Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears Book 4) (7 page)

Mason pulled open the door to Jason and Georgia’s screened-in porch. It creaked loudly, but just in case Jason hadn’t heard it, he knocked for good measure.

Georgia answered, clad in flannel pajamas, her wild curly hair piled on top of her head. A warm smile took her lips immediately. “You look like shit.”

Mason snorted. “Thanks.”

“No really. I mean, your beard looks rugged and manly and all, but you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“Is Jason around?”

Her delicate eyebrows lowered, and she pursed her lips. “Mason, I’ve heard about you in the woods. I don’t really want Jason Changing with you until you have more control.”

Mason nodded and ran his hand through his hair. He couldn’t be mad at Georgia. He really had been out of control, picking fights with anyone who even looked at him. “I’m not here to ask him to Change with me. I just need some advice.”

Georgia’s gaze tipped to the gashes on his shoulder, and with a slow, worried blink, she nodded and called out, “Jason. Mason’s here to see you.”

Jason appeared out of the back bedroom a minute later, wearing jeans, no shirt, and toweling off his hair like he’d just gotten out of the shower. “Hey, man. You okay?”

“Yeah. Listen, can I talk to you?”

Surprise slashed through Jason’s dark eyes, but the towering bear shifter recovered quickly enough. “Sure. I’ll be right out.”

A minute later, Jason was closing the door gently behind him and carrying a cold six-pack. “Come on,” he said lightly, pushing past Mason in his bare feet, his back still covered in droplets of shower water.

Jason didn’t say a word as he led him through the Gray Back woods behind the pristine trailer park, nor did he push conversation as they walked side by side, right through the porch light of Beaston’s trailer. The wild-eyed bear shifter was sitting on his porch, the door open behind him, and the soft glow from inside casting his face in shadow. All except those unnerving, glowing green eyes, which stayed on something behind Mason. Chills blasted up his neck, and Mason rubbed the skin there just to put warmth back into it.

“She ain’t here for what you think,” Beaston said low.

Mason looked behind him, but there was nothing there but the chilly feeling of wrongness. “What do you mean?”

Beaston lifted a shoulder. “You tell me.” He stood gracefully and crossed his arms over his chest, cocked his head. “I would come with you to the treehouse, but this is as far as I can get away from my raven boy.”

Mason smiled tiredly. He wished he had a baby to raise, but he was happy for Beaston. He was a good dad. Protective. “It’s okay, man.”

“Boar,” Beaston said as he and Jason moved off.

“Yeah?”

“She didn’t do it to hurt you.” Beaston shook his head sadly. “Some people just feel too much. Hurt too much.” Beaston climbed up the stairs and murmured, “She’s saying sorry.”

He closed the door behind him with a quiet click, and Mason clenched his shirt, right over his stomach where pain threatened to double him over. Beaston saw too much. Way too much. Mason had never told anyone that Esmerelda had taken her own life. He hadn’t even told Damon how she’d died.

“I didn’t know,” Jason said softly.

Mason tried to smile but failed. “No one does.”

Jason smelled of heavy sadness now so, unable to stand it, Mason strode past him toward the treehouse Beaston had built a couple logging seasons ago. He scaled the ladder and settled onto the porch, high up in the canopy, and dangled his legs off the edge. And when Jason had popped the tops on a couple beers and they’d each taken a healthy swig, Mason asked, “How did you get rid of your ghost?”

“I didn’t get rid of her. She had to decide to leave on her own. I don’t know, man. I blamed myself for her haunting me, but really, that was just Tessa’s personality to spend her afterlife pissin’ me off. She got louder and stronger when I first met Georgia, and then something changed.” Jason set his beer down with a hollow clunk, then cracked his knuckles. “The harder I fell for Georgia, the weaker Tessa got, until one day, she could barely talk to me. I was letting her go, sure, but in a way, I think she saw me moving on, and she was letting me go, too. I used to hate her. Tessa was my maker, my mate, but I wasn’t her only mate.”

“Oh, shit,” Mason muttered.

“Yeah, she died when she was with her other man, and she was mad I didn’t come to save her when things went south. Hell, I was mad at myself for a long time about that, too, but it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t her fault. It was a rival crew who didn’t care about killin’ off the women. The point—I used to hate her when she was alive. I hated her at her funeral because she’d bonded us, broken me young, and then she’d left me. Left me for another, left me on this earth mourning a woman who treated me like shit, but I couldn’t get her out of my head. I hated her for haunting me. For making me think Creed would have to put me down when I went crazy enough. But in the end, she saved me.”

“How?”

“She had something to say that was worth listening to, Mason. Georgia and Harrison? They’re here because Tessa warned me Georgia was in danger from those poachers. You remember that. You were there. Damon’s mountains went to battle, and it was Tessa who told me to Change Georgia to save her. To save me. I didn’t hate her in the end because, it turns out, she was there for a reason.”

Mason sighed and dangled his beer bottle over the side of the porch. “So you think Esmerelda is here for a reason. Because she has something she needs to say?”

“Does she have words?”

“Only two, but they’re getting stronger. Tonight at dinner, Beck heard her.”

“Beck? The publicist?” Jason’s lips twisted in a slow smile. “You bangin’ her?”

Mason looked away to hide a smile. “None of your damned business.”

“So, no. Zero pecker strokes for the sad pig.”

“We aren’t there yet, jackass. I want to be. She’s all I think about…”

“But Esmerelda?”

“But lots of things.”

“Like what?”

Mason gritted his teeth. He hated exposing himself to anyone, but he’d come here for Jason’s help, and he owed it to Beck to try. “Like she has a kid. And an ex who hurt her badly. Who still hurts her. And I’m…” Mason took a long swig of his beer, stalling. “I’m not good for anyone right now, and I don’t want to add my baggage to her already complicated life.”

“Who wants an uncomplicated life? I’m serious, man. Who wants a boring existence?” Jason arched his dark eyebrows. “The complications? The little blips and hiccups and heartaches? Those are what add texture to a life and make it good. They make people strong, make them able to appreciate happiness. And someday, when you get your head out of your ass, you’ll be grateful for where you’ve been. Hell, you’ll even be grateful for the time you had with Esmerelda because, in her own way, she’s prepared you for this.”

“For what?”

“For seeing the life you want and leaving the grit behind so you can go and get it. What does Esmerelda say, Mason?”

He stared at Jason, utterly shocked by how insightful the Gray Back jokester was being. “She says, ‘they’re coming.’”

“They’re coming,” Jason repeated softly. “Beck and her kid.”

Mason swallowed over and over, afraid his voice would crack when he spoke. “You think Esmerelda’s telling me it’s okay to move on?” God, what was this feeling coursing through his veins? Hope? He almost didn’t recognize it. Hope had eluded him for a long damn time.

Jason gripped his shoulder and shook him slowly. “Yeah, man. She’s letting you go. It’s time to let her go, too.”

Beck sniffed and wiped the last of the dampness from her cheeks as she shoved her legs into her jeans. The air had cooled up here in the mountains of Wyoming, chilling the floor boards of 1010’s front porch, making the soles of her feet tingle.

“I saw you,” Clinton said.

Beck gasped and pulled her pants up as fast as she could. Mortification blasted heat through her body in a wave before it landed in her cheeks. “Great, you pervert. You saw me.”

Clinton frowned. In the dim porch lighting, he stood leaned against the rail near the bottom stair like he’d been there all night. It was eerie how quiet he’d been. She wasn’t snuck up on easily, but her shame at what she’d done to Mason had her head spinning like a top, distracting her from the dangers of the Boarlander woods.

“I didn’t mean I saw you naked. I meant I saw your animal. I knew you were a flight shifter. Just didn’t know what kind. A snowy owl.” His natural hate-filled scowl had morphed into an expression that looked almost impressed. Clinton cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, which had lightened to silver. “You’re sad. Why?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” With Clinton or with anyone else. She would need to leave this place. Run. Flee back to her old life where she felt steady. Here, she dared to want things that would never come to fruition for a person like her.

Clinton looked off into the dark woods. “You know, I had a girl once who was sad. She thought bottling up hurt meant she was strong, but it didn’t.” Clinton dragged his inhuman eyes back to her. “Silence will hurt Mason, and it’ll hurt you, too.”

Warily, she approached the side railing and looked down on the normally furious bear shifter. “Why do you care? I thought you didn’t like me.”

Clinton snorted. “Don’t matter who I like, Beck. It matters who Mason likes. He’s a jackass.” He twitched his head behind him toward the trailer park. “They all are.” Shrugging one shoulder up to his ear, he lowered his voice and murmured, “But they’re
my
jackasses. Mason’s known that quiet sadness before. It brought a strong man to his knees, and he hasn’t learned to stand yet. I can see him trying with you, though. Don’t break him before he gets there.” And without another word, Clinton ripped the one remaining rosebush out of her landscaping, threw it in the middle of the yard, roots up in the air, then sauntered to his trailer next door and disappeared inside.

As his door banged closed behind him, Beck released the breath she’d been holding. Up until a minute ago, Clinton had terrified her, but maybe Mason had been right when he’d said Clinton would grow on her.

Break him? She didn’t have the power to break Mason Croy. What Clinton didn’t know is that she’d marked him. She’d claimed him because her animal required scars. She was a monster. And now the only one at risk of breaking here…was her.

What the hell had she been thinking? Everything had become so clear as she’d soared high above Damon’s mountains, lost in her swirling thoughts of the man she loved. What had possessed her to fall for a huge, dangerous boar shifter? She and Mason came from completely different worlds, obviously, and her decision to claim Mason didn’t just affect her. She had Ryder to think about, and a tentative alliance with Robbie that could go up in flames at any moment. Her pairing up with a shifter wasn’t going to make co-parenting with him any easier. Robbie was anti-shifter. Always had been. Always would be.

God, she’d messed up so badly with Robbie, and now she was making the same terrible mistake. Only this time, she didn’t have the excuse of naïve youth, inexperience with men, or a shotgun wedding for freak’s sake. She hadn’t learned anything from the first time around, but had dove in beak first once again. And Mason didn’t feel the same. He was hooked up on his ex and not ready to move on, and yet again, she was alone in this.

She had to get out of here.

Her stomach curdled and soured at the thought of leaving this place, these people, Mason. Today had felt good, freeing, and she’d owned who she was. She’d owned her inner animal right in front of Mason. But that wasn’t enough to capture a man’s heart, and she was in way over her head with this.

Affairs of the heart couldn’t be trusted with someone whose heart had been fractured like mirror glass.

Beck shoved open the door to 1010. Maybe it was this old trailer’s fault she’d fallen so unexpectedly hard. Cora had told her it was magic, and she hadn’t listened. Instead, she’d gotten drunk on feeling a part of this place and clawed up Mason! He would never forgive her for doing that without his consent. Hell, she would never forgive herself.

Stupid owl thought she knew all the answers. She thought instinct trumped logic, but she didn’t understand how the real world worked. Beck wasn’t just an animal! She was a person, too, who’d just slashed an illegal claiming mark into the shoulder of a man she barely knew.

Facing Mason again couldn’t happen. Not when she was this horrified by her reckless behavior. She would tell Cora something had come up and she needed to do her publicist duties from Saratoga, not from 1010, which was apparently akin to one of those cute little naked cupids shooting love arrows into everyone’s asses.

She yanked her suitcase from the closet and rushed to the built-in set of drawers.

“Where are you going?” Mason asked.

“Aaah!” Beck screamed, clutching her chest as she spun on him.

He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging, eyes blazing a brilliant blue.

“I’m leaving,” she squeaked out.

Mason blinked slow and raised his dark eyebrows. “Why?”

“Because I don’t belong here! I don’t have any control over my actions, which is insane because I’m a grown-ass woman. I’ve felt old and drained to emptiness for years, and then I come here and I’m making all these mistakes I can’t afford to make. And I’m mortified by what I did to you.”

Mason approached slowly, backing her into the corner as she countered him step for step. “What did you do to me?”

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t draw a single full breath into her lungs, and he was too close, too dominant, too riled up. A submissive snowy owl did not belong with a beast boar! Unable to force enough air past her voice box, she circled her finger in the general direction of the bloody tears in his shirt. When he stared at her like she’d lost her mind, she rasped out, “I marked you.”

Mason shrugged flippantly and said, “Woman, it didn’t hurt for more than a couple minutes, and it’s already forming into a scar.”

“How can you be so calm about this, Mason? It’s a big deal! I never marked anyone before.”

His face went completely slack as a spark of understanding lit up his eyes. Slowly, he dragged his gaze to his shoulder and pulled the tattered material to the side, exposing four perfect, deep, half-healed wounds. “You marked me? Like…
marked
me?” His voice jacked up in volume. “You claimed me?”

“I tried to stop my animal, I did, but I was angry, and my owl thought I was ruining things between us, and she really wants to keep you.” Beck swallowed audibly and dropped her gaze to his scuffed work boots. Softly, she corrected herself, “
I
really want to keep you. I shouldn’t have done that without talking to you about—”

Mason’s lips crashed onto hers. The wind was knocked out of her, not because of his heavy dominance, but because he was squeezing her against his hard body.

Her back hit the wall hard, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel the pain or have that trapped feeling anymore. Mason was touching her! More than touching her, he was giving into her completely!

His hands gripped her shirt roughly, and she tossed her head back and whispered his name as he ground his hard erection against her. His beard scratched at her sensitive skin as he dragged his lips down her neck and bit her hard. Not enough to draw blood, but hard enough that she felt his teeth sink into her skin by millimeters. “I didn’t know,” he rasped out as he pulled the backs of her knees up around his hips. “Boar people don’t do claiming marks like that. I didn’t even give a second thought to your talons on me, woman. Fuck, Beck, say it again. Tell me you claimed me.”

“I claimed you,” she chanted in a desperate murmur. “Mason,” she groaned as the roll of his long, thick erection pressed her just right.

Mason settled her roughly on her feet, gripped her shirt, and then ripped it down the front, popping her buttons all over the laminate flooring. Desperately, she clawed his shirt upward and over his head, and the second he was free of the confining material, his lips were on her again.

Her breasts bounced to freedom as Mason yanked her bra off her arms. She raked her nails down his muscular chest, down the mounds of his taut abs. Damn, she’d never seen someone as perfect as him. Even the long scars on his ribs were sexy as hell. When she leaned forward and clamped her teeth against the raised scar, Mason hissed, then gripped her hair and pulled her in closer, as if he liked the pain. Rough, sexy, snarly beast. She’d had to carefully control her animal with Robbie and act submissive, but Mason could handle her appetites, and right now she wanted to feel him. She didn’t want him gentle—not when both of their animals were riled up like this.

“I want you,” she whimpered, fumbling with the fly of his jeans.

The rumble in his chest grew louder as he shoved his jeans down his hips, unsheathing his thick shaft. Just the weight of it when he pressed it against her belly made her knees buckle with longing. She’d never wanted a man like this. Never wanted to be filled like this. Sex had been about desperation to feel a connection before, but now, it felt like a vital link to touching Mason’s soul. Is this what it was like to actually find a mate?

Gasping when his teeth found her neck again, she rolled her eyes closed and wiggled her hips, helping him shimmy her jeans down her legs. The second she was free of the fabric, their bodies crashed together, and she moaned at how damn good it felt to be pressed up against him. Warmth. Safety. Belonging. All the things she’d craved her entire life was right here for the taking.

Mason dropped sexy biting kisses to her breast, and worked her with that clever tongue of his until her sex pulsed once in delicious anticipation. God, she wanted him inside of her now.

But he had other ideas. Mason dropped to his knees, one hand on her breast, massaging with the perfect rough pressure as he sucked at the skin right over her pelvis, then lower and lower. By the time he pushed her knees wider apart, she was gripping his hair, guiding him, begging him, mewling out helpless pleading sounds. His teeth touched her left inner thigh, and then he clamped harder onto her right. Beck’s knees gave out, but Mason gripped her shoulder in a blur, kept her pressed up against the wall. As she clenched his hair harder, the snarl in his throat sounded damn near like a purr, and the vibration touched her inner thigh. And when Mason looked up at her with those ice blue eyes and that wicked smile, she knew she was done for. As punishment for his tease, she gripped the claiming mark so he would feel her. He winced, but his naughty smile grew wider. And the next time she rocked her hips toward him, he drew her clit into his mouth and just about buckled her over the erotic sensation.

And good gracious, that man knew how to draw an orgasm from her. He worked her into an inferno until she was loud, bowed back against the wall, hips rolling with the pace he set. And as if he knew she was right there, he slid his tongue deep inside of her. Three strokes, and she screamed his name as pulsing release drummed through her, more intense than she’d ever experienced before.

Mason stood, taking her with him, and tossed her on the soft mattress. He pushed her knees wide open as she lifted up to nip at his throat. And that big, dominant razorback boar shifter let her have his neck. If that didn’t show complete trust, she didn’t know what did.

Now her man wasn’t playing around anymore. He wasn’t readying her for his massive size or teasing. Up on locked, muscular arms, Mason settled into the cradle of her hips, trapped her in a fiery gaze, and slammed into her.

“Fuck,” she gasped at how good he felt filling her like this.

Mason drew back slow, and then rammed into her again. He smoothed out his pace and bucked into her gracefully, keeping the pressure building in her middle until she was arching her spine against the bed, begging for more with her body.

“I’m gonna come again,” she warned him breathlessly.

“Wait for me,” he gritted out in a sexy, gravelly voice.

“I can’t, I can’t. Mason!”

He slammed into her faster, deeper. There was a strange feeling in her chest, as if Mason had touched her soul with a hot poker. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the pleasure and pain. She knew what this was. It was exactly what had been missing with Robbie. Mason was bonding her to him, and after this she would never be the same. She wouldn’t be able to leave and rip her heart away from him.

Mason winced, and she knew he felt it, too. Her mate. Hers.

He groaned out her name and froze as the first jet of warm seed pulsed into her, heating her from the inside out. She clawed at his back as her second orgasm slammed through her, even more intense than the first. She was falling…or flying. Weightless as pleasure pulsed through her body, warring with the ache in her chest, and then in an instant, the hurt was gone. Mason’s dick throbbed inside of her as he emptied himself.