Authors: Anya Nowlan
Other folks came in and out, but Slate and his wife had been a treat all evening and Dahlia and Marcus couldn’t stop gushing about them as they drove home in the evening. So Austin had made a few calls and set up a surprise for both of the Robertses—one that was sure to be a particular joy for him as well.
He hadn’t told Marcus where they were going, and the boy had probably thought it was going to be another “boring” hike or tedious trip to some dreary place in Austin’s lame pickup. So it was good that Austin could still surprise the know-it-all teen. Leverage with kids that age was a hard thing to come by.
“What’s going on?” Dahlia asked, appearing in the doorway behind Austin with her Kindle tucked in one hand. “Hey, Slate!” she said, waving and mirroring Marcus’s happy grin.
“Marcus, come say goodbye to your mother!”
There was an obvious sigh of frustration as Marcus bounded up the steps and picked up his bag from Austin in the same motion as he slammed into Dahlia, giving her a quick hug.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he rattled off, throwing the backpack over his shoulders and scooting down the steps, even giving Austin an appreciative nod along the way.
“Well I’ll be, I thought I’d never see the day,” Austin murmured to Dahlia quietly, smirking.
While Marcus had no issues getting friendly with Slate or the other guys at the bar, he was obviously wary of Austin. He couldn’t blame the boy—no man had gotten close to his mother in years and now that there was a possible contender on the scene, some lack of trust could only be expected. But Austin was determined to make things work, both with Marcus and his mother.
“I saw that! But what’s going on, exactly?” Dahlia asked, still wrought with confusion.
“You remember Slate saying that he does some flights over the mountains around here, Sleeping Dragon Hill and the like, and you told Marcus that he could maybe go one day? I talked to Slate and he has some flights planned for tonight and early tomorrow. He’s staying up in the cabin on the reservation grounds with Teresa and they would love to take Marcus with them. If you’ll let them, that is,” Austin explained, keeping his voice low.
A sly grin played on his lips, already knowing that he had won. He would have never done something like that without Dahlia’s approval, but she had given her blessing the day before and Austin wasn’t the kind of guy to pass up a good opportunity like that. Marcus needed to be around shifters who could show him their way of life without the obstruction of personal animosity in the way—which was still a problem between Austin himself and Marcus—and Austin was willing to kill for some alone time with Dahlia.
Win-win!
“Everything all right? Good to go?” Slate asked as Marcus threw his backpack in the backseat of Slate’s truck and was already climbing into the passenger seat.
Slate was looking as much at Dahlia and Austin as he was at Marcus. With a giggle and a nod of her head, Dahlia slipped her hand into Austin’s big paw.
“I should have known you were up to no good, Austin. It’s fine, Slate! Have a good time! Make him call me in the evening before you go to bed! And you behave for Slate and Teresa, Marcus! I mean it,” Dahlia chided in that way that mothers do.
When the truck sped out of the driveway, sending the appropriate amount of gravel flying for a hotheaded airplane pilot, Dahlia put her other hand on her chest and took a deep breath. Squeezing her hand, Austin pulled her closer to him and tucked her into a hug against him. He kissed her forehead and let her stay there for a moment, composing herself. As he’d figured, for her, letting go of Marcus for a day was far harder than for Marcus to go off searching for an adventure. A mother’s heart always worried.
“You’re not used to letting him go out on his own, are you?” he asked gently, laying another kiss on the top of her head.
“No, not at all. I’d never do something like that in New York. And honestly, it’s not like he has any friends there to begin with, or at least friends with families I could trust. But here, it’s all…”
“Different,” he finished for her, smiling.
And it was too. Idaho was nothing like the big cities and Shifter Grove in particular was a town where kids could run around freely, dropping in on the neighbors and generally making a lovable nuisance out of themselves. It was the kind of town Austin had grown up in, and the kind that he hoped his future children could experience.
That thought hit him right in the chest, drilling into the base of his sorrow. His kids… at his age, he thought he would have had cub after cub already. That had always been the plan: settle down with his mate, raise a family, and watch the days drift by in the happy company of a big, raucous group of children and extended family. But that hadn’t happened.
He shook the sorrow off of him like water and tugged Dahlia by the hand to come along with him, the chilly nip of autumn winds gnawing at him while standing on the porch.
“I have another surprise for you,” he said with a devilish grin, closing the front door and locking it behind him.
“I should have guessed,” Dahlia laughed, following him dutifully through his big ranch house and into the kitchen.
There, pots were boiling and the whole place looked like a battleground. But Austin was clearly the general in this war and he was winning. With a victorious flourish, he swept across the scene, an epic tale of disarray and delicious scents to really tempt the taste buds.
“I am cooking dinner! And I am taking it seriously!” he announced.
“It looks like you’re attempting to brutalize the dinner, if you ask me,” Dahlia commented snippily, wearing a teasing smirk.
“Oh is that what you think?” Austin asked, feeling more playful than he had when he was a twenty-year-old, full of trouble and brilliant ideas. “I think you’re going to have to answer for that!” he called, pouncing on Dahlia and tickling her ruthlessly.
“Nooo! Austin, stop!” she wheezed through giggles, squirming in his hands.
Her lush, delicious body put anything that Austin was cooking to shame, and Austin was an excellent cook if he said so himself. Pressing Dahlia up against the wall in his pristine sandy-tiled kitchen, Austin kept her pinned between himself and the cool plane of the wall, his face inches from hers.
“Only if you say you’re sorry,” he taunted, his voice a low, purring growl.
“Never,” she bit back, her teeth grazing her lower lip expectantly.
There was that spark in her eyes that he’d yearned to see, shining so brightly that it could have led a man home through the stormiest seas. As if of their own volition, his hands grabbed for her, groping her maddening curves, and his lips attacked her like she was the nectar he needed to live. He kissed her firmly on the mouth and she responded with a mewling moan, melting into his touch.
Her hands fisted around the fabric of his plaid shirt, tugging at it to get closer to him, already standing on her tippy toes. And he, well, he couldn’t get enough. The thought of throwing her on the kitchen table and fucking her until both of them couldn’t walk anymore was a thought so appealing that it shadowed everything else.
Austin’s teeth were tugging at her lower lip and his hands were steadily making their way up her back under her shirt, now unrestrained by the veneer of good manners he had hidden behind, when a loud hissing noise cut into their blissful moment. It took a second for Austin to realize what it was, but when he did, he peeled himself off of Dahlia with a groan so frustrated that one would think he’d just lost a million dollar bet.
The damn potatoes were boiling over.
“We’re not done with this, missy,” he said sternly, giving her a glowering look that was marked with his tongue slipping over his lips ever so quickly, scooping up the last taste of Dahlia before he turned around.
“I’m going to open the wine,” Dahlia said, equal parts frustration in her own voice.
“I think that’s for the best,” Austin muttered, scooping a hand through his short-cropped brown hair as he quieted the offensive pot of vegetables.
His cock was straining against the front of his jeans and concentrating on cooking was a struggle worthy of a man much stronger than him, in Austin’s opinion. Dahlia’s eyes were fogged over with lust and that spark of life he’d gotten to burn in them shined only brighter, even though her throat was dry and her chest rose and fell heavily in the wake of their passionate make-out session.
Damn did it feel good to ignore his inhibitions and go for what he wanted. It was made all the better that his need was so clearly doubled in Dahlia. He was determined to make this night count. Whatever it took.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Austin
Though Austin had no idea by the end of his cooking session if he’d made the right recipes—considering how damned distracted he was by Dahlia—in about twenty minutes the dining room table was set and waiting for them. A candle was lit in the middle of it, one of those squat, fat ones instead of the fancy long ones, since he was a simple man and favored function in all things. Austin carried in two plates loaded heavy with steaks and mashed potatoes with gravy and vegetable sides.
“Voila!” he said, placing the plate in front of Dahlia and falling into his own seat with a satisfied thud.
“A man of many talents, I see,” Dahlia said, peering at him over the glass of Merlot, her ocean blue eyes so inviting that Austin was more than willing to go and drown in them at the drop of a hat.
“I have my secrets,” he tossed out casually, though the look she gave him made him immediately regret it.
“Do you now? Well, you know mine, show me yours,” Dahlia said, cocking a brow as she cut the first piece of her juicy steak. “Austin! This is amazing!” she cheered, digging in for another bite.
Austin watched with revered interest as the piece of meat disappeared behind her ruby lips, and he wished to be that fork for a moment in time. That train of thought was quickly cut short by his stomach growling at him as if he had just hiked the Appalachian Trail without a snack in sight.
“Glad you like it, Dahlia. I figured we were overdue for some home cooking that didn’t include warming up leftovers from the diner,” he said, chuckling.
At the same time, his mind was roiling about uncontrollably, trying to formulate sentences. His dark past clung to him like a cape he couldn’t take off and he knew from past experience that whenever he tried to explain it or himself, he ran out of words far faster than he liked to.
How do you tell someone that you’re perfectly broken and might never be whole again, especially if that someone’s a woman you desperately want?
The grim thoughts were not given much time to take hold. He got another bite or two in before he found Dahlia peering at him through lowered lashes, expecting him to spill the beans.
“Come on, Austin. You know I don’t like secrets,” she said, beginning to lose her appetite as worry engulfed her now as well.
“Okay,” he started, pouring himself some more wine. “You were curious why I was still single, right? I don’t need to tell you about fated mates and the way we find the ones we must be with. You’ve gone through it all; you know as well as I do. But I… I lost mine,” he said, pausing to wash the lump forming in his throat down with some wine.
“What do you mean?” Dahlia asked carefully, forgetting about the meal altogether.
With a sigh, Austin let it flow out of him like the frayed edges of a bad dream. He kept his eyes on his glass, knowing that if he looked up and saw the sadness in Dahlia’s expressive eyes, he might lose his voice completely.
“We were young, Amelia and I. I think I was twenty-four when I met her, and she was a few years younger. I knew immediately. How could I not! She was the one. But she was human and had no shifter background, so I couldn’t just pounce on her and tell her that she was my woman for life and that was how it was going to be. So I took my sweet time.
“I wined and dined her, I got close with her father, I did all of those things, fully aware that I would at one point need to tell them that I moonlight as a were mountain lion, not so different from the predators that sometimes kill their animals. She was a ranch girl and thought it was so great that I knew my way around cattle and loved country life as much as she did.”
The note of sadness in his voice was so heavy by now that it scraped at Austin’s ears. But he couldn’t clear his throat now. If he tried, he figured he might not say another word at all. His body vibrated slightly with shivers, cold, and hot flashes that went through him at dizzying speeds when he thought back to the one he had lost. To the future that could never be.
“So we’d been seeing each other for a few months and I was madly in love. I was completely lost in her and she loved me right back. You know how it is. It’s supposed to only work one way, that the shifter falls for the mate, but I’ve always thought that there’s some magic there that grabs both of the people involved. I can’t believe so many otherwise rational, gorgeous women would choose to live with us shifters otherwise,” he said, chuckling at his own weak attempt at a joke.
He knew he was stalling and Dahlia did too. She reached her hand over the table and put her palm on his, supporting him with her warmth and presence.
“Tell me, Austin,” she urged, and he complied.
“We were driving to her house after having dinner one night. It was raining. An absolute downpour, couldn’t see a damn thing. It was dark and I had promised her father that I would get her home by ten, so we kept pushing. I had the ring ready and had everything figured out by then, but I had to get her father’s blessing. They were just that kind of family, and I respected that. But the weather got so bad that I had to stop by the roadside and hope for it to clear out. So we had time to talk, the two of us, away from everything.
“Back then, shifters weren’t common knowledge like they are now. We were something to be feared, something unreliable and alien. There was no SassyDate and no dragon rock stars, you know? Anyway. I looked into her green eyes and I decided I would tell her. Right then and there. And so I did. The next thing I knew, she was screaming at me, crying and in hysterics. I knew it would come as a surprise, but the dread I saw in her… I’ve never seen anything like it. I felt like a monster.