Fierce Protector (Sierra Pride Book 3) (4 page)

Her hands were shaking, fluttering, really, and he wondered if she was in shock or something. He wasn’t taking care of her, but he should be. He felt…responsible for her. “Come inside. Let me get you some food,” he said. “I’ve got some instant oatmeal. You like oatmeal?”

He sounded like a nervous high schooler.

She followed him into the little hunting shed. “Yeah, oatmeal would be great.”

Busying himself with the camp stove and a pot of water, Gabriel stole looks at her over his shoulder. She was triggering every one of his protective instincts. Yeah, she turned him on, but more than anything, he wanted her to be well and feel safe.

Right now, she looked uncomfortable, so he tried to think of something to fill the silence. “I’m not the cook in my family,” he said. “That’s my brother Maverick. He’ll brag to anyone who’ll listen that he makes the best barbecue sauce in the north state.”

“Is he right?” Miranda asked.

Gabriel smiled. “Yeah, he’s right about that. He’s not right about everything he brags about, though.”

“No?”

“No. He definitely has the smaller dick between the two of us.”

Miranda started giggling uncontrollably. She had the prettiest smile. Between bursts of laughter, she asked, “Is this where I talk about typical guys and their preoccupations with their genitals?”

“It’s not a preoccupation if I’m stating the truth,” he said. “It’s Maverick who’s preoccupied.”

She shook her head. “Is Maverick your only sibling?”

“No.” Gabriel frowned. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his brothers. It wasn’t as painful now that he wasn’t in knots over Hera, but he hadn’t left his brothers on the best of terms. He’d hit Mav by accident while trying to punch Blake, and Jude had all but thrown him out.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, trying to cover up the new silence. “You seemed pretty upset out there, when you saw me shift.”

“I’m doing better, thanks. Science is so easy for me—everything has an order to it, a reason. Even if I don’t know the answer, I know that there’s an answer in the science, waiting to be found. But this—what I just saw—I don’t know if it has an answer.”

“Sure there’s an answer,” he said. “It’s just not something the world is ready for yet.” After finding a clean spoon, he passed it and a bowl of oatmeal to Miranda.

“Thanks.” She dipped her spoon into the oatmeal.

“Hang on,” Gabriel said, and stepped outside. He found a nearby bush of thimbleberries and gathered a few. He came back in and handed them to Miranda. To her it was probably just berries, but he felt a little as if he was making an offering to a goddess.

“Thanks,” she said with a smile, and stirred them into her bowl. “My mom always put berries in my oatmeal when I was a kid.”

“Best way to eat it.” Gabriel cleared his throat. “So, this, uh, program of yours. What’s it about?”

“We’re studying population distribution of cougars. Um, real cougars. Not were-cougars.”

He snort-laughed, but waved a hand that she should continue. She didn’t need to know that some crackpots actually were trying to find proof of what they were calling “were-cougars.” They wrote up papers and distributed them amongst a small set of academics. Most people laughed or rolled their eyes at the anecdotal proof these “scholars” had compiled, but the truth was, with every new report or book circulated, Gabriel and his people were in more danger.

He didn’t want to think about that, though—he wanted to talk to Miranda.

She rolled her eyes. “What do you want to be called?”

“Shapeshifter, or shifter for short. Mountain lion shifter, or cougar shifter, or lion shifter…any of those things.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, my research is
not
on shifters. I’m curious about home ranges, primarily, but I also like looking at markings in the fur, and coloring, and whether certain areas are more or less likely to hold similar color markings. For the most part people think cougars all look the same, but once you really get to know one, in my case by studying pictures, you can see differences. It’s those differences I’m interested in.”

Her bowl of oatmeal was empty. He held up the pot. “More?”

“No, thanks.”

“I’ll finish the rest, then.” He wolfed it down with her spoon while she watched. He watched her, too. It should have been awkward, and maybe with anyone else it would have been, but he studied her eyes, her nose, her lips. The hollow of her throat that seemed to be begging for kisses.

He set aside the empty bowl and scooted toward her.

“Miranda, I’m going to kiss you now.” Wait, shit, no, that wasn’t right. Consent. He needed consent. If there was one thing his Nan had brainwashed him and his brothers with, it was asking consent. “Is that okay?”

She nodded.

“Really, is it okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

And in the tiny shack in the middle of the wilderness, with nothing around them but trees and bushes and rocks and sky, he leaned down and plucked at her lips with his own.

She tasted sweet—so sweet—and her lips were soft beneath his. He wanted nothing more than to ravish her mouth, but no, he’d hold himself back. He didn’t want to scare her. This kiss felt like the most important thing he’d ever done in his life.

Cupping her face with his hands, he pressed his lips to hers a second and a third time, breathing in her air, smelling her, feeling her softness and tasting the sweet thimbleberries on her breath.

He felt a rumbling deep in his chest. It was both a satisfaction and a yearning.

He’d found his mate.

Miranda was his mate.

He was doing a good job of treasuring the moment until she leaned closer and mashed her mouth against his. Then it was all slipping tongues and searing lust, and he couldn’t hold himself back anymore. With a growl, he picked her up and carried her to the cot in the corner of the shack. He sucked and slurped kisses down her neck.

He hesitated. Why take her inside the grimy shack on this cot that would probably collapse under their combined weight? They were out in nature, his temple. He would rather honor her, claim her as his, out there with the trees and sky and pure clean air to witness their love. He snagged a blanket from the cot, all the while keeping Miranda in his arms. She kissed him just as hungrily while he carried her outside.

Tossing the blanket on the ground, he lifted her shirt, impatient to feel her against him, to see, to taste as much of her as possible. She nipped at his lips and he smiled against her. “Biting?” he asked. “I thought that was my job.”

She bit him again, laughing. “I scratch, too.”

A shiver ran through him, lust mixed with something else. Love. Commitment. He didn’t know what this coupling would mean to her, but to him, it meant everything.

Her hands snaked under his shirt, gracing his stomach and pressing up toward his nipples, where her fingernails scratched lightly. He shivered again and yanked off his shirt before turning to her breasts, covered by a sports bra. He wanted to rip the bra from her, but once again his Nan’s lessons on consent were echoing around in his desire-fueled brain.

“Is this okay?” he asked. “Do you want to…” It wasn’t fucking. It wasn’t merely sex, either. It wasn’t mating, which sounded so clinical and animal. The closest thing he could think of was “making love,” but it felt like so much more than that.

“I want all of me to be with all of you,” she said.

Exactly. “All of me, all of you,” he echoed.

She lifted her sports bra over her chest, revealing her small, beautiful breasts. He nuzzled into them immediately, kissing and licking, tweaking her nipples with his fingers and eliciting moans from her.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured.

She threaded her fingers in his hair, drawing his head closer to her chest. He fumbled with her jeans, cursing the stubborn buttons, until she pulled his hands away and shucked off the jeans on her own.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” he kept repeating. He knelt on the blanket and slid his hands up and down her legs, kissing trails over her knees and thighs. He pressed a single kiss to her panty-clad pussy.

She moaned and her legs shook. He kept them in place with a hand wrapped around each knee, pressing more open-mouthed kisses against her mound. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Gabriel.”

He slid one hand up the back of her leg, teasing her inner thigh with his fingertips. He hooked his fingers under the bottoms of her panties and tugged them down, revealing her sex. He wanted to press his mouth against her immediately, taste her, revel in the delicious scent of her, but instead he paused. Looked up. Met her beautiful brown eyes, which smoldered down at him. A soft smile was on her lips, and her hair had come out of its ponytail and framed her face. He couldn’t get over how beautiful she was.

Watching her reaction, he pressed his lips to her pussy and slid his tongue along her seam. Her eyes started to close, but she held them open. His name was a prayer on her breath as he lapped at her.

Her legs tensed where he gripped them, and he moved one hand so he could slide two fingers into her wetness. He held her in place until she moaned and writhed, bucking as the orgasm shook her. “Gabriel! Yes!”

He left his fingers in her, moving them in and out while she squeezed against him.

“I want more,” she said. “I want your cock, Gabriel. All of me, all of you.”

He nodded. He took a condom from the wallet in his back pocket. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

After pressing another long kiss against her pussy, he removed his fingers so he could pull off his pants and don the condom. Miranda was already lying down, touching his thighs, his waist, his arms, anything she could reach with one hand, while rubbing her other hand against one of her nipples. It was the sexiest damn thing he’d ever seen.

He lay down on top of her, nudging her legs apart, then pushing himself inside. She squeezed him so hard he could’ve come right then, so he froze, careful, waiting for the bliss to retreat. He wanted this to last. Claiming her for the first time, his Miranda.

Holding still inside of her, he touched her face, whispered her name, planted a kiss on her forehead, on her nose. “Mine,” he murmured. “Mine.”

She wriggled beneath him, nearly causing him to lose it again, but he was in control now, and he stroked into her once, twice. She cried out again, pushing and pulling at him. She lifted one of her legs up, and he hooked it over his shoulder. It created enough room for him to reach between them and rub at her clit.

This time when she came, she rippled around him, and his balls clenched and he pumped hard and fast, emptying himself and everything he’d once been, becoming wholly new and pure in her arms.

“I love you, Miranda,” he said, kissing her jaw line.

She looked startled at first, but her eyes met his and she nodded once. “I love you, Gabriel.”

Chapter Eight

Miranda watched Gabriel from the corner of her eye. They sat naked, side by side on the cot in the hunter’s shack, sharing a can of stew that they’d heated with the camp stove.

“That was intense,” she said. “I’ve never…done that. Not so soon after meeting someone.” Sure, she’d messed around with guys she met at parties or bars, to let off some steam on the weekends. It helped her focus better once she dove back into research and academic papers. But with those guys, there’d been a couple of hours of flirting, at least.

And the sex had never been so intense, so renewing.

“It’s never been like that for me, either,” he said.

Good
, she thought. Hell’s balls, she was already feeling possessive of this man. This was the strangest experience. A great experience, but one that didn’t fall neatly into any of her expectations or studies or classifications.

This man defied all logic, from his very existence to the way he made her feel.

“So you don’t usually roam around seducing random women in the forest?” she joked.

“Not ever. But you’ve definitely converted me.” He nudged her shoulder with his own, and the glimmer of a smile played on his lips. “I’ll have to be on the look-out next time I go roaming.”

“You better not.” She held up a fist like she was threatening him, and he pretended to cower. Seeing such a huge, well-built guy cowering at her made her laugh out loud.

Amazingly, she didn’t actually feel jealous, or fear that he’d leave her. Usually she was leaving guys first, always on the defense against them taking off and leaving her heartbroken. The way Gabriel had said he loved her, though, and the tender look in his eyes, made her feel full and secure. She had nothing to worry about.

He was looking at her in the same way again. Caught in his gaze, Miranda held her breath as he leaned forward and pressed his lips gently against hers.

“What was that for?” she asked.

He caressed her jaw tenderly, reverently. “It was because I can. Because I want to. Because I can’t imagine not wanting to kiss you and show you how I love you.”

It was a good answer. A gentle warmth spread through her entire body, and she shivered in delight and placed a quick kiss on his bicep.

She traced the tattoo centered between his shoulders, a five-pointed star with the letters SF in the center.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

He looked, at first, like he’d blow off her question. She suspected that he probably gave a bullshit answer to everyone, because the pain that flashed across his face told her it was too personal to want to share.

But he cleared his throat, and spoke. “My sister,” he said. “Starla. She was abducted and killed when I was a kid. She was the oldest, but only by a year and a half, and I was bigger than her. I’d always felt like it was my job to protect her. But I lost her, and…” His voice trailed off as his eyes took on a far-away haunted look. “And this fucking tattoo is the smallest of reminders of her, and of what happens when I lose vigilance for even a moment.”

“I’m so sorry,” Miranda said. Her chest felt tight, and she squeezed his wrist, wanting him to know that she meant it, that if she could have taken any of the hurt, she would have.

“It’s in the past. I had the tattoo put on my back so I wouldn’t need to see it all the time. So I could move on, was the thought. Mostly I have, but I still have regrets for not being a better protector, for not rescuing her.”