August: Mating Fever (Bears of Kodiak Book 2)

August

August

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Selene Charles’ Books

Copyright March, 2016 Selene Charles

Cover Art by Croco Frauke

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T
his is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

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Published in 2016 by Selene Charles, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America

Three Brothers. One mating ritual. Equals one wild, sexy night...

A
ugust Hawthorne was a strictly by the book kind of a shifter. Steadfast, serious, and knowing exactly where his life was headed. Until the day Jackson Rose stumbled into his bar looking for a job.

The sexy siren soon turns his world upside down and makes him question everything he ever thought he knew, like maybe for the first time breaking his own rules and choosing who to be with rather than let instinct control him any longer.

He’s got one year to decide, or he risks losing everything he never knew he wanted and cannot live without...

August

O
ne year ago

“’Scuse me.” A melodious, feminine voice pricked August’s ears. The sound of it broke him out in a wash of goosebumps that caused his jeans to tighten.

The surge of desire was so powerful and unexpected that he jerked from his kneeling position beneath the bar top, making to stand, but instead nearly knocking himself unconscious when he slammed into the polished mahogany.

“GD it.” He snarled, feeling the grizzly in him come out in a rumble through his words.

Rubbing at the back of his head, he glowered when he stood and shook off the wave of dizziness from the knot starting to grow. Then he immediately lost his words when he took in the sight of
her
.

She was tall and leggy with a rack that he would be able to palm and then some, no doubt a perky size D. But it wasn’t just her breasts that made him pause.

She was everything. Every fantasy he’d never known he wanted, but now suddenly did, stood in front of him. Her long, gleaming chestnut brown hair accentuated eyes so startlingly blue that they almost appeared clear.

He used to only ever notice blondes, short, skinny, and sort of curvy. The woman that stood before him was the complete opposite in every way.

Her heart-shaped mouth had a sexy, little mole right above it. Normally, he was an ass man as most grizzlies were, which made it a minor miracle that he was so focused on her face.

But he felt compelled to study her, to memorize each dip, plane, and groove of the masterpiece that she was. Slashing cheekbones, sculpted brows, and an aquiline nose fit her oval-shaped face perfectly.

She smiled, and his heart felt like it had suddenly stopped beating in his chest. The angry retort that had just been on his tongue for making him slam his head into the bar was all but forgotten. The only thing that came out of him were sounds that hardly resembled English at all.

“Huh?” he asked dumbly.

Her lips twitched as if she was hanging onto a laugh. “Heard you guys were hiring.”

Clenching his jaw, August still felt out of sorts. He had opened up the Junk Yard ten years prior when he’d realized his brothers had no damned intention of ever leaving this icy slice of hell they called home.

Not that August minded the solitude of their isolated cabin in the woods. He just didn’t like being isolated as much as they did.

While Chance was content to turn a wrench when the mood struck him, and Phoenix did whatever the hell it was that Phoenix did, August needed more than just his brothers’ ugly mugs to look at on the endless days of nights that made up an Alaska winter.

His place was a local dive, but more colorful fare than what humans might find since Breed pretty much populated the entire Kodiak chain.

The soft blue mood lighting he’d installed some weeks ago played along her flesh, and a soft glow radiated from her pores. Colors of mother-of-pearl—blue, green, and a dazzling silver—danced over her skin.

At that moment, all the pieces clicked together for him—his instant sexual attraction, why her voice had left him speechless, and why she was the polar opposite of his typical “type” and yet he wanted her with a ferocity that stole his breath.

“You’re a siren.” He ignored the sheet of paper she was trying to thrust into his chest.

Her pretty lips turned down into a soft frown, and she glanced around the bar, which wasn’t currently full of people. Only the hardcore boozers lingered around on a Wednesday at one in the afternoon.

Clutching the paper tightly, she set her hand down on the bar. A weary look he recognized well came over her features. She didn’t realize where she was.

“You do know this is Breed territory, right? You’re safe here.”

Her nostrils flared, and he couldn’t help but wonder just where in the hell she’d come from that had made her so skittish.

Most humans knew that Breed existed. Many were fair-minded and willing to live alongside them in a sort of peaceful cohabitation, but there were some places where Breed weren’t wanted.

Period.

And any Breed who dared encroach on those places took their lives into their hands.

She was looking around the bar again. There were only three regulars inside, all of them Breed—two wolves and one otter. She sniffed as if to scent out their animal.

“In here, there’s one rule.” He lifted a finger. “No predator. No prey. Play nice, or I’ll toss you out.”

Those luscious lips of hers twitched. “That’s good.” And again, just the sound of her voice broke him out in a rush of need and fire.

Holy hell, she was going to have to turn down her charms, or he would have nothing but a pack of horny Breed on his hands. No one would actually be buying booze, which was the whole point of this place.

Rubbing the back of his neck with his hands, he grunted. “You need a job, I take it?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Qualifications?”

She smiled, and it was like taking a fist to the heart. Shit, hiring her was a dumbass idea. He knew he’d be asking for trouble.

“I’m a DJ,” she said.

He snorted, laughing as he said, “That might be a little too much for this crotchety group of people I’ve got here.”

“I’ll do anything. I can mix drinks. Hell, I can even be your bar wench. I just need a job.”

And though he had an aching cockstand that pissed him off, August was actually capable of thinking with more than just the snake in his pants.

“Why are you so desperate? What are you running from, little mermaid?”

She bristled, and he chuckled, knowing he’d pegged her right. She was too highbrow to be in this backwoods place, which meant she was running.

“Look, I don’t want no trouble here,” he said. “We’re a small town, and—”

Shaking her head, she glanced off to the right. For a brief second, he saw a flicker of sadness wash through her pretty blue eyes. “I won’t bring you any trouble. I swear it,” she whispered softly.

“Can you turn down your charms?” Immediately, August felt the fine hairs on his arms relax. The tightness at the base of his spine disappeared as though smoothed away from magick.

“Yes, I can.”

Licking his front teeth, he decided to ignore every warning in his head that told him he was asking for trouble by taking her on. Now that he could look at her without the inherent magick of her nature screwing with his wiring, he realized she was still fucking gorgeous. That part hadn’t been magick at all.

“Don’t need a DJ. But if you want to play music on the weekends, something the local color would like—”

“Such as?” Excitement suffused her features, and once again, he saw the wash of mother-of-pearl ripple across her skin.

Damn, he was in trouble.

“Country. Rock. I don’t know. Just no techno shit.”

“Dub step?” She supplied with a smirk.

“Whatever.” He slashed his hand through the air. “That stuff. None of it. Then I think we’ll be all right.”

The siren was beaming, and he damned his thumping pulse to hell. August had always had one hard-and-fast rule—no fraternizing with his employees. And he never had.

But now he couldn’t shake the image of shoving her up against the wall as he sucked and nibbled on her neck and slid his fingers deep inside her wetness as she mewled and panted in his ear.

His cock twitched, his stomach tightened, and he grunted as he forced himself to think about anything else but her.

Rubbing her arms, she stepped away from him. “Shit. I’m sorry. I really am trying to control myself.”

So she’d done it again.

Gritting his teeth, he realized what he needed to do—tell her to get lost, that she was too unstable. She was too... fucking perfect. He just knew she was going to screw with his life. Instead, he said, “It’s fine.”

Her dark brows gathered into a tight V of confusion. Cocking her head to one side, she said softly, “Any other guy was blasted with half the shit I just laid on you, and they’d have tried to take me out back and have their way with me.”

Sirens could be a deadly bunch. But they were just as hunted as they were feared.

“I don’t do that shit, and neither will anyone else who works or drinks here. You got me?”

If August were a betting man, he’d say the flicker of emotion in her eyes was one of relief. Wetting her lips, she nodded. “So I can only work on weekends?”

“You want more work than that, you can serve drinks.”

She held up her hands. “Yeah, I don’t care. Whatever. I’ll even wash dishes. I just need a job that pays me a check.”

He narrowed his eyes, not missing the way she’d worded that last bit. “What were you paid in before?”

Sucking in a breath, she said softly, “I have a feeling you don’t miss much, do you...”

He held out his hand to her. “August Hawthorne.”

Looking down at her with a fair bit of confusion and skepticism, she finally seemed to come to some conclusion before she held out her own to him. “Jackson Rose.”

“Jack.” He grinned when she wrinkled her nose.

They shook hands, and the touch of her skin to his was electric. Warmth flowed from her palm into his, filling his head with crazy, crazy thoughts. Thoughts of her moaning. Of him urging her to come faster, harder, to take all of him...

“Shit,” he snapped, yanking his hand out of hers as though it burned. “Wear gloves next time, siren, or this partnership ain’t gonna last long.” He all but panted.

She gasped, cradling her hand to her chest and eyeing him just as hard. A look of shock scrolled across her gorgeous features. “I...I will.” Her voice had grown husky, and he couldn’t help but moan.

The less he saw of her, the better.

Jackson

“S
ex on the beach.” Blue smirked as he said it, his dark eyes twinkling with heat and thinly veiled sexual innuendo.

She didn’t know much about the trucker-hat-wearing blond, other than the fact that he seemed determined to make her blush whenever he ordered drinks. He appeared like clockwork every Tuesday night at happy hour.

Just because she was a nice siren and didn’t try to suck the souls out of all the bodies around her, didn’t mean she was naïve. Giving him a sassy snort, she said, “Never gonna happen, Blue.”

He hadn’t actually been ordering a drink. In the past week alone, his drink orders had varied, but all of them had a running theme: Cock-sucking cowboy. Bend-over Shirley. Sex on my face. Blue balls. Suck, bang, blow. A few other more inventive ones in the bunch required one to wash her mouth out with soap after saying them, so she’d refused to say them. Needless to say, it wasn’t difficult to figure out what he was up to.

Jack had settled into a rhythm of sorts at the bar. She flirted with anything that moved, turned on the charm when they seemed about to leave, and brought in a truckload of cash.