Chasing His Bunny (2 page)

"Bethy?  You're drooling a
little."  Her younger sister's voice, tinged with amusement,
cracked Bethany's composure. 

Ick, how embarrassing. But
at least amusing her sister had cracked the younger woman out of
the fetal ball she'd been curled into.  

"Sorry," she whispered
back, not truly feeling sorry at all, and also knowing that all the
shifters within ten feet of them could still hear her. At least,
she could guess that based on the experiments Dr. Montgomery had
run.  The sound wouldn't reach Mr.
Tie-me-up-Tie-me-Down-and-Swing-Me-Round's ears, but the others
would know.  Maybe she'd get lucky and they'd report back to
him and Bethany could have her first time of fun with a man before
she got shipped off to wherever their rescuers were taking them.
 "You have to admit, he's definitely drool-worthy."

"Kind of over-muscled for
me.  I like that one," Bailey whispered back, pointing at a
leanly muscled, red-haired shifter that was definitely within
hearing distance.  He actually blushed, which was pretty cute,
and then immediately averted his eyes when Brock, Brice and Brady
all growled in stereo. 

Bethany and Bailey immediately started
laughing.  Oh god, it felt so good to laugh about
something!

The incongruity of their laughter amid
the wreckage, the smoke, and the blood attracted the attention of
Mr. Let's-Find-A-Reasonably-Comfortable-Flat-Surface-Fast, and he
swung round and started stomping towards them.  Bethany perked
up.  So did her nipples.  Her libido was already plenty
perky.

"Get these five into the
trucks. We've got enough seats if they spread out-"

Well so much for her libido. 
Ugh.  Alpha Asshat wasn't even looking at Bethany or her
siblings as he barked orders at the soldiers around them; treating
them like they weren't even there.  And as for his assumption
that they'd be split up...

All five of the Bunson
siblings jumped in at the same time, using different words, but the
basic message was the same: Fuck you - we're staying
together.

Finally reaching a
reasonable speaking distance, Mr.
Thinks-He-Can-Tell-Me-What-To-Do-And-Not-In-The-Sexy-Way, put his
hands on his hips as he glared at them, opened his mouth and...
suddenly stopped.  Sniffed the air.  His incredulous,
dark eyes widened almost comically and his head whipped around so
that he was staring right at... her.

"Mine."

"What?"  Bethany barely had time
to jerk in surprise before her brothers had created a fortress of
flesh between her and Mr. Suddenly-Acquisitive.

"Excuse you?" Brice growled, and she
didn't have to see his face to know that he was glaring at the
other man.  "What did you just say to my sister?"

Ugh.  It sucked being so much
shorter than her brothers.  They were like
mountains.

"I said-"

Big, unmovable
mountains.  Whose ticklish spots she was well versed
with.  The big guys squealed as her fingers stuck into their
sides, shocking their audience as they jumped out of her way. 
More than one soldier brought their weapon up again, obviously
nervous, until Alpha Asshat turned and snarled at them.  The
weapons were hurriedly lowered.

"What did you just say to me?" Bethany
demanded as she shoved her way past her brothers.  Brady put
his hand on her arm, trying to tug her back behind him. 
Without even looking, she bent his finger back while simultaneously
stomping on his foot.

"Son of a bitch!" He muttered, shaking
out his hand.  Beside her, Brock and Brice were shifting into
place, making themselves honor guards since it was obvious that she
wasn't going to let them be a barrier.  The injured Brady had
moved back a step, but Bethany was willing to bet he'd just put
himself into position to protect the less combative Bailey. 
Totally acceptable.

Mr. Still-Needs-To-Answer-The-Question
looked at them with something akin to amusement.  So glad she
could provide entertainment.  She glared at him, ignoring how
utterly delicious he looked with that tiny little smile on his
mobile lips.  

"I said, what did you just say to
me?"

That smug smile faded as his eyes
moved away from her brothers and back to her.  How flattering.
 "You're mine.  You're my mate."

Bethany snorted.  "I most
certainly am not."

While she’d been born a
human, everyone knew exactly what shifters thought about mates. She
didn’t remember much, but she knew that mates were a forever deal.
Yeah, not happening. She wasn't ready for a mate.  Hell, she
wasn't ready for any kind of committed relationship much less one
that couldn’t be ended.  She was a needy, lustful, and eager
young virgin who had been cooped up in a cage for far too
long.  There was no way she was just going to hop into bed
with the first guy that wanted to claim her and
stay
 there.  Although, she
had no objections to the hopping into bed part. That was the good
part.

"Yes, you are," the man growled,
looking even less patient.  He thrust out an arm.  "Smell
me."

The scent of man, pine,
and something wild, like a cold night’s frost filled her nose. Her
nipples got even harder and her pussy creamed. She was totally on
board with the sexual reaction - if he wanted to play hide the
salami she knew a few good hiding spots – but the rest of it? Nope.
Yummy smells or not, tempting or not, monster inside her insisting
“mine” or not, she was going to be a free-wheeling, commitment free
(at least for a few years), little sex machine. That was the sum of
her current relationship goals.

"Whoop-de-do," Bethany
said in a bored voice. She’d gotten pretty good at controlling her
reactions while she was in captivity; the bland face was the
easiest to maintain. Don’t react so that they don’t know they’re
getting to you.  "You smell good.  You can't be the only
man on the planet with that particular attribute."

Something beeped and one of the
soldiers looked down at a device they were holding and then back
up.  "Steele, we need to move."

"Shit.  Fine, let's
get going, we'll sort this out later," he said grimly.  His
gaze caught Bethany's.  "And we
will
 be sorting this out
later.  Now come on."

Stepping forward he reached out to
take her arm, and of course, got himself a bloody nose for his
trouble.

******

There wasn't a word in the English
language that could adequately describe how fucking furious he
was. 

His
mate
 had
punched
him on the
nose
. 

Steele still couldn't believe
it.  His beta, an overgrown bear shifter by the name of Jordan
Kane, was still chuckling about it.  The bastard better cut it
out if he didn't want a bloody nose to go with
Steele's. 

The inside of the hummer was dead
silent other than Jordan's occasional chuckles, which happened
every time the big bastard looked over at Steele.  Steele's
fingers tightened around the steering wheel.  He glanced in
the rearview mirror, ostensibly to check on the convoy following
behind him, but really because he couldn't stop looking at his
mate.

His
mate
.

He’d never been a
superstitious person, but considering that today was April Fools’
Day, he felt like he’d just had the biggest fucking joke Fate could
have ever played on him.

Inside of him, his wolf was
jumping up and down, running around in excited circles, and lolling
about on his back with his tongue hanging out.  The stupid
animal didn't even care that they'd never smelled anything like her
and her siblings before, and had no idea what kind of shifter she
was. That all of them smelled like an unnatural and confusing mix
of predator and prey. It didn’t care that their mate had just
punched him on the nose. It just cared that they’d found her, she
was obviously another alpha, and she was
here.
It was fucking
delighted.  Steele was thankful that his own ass wasn't
wagging, the wolf was so damned happy.  At least one of them
was.  Steele didn't want a mate.  He never had and he
still wasn’t too sure how he felt about it now that he’d found
her.

The only male in a family
of six siblings, he'd had plenty of protecting and looking after
females his whole life.  Hell, he'd left his pack and gone out
on his own after the third one had finally mated and he hadn't felt
guilty about leaving his parents to watch after the other two... A
one-on-one ratio at least gave his parents a fighting
chance. 

Steele loved his sisters,
but he had to admit, he didn't truly
get
 them.  Every single
one of them was demanding, needy, and expected to be treated like
the queens they felt they were.  They were pampered
princesses, made more so by the fact that their father was the
Alpha of their pack and everyone deferred to them.  Their
friends were suck-ups and their mates were overly impressed by
them, in Steele's opinion.  He loved them... but he'd also had
his fill of females always needing him to do everything for
them.  Going out on his own, he'd found that he attracted the
same kind of women, no matter how hard he tried to avoid them.
 He wanted a different kind of woman.

Unfortunately, thanks to
his sisters, he was used to being a little bossy and perhaps a tad
overprotective and just a bit too much of a caretaker for more
independent women.  They found him overbearing, high-handed
and arrogant.  So, for the last couple of years, he'd found it
easier to just swear off personal relationships with women. 
Hell, he hadn't even gotten laid in the past year, since the
independent women he liked weren’t a fan of him and the women who
did like his overbearing, high-handed, and arrogant ways were way
too needy, dependent, and weak for his wolf.  He attracted
Stage 5 Clingers like nobody’s business.

Which his mate most
certainly was not, which was probably partly why his unfavorable
view on mating had turned to something a little less
decisive.

No clinging at all for the
curvy, little blonde, which was too bad because he’d really like
her clinging to his dick, which had been hard as his nickname since
the moment he’d scented her.  She was seated in the far back,
next to her sister.  In the middle row of seats, her older
brother was glaring at Steele in the rearview mirror, apparently
unimpressed by the fact that he was seated next to Steele's biggest
and most deadly soldier - Kasim, one of the few lions living in the
States.  Practically radiating calm, the lion glanced over his
shoulder to give the females an encouraging smile, his white teeth
flashing in his dark face.

Getting the Bunson family
into a vehicle had been an exercise in diplomacy, and thankfully
Steele's Omega, Jacqueline Morn, had stepped in.  It was her
job to keep the peace in his pack after all.  She was damned
good at it too, despite her badger temper.  Or maybe because
of it.  When Steele had insisted that his mate accompany him
and then her entire family had insisted on accompanying her, it had
been Jacqueline who put together the seating arrangements in the
hummer.  Surprisingly, the two younger males hadn't argued
once they knew that Bethany would be separated by a row of seats
from Steele, and that Brady would be sitting in that
row.

Of course, their quick
capitulation might also have had something to do with Jacqueline
pointing them to her hummer, which had been surrounded by females,
waiting for her. All of them grinning invitingly at the Bunson
brothers.  His Omega wasn't exactly known for being
subtle.  But if putting the two males into a hummer full of
females was what he'd needed to get them out of there, that had
been fine with him.

They'd already overstayed
their welcome, and he couldn't help but worry that they would
somehow be followed from the compound.  They knew at least
four of the employees had managed to escape.  Their scents had
been found, heading away from the compound, but Steele had had to
make the executive decision not to follow them.  They just
didn't have the personnel possible to do that, gather up all the
files and equipment from the compound, guard the prisoners that
they'd taken, and see to the captives that they'd rescued. 
After all, going in to this mission, they hadn't known that there'd
be captives or the extra staff that had been needed to take care of
them.

Intelligence had been
fucking shoddy, and he was going to have a few choice words with
his boss when they got back.

"Where are we going?"
 

Ah, the dulcet tones of his
mate.  She wasn't asking a question so much as demanding an
answer.  Steele had already noticed she had a tendency to do
that.  From what he'd heard over the radio, she
hadn't
been like that
when his team had first broken into her cell.  Apparently,
freedom had gone to her head pretty quickly.

Then again, he preferred
demanding over frightened and needy.  Just seeing her, knowing
that she'd been a captive, knowing that they'd done
something
 to her,
because she sure as hell should have known he was her mate as soon
as she'd smelled him, had all his protective instincts riled. 
Even though she'd punched him in the nose.  He much preferred
a happy, gamboling wolf in his head to a furious, protective one
without an enemy to rip into shreds.