take up way more room than his human body could. As his eyes raked the walls, then he opened my cupboard doors, I watched him closely. Those broad shoulders, the way his shirt hugged his chest as he… I blinked when he turned around.

“Find anything in there?” I asked. “Some rabid dust bunny shifters maybe? Or just that dildo Daria gave me that looks like a tentacle.”

“What?”

He frowned at that.

The creepers at the carnival seemed a long way away right now. Kieran had used his super shifter nose to check the place out. We were safe, and that meant scared Harper got booted out of the room and replaced by this.

“I mean, there’s one way you could ensure I was safe.”

A few slow steps and I was right there in front of him, confronted by his massive size again. Before it was in bear form, which was awe inspiring, but when he was human…? My hand slid down his shirt, plucking at the top bottom.

“Harper—”

He was about to say something sensible, about locking all the doors and windows and getting a good night’s sleep, but right now I didn’t want sensible.

If I went to bed alone, I’d replay what happened tonight over and over until the wee hours of the morning, and if I wasn’t going to get any sleep, I’d much rather do so having fun.

“You said you’d do anything for me.” My eyes met his just in time to watch his turn to molten gold.

“Keep you safe. Stop those fuckwits from getting within a metre of you.”

That low, urgent growl. It did something for me back then, but right now, it hit differently. When strangers were being scary, I couldn’t appreciate the raw power of it, but I did right now.

“You did that.” I nodded. “You scared them off and kept me safe.” Another button popped open and this time my hand slid under the soft fabric, finding his chest hard and shockingly hot under my palm. “But that’s not what I need right now.”

“I know what you need.” His hand covered mine, and for a moment I thought he was going to pull it away.

The tension in his forearm made me think that was a possibility, but whatever war he was fighting internally, it appeared I won.

A thumb brushed across the back of my hand. “I can smell it on you.”

“There you go, talking about my scent again.” His eyes widened and his lips fell open, ready to babble out an apology, but that wasn’t what I needed. “What’s it telling you, Bear Boy?”

“I…”

I liked the way he fought to find the words, the way his body towered over mine.

The feel of his knuckles grazing my cheek was sweet, but I needed more than sweet.

Sweet wouldn’t drive away the memories of what had happened tonight, the incomplete explanation that Kieran had given me.

So I pressed my face into his palm, then moved, flicking my tongue up along his thumb, then staring into his eyes as my lips surrounded it and sucked.

That sharp intake of breath was everything. I didn’t feel helpless, small, or a victim anymore. I had power, and I displayed it right now. Those golden irises were swallowed by his dark pupils, his breath coming in faster with every suck.

“Harper…”

He said my name like a prayer, but whatever god or goddess he was praying to, he lost the fight, pulling me free and then picking me up to toss me on my bed.

That’s when I knew I’d won.

Kisses bruised my lips and trailed down my neck, his stubble scratching the skin. I’d be red raw with beard rash and I didn’t care. The faint sting had me feeling more alive, something consolidated when my fingers sank into his hair. My mouth found his, my hunger a perfect match for his own.

Until it outmatched it.

I pulled away, tugging at my clothes and his until he pulled back.

“Harper, this isn’t a good idea.”

“Oh, I disagree.” I reached down and cupped the sizeable mound in his jeans, giving his dick an experimental squeeze, watching his eyes go heavily lidded. “This is my best idea yet.”

“Harper.” That growl did things to me, as did his hands as they went around my wrists, pinning them to the bed, because this was the kind of masculine strength I needed. Not threatening to hurt me or sniffing me like a dog in heat, but this. “You were threatened tonight. That had to be scary.”

“But that’s what you’re here for, right?” I pulled against his grip, somehow happy when he didn’t let go. “To keep the bad guys away, to protect me.”

“Always,” he said with a shake of his head. “Forever, Harper.”

“Well, what I need right now is to forget about those creepers.” My nose pressed forward, tracing the line of his neck and breathing in. I didn’t have the olfactory capability of a shifter, just getting lungfuls of woody male scent, but that was enough. “Help me to forget, Kieran?”

His teeth ground together. No, his fangs.

I watched them recede back as he let out a guttural growl before lunging forward.

My clothes and his were torn off and tossed aside, and then we were skin to skin.

Yes, this, I thought dimly, as my eyes fell closed, my lips finding his, because this was the moment when my mind went blank and stopped worrying and just started feeling.