Bastian Read online

  I was just going to help her down. I only wanted to lift the part of her that was caught on the gate and let her down—but the second my nose came close enough to touch her skin, she lost her damn mind like I was going to bite her.

  Horses don’t eat people. My horse said.

  You and I both know that, I answered silently in my mind, but she isn’t rational.

  This was your idea.

  He was right. It was my idea, because I wanted to watch her without her knowing I was watching. That was why I stripped my clothes off in the mudroom right inside the back door and shifted in the yard. So fast I almost kicked the back door in during the shift. It was probably creepy, being so sneaky, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I did feel bad about the terror radiating from her body in peal after peal of feminine shrieks that tapered off into the coarse sound of heavy breathing. She never opened her eyes, just kept them closed as she rattled against the gate, feet scrambling against the air and her arms thumping against the posts behind her.

  So I backed away from her, keeping my head low and acting for all the world that this giant stallion in the yard didn’t give a shit about the hysterical woman hanging from the gate. Pretending the scrub growing in the dirt along the fence line was more interesting than her long brown hair, straight as sticks as it hung down past her shoulders, and I imagined, halfway down her back. My horse didn’t want to leave her alone. He found everything about her interesting and wanted to get closer, even as I tried to give her space to calm down, looking down instead of at her or whatever would keep her from thinking I was trying to take her out. This was such a bad idea.

  She has good legs. Of course, my animal would notice that first.

  Don’t you worry about her legs. I replied, even though I agreed with him. Jesus, since when did he notice a female? He’d never been interested before. We had an agreement. Women weren’t part of it.

  Even if he was right and her legs, although not very long, were very curvy in those dark wash jeans with the purple heart patch on the thigh. A thick, juicy thigh. The denim pulled tight over her legs and where it separated and dipped down in between her thighs the material thinned and frayed, becoming lighter. She would get a hole there soon, or split a seam. The thighs on those jeans would burst and I tried to ignore the little thrill shooting down my spine at the thought of it.

  If she keeps kicking, they’ll rip right off her. I didn’t like where my animal’s thoughts were going. It was one thing to be attracted to a female, it was another thing to be so distracted that he couldn’t leave her alone. I kept trying to move my body back towards the house so I could shift and get her off the fence, he kept trying to keep us in place so he could study her further. She smells good. She smells like ma—

  Nope. I interrupted that train of thought with a strong mental push and lunge towards the backyard. The woman stiffened on the fence, her fear wafting towards me and churning my stomach, but she didn’t scream again. My animal was too close to thinking the “M” word, and that was scary. That woman wasn’t a mate. I never planned on having one of those. She was a client, and as such she was in need of help.

  What she didn’t need was me assaulting her in my mind while my horse talked about what good stock she came from.

  Jesus.

  She froze as I turned and headed back where I came from. The yard behind the house. I didn’t turn to look back at her, but I could feel her gaze follow me until I disappeared from view. There were no more noises coming from her, but the rank stench of fear still permeated my sensitive nose.

  She wasn’t just afraid. She was in a full-blown panic.

  Don’t be a dick. That was what Colton said just the day before. Then she’d shown up and I immediately creeped her out and caused a scene. Okay, then. What next?

  I shifted so fast it was painful, hurrying through the change until my body exploded into my human form. Normally it was a pleasant, stretching sensation but this time I was turned inside out, struggling with my thoughts and urgency. I wanted to run away. I wanted to call Colton and tell him to fuck off with whatever the reason was he sent that woman to me. I also wanted to pull her down from the gate and hold her soft body against mine while I got lost in the scent of her hair.

  I could only do one of those things.

  I slipped through the back of the house, pulling my pants over my legs and my shirt over my head as I went. I paused at the front door, wondering what I would say to her when I went back out. Would she let me help her off the gate? Should I introduce myself or just kind of let her talk? What the hell kind of trouble was she in that she had to resort to trespassing to begin with? How does she know Colton and why is he helping her—and what does she have to do with shifters? That was a very human woman dangling from my gate. I couldn’t imagine a reason Colton would send a human woman to me for help. Not with my family history.

  She was still hanging there where I left her, and she jerked her head up when I closed the front door behind me with a click. She wasn’t flailing her arms and legs anymore, just dangling with her neck bent at a funny angle. Her head was down but her chin was still angled up, and she glared at me from that awkward position. It looked uncomfortable.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  Well, I was, but not sure how she could know that yet unless someone told her. And depending on who she talked to, the level of asshole could change. But I didn’t know her, and I didn’t know what she was doing here yet, so I decided not to be offended.

  “Oh, I’m the asshole? Did I break into your yard and try to climb your fence? Sorry.” I scowled, not to make her think I was angry, but mostly to keep my lips from curling upward. She looked funny as hell and I didn’t know why, but the madder she got, the funnier the situation seemed to me.

  “You know what I’m talking about. That crap you just pulled a minute ago. When you were…your other self.” She bit her lip and stumbled on the words, but there was no mistaking her implication. There was no surprise on her face and there had been no slip up on my end. She knew who and what I was. She knew about my ability to shift. And she was not surprised.

  Oh, shit.

  “Why don’t I help you down?” The words fell lamely from my lips. There wasn’t much of a follow up to her statement. I couldn’t refute it, because it was true. But I also would not confirm something she already knew. It looked like we were skipping a bunch of pleasantries today.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” I finally reached the place where she dangled and placed both hands on her waist.

  “What are you doing?” The shriek ricochet off the fenceposts and the Joshua trees in the yard. She grabbed my shoulders and pushed, shoving me back a foot or so and sending herself flailing in the process.

  I threw my hands up in defeat. “I’m trying to help you, woman. Or were you planning on dangling there all day? It might be hot as hell right now, but it can get real cold at night. You need a blanket?” Damn, she was worked up. Without trying, I let her prick my temper to where I was fussing right back at her.

  Her mouth opened wide and I braced myself for the yelling. I wasn’t disappointed either, because she let loose with a couple of swears that would have made my father blush, may he rest in Hell.

  “Oh, now you want to help me down? A minute ago, you were out here trying to eat me.”

  “I was not. I was curious, you harpy, and we were trying to access the situation.”

  “Who’s we?” Her eyes narrowed, but I wasn’t going to take the bait.

  “I think you know damn well what I mean and you’re trying to get me to say some shit I’m not comfortable saying. Now are you going to let me help you down and tell me what the hell you’re doing here, or do you want to continue this pissing match hanging on my fence? Because I got to tell you, I’m pretty comfortable standing here but it looks like you could use a stretch.”

  Actually, I was getting a little worried about her. The way her shirt was caught had her shoulders pulled painfully ba
ck. That couldn’t be good for her circulation. It was best if we could get her down and the blood running to her extremities like it should, but she just wanted to fight. So…

  “Colton said, Bastian Michaels always does the right thing. If this is what he meant, I think I might have called the wrong people for help.”

  That didn’t sit right with me. I was still in the dark about so many things, and now this woman was giving me a dressing down in my own yard about some stuff I still didn’t know about. She wasn’t afraid anymore, I didn’t need shifter senses to know that, but her anger was strong. If one of us didn’t put a stop to the bickering, we could very well still be in a standoff come night fall.

  “I can’t do the right thing, if I don’t know what the problem is. Now stop yelling at me and wiggling around and let me help you down.” I was being very sensible. Why wouldn’t she listen to sense?

  “Is that a command?” She whispered the words so low I almost didn’t hear them, but I did, and they were enough to stop me in my tracks. She couldn’t know. There’s no way she could know. There was no way on his worst day Colton would let that secret slip, and I for sure wasn’t telling anybody. She couldn’t know about my gift. Nope. But better be careful anyway.

  “You wouldn’t need to ask that if it was.” I reached for her waist again, and before she could struggle, I lifted her up. I meant to lift her up and away from whatever had a hold of her shirt. Instead, I put more pressure on that short-sleeved cotton button down than it was equipped to handle and the damn thing split straight down the back—but not before pulling against the front and popping buttons as it went.

  That damn shirt fluttered down her arms in two separate halves, and without the tension holding her to the gate, she fell heavily against me, her soft chest pressing into the front of my body.

  She’s beautiful.

  Shut up, I told my animal with disgust. Not that I disagreed with him at all. On the contrary, I wholeheartedly agreed with him. This woman was a vision of thick curves and dimpled cheeks, but holding her against me after ripping her shirt from her body was not the time to be admiring her form.

  “Oh, open your eyes you sissy, I’m wearing a cami.”

  I had closed my eyes to be polite, which she refused to acknowledge, so I opened them again and matched her angry stare. There was no pleasing this woman, and if by cami, she meant that skintight tank top with the tiny straps, then okay; I guess she was still dressed. But with each angry huff of breath she sent in my direction, her chest rose and fell dramatically. Someone with manners would have looked at the ground or the top of her head, but I was an asshole, so I didn’t even bother trying to tear my eyes away from those curves trying valiantly to stay under the neckline of that joke of an undershirt.

  “Woman, why are you so difficult?”

  “I’m not difficult,” she yelled, stomping her foot angrily. “I’m really nice, people tell me that all the time. Jerica Bellefontaine is a nice girl. But you have been a turd since I got here, so you get what you give. Now open the gate. I’m gonna drive my camper through it, and I’ll go back inside and stay in there until tomorrow. And then, when I ring the damn bell, you are going to answer the door like a gentleman and hear me out. Then you are going to help me like you’re supposed to, because I know damn well Colton told you to. He’s your shifter boss, isn’t he?”

  I didn’t know if that was a rhetorical question or not, but her dark eyebrow was raised so high it made a point that almost touched her hairline. I was dealing with a very knowledgeable woman, and that could either be a good or a bad thing. I’d need a little more information before I made that classification.

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  She pursed her lips together and glanced nervously at the closed gate, like she was checking over her shoulder for something, and it was that time I remembered that she actually was in some sort of trouble, even if I didn’t know what kind.

  “I read it in a book.”

  Chapter Three

  Jerica

  Morning came sooner than I thought it would, considering I passed out hard as soon as my head hit the mattress. I would have thought my anger would have kept me staring at the ceiling all night. but after escaping a kidnapper and driving thirteen and a half hours straight from Boulder to Kettle, I guess the exhaustion just caught up with me.

  Plus, being surrounded by the impenetrable fence didn’t hurt. And I wasn’t horribly mad at Bastian Michaels. Not really. I had climbed his fence and demanded he help me, all with no explanation at all. He hadn’t tried to hurt me in his other form, I’d just been afraid as hell because…well I was afraid of everything. Including giant horses. Anxiety was a bitch and I kept it from crippling me by just being a bigger bitch.

  Although I hadn’t necessarily planned on busting through my shirt and falling into his arms. That was probably just fate’s way of giving me a humiliating bonus. One thing I knew, if I was here, nothing was going to get me—not even Shane Westley. Especially not Shane. This place was his kryptonite; but even so, I just needed to make Bastian understand we had a real problem on our hands.

  I was all prepared to start over on friendlier terms, but the minute he answered the door and I saw his face, I just wanted to punch him in his smug mouth.

  I had prepped a good morning, nice to meet you, but the words evaporated on my tongue when he answered the door holding a still steaming cup of coffee, wearing nothing but a pair of red plaid pajama pants and a shit eating grin. “You couldn’t put on a shirt for the occasion? Don’t get a lot of guests, I take it?”

  And damn my face for even heating up at the picture he presented.

  “One—it’s seven thirty in the morning. Two—it’s hot, this is Arizona. Three—you went topless last night so I thought I’d return the favor. Four—It’s my house and I just got up; I wasn’t ready for company yet. You want to come back later or you want to give me a few seconds to get decent? I rushed to answer the door; I thought if I took too long you might scale the wall and try to drop in through the roof.”

  Okay, he had me there. I said nothing, just walked through the open doorway, snagging the cup of coffee out of his hand on my way past and taking a large sip of the hot liquid. No sugar, just half and half. It was good.

  He said nothing, just walked through to the open kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee, using in the exact amount of half and half I would have also used, and still stirring it up with a spoon as he gestured for me to sit at the large wooden table in the center of the room with the bench seats. It reminded me of a picnic table, and something I never would have thought a man like him would have in his home.

  Not that I knew anything more about him than I’d read; that information petered off at about eighteen years old—and he looked to be in his thirties now.

  He disappeared down a hallway and came back seconds later still pulling a black t-shirt down over his shoulders and chest. I couldn’t decide if he looked better with it off or on, and I was infuriated with myself for even thinking about him in that way. Hello Jerica, you’re on a mission. He’s muscle, not food. If Bastian had any inkling of my inner monologue, he gave no indication. He just stood there, holding his coffee cup in one hand and rubbing the dark stubble on his chin with the other.

  “So... you want to tell me what you’re doing here, how you know about shifters, and why Colton thinks I need to watch over you? Because honestly, I didn’t get zip out of him except explicit orders to not be a dick, and well, you kind of brought that out in me in the first five seconds.”

  He wasn’t picking a fight; he was dead serious. I decided not to beat around the bush and give him the information as straight and to the point as I could. I took a deep breath, filled my lungs, and got it all out in one try.

  “My name is Jerica Bellefontaine and I was a waitress in Boulder, Colorado. I was kidnapped by your brother and held captive for several days. I got away and drove to Kettle straight through, only stopping to pee twice. I kno
w about shifters because your brother told me when he had me shackled to the furniture. I called Colton because his phone number was written in one of Shane’s journals, and he sent me here to you. Said it would be safer than trying to go to him since this would be the last place on earth Shane would come back to. I found your exact location from Gas Station Ritchie outside the Kettle Plus filling station and he told me to mind the asshole horse that may or may not be in the yard. You’re the asshole horse, aren’t you? It’s okay that you are, that isn’t important right now.”

  I stopped for breath but didn’t continue talking because the coffee cup in Bastian’s hands fell straight to the floor and shattered, spilling hot liquid all over Bastian’s feet. It had to burn, but he didn’t seem to notice, just closed his mouth with a clack and whispered, “You’ve seen Shane?”

  I got up from the bench seat and ran to the kitchen sink, since Bastian didn’t look like he was going to. I grabbed a wad of paper towels off a roll and doused them with cold water, then I ran back over to Bastian, still standing in the same place, and gently patted his bare feet with the cold towels.

  “Move.” I barked the order at him impatiently and he did, stepping backwards a foot or so and watching me silently as I soaked up the coffee spill and threw the broken pieces of cup on top of the towels, dropping the whole mess in a trash can off to the side of the kitchen against the wall. He was in shock, any fool could see that, but I wasn’t sure if he was in shock because I escaped a kidnapping, or because I mentioned his brother’s name. “Yeah, Shane. Your brother.”

  “I haven’t seen my brother in a few years, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Seriously, you have to be talking about someone else. I…I need to sit down.”

  There’d been disbelief in his eyes, so I expected that, but it still pricked my temper that his first instinct was to tell me I was mistaken. After almost a week locked in a cabin, I was pretty sure I knew who my captor was. “I said he kidnapped me and held me captive, not that he physically hurt me.” I couldn’t help but snap the words at him, my anger and frustration rising to the surface. “And if you really haven’t seen your brother in a while, I don’t think you’re the best person to say what he is or isn’t capable of.” To hammer home my point, I pulled a stack of single subject spiral bound notebooks out the messenger bag I had slung around my shoulder and slapped them on the table so hard the bang resounded off every wall in the kitchen. To his credit, Bastian didn’t flinch at the noise, but I could tell by the look on his face he recognized those worn out books.