ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (213 page)

Or was I going to be scarred for the rest of my life, because the better half of me turned out to be the worst?

I leaned my  head against the car window, the cold glass traveling into my skin and settling in my head as a dull ache. My breath my small circles on the window, and the foreign scenery rolled by like it was a picture that was moving, not us.

Finally we pulled into the airport and Margot pulled my bag out of the trunk for me. I took it from her, and she grabbed me and pulled me into a hug. I took a deep breath, trying to hold onto the last of the ranch I would ever have.

“It’s going to be alright, don’t you know?” Margot said, her hands still on my shoulders. “You just keep your eyes on what’s real, not what everyone says is right, and things will go the way they should. You trust me now, Warren’s a good one.”

I nodded because I didn’t what else to do.

“Thank you for driving me,” I said when Margot got back in the car. She waved at me, smiled like nothing was wrong, and drove off. I was left alone.

I booked a ticket but the flight wasn’t until the next morning, so I booked myself into a hotel that was attached to the airport. My phone rang again. I turned it off before it had a chance to roll over to voicemail. I didn’t want to know.

I ordered wine from room service. It was thick and red and it was tart when it ran down my throat. But it made my head feel light. It made the heavy feeling in my stomach dissolve, and after a while I didn’t feel like crying anymore. I lay on the hotel bed, feeling sufficiently numb, and ready to go home.

Chapter 5

I’d never noticed before how much New York lacked in color. Everything seemed to be another shade of gray. If I was lucky there would be black. Or white. The wild colors in the advertisements on Time Square, the yellows in the cabs, none of that was real. The only place that held something that resembled life was Central Park.

And Central Park didn’t reflect the wide open rangers or towering mountains at all. It was a poor excuse for vegetation in a place where mankind dominated.

To keep busy I volunteered at a children’s home. Not because I had an urgent need to keep the children off the streets, or the urge to suddenly donate, but because this was the only place I felt I could do something that counted. It ate up the hours in my day that I spent awake, it took me out of the house, and it put all the money lying around in my bank account to good use.

The children were little rays of hope in an otherwise dreary world. They smiled even though their lives were upside down. They laughed at the smallest thing, purely because it was funny. I admired the way they could look at life and not be bothered to add any sort of reason to it. I wondered where we lost that in the process of growing up.

On Wednesday morning, a week after I’d left Montana, I was manning the telephone in the office while Moira ran out. She was the secretary that dealt with the calls – it was amazing how many calls came into the center, donations, help, adoptions. So many people were willing to help if the rest of us opened our eyes to notice.

The office was chilly and I pushed my hands into my jacket pocket. My fingers found something and I pulled it out. It was my wedding ring. I turned it round and round, looking at the way the white and yellow gold looped around, each going their separate ways, until they met in the middle and the yellow intersected the gold before they came together where the diamond was set.

Our paths, separate until we met, and then combined to make something beautiful. That’s what he’d told me. He’d gotten it inscribed, too, after the two had been welded together when we’d gotten back from our two-day honeymoon.

Hearts collide

That was all it said. 

A woman came in with a little girl on her hip and I put the ring back in my pocket. The child looked about four, and she had hair made of sunshine and eyes as blue as the sky. She had stitches down her arm, about ten of them.

“Can I leave her here with you for just a second?” the lady asked. “I just need to run these forms to Bob.”

I nodded and she put the little girl on the chair.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Gemma.” Her voice was like clear glass. Sparkling. Pure.

“That looks like it hurts a lot,” I said, pointing at her arm.

“It’s not so bad if you don’t look at it.

“What happened?”

“Bobo bit me.”

“Who’s Bobo?”

“He’s our dog,” the lady said, coming into the office again and hauling Gemma onto her hip. “Thanks for watching her.”

“That’s quite a wound,” I said. The woman nodded.

“I know. I don’t know what’s going on with that dog. Every month he loses it and attacks the closest thing to him. No one can tell me what I should do about it.”

“Put it down?” I said. It seemed like common sense. If the dog was a wild animal and it was your children you were talking about, there wasn’t really much of a question.

“We can’t just kill it. That’s inhumane.” She turned on her heel and walked out. I watched Gemma, running her baby-fingers through her mom’s hair. I shuddered to think how many times that could still happen. Children were the future. Killing the animal because it threatened your future…

The knowledge smacked me in the face so hard I had to sit down before I fell over. I wouldn’t think twice to have the dog put down. If I had to choose between the dog and the child I would pull the trigger myself.

And I had called Warren a monster? For doing what was right?

I suddenly felt like crying. It sat at the back of my throat, thick and round and I couldn’t swallow it down. I took the ring out of my pocket again, and slipped it on my finger.

“I have to go,” I said when Moira got back.

“Thanks for stepping in,” she said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

“Actually… I don’t think I’ll be able to come back. I’m headed to Montana.”

I walked out of the building before she had a chance to ask more questions.

I walked up to the counter and asked to book the next flight out to Montana.

“We’re fully booked,” the young man behind the counter said to me, squinting at the screen. “The next one open is next week Monday.”

“Next week Monday only? What, is the whole world flying to Montana all of a sudden?”

The young man looked at me with dead eyes and a look that made it clear none of this was his problem. I turned around and walked back to my car. Traffic had started building up and I sat on the road an hour longer than I needed to. If I’d called ahead I would have known and gone straight home. Impulses only worked in the movies.

I parked against the curb and got out, fishing in my handbag for my keys. The doorman waved at me when I walked in. I pushed the elevator button that took me to the fifth floor, and the doors closed behind me. Monday. It was almost a whole week’s wait.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Warren’s number as soon as the doors opened on my floor. I stepped out, the phone against my ear. Somewhere down the hallway a phone rang. When I turned the corner and faced my door, Warren was leaning against it, cell phone against his ear.

“Hey,” he said and I heard his voice over the phone and right in front of me.

“Hey,” I said, slowly dropping my phone and hanging up. Warren did the same.

“Look, Edith—“ he started but I didn’t let him finish. I stepped into him, wrapping my arms around his neck, and kissing him. He froze under my lips for a second before he kissed me back.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled against his mouth. “You were right. I was such a bitch.”

Warren took my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes.

“That’s something I didn’t expect to hear,” he said, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I came here fully expecting to grovel and tell you I would give it all up.”

“Give what up?”

“Everything. I’ll move to the city. I’ll give up the ranch and the stupid sheep, and you’ll never have to see any of that again…”

I shook my head until his sentence trailed off at the end.

“You love that life. I won’t let you move here.”

“I’m miserable without you, baby. I get that I’m weird, that all this is a mess. If I could just walk away from that damn curse and never look back, trust me, I would. It’s a part of me but I can push it as far away as I can. As long as I have you.”

I snaked my arms around his neck and put my head on his shoulder.

“You don’t have to do that for me. “

“But I love you,” he said, and the warmth that flowed through me every time he said it was back.

“I love you too. And you were right. I get it now.” I was aware of how close our bodies were, of his lips so close to my face. He smelled manly, male, wild. I ran my hands down his chest.

“I’ll come home with you. And we can try again. I want to try again. I’m sure I can get used to it, I just need to try.”

“I’ll change—“ I stopped his sentence with my mouth on his. I loved him. I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to live with him on his ranch. There was nothing else to say. His arms tightened around my waist and he kissed me like he meant it, his tongue drawing a trail on my lips and then finding its way into my mouth, erasing any thought I could have outside of him. I fumbled behind him for the doorknob and turned it, pushing us into the apartment.

His hands were under my shirt before the door closed again, and he popped all the buttons trying to get it off. He dropped it to the floor, and unhooked my bra. I fiddled with my jeans, undoing the button so he could roll it over my hips. I found his buckle too, and undid it. We left a trail of clothes to the bedroom, scattered through my apartment. I crawled onto the bed first and he was on top of me in a second. His hands slid over my body like he was trying to commit me to memory.

His hands finally found my desperation, and his fingers reminded me who he was, and who he could make me. My body arched and curled around his hands, moans and groans escaping in a chorus of ecstasy until I was reduced to a melted puddle of lust when I finally stopped torturing me and pushed into me.

This was Warren. This was the man I loved, my other half, the reason I woke up every day. It had been a week of hell, I’d been drowning, and with his raw power and slick lust he brought me to the surface again where I could breathe.

He was urgent, serious, rough around the edges. In the way his hands knotted in my hair and his teeth nibbled in my neck, the bed biting into the wall, he translated his fear of losing me. He was an animal, and there were no masks now, nothing to hide who he really was.

But this Warren, raw and honest and real, was the one I loved to my core. This was the man I’d chosen as a husband. The wolf I’d chosen as a mate. The life I’d chosen to live.

When he pushed me into an orgasm that blinded me with white light and spread through my body like melted caramel he was right there with me, moaning into my ear, riding out the wave that erased the lines between us until I didn’t know where his body ended and mine began. When the world finally slowed around us, he pushed up on his arm and looked at me. His skin was shiny with sweat and he was breathing hard. My panting matched his.

“I missed you so much. I don’t want to do this without you,” he said.

“Never again,” I answered and slid into his inviting arms.

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BONUS

BEAR SHIFTER’S BEST FRIEND

By: Alexis Diamond

Chapter 1

Bruce looked out the window, noted the position of the sun. It would be a while before the town’s folk were going to turn in for the night. He really had to get out to the forest.

His skin burned like he was running a fever, but he knew from experience that that wasn’t what it was. He glanced around the pub. Banbury Inn was filled with regulars, grouped around small tables in the main area, or on stools at the bar. Murphy stood behind it polishing glasses.

The Inn was the one place the adults came together after a hard day’s work to spend time together and wind down. It was the oldest building in town, dating from the time Williamsburg was founded almost a century ago. It was filled with people who made a living the mountains.

Williamsburg lay at the foot of the Syracuse Mountain Range, in Syracuse Valley. Traveling to Williamsburg was like traveling back in time. There was barely cell phone signal and if you wanted internet connection you had to go down the mountain a bit more to Rhodestown.

No one really bothered with that. They survived in the mountains because that was what they had always done, what their ancestors had done.

When the sun was below the horizon, Bruce got up and mock-stretched.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” he said to Murphy behind the bar. Murphy rested his arms on his oversized belly, still holding the glass and rag, and smiled.

“Mountain air getting to you, Brucie?” he asked.

Bruce chuckled. “After five years I think I’ve gotten used to it,” he said and left the bar, relieved he didn’t have to explain more than that.

He turned left from the bar, and followed the road until it ran into a dusty trail that led into the trees. He followed it, relying on his acute night vision to navigate his way up the mountain. The ground was steep and traveling got harder and harder, but Bruce was used to it.

When he was high enough that Williamsburg was just a small strip in the valley below, he looked around, listening into the night. Besides the hoot of an owl and the scurrying feet of night creatures in the trees, he was completely alone.

He turned his attention inward, focusing on the movement of his blood through his veins. He was aware of the very existence of his cells, the way his body moved and breathed. He felt the pull of the moon, different than it used to be when he lived in the city, and he set the beast free.

His bones moved under his skin. Popping sounds accompanied the change as his body reinvented itself. It was painful as much as it was strange. The first couple of times Bruce had changed it had driven him into a panic attack. But that had been almost fifteen years ago, when the shapeshifter inside of him hit its puberty. Now at thirty years old he’d changed more times than he could count.

When he’d changed completely, he sat back on his haunches, curled up his nose, and growled. It always felt like a sort of freedom to let the bear out. A grizzly bear was common in these parts and he didn’t have to hide as much as he just needed to avoid people.

As a bear he weighed almost nine hundred pounds. That was four times more than he weighed as a person. It was big even for a bear. Where did the extra weight come from during the change? No one had been able to figure that out yet.

The human world wasn’t ready for shapeshifters. Not yet. Maybe eventually they would get there, but shapeshifters had to lay low. The only group of people that knew about them and believed they were more than just a myth was a group of hunters that called themselves the Assassins. The name itself should have given away that they believed they were taking out humans, but they refused to see it that way.

The Assassins had been on his trail before he’d left the city at the coast, but since he’d arrived in the mountains there had been no sign.

He worked his way through the woods. He needed meat to keep the change at bay, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to control it. Normal bears could fill in their diet with plants and insects. He couldn’t.

He sat down next to a tree and waited. When it was quiet for some time the night creatures came out of hiding. He moved fast, faster than a bear his size should have been able to move, and managed to grab the hare. It was bloody and cruel but it was life. A hare wasn’t nearly enough, but he still had the rest of the night.

Somewhere after midnight he heard the howl of a wolf. He lifted his head and sniffed the air. There were werewolves in the area. Two of them were a part of the Family, what they called the pack he’d joined after he’d come from the city. It was either Rosa or Stephen. They were a mated couple and they hunted together more often than not. If it was a foreign wolf, they would hear about it the next day.

Tara was the alpha and she didn’t allow visitors unless they had a very good reason.

Bruce finished his hunt, and by the time the first bird called his question into the dawn, he shifted back to human form.

He had to get used to his human form a lot more than he ever had when he changed into a bear. It felt like being a bear was what he was born to be. Being a man just let him fit into the world.

When the sun rose up over the horizon, painting the world with the greens and grays that belonged to the Syracuse Mountains, Bruce walked into the town. Williamsburg was still asleep, and he preferred the village like this, when there weren’t so many prying eyes around.

Sometimes it was a challenge living in a town where everyone knew everyone.

The first people crawled out of their cabins into the street. There were fields and cattle to tend to. For a small settlement they managed to generate a lot.

Jenna was one of the people first out. When Bruce saw her he sped up, smiling before she turned and saw him. She had a basket of clothes in her hands and she returned his smile.

“You’re out early,” he said.

“My mom needs some help, she’s feeling a bit off so I thought I’d do the laundry for her.” She didn’t ask about seeing him. He was always out this early.

“Do you want to grab lunch later?” she asked. She worked at the local hair dresser.

When Bruce had just come into town, Jenna had been out in the woods. He hadn’t seen her until nightfall, when he’d headed into the trees to change. She’d been trapped under a fallen tree and no one had been able to hear her call for help. He’d already shifted, and she’d been terrified. But he’d managed to shift off the log and disappeared.

Later he’d come back and helped her to the village as a human.

He’d almost lost control after that, not having had the time to hunt, but it had been worth it. Jenna was one of the few young women in town, and she was beautiful. She had auburn hair that hung to her waist, and she had curves in all the right places. In the city, the average woman was too skinny. They all went on fad diets and worried about their size.

Out here the women were beautiful, voluptuous, the size a woman should be.

Jenna had emerald green eyes that smiled at him whenever she looked at him. If he’d had a different life he would have courted her. He could imagine the bliss of waking up next to woman like her for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t give away what he was, and he wouldn’t be able to marry someone without showing them every side of him.

Either he was going to have to marry a shapeshifter, or he was going to be alone for the rest of his life. Lying wasn’t an option.

“I’ll see you around lunch time,” he said to her and left her to her chores. He walked the dirt road that twisted through the cabins that were scattered at the edge of the village, until he reached his own. His was the farthest between the trees. It was safer that way. He preferred being as far from the people as he could be, and still be a part of the village.

He drew the curtains so the cabin was dark, and crawled into bed.

He got about five hours sleep when he woke up again. The sun was high up in the sky and there were virtually no shadows as soon as he stepped out of the trees. The sun was hot on his skin and he missed the cool of night.

He waved at some of the villagers as he walked past there shops, and finally he opened the door to the hair dresser. The air-con blasted him when he walked through the door, ruffling his hair. When he was in human form his hair was a shade lighter than when he was a bear, but it was still quite dark. It matched his eyes and people always commented on it.

Jenna was blow-drying Mrs. Schmidt’s hair when he saw her. The old lady sat with her lips pursed, watching Jenna like a hawk, but she wouldn’t find fault with what Jenna was doing. I leaned against the reception desk and Clara, the girl behind it, smiled at him.

“All done, Mrs. Schmidt,” Jenna said and the old lady got up and hugged her. She walked to the desk where Bruce was leaning and paid Carla. He pushed away from the reception desk and walked toward Jenna.

“Ready to go?” Bruce asked and she nodded. They left the hair dresser together and walked down the main road, turning into a side road where there was a café. They greeted the owner and a waitress showed them to their tables. She was younger, barely sixteen, and Bruce hadn’t seen her around the village as often. But Jenna knew everyone.

“Thanks, Lisa,” she said when Lisa gave them their menus. After she disappeared Bruce looked at Jenna.

“How have you been?” he asked. She nodded.

“Good, just the usual,” she said. “Drew’s still after me.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. Drew wasn’t a lot younger than he was, but he was sweet on Jenna and he had a leg up on dating her, because he was just human. Normal, plain and down to earth – not a bad guy – and not the kind of guy Bruce wanted Jenna to have. He didn’t want her to have any guy, if he had to be honest, but he couldn’t stop her from loving someone. She deserved that.

“I don’t know if I should go for it,” she said. “It seems silly to turn him away, he’s not a bad guy and who am I going to find to settle down with? Unless I leave Williamsburg I’m not going to find someone. Who’s going to come here?”

Bruce had been come from the outside world. But that was never going to happen.

“You shouldn’t be with someone just because you think it’s the thing to do. If you don’t really feel something for him – and I mean really feel – then don’t be with him.”

She nodded. “I guess you’re right,” she said, but it didn’t sound convincing.

After lunch Jenna headed back to the hair dresser. Bruce made his way down to the plant. Five days of the week Bruce worked as a lumberjack with the rest of the town’s men. It was easier to fit in that way and still keep contact without being overly social. And he was between the trees even when he was a human. They worked on the other side of the valley, against the ridge that rose up half as high as the Syracuse Mountains, so they stayed far away from his hunting ground and the other shifters.

He returned to his cabin and cleaned. Without a wife it was up to him, and if things went the way it was now, it would be up to him for the rest of his life.

By sundown he walked around his cabin and made his way through the dense trees that grew behind it. He followed a different trail than when he went out to hunt. This one was barely visible and it wound through the trees before it finally disappeared among a patch of rocks. He climbed over it. It was hard work but he liked the exercise, and if it wasn’t for his strength he wouldn’t have been able to get up there.

Humans wouldn’t be able to trail him, they wouldn’t get further than the rocks, and that was peace of mind. That was why they met where they did.

The trees fell away, giving way to rocks and boulders, and finally he was far enough up the mountain to start finding the natural caves. He stayed alert, listening for the sounds of other animals, but besides birds and the occasional squirrel he was alone.

When he got to a plateau, he stopped to catch his breath. He could feel the ground, alive with magic. It prickled along his skin and he took a deep breath. It felt like he was underwater. They were close. He could feel the other shifters.

It was like they were connected with thin lines, like spider webs, and he could feel them coming almost like vibrations.

The first to step onto the plateau were Stephen and Rosa. They were both werewolves but they couldn’t be more opposite as people. Stephen was as big as Rosa was small. He had dark hair and blue eyes. She had blond hair and brown eyes. They walked toward him hand in hand and Bruce could feel their collective power.

Lori arrived almost the same time they did. She was also a bear, but she was the most unattractive woman Bruce had ever met. Where he liked to think that he blended in with society, Lori stood out. She was big-boned and carried herself like a man, with short cropped brown hair and predator eyes that missed nothing.

She nodded at Bruce. He was above her in pack hierarchy only because she was female and he was male. If it came down to a fight Bruce would lose hands down, but nature was chauvinistic even when it came down to animals.

Dwayne and Cleveland arrived at the same time. Dwayne was human, but he was a psychic and he had other magical abilities that helped the Family as a seeing eye. He could feel things, and he knew where the Assassins were, which was the main reason why they’d let him stay.

Bruce wasn’t sure what Cleveland really was. No one really knew for sure. When he shifted he was a bird of prey that looked a lot like an eagle – all shapeshifters needed blood – but when he was a man he had a pale look about him, with pale skin and even paler eyes. He was small and slender, and he didn’t fit in.