Mischief in a Fur Coat (3 page)

Drew sat on the tiny porch of his one room cabin, puffing on a cigar and listening to the soft snoring coming from inside. It was past midnight, and everyone else was asleep. But Drew couldn’t seem to quiet down his racing mind, so he’d decided to come out and get some fresh air. He stared over at the massive addition to the cabin that was days away from completion. Drew should have been excited to move in, but he was starting to wonder if the building project had been a waste. The more he saw on the news, the more he had a feeling that the crew wasn’t going to be able to hide out in Michigan much longer. Sure, they were in the middle of the wilderness. But there were people around. People who liked to ask questions. And, although Drew had tried to be as conservative as possible with the amount of groceries he ordered from the general store, he knew the grocer was starting to get suspicious. There really wasn’t a way to order food for himself and nine bears and not have it look a little questionable. After today, he was pretty sure it was just a matter of time until someone figured things out.

Besides, Hope was right. They couldn’t sit around and hide forever while the rest of the shifters in the world were being hunted and killed. Drew had always viewed the government as corrupt and useless, but he had preferred to keep his distance. This time, however, things had gotten too personal. His own family was being hunted. His friends’ clans were being hunted. Every day, new shifters were being murdered for the simple crime of just being shifters. Drew couldn’t keep just sitting by and watching that happen, and he knew his friends couldn’t, either.

Drew took a long drag on his cigar, and then puffed the smoke out in little circles, watching as the moonlight lit up the small, gray shapes. He’d spent the evening finally coming clean to the rest of the crew about the news he’d been keeping from them. He hadn’t intended to be secretive. It had just kind of happened. He’d minimized what was truly going on out in the world in an attempt to protect his shifter friends. After all, if there was nothing they could do to help at the moment, anyway, wasn’t it better for them to be blissfully unaware of how awful the persecution had become?

Drew had acted with good intentions, but he saw now that his secrecy had been a mistake. The clan had handled the news better than he’d expected, and instead of becoming blind with anger they had started brainstorming ways they could help. Thankfully, they had also forgiven him for not being thorough with the news. Hope had stared daggers at him the whole time, but that was about it. And he could handle a couple of angry looks from her. In fact, he almost enjoyed it when she glared at him. She looked so sexy when she was all fired up like that.

Drew felt a stirring of desire, and he let out a long sigh. He should have known that being around beautiful shifter women all day would eventually lead to his developing a big crush on one of them. Drew hadn’t had a girlfriend in years, and he didn’t have plans to change that. Most women didn’t want to live out in the woods like he did. Oh, sure, they’d claim that they longed to be one with nature and have the peace and quiet that the forest offered. But after a few weeks the novelty of it would wear off, and they’d get bored and whiny. So Drew had given up trying.

Hope was no different. She was already complaining about how different life out here was. Drew tried to be patient and remember that she’d just completely lost the life she built up for herself in Chicago. But he really didn’t understand how someone could be so attached to a loud, flashy life in the city. The fresh air and freedom of nature was much better in his opinion. And, heck, he wasn’t even the one who was half bear.

Drew shook his head in bewilderment. He’d often heard his dad complain about how shifters these days were losing touch with their roots. They didn’t want to be a part of clans anymore, and they were moving away from the wilderness at alarming rates. Drew had always thought his dad was overreacting, but now he wasn’t so sure. The crew he was helping out right now seemed to give validity to his dad’s complaints. Although, to be fair, they had formed a tribe of sorts after the escape from Chicago. They considered themselves a clan of their own now, with Grant and his lifemate Storm as the alphas. Drew chuckled. No matter how much a shifter tried to run, the longing for a clan never seemed to truly go away.

Drew allowed himself to fantasize, just for a moment, about what it would be like to allow himself to truly be part of Hope’s clan. To be her mate, and to be part of something bigger than himself again. But he quickly pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to join another clan. As the only human child in a clan of shifters, he’d grown up always feeling just a little bit different. For the most part, the other kids had treated him like he belonged. But if someone was mad at him or was in the mood to be a bully, they would take the opportunity to remind him that he wasn’t a shifter and didn’t belong. Drew knew that he should let these childhood remarks go. Kids said all kinds of things that they didn’t really mean. But Drew still harbored a lot of resentment deep within him. He loved his shifter friends and would fight to the death for them. He was a man of deep loyalty and honor, and he would put his own life on the line to keep this clan safe. But he didn’t want to get too close to any of them emotionally. Opening up your heart to a shifter was, in his opinion, a recipe for heartbreak.

Which is why he’d been an idiot to kiss Hope earlier. Not only had he made it obvious to her that he was attracted to her, but he’d lit a fire in his own belly with that kiss. He could not get her out of his mind. And every time he thought about her, he wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to take her back to that waterfall and kiss her until she could hardly breathe anymore. He wanted to tear off her clothes and lay her down in the cool grass, then tear off his own clothes and make love to her until she screamed his name so loudly that even the sound of the rushing waterfall couldn’t drown it out.

Drew sighed and let out a frustrated grunt. He was letting his imagination run off with him again, and his body was responding to his fantasies. Between his legs, his dick had become a hard, stiff rod, throbbing with anticipation and begging to be allowed to find relief in Hope’s body.

“Get a grip, Drew,” he said aloud to himself.

But the more he admonished himself to get it together, the more he realized what an impossible task that was going to be. He’d danced too close to the edge, and he’d fallen right over it. Hope Pearsons, the woman he’d been blazingly angry at just this morning, had somehow managed to completely bring to life passions in his heart and body that had been lying dormant for nearly a decade.

This was going to be a hell of an interesting ride.

* * *

Hope woke up to a bright stream of sunlight on her face, and the sound of incessant hammering. She blinked a few times and looked around at the one room cabin, surprised to find it completely empty. She had no idea what time it was, but it looked like everyone except her had already started their day. She sat up slowly and rubbed her forehead. Usually, Hope was a light sleeper, and woke up at the smallest stirring from one of her many roommates. But she must have slept like the dead last night, exhausted from an emotional day.

And, of course, there were no electronics out here to wake her up. This had been one of the biggest adjustments for Hope. She had become so accustomed to the constant whirring, beeping, and buzzing of modern life that the silence out here in the woods was almost deafening. Hope stood and went to look out the window. Grant, Calum, and Storm were working on the cabin addition, which was probably only a day or two away from completion. Hope felt a pang of guilt as she looked over at the addition, because she hadn’t done any work on it for several days. Instead, she had sulked around in the forest and then run off to town to drink beer.

She told herself that she had already done her fair share of work at the beginning of the project. For several days, Hope, Mia, and Juno had been the hardest workers on the project. Hope smiled, remembering the fun days of laughing with the girls while exhausting herself from hard labor. Then she frowned, looking around and wondering where Mia and Juno were now. Or any of the rest of the crew, for that matter. The only shifters she could see right now were the three working on the cabin.

Hope grabbed a muffin from the kitchen, and then threw on a hoodie before heading outside. Calum looked up as she walked out, and got a big, mischievous grin on his face when he saw her. Hope braced herself as soon as she saw that grin. She’d seen it hundreds of thousands of times over the years, and she knew it meant he was about to make a teasing jab at her expense.

“Well, well, well,” Calum said. “Look who finally decided to grace the day with her presence. I was about to come check on you and make sure you weren’t dead.”

“Very funny,” Hope said, rolling her eyes. “It took me a long time to fall asleep last night, so I guess I slept in a little to make up for it.”

“A
little
?” Calum asked, letting out a big roar of laughter. “You call sleeping in until 1 p.m. sleeping in a little?”

Hope’s eyes widened in surprise. “It’s one o’clock?” she asked, looking back and forth between her brother, Grant, and Storm, as though waiting for one of them to start laughing and tell her it was actually only ten o’clock or something like that. But the three of them just stared back at her with amused looks on their faces.

“Uh, yeah, Hope. It’s after one,” Storm said. “I can’t believe you slept through all the hammering we’ve been doing out here for hours.”

Hope looked up at the sky, and realized that the sun, while still very high, was dipping ever so slightly toward the west. Her brother wasn’t kidding. It was definitely well past noon.

“Where’s everyone else?” Hope asked, looking around in confusion.

“The rest of the shifters went on a hike. Supposedly there’s a long trail that goes all the way to the lake, and they wanted to check it out. Drew went into town again to order supplies.”

Hope narrowed her eyes. “He just went to town to order supplies yesterday.”

Calum frowned at her in response. His expression was genuinely angry, something Hope rarely saw. “Yeah, I heard,” he said. “But you would know better than me since you apparently were also in town yesterday.

Hope bit her lip and tried to keep herself from making a snarky remark back to her twin. She wanted to defend herself, but he had a right to be angry. She had put their whole clan at risk by going to the bar. Still, she wasn’t completely sorry for it. She had to admit that it had been nice to get a change of scenery for a few hours. It had been surprisingly refreshing to talk to someone outside of their little group of refugee shifters, even if that someone had been a grumpy old bartender.

“Whatever,” Hope said. “I’m going to get some breakfast.” Then she spun on her heel and made her way back to the small cabin.

“Don’t you mean lunch?” Calum called after her, then burst into a fit of laughter.

Hope gritted her teeth and ignored him. She loved her brother, but he definitely knew exactly how to get under her skin.

Hope stormed into the cabin and put some coffee on to brew, then looked in the refrigerator to see what was available for food. There were plenty of eggs, so she decided to make herself an omelet. She started robotically going through the motions of chopping up an onion and then cracking eggs open. She felt angry, ashamed, and confused all at once, and she didn’t know how to deal with the sudden flood of emotions.

Drew was so lucky to be human. He could do whatever he wanted to do, and go wherever he wanted to go. Did he really have to rub it in all of their faces by going to town two days in a row?

Hope cursed as she accidentally dropped an egg on the floor, sending it’s sticky clear white and goopy yellow yolk splattering in several directions. With a sigh, she went to get something to clean it up with. She forced herself to take several deep breaths as she cleaned, willing herself to calm down and be rational. She knew part of her anger toward Drew stemmed from the fact that she had been dreaming of his perfect, sculpted body ever since he kissed her yesterday. She had been hoping that he might pay a little extra attention to her today. She’d even dreamed about what it would be like to kiss him again. But instead of paying attention to her, he’d taken off into town.

“Must be nice,” Hope said bitterly, scrubbing the floor rigorously even though the raw egg was long since cleaned up.

“What’s nice?” a voice asked from the doorway of the cabin.

Hope froze, then looked up to see Drew in the doorway. He was standing there with the sun to his back, making him look like a silhouette. A sexy, broad-shouldered silhouette. He was carrying a huge cloth bag in one arm, and he smelled like hot dogs and beer. He’d been at the bar in town, that’s for sure. Hope felt the anger bubbling up within her again. He was maddeningly gorgeous, but she hated herself for even thinking that right now.

“Have fun going out on the town drinking?” she asked. “Must be nice to not be a prisoner in your own home. To come and go as you please.”

Hope stood up and tossed away the cleaning rag she’d been using, then crossed her arms and stared at Drew defiantly. If he said one word about how this was hard for him, too, she swore she was going to really go off on him.

But he didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead, he took one step into the cabin so she could see him better. His eyes were tired and sorrowful, and they looked into Hope’s eyes with such intensity that she finally had to drop her gaze.