Fierce Wanderer (7 page)
Authors: Liza Street
She tried to keep her legs from shaking, tried to be strong until Blake could get there. “I don’t have them.”
He gave an exaggerated sigh. “They’re probably with your new toy. My men are closing in on him right now. We’ll take the photos, and be out of your hair. No one has to get hurt.”
She didn’t believe anything he said. Nobody could sneak up on Blake.
She also didn’t believe they’d just take the photos and leave without hurting her or Blake. Tobin wanted revenge; she could see it in the cruel twist of his mouth.
“How’d you get here?” she asked. If she kept him talking, Blake would have a chance to figure out something was wrong and come find her.
He smirked. “I knew you’d come back to the ranch. You didn’t have a truck or anything. You’d have to get supplies somehow. So we just looped around on the highway and beat you to it. The ranch was deserted, so once it got light, we started hiking toward the crash site. I knew our paths would cross.”
Hera heard rustling nearby. She prayed it was Blake, but two men emerged. One of them worked with Tobin; she’d seen him before. The other she recognized from some of the photos in her duffel. “We can’t find him or any photos,” one of them said.
Tobin spat. “He’ll come if the whore screams for him.”
He took aim.
“If you kill me, why would he come?” Hera asked.
“I don’t plan on killing you yet,” Tobin said. “You can’t scream when you’re dead. But a blown knee-cap, well. That’ll get you to holler.”
He lowered his arm slightly, taking aim at her legs.
“No,” Hera said. “No, don’t do this.” She hated the panic that laced her words, that crept up her throat and threatened to choke her.
A mountain lion jumped out from the brush behind them, snarling. It landed on Tobin. Hera screamed, and a shot rang out. One of the men standing next to Tobin fell, a look of shock on his face as blood pulsed from a wound in his neck. He lay motionless.
Tobin screamed in terror and pain. The lion mauled him, tearing him apart with his claws and teeth.
The other man backed away and found a long pine branch. He held it for a moment, as if trying to decide whether he should hit the lion with it to free Tobin.
But Tobin’s screams had turned to weak gurgles, and the lion turned its blood-stained face to that last remaining man. The man backed away slowly, brandishing his stick. The lion lunged at him. He screamed, dropped the stick, and ran.
The lion gave the corpses next to him a look of pure disgust and loped over to the stream. He dipped his head into the water, washing away the blood.
Hera stood frozen in place, too much in shock to move. “Blake?” she whispered.
Once the blood was washed away, the lion in front of her began to change form. He shimmered as joints popped and fur diminished, until a naked man crouched in the lion’s place.
She was shivering. He retrieved her jeans and helped her put them on. “We can’t stay here,” he finally said. “It smells like death.”
Flies had already come circling around the corpses. Hera shuddered.
“Are you okay?” he asked, picking her up and carrying her from the stream.
“Yes, I…I think so. I can’t believe it’s over. It’s really over. He’s gone.”
“He is. You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”
Chapter Eighteen
Blake put his brother’s Range Rover in park and watched Hera as she stirred from her sleep. All along the windy roads back from Reno she’d napped, her head lolling one way or the other with every turn. It sure as hell didn’t look comfortable, but she was exhausted. She’d insisted on doing her own hiking back to the ranch.
He’d hated that. Not because she was slow. No, he didn’t care at all how long she took, because it meant more time together. He’d hated watching her struggle and watching her falter when she’d inevitably gotten blisters. He’d hated it that she wouldn’t let him help her more than a hand up over fallen trees.
She didn’t seem to want him to touch her, and that hurt.
He looked past her sleeping face, silhouetted from the lights of his ranch home.
They’d anonymously dropped off the folder of photographs, with Hera’s pre-typed note about Tobin and his crimes. After that, they drove around Reno for a little while. She’d expected to connect with her friend, but her friend wasn’t at home and wasn’t answering Hera’s calls.
Without anywhere else to go, she’d agreed to come back here, to Blake’s place.
He reached out a tentative finger and touched the edge of her cheek, just where her jaw line met her neck. “Hey,” he whispered.
She jumped, startled awake.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No,” she smiled. “It’s okay.”
“I know I’ve scared you,” he said. “Either with the mate talk, or slaughtering your ex-fiancé. Probably both.”
She watched him in the dim light. She smelled so damn good, he wanted to rub his face in her hair, mark her as his.
“I’m glad about Tobin,” she said. “It doesn’t make everything better, because I still can’t go back to Winston. There were too many dirty cops, and their families will hate me for sending them away.”
She paused as if gathering her thoughts, and Blake waited.
“I guess I don’t understand what it means that you think I’m you’re mate.”
“It means you’re the only woman I’m going to love,” he said. “Beyond that, I don’t know anything about it. Our folks died when we were cubs, and we were raised by a grizzled old aunt who wouldn’t tolerate that kind of talk. So we’d be figuring out what this means together, if you’re willing.”
He took in a deep breath, watching her. He thought she smelled happy, but he couldn’t be sure. There were too many variables, too many different ways this could go. If she didn’t want to go back to Winston, she might wait to get in touch with her friend, and live with her there in Reno. Start a new life on her own.
A life away from him.
He didn’t know if he could bear it.
She unbuckled her seatbelt. This was it. She was going to get out of the truck and ask Jude or Mav to find her a couch away from Blake, somewhere she could sleep for the night before coming up with her next steps.
But instead, she slid over to Blake. She turned around and threw her leg over his lap so she straddled him.
“Hera?” he choked.
“Blake,” she said, “I don’t know what’s come over me, but whatever strange strong feelings you have, I’ve been feeling them, too. I thought I would die if Tobin shot you. I wouldn’t have been able to go on. But you’re here, and we’re alive, and I think we owe it to ourselves to follow this relationship where it wants to take us.”
He blinked back tears of relief. “You’re not leaving.”
“No,” she said. “If you’ll have me, I’ll stay right here.”
With a growl, he leaned forward and captured her mouth with his.
The porch light flicked on and off, and Mav opened the front door. Leaning out, he said, “Stop screwing in Jude’s car!”
Blake flipped him off and continued kissing Hera, his lover, his mate.
The Sierra Pride Series
Fierce Wanderer
Fierce Heartbreaker (due out June 2016)
Fierce Protector (due out July 2016)
Fierce Player (due out August 2016)
Fierce Dancer (due out September 2016)
Fierce Informer (due out October 2016)
Fierce Survivor (due out November 2016)
Fierce Lover (due out December 2016)
Acknowledgments
The Sierra Pride series would not have been possible without the loving guidance and spot-on feedback given by my critique partners: Tori, Pat, Kary, Shyla, and Rochelle. You awesome women have helped my dream come true! Special thanks goes to my friends and family for listening to me obsess about these characters for months. And to J—this book is for you. Thank you for your understanding and your encouragement. I couldn’t do this without you.
About Liza Street
Liza got her start in romance by sneak-reading her grandma’s paperbacks. Years later, she tried her own hand as a ghostwriter of romance. It wasn’t long before she heard the call of the wild—the call of shapeshifters, to be exact—and she couldn’t resist developing her own series. Now she divides her time between freelance editing, ghostwriting, and the mountain lion shifters in the Sierra Pride.
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A Note from Liza
Thank you soooo much for reading my debut romance! One thing I’ve learned in this business is that reviews help authors a whole lot. If you loved Fierce Wanderer (and even if you didn’t!), an honest review would be an immense favor.
If reviews aren’t your thing, I thank you anyway for doing me the honor of reading my book.
Love,
Liza
Copyright
Fierce Wanderer, Book 1 of the Sierra Pride
by Liza Street
Copyright 2016 Liza Street. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental or used fictitiously.
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