Shifters of Silver Peak: Mate For A Month (8 page)

As Beacham’s grip tightened even harder on her arm, Marcus’ voice sounded in her head.

“Why didn’t you just shift?”

She hesitated for just a second. Turn into an animal? Here in public? It went against everything she’d been taught. It went against her upbringing. After she shifted, she’d be
naked.

Then Beacham started pushing her into the back seat, and she let out a growl of rage and let her wolf burst forth.

Fur shot through her skin and her snout lengthened. Her clothing fell away, and she felt her bones melting and reforming. She lunged at Beacham in a rage and sank her fangs into his arm until he let go of her. He shrieked and fell back, staring at his bloodied arm in shock.

“You bit me!” he shouted, his voice shrill. “Like a dog! You bit me!”

Then fur started rippling on his face and he let out a low, animal growl. His face melted into a wolf’s, black lips curled back, saliva drooling from his jaw.

He was shaking with rage. He’d go wolf in a minute. He’d overpower her.

From across the parking lot, she heard a howl of fury. Marcus, in wolf form, as big as a small horse. Beacham saw him loping towards them and let out a high-pitched cry of fear.

He leaped into his van and screeched out of the parking lot, peeling out so fast he left a trail of burned rubber behind him.

Marcus reached her just as she turned human again.

He turned human too, his fur melting back into his skin, and then he was crouching in the parking lot. He stood up, glaring after the retreating van.

“How did you find me?” she asked, in tears.

His gaze seemed to swim back into focus, and he turned to look at her. “Small town. Everybody is in everybody’s business. Joyce called up Chelsea to yell at her that you seemed upset and I probably hurt your feelings.”

“Oh. And you came for me.”

“Of course I came. Did he hurt you?” His hands were balled into fists. Fur rippled in waves across his naked body, sinking under his skin and bursting out again.

“No.” She swallowed a sob. “He was going to drag me away with him. Force me to marry him.”

He shook his head vigorously. “I will never let that happen.” Then he glanced across the street. “What are they doing here?”

She followed his gaze and realized that Marisol and Ambrose were standing there.

Watching.

Fury boiled up in her.

She stalked across the street, stark naked, with Marcus following at her heels.

“Eileen, really. Your behavior is completely unacceptable,” Marisol said, raking her with a severe look. “You are naked, young lady. Your mother would be—”

“Don’t you dare even mention her, or I will chew your face off. My mother wanted me to marry for love. You knew Beacham was there? You watched him try to kidnap me, and did nothing?” she yelled at them.

“We saw you go into the bar, and told him where you were so he could get you out of this horrible place. It was for your own good,” Marisol said in her soothing voice. “You haven’t been yourself since the day you got here.”

Marcus’ wolf came exploding out of him, and he lunged at her, knocking her against the wall. As he stood over her, snarling and snapping, Marisol shrieked and whimpered, crying out, “It was for her own good! Her own good!” over and over.

Ambrose let out a high-pitched scream and cringed away from Marcus. At the same time, a patrol car pulled up, lights flashing. It said “Sheriff” on the side.

“Everything’s fine!” Ambrose told the sheriff quickly as he climbed out of his car.

“Doesn’t look fine,” the sheriff said. Eileen remembered that she was naked and did her best to cover herself with her hands, although the sheriff was only looking at her face.

“No, it isn’t fine,” Eileen said angrily. “My ex-fiancé tried to kidnap me, and these two set the whole thing up. His name is Beacham Haversham. He’s driving a maroon minivan with darkened windows and heading north on Main Street. I want to press charges.”

Marisol gasped in outrage. “You can’t arrest him,” she informed the sheriff. “He’s a Haversham.”

“He’s a what?” He stared at her in annoyance. “I don’t give a damn what he is. Kidnapping’s a crime here.”

Marcus turned human again and rose to his feet. His eyes had that crazy light.

“You two deliver a message for me,” Marcus said to Ambrose and Marisol. “To her father. And to that prissy little city Chihuahua Haversham. Any of you try to take her again, I will find you, and I will end you. I don’t care about the consequences. You’ll drown in your own blood, and so will whoever tries to come after her.”

“He’s threatening us!” Marisol wailed at the sheriff. “You heard him, he just threatened us!”

The sheriff nodded. “Yep. Welcome to Silver Peak. That’s the kind of thing that tends to happen around here when you try to kidnap someone’s mate.”

Eileen sat up in bed, staring at her sleeping husband. Or mate.

After the sheriff had showed up the night before, someone had found her a T-shirt, and she had filled out a complaint. Beacham had been tracked down driving at a hundred and twenty miles an hour as he tried to flee the area; they’d added speeding and reckless endangerment to the attempted kidnapping charges. Ambrose and Marisol had been arrested and charged as accessories.

She’d also filled out a restraining order against all three of them. She knew this was going to be the talk of their social set tomorrow, and her father would be humiliated and furious. Talk about burning bridges.

Marcus hadn’t talked to her much as they drove back, but she kept thinking…
he came looking for me.

Why? He had to care, at least a little bit.

She’d been too rattled from the assault to try to talk about it, or anything else. For once she hadn’t felt like teasing Marcus or trying to draw him out or gossiping about her day.

When they’d got back to the Silver Peak property, she’d found out that a big, fancy tent had been erected on Marcus’ property so they’d have somewhere to sleep, and everyone had crowded around her and hugged her and threatened to kill Beacham, until she’d burst into tears of stress and relief and gratitude, and Marcus had growled and chased them all off.

She’d fallen asleep almost immediately afterwards.

But now she was awake, and looking down at the handsome, sleeping behemoth who’d vowed to protect her no matter what the consequences.

She blinked in the dark and looked around the tent. It was very homey. There were wooden pallets arranged to make a floor for them, and a big blue rug spread out across the pallets. Marcus had a hand carved nightstand set up next to a futon bed. He’d hung up a string of twinkling crystal lights inside.

Marcus began moving in his sleep. He groaned. He thrashed on the bed.

“Marcus. You’re okay,” Eileen said quietly.

“Don’t touch him!” Marcus shouted. “Take me! Leave him alone! He’s weak, he’s nothing. I’m the one you want!”

Then he sat bolt upright, panting, staring straight ahead at something that only he could see.

“Marcus. Baby. You’re safe. I’m here,” Eileen said in low, soothing tones. She reached out and stroked his arm, fingers trailing over his bulging biceps.

His eyes focused and lit on Eileen.

“Did I hurt you?” he demanded.

“Of course not,” she said, keeping her voice calm and steady.

He was breathing hard.

“I’ll go sleep outside.” He swung his legs off the side of the bed.

She felt a clutch of panic squeezing her chest and reached for him, grabbing his arm. “Don’t do that. Don’t leave me.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and she was afraid he’d go. But then he lay back down next to her and wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed in to his naked body. She could feel his erection pressing against the small of her back, and a slow, warm tide of arousal washed through her body.

“I don’t want to. I never want to leave you,” he said, his voice hoarse with sorrow. “I want to wrap myself around you and breathe you. I want to look at you all the time. That’s why I’m always running away from you. Because the longer I’m around you, the harder it will be when you finally go.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she slid her hand over his and squeezed it.

“When you go…I’m afraid that’s what will break me,” he said finally.

She felt her heartbeat quicken. “Maybe I don’t have to go when the month is up. I thought that was what you wanted. But if you wanted me to stay…”

He squeezed her hand in return. “I want you to stay more than I want air. Or hamburgers,” he added. “And you know how much I love hamburgers.” She blinked back tears at that, she was so touched. If anyone else said it, it would sound ridiculous, but this was Marcus. Honest to a fault and always spoke his mind.

“Yes. I do know,” she said.

“But I don’t know what’s happening to me, and I can’t promise anything at all. I might go feral, Eileen. No, you have to know that about me,” he said as she stiffened and drew in a breath of protest. “Pretending it can’t happen won’t make it go away.”

“What’s giving you these nightmares?” she asked desperately. Her hand tightened on his, as if she could keep him from slipping away from her.

His voice went dull and rough again. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Maybe you should,” she said. “You keep everything bottled up inside you, but that isn’t working for you. Let it out. I swear that nothing you say could change the way I feel about you.”

He heaved an enormous sigh that travelled down the length of his body. There was a long, long moment of silence and then he spoke, his voice heavy with sorrow. “Ten years ago, I was kidnapped while I was hitch-hiking and forced to be part of an illegal fighting ring. They held me for two years. I nearly lost my mind. I finally escaped, but not really. Not all of me. For a long time I could barely stand to be around anyone; talking to people felt like being stabbed with hot needles. But not you,” he added hastily. “I never felt that way around you.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Eileen blinked back tears and thought about how much she’d like to murder whoever had hurt Marcus, that big, gruff giant of a man who couldn’t see how good he really was.

With a jolt of horror, she remembered what he was talking about. Eight years ago, she’d been in boarding school and she had heard something about a huge scandal involving an illegal fighting ring in which shifters had been drugged, kidnapped and forced to fight to the death. Among those arrested had been Senator Coulson, formerly a pillar of shifter society, a billionaire shipping magnate named Nikolas Constaninopolis, and other names who regularly graced the society pages.

She swallowed her tears and listened quietly as Marcus spoke.

“There was a man… He helped me hold on to my sanity, and then he died because I couldn’t help him,” Marcus said. “And there were a couple of people who survived the whole ordeal with me, but they weren’t able to function anymore after they got out. I send money to their families.”

He paused. “Odds are good I’m going to lose my job. Then I wouldn’t be able to help them anymore. Or...take care of you.”

Eileen shrugged. “We have a roof over our heads. No thanks to me, of course. But you’ll find another job. And I’m going to find work if I have to sweep floors. No, don’t argue with me. We wouldn’t be the first family that went through tough times.”

“Family?” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

She meant it, she realized. She would stand by him no matter what.

“Family,” she repeated firmly. “Besides, do you even like your job? It doesn’t seem to be where your interest lies. You spend all your spare time making those wonderful, beautiful carvings.”

“And then I break most of them, because, you know. Crazy.”

“Well, don’t break them,” she said reasonably. “Sell them. They’re stunning. You could make a living off them. There, problem solved. Everything will be fine. We’ll be fine.”

“Eileen.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “There’s nothing I want more than for us to stay together, but you deserve better than a broken down, raging…” He drew a shaky breath.

“I thought I was getting better. Not getting better to the point where I could be with people all the time, but…it didn’t hurt me as much to be around them. And then...just a few weeks ago, it started getting bad again. Nightmares every night. This rage just fills me up sometimes, comes out of nowhere. And I see the people who died, as if they were right in front of me.”

A few weeks… For some reason, that meant something, but she couldn’t think why at the moment. There had to be a reason that his nightmares had returned. What was doing this to him?

“Is it possible that you’ve seen or heard something that triggered those memories?” she asked. “Someone from your past?”

“I thought about that too, but…me and a couple of other prisoners killed the people who were holding us. The people who did this to us…they were all arrested and jailed for life. I know who the survivors were, and I haven’t seen any of them.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”

He moved, sliding half on top of her and staring down into her face. “Eileen, I would lay down my life for you. But I can’t promise you anything right now. I’m trying to hold on, but I’m falling over the edge. It’s just...” He reached down to stroke her face.

“It’s just that when I’m with you, it’s different. The darkness…it fades a little bit. But as soon as I’m away from you, it comes back.”

He needed her. He really did need her. She actually meant something to somebody – to her mate. Just by being her.

She’d never leave this man’s side, she realized.

“Okay,” she said. “You don’t have to promise me anything, but I’m promising you. I’m not leaving. I don’t care if you’re broke, I don’t care if you’re crazy. We’ll take it day by day.”

He moved a little, and she felt his hardness and smelled the musk of his arousal. He let out a low groan. “Dear God. Eileen. I want you so much right now it hurts.”

“Then take me. Stupid,” she added. “Since when are you so damned chatty? Less talk, more action.”

His eyes gleamed at that, and she grinned up at him. Giving him a hard time was the best way to break him out of his moods, she was learning.

Laughing – a low, musical, joyful sound she never would have thought she’d hear from him – he pounced, wrapping her up in his arms. They rolled and tumbled, wrestling playfully, until Marcus pinned her to the bed, his hips between her spread thighs, his large, capable hands trapping her wrists above her head.

He grinned down at her, eyes sparkling, but then his expression became more serious. For a moment her heart sank, but then she realized his eyes didn’t hold their usual shadow and his face wasn’t closed off. He was looking not inside himself at some painful and inescapable past, but at
her
.

What was more, he didn’t see Eileen Pennyroyal, spoiled socialite and scion of one of New York’s most elite families. He didn’t see deportment classes and finishing schools and elocution lessons and a Fifth Avenue wardrobe. He saw past the glossy, high-society veneer to the person she was inside.

Just as she saw past his gruffness, his antisocial boorishness, to the sweet, gentle man who was so terrified of hurting others that he continually tortured himself instead.

Then his mouth descended on hers.

She was surrounded by his scent, intoxicated by his big, sleep-warm body over hers. His mouth was hot and fierce on hers, and he nipped at her lower lip with sharp, white teeth, urging her to open to him. He devoured her greedily, his tongue dancing against hers, and she moaned into his mouth, urging him on.

He wriggled down her body, planting kisses on her throat, her collarbone, and she squeaked with surprise when he tweaked her nipple with his teeth, then moaned when he soothed the furling bud with the flat of his tongue. He suckled, sending silvery threads of sensation playing over her skin, and she parted her thighs further, moaning with need.

Marcus worked his big hand between her splayed thighs, testing the wetness there, and those clever fingers found the sensitive bud of her clit, making her gasp and jerk. As he kissed and sucked her breasts, he circled her clit with his fingertip in a smooth, confident motion that built her excitement to a thrumming need. She stroked the scarred muscles of his back, gasping for breath, her heart thundering. When he worked his finger into her sopping-wet slit she rolled her hips against his hand, silently pleading for more. He groaned against her sweat-damp skin with possessive satisfaction.

She put her hands on his broad, muscular shoulders as he worked his way further down her body, dipping his tongue into her navel and grazing her hipbone with his teeth. He parted her legs with his palms and lapped at her inner thighs, tasting her sticky juices, and she writhed and clutched at his head when he flicked his tongue over her engorged clit.

He kissed her pussy as he’d kissed her mouth, playing his lips over the slick folds and darting inside with his tongue, sending her spiraling out of control until she was coming hard against his mouth, holding his head between her thighs with trembling hands and giving hoarse, helpless cries of passion as she spasmed with pleasure, over and over again.

He moved up over her again, taking her mouth, and she tasted her own excitement on his tongue. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his hot, rigid shaft and he growled in response, his length twitching against her palm. The way he reacted to her touch was like a drug.

She moved her hand back and forth, squeezing gently as she got to the head and feeling the stickiness of precum against her skin. Then she worked her way back towards the base of his cock before allowing her fingers to tangle in the crisp curls of his pubic hair and rolling his balls gently in her hand until they tightened in her palm and he muttered a curt, desperate plea for her to stop before he lost control.

They were both panting with desire as he gently disengaged her touch and took his shaft in his hand, positioning himself against her needy entrance and pushing inside her slippery pussy with a single smooth stroke.