Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears Book 3) (17 page)

Alison was gone. Each of her breaths brought a needy sound that got louder with every stroke into her, and the volume of the growl in Kirk’s throat matched until he threw his head back, yelled out as he slammed into her harder.

The light of his car was blinding now, and the stars above were too bright to look at. Closing her eyes tightly, she bowed against the earth, meeting him blow for blow until the first drum of her orgasm shattered her. Her release intensified, and she screamed out his name.

With a feral-sounding growl, Kirk pulled out of her and took himself in hand. He gripped his dick and lifted above her. She couldn’t take her eyes away from his graceful movement as he pulled stroke after stroke. Her orgasm pulsed on between her legs. He was letting her watch! Kirk locked an arm near her cheek and leaned forward. And as his stomach tightened, the first warm shot of his release splashed onto her belly, followed by another and another. His hips jerked, his eyes locked on hers. As he emptied himself completely, he ground out, “Mine.”

Oh, there was her wild man. Her wild mate. There was the possessive shifter side that sat just under the surface, marking his territory. She was his. Maybe she had been from the moment they’d seen each other.

She traced the bite mark she’d made on his shoulder. Lifting off the ground, she kissed the scar gently, then lay back and touched the dark scruff that shaded his jaw. As he pressed his lips against her palm, she whispered, “Always.”

Always.
Kirk put his car into park and let his hand slip from the steering wheel. The way she’d said “always” when they’d been together in the woods had split his heart open so wide it was almost painful.

Ally inhaled deeply, but didn’t wake up in the dim street light that illuminated the yard of her cabin. The soft glow lit up her cheek and, carefully, Kirk brushed her short blond hair from her face. It felt like silk and had soft waves to it. Her roots were darker to match her lashes that rested against her cheeks. A natural brunette, but he liked her like this. She’d been affected by her years undercover and looked accordingly tough, but he was the one she shared her real self with. Beautiful mate.

He relaxed against the headrest, just staring at her because he could. Usually, she grew self-conscious under his prolonged attention, likely a product of her phantom past. Invisibility had meant survival, but she was safe here with him. He would make sure of it. He would make sure she knew she was protected, and he would be the lucky one who got to watch her open up.

God, she had him. Ally didn’t even realize how much he cared about her. How devoted he was. How much she owned him, body and soul.

His decision to choose the Boarlanders wasn’t just about him. Sure, he’d grown an undeniable loyalty to Harrison and his crew, but choosing them also meant another layer of safety for his mate. She had an undercover past, and he didn’t know how many enemies she’d found in that life, but he knew the crews of Damon’s mountains would go to war for their own. Winning his freedom from Kong tonight meant Ally was now a part of this place.

Kirk searched the dusty gravel parking lot in front of her cabin. The road blocks were up, but he would drive around them like he always did. He’d been so damned tempted to bring Ally back to Boarland Mobile Park, to 1010, just so he could sleep beside her all night. He’d never done that with a woman before. In fact, Ally was taking more of his firsts than she knew. Being with her felt different from every other relationship in his life. She was more.

She was richness and fulfillment. She was polish on a dirty penny, and now he felt like his entire life had led him here, to this life with her. Fuck where he came from. Fuck his messed up people and the treachery Fiona had pulled. Fuck every single thing except for the life he was building with Ally.

She deserved everything. To be provided for, to feel safe. She deserved his fealty and the protection of his body. She deserved to be happy, and he was going to work his ass off every day for the rest of his life to give that to her if she would let him.

He had to be up in a few hours for one of the last long days of logging season so he couldn’t afford to stall anymore. Being exhausted on the jobsite put his crew at risk.
His crew.

Kirk huffed a soft chuckle. Damn, it felt good to belong to something bigger than himself. To something that didn’t stifle him or leave him hungry for a life he could only imagine.

Ally had done that—made him choose a future.

Kirk got out of his Mustang, shut the door easy, then strode around the front. Ally sighed the cutest little sleep sound he’d ever heard as he unbuckled her and lifted her from the car. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her cheek against the base of his throat and now his gorilla was practically clapping inside of him like a giddy teenager. She never looked at him like he was a monster, and she didn’t mind his rough edges like he’d been afraid of. Instead, the more he exposed of himself, the better they seemed to fit together.

It felt so damned good to have found his person. His partner. His mate. His Ally.

He maneuvered her front door open. As the swinging screen door creaked closed behind him, he strode through the office area to her bedroom. Settling her gently on the mattress, he lowered to his knees beside the bed and gave into his urge to touch her. Kirk drew her to the edge and hugged her securely against him. Inhaling deeply, he committed her scent to memory. Shampoo, soap, earth, Ally…him. He liked best the way she smelled right after they’d had sex, and screw whatever monstrous things that said about him.

“Ally,” he murmured.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she stretched against him like a sleepy feline.

“Earlier you said something to me, and it took me by surprise. I didn’t respond like I should’ve. You were brave enough to tell me you loved me, and I didn’t tell you how I felt about you.”

“Then tell me now, you big sappy monkey,” she whispered.

The words caught in his throat. Not because he didn’t feel them with every fiber of his being, but because he’d never said them before to anyone. He buried his face against her neck. “I love you.”

Her cheek swelled with a smile against his. “Now say it while you’re looking at me.”

He sighed and eased back, searched her eyes in the dim streetlamp lighting that filtered through her bedroom window. “Ally Cat Ghost Holman—”

“Stop it and be serious.”

“I love you.”

The smile dipped from her face, then returned slowly, like she couldn’t believe he was saying these sentiments to her.

“You had to have known how I felt, Ally.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But it’s different hearing you say it out loud. Feels better than just hoping you feel the same as I do.”

Kirk kissed her soft lips, then stood to leave, but she held his hand. “Don’t go. Not yet. Can you just stay here with me for a little while? I don’t want the night to end. Not yet.”

“Okay.” Kirk kicked out of his shoes and climbed onto the bed behind her, spooned her against his chest, and nuzzled his face into the back of her neck.

And then Ally—his Ally—took another first from him as he fell asleep beside her.

****

Kirk’s warmth left her back, and Ally pouted sleepily. She was still lying on top of the covers, and the only thing that had kept her from the chill in the air was her big, naturally hot-natured mate.

But when she turned around to beg him to lie back down beside her, the look on Kirk’s face had her sitting straight up beside him. He had his head canted, his ear directed at the window to the back yard. Outside, gray dawn light streaked through the sky, which made it easy to see the suspicion on Kirk’s face.

“Can you hear that?” he asked.

She listened really hard. Other than a few morning birds chirping outside and her own breathing, she didn’t hear anything. “No. What does it sound like?”

He narrowed his eyes as if searching for the right words. “Like something tiny and high pitched. Like the whine of a mosquito, but it’s constant. A buzzing. Electric maybe. It’s almost too high for me to hear but I had trouble sleeping because it doesn’t belong out here.”

She ran her hands over the gooseflesh on his back. Something had his instincts up.

“Do you have a computer?” he asked low.

“Yeah, in the other room. It’s turned off, though.”

“Huh.” He was doing it again, angling his ear toward the window. In a distracted voice, he said, “I’ll be right back.” Lithely, Kirk slid out of bed and padded silently out of the room.

In a less graceful maneuver, Alison flopped out of bed like a tuna fish and bolted for the peg on the wall where her holster was hung. She pulled her Glock and checked the clip, then slipped out the back door behind Kirk.

He was standing in the clearing, hands on his hips as he scanned the canopy above. He slid one bright-eyed glance at her over his shoulder before he strode up to a giant pine and climbed up the branches so easily she lowered her weapon to her side and gawked. Midway up, Kirk gripped the trunk and yanked something off the bark. Then just as gracefully and swiftly, he climbed back down and stared at something small and black on the palm of his hand.

Ice prickled her blood as Alison approached him slowly, gun angled toward the ground, eyes glued on the contraption. “What is that?”

He rolled his palm, turning the device over in his hand, and she gasped as she recognized the lens of a small camera. She’d used similar ones in her years undercover.

Kirk lifted his troubled gaze to hers. “You’re being watched.”

Alison leaned against the doorframe to her bedroom and studied Finn as he reclined in the office chair and tossed a tennis ball into the air. He looked calm-as-you-like, but her red flags had been flashing non-stop about him lately.

He’d become combative and hard to hold a conversation with. After the influx of videos from the silverback fight, he’d spewed his disdain for Kirk and her involvement with him. Thank goodness her years undercover had made her hart to track, because so far, no one had listed her name yet in the videos of the fight. She’d been there, followed by the cell phone cameras as she’d walked beside Kirk out of that barn. On the outside, she’d looked calm and collected, head held high, her hand on Kirk’s ribs as Kong and Layla had followed them directly, the other shifters of Damon’s mountains pushing back the crowd around her. If anyone had questions about Kirk being paired up before, those had been put to rest with the #kirksqueen that was circulating the Internet.

Finn had gone bat-shit crazy over the footage—yelling, calling superiors, and filing formal complaints, but the cold, hard fact was that her relationship with Kirk wasn’t illegal. Marriage and claiming marks were, but she hadn’t told anyone she bore his scar, so she was free to date him all she liked. At least for now, until the government tried to strip the next round of rights from shifters.

So far, the footage hadn’t damaged public perception of shifters that Cora could tell. In fact, she’d told Harrison the silverback battle had boosted curiosity on shifter culture, and her pro-shifter website had been surging with hits and questions. Harrison’s relief had been almost tangible. They hadn’t taken a giant step back in public relations and now, at the Boarland Mobile Park, Alison was utterly happy. But here at the post, Finn worked very hard to drain her.

For the last two days, she’d kept the fact that Kirk found the cameras a secret, waiting for some kind of reaction from Finn, but so far, he showed no signs of suspicion. Her mind had immediately gone to her partner when Kong had tracked down five cameras, all pointed at her house, while the woods behind Finn’s house boasted none.

Alison opened her palm and glared at the small black device she’d disabled. Someone had been watching her, but maybe Finn didn’t know about them. She hoped he didn’t. That betrayal would sting like a lash if he did. He was an anti-shifter jerk, but he was also her partner who was supposed to have her back.

“Finn?”

“No.”

She’d expected that clipped response. It was his go-to whenever she tried to talk to him. Alison screwed her face up with concern and pitched her voice higher. “Look what I found in the woods.”

He dropped the tennis ball and turned in his chair, his eyes flashing with worry. And for an instant, when he locked eyes on the device on her palm, there was a spark of recognition. Mother fucker.

“Where did you find that?”

“In a tree. Finn, someone is watching us. Why do you think they would do that?
Who
would do that?”

His bright blue eyes tightened at the corners, and he stood and retrieved his ball. “Hell if I know, Holman.” Now he wasn’t meeting her gaze, and she had to hold back huffing a breath. Un-freakin-believable. She didn’t know why they were really stationed here, but that didn’t mean Finn wasn’t aware.

He wasn’t her partner at all. Maybe he was the one sent to babysit her. But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.

“Do you think there are more?” she asked, still feigning worry. This was the part she was good at. Acting scared, acting stupid, wondering out loud. Ask a human a direct question and their instinct was to answer. Every time. Too bad for Finn she was almost as good as a shifter at sniffing out a lie. Years undercover had honed her instincts for people.

“Probably not. It’s probably Damon keeping tabs on us.”

If Finn really believed it was Damon, he would be pitching a way bigger fit and searching the woods for more. He was full up to his eyeballs with bullshit.

“Sooo,” she drawled out, “this is nothing to worry about?”

“I don’t know, Holman. I mean, shit! Do you expect me to know every answer in the goddamned world?” Defensiveness—a huge counterpart to lying. Get angry and take the focus off the fib. “What are you so worried the dragon will see, Holman? Your boyfriend sneaking in here to fuck you like an animal every night? Huh? You worried he’ll see you drying your laundry, drinking a beer, or taking a fucking hike?”

She leveled him with an empty smile. “I didn’t tell you where I’d found the camera, Finn.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But the whites in his eyes said he knew he was busted.

“I drink an occasional beer on the back porch. I keep the back door unlocked for Kirk to come spend time with me as he pleases. I hike in the back woods and dry my laundry on a line out behind my cabin. And somehow you knew where the camera was placed.” He knew where all of them had been placed. She wanted to strangle him for whatever betrayal he was pulling. “Good fucking guess,
partner
. Get out.”

“This is my post too—”

“Get out of my cabin!” she screamed, shaking with rage as she jammed her finger toward the door.

Finn stood, hate in his eyes, teeth gritted like he loathed the sight of her. The feeling was mutual. “Our superiors have to watch you to make sure you don’t fuck up again, Holman. They’re making sure you’re safe to be in the field. I’m here because you can’t be trusted not to go psychotic again.”

Lies.

Finn strode to the door and opened it wide, allowing the saturated afternoon light in. “If you hadn’t fucked everything up, if you hadn’t been a colossal failure, neither of us would be up here in this hell. The cameras are here because you’re a worthless undercover cop who can’t be integrated back into society without parameters. PTSD.” Finn spat on the wooden floor. “Fuckin’ weak.”

He slammed the door behind him so hard it rattled the cabin. Alison squatted down and covered her ears with her hands as an anguished sob wrenched from her throat.

Lies, lies, lies!

Finn was blaming her because he was busted. This wasn’t her fault. Not her fault. Riggs’s gasping face slashed across her mind, and she shook her head hard to rattle the vision away. His eyes had been so scared, but he’d shaken his head slightly.
Don’t help me. They’ll kill you. Don’t blow your cover. Don’t do anything.

And she was supposed to allow his murderer to kill the last good parts of her, too? No. She didn’t regret going cold. Didn’t regret going numb. Didn’t regret choking the life from that man. She’d done it tearless because she’d seen too much by that time to feel pain anymore, emotional or otherwise. Kirk had watched Kong tortured, and he’d said he went dead inside…well, she knew that feeling intimately. Knew what it was like to snap. To have enough and not want to feel pain anymore, so she’d turned it off. Her feelings, her humanity, all of it. And now, her flashbacks were always the same. Riggs’s face. Riggs’s pain. She barely remembered killing his murderer, and for the life of her, she couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty.

Oh, she knew what that said about her. She’d taken a life remorselessly.

She wasn’t Ghost. She was Monster.

Finn was good at games. He knew which buttons to push. Mock her pain, mock what she’d been through, and suddenly she was falling apart instead of focusing on what she’d just learned. If he didn’t place the cameras, he knew who did. Well, fuck him and whatever sketchy mission he was on.

Alison stood and strode for her room. Where there was fire, there was gasoline. Cameras wouldn’t be the only thing she had to worry about. She wiped the sleeve of her hoodie over her cheeks and rifled through her drawers, turned over the bedside table, searched the lamp, the mattress, the bedframe, her suitcase. After turning her room upside down, and then the rest of the house, she found three bugs, which meant someone had been listening to every word she said to Finn. Every word she said to Kirk when he’d spent the night in here with her. They’d listened to Kirk’s first
I love you
. They’d stolen private moments from her, and for what? There was no reason for her and Finn to even be here! The shifters posed no threat to anyone. They never had.

She slammed her hiking boot down on the bugs and crushed them to dust, and then she pulled her knife and cut the lining of her suitcase. She hadn’t come into this weaponless. She’d come to this job just as she had any other because she would never taper her instincts again. She wouldn’t feel safe as long as she was working this job.

With trembling fingers, she pulled the burner phone from the lining and turned it on, then dialed the number of someone she knew she could trust.

“Porter,” her handler answered.

“It’s hot as hell in here,” she murmured darkly. He would get it. He always had. Porter needed to get his hands on a burner phone quick and call her back because if she was being spied on, so was her handler.

“Give me five,” he muttered, and the line went dead.

She paced the tossed bedroom, chewing on her thumbnail as her mind raced. Was this about her, or about the shifters? Was it about a case she had worked? She’d built up a mass of enemies, but as far as she knew, she hadn’t been outed. Her tats were a giveaway, but she hadn’t gotten them until the Chicago job. Fuck, what was Finn into?

Her burner rang, and she rushed to answer. “I’m here.”

“What’s gone wrong?” Porter asked.

“Something’s not right. I’ve felt it since they assigned me the job. I’m sitting here, doing nothing, waiting for something I don’t understand. And then I found five cameras in the woods, all pointed at my cabin, and none around Finn’s house. I thought, okay, maybe it’s just security for the post, but I just asked my partner about them, and he gave me a whole lot of bullshit reasons I’m being watched. And I just disabled three bugs that were in my house.”

“Shit. Did you get them all?”

“Yes. I searched every inch of this place. Can you look up Finn Brackeen’s file?”

“Hang on.” The sound of typing clicked over the line. Porter sighed an irritated sound. “He’s clean.”

“Clean? No, he had sexual harassment reports. Three of them from female officers in his precinct.”

“No, Holman. If he did, that information has been wiped. In the system, he’s clean as a whistle. Hang on.” More typing. “Holman, you won’t believe this.”

“What?”

“You’re in the system. Still active duty undercover.”

“No, no, no, I’m not in any system. That’s the fucking benefit of being undercover.”

“You are, and it has no mention of your discharge, your break, the self-defense case, none of it.”

Alison backed up slowly until her shoulder blades rested against the bedroom wall. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make her look clean. “What does this mean?”

Her handler was quiet.

“Porter, we’ve been working together for a lot of years. Tell me straight. What does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted low. “I really don’t. I have to get off this phone. I’ll look into it more. How do I get ahold of you?”

Her mind raced around like a hurricane. “Let me think.”

“No time,” Porter said in a rush. “I’ll figure it out. Be careful.” The line went dead, and she yanked the burner from her ear, stared at it in horror.

With a trembling breath, she dialed Kirk’s number. No answer, which made perfect damn sense because he and the Boarlanders were up at the Gray Backs’ landing today, rushing to make their final numbers for the last day of logging season. They would be working until dark, maybe beyond.

Her instincts were kicked up like dust in the path of a tornado. All the fine hairs had risen all over her body, her stomach was in knots, and there was this little voice at the back of her mind that was saying,
Time’s up. Run!

Alison yanked her suitcase out of her closet and tossed it onto the bed. Fingers shaking, she called Kirk again from the burner phone. No answer. Shit, she didn’t feel right going to Boarland Mobile Park for sanctuary without the shifters’ permission. If she had Damon’s number, she would call him.

Should she even go into his mountains knowing what she knew now? They had enough on their plate without an undercover cop on the run. No, Kirk would want her to stick around. She was a Boarlander, and even if that meant nothing in the eyes of human law, it meant everything to her, to Kirk, and to the crew.

A messy armload at a time, Alison shoved her clothes from the drawer into her suitcase. A couple pair of panties fell onto the floor, but fuck ’em.
Run, run, little ghost.

She called one last time, and certain Kirk wouldn’t pick up, she put it on speaker phone and set it on her bed so she could shove a knee on her overflowing suitcase and zip it up.

“Hello?”

“Kirk!”

“Ally? What’s wrong? Why are you calling from this number?”

“Are you up on the landing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just took a five minute break to get some water and see if you texted me. Ally, you sound panicked. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Something’s wrong.” She searched for words. What could she really tell him? He already knew something was off from the cameras he’d found, but explaining her flighty instincts were tricky. She lowered her voice and explained, “Finn knew about those cameras, and when I confronted him, he—”