BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (101 page)

Jenna recognized him by the lurch in her stomach before he turned and she recognized his face. He was bigger than all of them, except that woman, and he moved like he had authority over him. Something made her think he was stronger.

Maybe it was the way they were toward him, too. They were submissive, like they’d accepted he was the boss.

Why Bruce didn’t want to introduce Jenna to these people were beyond her, especially if he was the boss. But he hadn’t wanted them to know about her, so she stayed put.

They gathered in a circle toward the edge of the plateau, and it looked like some sort of meeting was about to begin, but nothing happened.

They were still waiting for someone, Jenna realized.

A moment later a woman with long black hair and a rolling, lethal gate appeared from the trees almost right next to Jenna. The woman was tall and thin and the way she carried herself let Jenna think that she knew she was beautiful, even from behind. The whole group stiffened when she came closer, and it was clear that she was in control, not Bruce.

Even he turned his eyes down and hunched his shoulders when she came closer.

There was familiar about this woman, but Jenna didn’t know what. Until she turned around.

Tara’s green eyes glowed in the dark, and when she flashed a menacing smile Jenna’s blood ran cold. Tara had sharp, pointed teeth in her mouth. She looked more like an animal than anything Jenna had ever seen, and she was almost sure it wasn’t Tara after all.

But then the woman spoke, and it was impossible to mistake her. It was definitely Tara.

So that was why Bruce hadn’t wanted to introduce Jenna. Because Tara was there. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of jealousy. Bruce was asking her to stay home while he went up the mountain and spent the night with her?

Jenna huffed. She hadn’t decided what to do yet, when Tara’s voice cut off in the middle of her sentence. She started looking around, her eyes searching the trees. The atmosphere around Jenna changed, the air was suddenly so cold she started to shiver. An icy wind blew from where they group was standing, and Jenna wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep the cold out.

She didn’t dare move now, with Tara scanning the trees, but a moment later Tara’s eyes snapped back to where Jenna was, and locked onto her, even though Jenna had been sure she was completely hidden.

Tara’s eyes changed from a green glow to a white glare that almost blinded her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

Chapter 5

The night prickled along Bruce’s skin and something felt wrong. Everything felt like it was just slightly off-kilter, like something was about to happen and he didn’t know what it was.

All the way up the mountain he’d had the urge to look over his shoulder, but every time he did there was nothing. As if anyone could follow him up there… the only creatures able to go up that side of the mountain were other shapeshifters. Humans couldn’t scale those slippery rocks.

And still he’d felt like he was being followed. Not stalked, like it was an animal, just followed. And still, even though he hadn’t felt like it had been dangerous, he had felt danger curling up his spine and unfurling in the base of his skull.

He just couldn’t place it.

The group of shapeshifters came together on the plateau as always. He was one of the first to arrive but he hung back in the trees. He wanted to see if something was waiting for them. He had a thought that it might be the Assassins, but the feeling didn’t fit. He’d felt the dread that came with Assassins, smelled the stench of death that followed them. What he felt wasn’t that.

It was a relief, but it still left him in the dark.

Stephen and Rosa were the first to step out onto the plateau. They didn’t show anything, but Bruce could tell Stephen felt it too. He was twitchy and his eyes shifted all over, looking out for something.

Lori was next and she stomped onto the plateau looking like she didn’t feel a thing. Bruce didn’t doubt that. She was big enough and strong enough not to fear too many things. Anything other than the Assassins was an afterthought to her, either because she was too close to her animal to care, or because she was too tied up in the preternatural world to have to really fend for herself.

Bruce wondered for a second what it would be like to be like her – to have absolutely no attachments. The only people Lori really were bound to were the members of the pack, and even then it had nothing to do with affection. It was purely because that was how it worked. He doubted she’d ever really invested herself, and if she had it was so long ago she couldn’t remember what it was really like.

He couldn’t imagine a life like that. Everywhere he’d been, even before he’d come to Williamsburg, he’d known people and loved them on some level.

Williamsburg was the one place that felt the most like home, but still. He couldn’t imagine a life without people, ties, connections, bonds. He couldn’t imagine a life without Jenna.

The conversation earlier had bothered him. She was so open-minded about it. She could have run for the hills and decided never to see him again after she found out what he was. Instead she wanted to know more about his life, wanted to make peace with it.

That was all good and well if it wasn’t so dangerous for her to be a part of his word. Just
knowing
about his world was bad enough already. He was edgy about it, nervous to leave her down there alone when all of the pack hadn’t arrived yet. There had been too many times already where one of them had been down there trying to kill her while he thought they were up in the mountains for a meeting.

Dwayne and Cleveland appeared at the same time as if his strength of will that they be present had summoned them. Dwayne glanced at Bruce with a strange expression, his eyes telling Bruce that he knew things that the others didn’t. Maybe he felt it too. Maybe he knew what it was. After the meeting he would have a chat with the guy, see if he could find out what was going on.

The feeling was starting to give him the scratch and he couldn’t shake it no matter what he did.

He held his breath as they all marched to the circle and stood facing each other. They didn’t say anything and the shift in power was clear, the hierarchy settling so that he was at the top of the pyramid. The others felt it too, their auras submissive toward him. The power always rearranged itself that way, but it felt different than usual. It was more distinct, like it was important. More than before.

When Tara finally stepped out of the trees Bruce let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d been anxious about her turning up. He hadn’t forgotten that she was the last one of the pack members that had tried to kill Jenna. And he was the one that had shot her in the shoulder.

It didn’t look like it now, with how she moved, but she’d struggled to recover, fought a battle to pull through at all. It was her power that had saved her.

She walked onto the plateau and her power rolled over the bare ground and pushed against them. It made it harder to breathe, and Bruce was sure that whatever she was throwing off was adding to the feeling he still couldn’t shake. She moved like she was on the hunt and when she came closer he dropped his eyes because no matter how he’d come to despise he, she was still above him in rank and way more powerful.

Even without the extra boost his power had given her in the short time they’d tried to do a relationship.

“Well, it’s nice to see you all here together,” she said in a sugary voice that did nothing to hide how lethal she was and how much she was obviously ready to go out on the hunt. Bruce could smell her bloodlust.

None of them answered. Whatever she needed to say, he wanted her to say it so that he could get away from there. The power in the ground was restless, uncomfortable.

“I want to talk about the Assassins,” she said and the group shuffled as if the topic was something no one wanted to talk about. “I hear they still haven’t moved on.”

She glanced at Dwayne who nodded in confirmation.

Tara’s voice was hard when she spoke again. Her eyes were glowing a greenish color, heading swiftly toward the blinding white light that it became when she was about to change. The change was close. Her usual eyes didn’t look the way they did now.

“I want to know why that is. They’re smelling something here. Someone knows something and they think they can pick up on it.”

Bruce was aware of her teeth as she spoke. They seemed even worse than before, deadly and animalistic. She was losing her humanity and it wasn’t happening slowly.

“If there’s any human down there—“

She stopped talking and her eyes shifted to the trees. The feeling in the air grew until Bruce felt like it was going to suffocate him. Tara’s eyes started changing, went all the way to the bright light and the thin pupils that made him think she should rather have been a snake than a leopard.

“There’s a human here,” she said under her breath and her voice was low like she was growling. Bruce lifted his head and smelled the air, but all he could pick up on was Tara’s sudden aggression.

“It’s impossible for a human to get up here,” he said. Tara glared at him and then moved toward the trees at a speed that was much too fast for a human, using muscles that a human shouldn’t even have had. She disappeared into the trees and a moment later Bruce hear a small yelp.

The sound tugged at him like there was something very important he should know what he didn’t. And then Tara came out of the trees again, dragging a woman by the arm.

Dragging Jenna by the arm.

Bruce’s blood went cold and for a moment he felt dizzy. The pack gasped for breath.

“Impossible, is it?” Tara said and her voice was thin with rage. She was on the verge of losing control. Bruce glanced down at Jenna. She didn’t look scared as he thought she would. Maybe a bit rattled, but there was anger in her eyes, too. They were a brilliant green, a human green, but the anger was unmistakable.

“You human found us,” Tara said. Bruce’s stomach flipped. By saying
your human
it sounded like she knew about the mating. But she couldn’t know, could she? Not unless Dwayne had told her, because Bruce had no doubt the psychic knew.

When he glanced at Dwayne the man shook his head almost imperceptibly, as if he knew the question on Bruce’s mind. He hadn’t ratted him out. He liked the idea that there was another loyal in his pack, someone that had his back. But that took a backseat in his mind.

Tara had Jenna and she was beyond angry.

“We should have killed them all when we had the chance,” she sneered. “Taking out only the few humans that know leaves too many that can still find out.”

“Tara,” Dwayne said softly, trying to ease the situation. But she wouldn’t hear it. She threw Jenna down and Bruce went to run forward and check on his wife. Every muscle in his body was clenched tight and he had to bite on his jaw not to attack Tara for manhandling Jenna.

“Well, we’ll make this easy,” she said and her voice rolled out husky and on the verge of a growl. She was letting her animal go. All hell was going to break loose in about five seconds. “We’ll start with her and then work out way down the mountain.”

Tara brought on a part of the change. Her face pushed out, taking on a strange shape that was between her leopard and her human. Her fingers lengthened, her nails turning into black claws and her skin became hairy. But she kept her human shape, her ebony hair that trailed down her back like silk and her hips that swayed when she walked, so that she was rather a bi-pedal monster.

She turned and headed for Jenna, teeth bared and claws ready. Bruce lunged forward but he would be too slow. Jenna screamed as the claws came down.

Instead of sinking her claws into Jenna’s cheek as Tara had planned, her hand bounced back as if there was a force around Jenna. She scrambled back, away from Tara, her eyes wide, her breathing too fast. If she didn’t focus on breathing slowly, she was going to hyperventilate.

“You have protection,” Tara said to Jenna, her eyes narrowed to thin slits. “A shifter’s protection.

She turned and her eyes found Bruce immediately.

“You’ve given her your protection,” she said.

“I’ve taken her as my mate,” Bruce answered, because it was better that Tara knew than that she thought there was some way around it. He wasn’t just Jenna’s bodyguard, he was her guardian. There was a very big difference.

Tara let out a sound that was something between a hiss and a low-throated growl, and launched toward Bruce, taking out her anger on him instead. This was what it was for. The bond that he’d forged with Jenna, the protection he’d given her by taking her as his mate. This was what it had been all about. Jenna could not be harmed, instead he would take her place.

He was ready for Tara, and by the time she reached him he was a bear. The shift came fast, the magic in the air making it easier, the fear for his wife making it less painful. It was like all sensation had left his body and all that was left was his quest to protect his own.

Tara was a leopard by the time she reached Bruce, having taken her shape, too and she attacked him with a scream that sounded eerily human coming out of her leopard throat.

How many times had they gone through this?