Theirs to Bear: Icy Cap Den #3 (Alaskan Den Men) (3 page)

BOOK: Theirs to Bear: Icy Cap Den #3 (Alaskan Den Men)
12.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
4
Liv

I
’d been hanging
off an Icy Cap cliffside all morning, screaming to the empty beach below. This is what I got for setting out on my own across the Artic tundra. All I wanted was to collect some fresh herbs for myself while Gary watched Leo.

Tristan had warned me about going off on my own. But had I listened? No.

Instead, I was going to die. And that wasn’t the worst part. In an attempt to save myself, I’d used every last bit of clothing I had as rope in a failed attempt to haul myself up off this ledge.

Now I’d pinned all my hopes on my thong. Before today, my slingshot panties were a fashion choice—not survival gear. In the hopes of hanging on, I’d looped it around the sturdiest roots I could find, but I didn’t have the arm strength to haul myself up.

The damned thong had given me the biggest wedgie of my life before I liberated it for use as a lasso.
I was not keen on introspection; I had a difficult time waiting for my nail polish to dry. All this because I’d fallen over the edge trying to get some fresh lavender.

Blackberry vines had closed around me like a net. They protected me from falling. On the flip side, extracting myself was going to be painful to my skin—and pride.

It’s too late to learn any lesson from this. Instead my son will live the rest of his life knowing that when someone finally found my frozen body, I was pretty much naked.
With my luck, that discovery would be by a cruise ship whose season didn’t start for a few more months. That was one thing to be thankful for.

I screamed for help until my throat was hoarse. My cries competed with those of the arctic terns and skuas circling above me. They were mighty curious, which was OK for now since they weren’t raptors. When the eagles showed up, I’d be in serious trouble.

The ledge above me trembled, loosening more of the bank. I was busy watching the earth crumble to the two-hundred-foot drop below when a shadow fell across me from the cloudless sky.

“I recognized the screams.” Tristan’s mirrored aviator sunglasses peered down at me over the bank’s edge. “Need some help?”

“Swear to God, get me out of here and I’ll give you anything you want.”

“You’ll leave Icy Cap?”

“Except that.” I shook my head slightly. I was aware of my precarious perch, despite my feelings on the subject. “Leo belongs here. I won’t leave him.”

“You are so stubborn you’d rather fall to your death?”

“If you have to ask that question, then you don’t know me,” I said.

“This is a new use for a thong.” Tristan fingered the nylon material that stretched like a rubber band between me and the branch it had snagged on.

I closed my eyes. The darkening stubble, his sunburned nose, those glasses. Even when I was facing death, Tristan’s hotness awed me.

“Are you going to help me or not?” I asked.

Tristan scanned over the edge again. His lips twitched. “Is that sage nestled against your tits?”

His eyes looked down into mine with the slightest twinkle. Frustration boiled inside me. He thought this was funny, when the ledge supporting me could give out at any time?

“Just get me out of here before I make my kid an orphan, bastard.” My words lacked heat. Damn his attractive self.

“Injuries?” Tristan lay flat atop the bank, dangling his arms toward me over the cliffside .

“Nothing’s broken,” I said.

He scooted forward. More bits of sand and rock crumbled from the ledge. My precarious situation didn’t prevent him from ogling my cleavage. Under normal circumstances I’d have appreciated the attention.

After running his hands lightly over the edge, testing for loose earth, he stood up, brushing soil from his palms. “Did this rescue start out thong-less, or was that a later development?”

“I was trying to lasso a branch above me to crawl out. I didn’t fall over the ledge with rappelling gear.”

He produced a rope from his backpack. “I thought you were trying to signal, like Batman uses his silhouette in the sky. Only with you, it’s panties.”

“How’d you know where I was?”

“I stopped by your place. Gary said you’d gone out alone. I came looking.”

He fed the rope down with a carabiner clip attached to it. It dangled at my stranded thong. With a few flicks of his wrist, he released the garment from the offending tree branch and reeled it to him. “I knew all that fly fishing would come in handy.”

“But how did you know where I was?”

He pocketed my panties as a slow grin spread across his lips. “Wild strawberries don’t come into season until early June. I followed your scent.”

“You think I smell like strawberries?”

“Yes.”

“That’s is some powerful sniffer you’ve got there.”

“I’m an ice bear shifter, remember?”

“You never let me forget.”

“Getting you out of there is going to be a bitch with the zero clothing you’re wearing. As it is, I’ll be spending the rest of the afternoon plucking blackberry thorns from your sweet ass.”

Damn. If that didn’t sound so humiliating, and if I didn’t know that Tristan would never let me forget this, I would have been seriously turned on. Lately my life had become one bad cable movie, something like
A Widow Wanders in the Wilderness
or
Celibate Stylist Scarred by Savage Stems
.

“Hey!” I called. “Will you get me out of here?”

Tristan said, “I’m checking the rope before I come down.”

“You don’t need to come down. Just throw me the rope already and pull me up.”

“I’ll rappel down and we’ll come back up together.”

Good-bye, last shred of pride.

Tristan lowered himself over the cliffside.

I reached toward him. Loose sand below me tumbled.

“Don’t move.”

“I’m trying to help.” Being a damsel in distress didn’t come naturally to me. Even as Tristan’s jeans outlined his firm ass, dangling at eye level.

Some women loved ripped abs, others preferred built biceps. I’m not picky.

“Ready?”

“This might be a little late to mention,” I said, “but have you done this lots before?”

“Never.” I could hear the grin in his voice. He was actually enjoying this.

Coming alongside, he handed me a bandana from his pocket. “Wrap it around whichever wrist is in worst shape.”

My heart jackhammered with his proximity.

Tristan tossed me a pair of work gloves. Producing a pair of small shears from his pocket, he snipped away at the brambles encircling me.

As much as I hated being snagged, the dropping foliage was making me nervous.

“I’m going to pass these you to soon so you can work from your side. We’ll secure the rope before cutting away the final layers.”

“Can’t you pull me out of here?”

“Patience. Now snip away and I’ll have you out of here in a jiffy.”

When I was finally free of the brambles, Tristan tied himself chest-to-chest with me. His rock-hard abs felt amazing. He’d kept up with the gym, no doubt about it.

A thinner but still prickly layer of blackberry thorns pressed into my skin from the other side. The stupid things were painful. They were cutting into Tristan’s shirt too. Fresh bloody streaks smeared his arms.

“We’re tied pretty tight,” he said. “On the count of three, I’m going to push us away from the cliff. Hang on. One, two, three.”

I squeezed my arms around his torso, refusing to look down. When Tristan pushed us away from the brambles, I screamed.

“Climb,” Tristan ordered. “The rope is holding us. Loosen your grip on me; you’re squeezing the breath out of me. I’m no good to either of us unconscious.”

Dimly I was aware that I was gradually drawing closer to the bluff’s ledge.

“Careful climbing out. Crawl on your belly so the edge doesn’t collapse.”

I heaved myself over the top, then slithered away from the edge on my gashed-up belly. I wanted to gasp but it hurt too much. My whole body ached. Jagged welts oozed blood.

“Slide over.” Tristan huffed. “I’m coming up.” He hauled himself over the ledge. I tried to pull his arms to help, but mine felt like rubber.

“You OK?” Tristan asked.

“Outstanding.” I was too sore to move. My heart thumped. Naturally, this was only from the stressful situation I found myself in and nothing to do with Tristan’s proximity.

“You need to drink some water. Let me help you sit up.”

I waved at him. “I’ll rest here a minute. Thanks.”

“I always wanted you on your back.”

I laughed, glancing over at him. His cuts only made him look more manly and handsome, like he was used to rescuing stylists dangling from cliffsides. “Ouch. That hurt. Don’t make me laugh again.”

He pulled us both to our feet.

I was lucky to have him as a friend.

That should be enough.

It had to be enough.

Without warning, he enveloped me in his arms and landed a searing kiss on my lips. He started to pull away, but my hands were in his hair, holding him to me. He parted my lips, slipping his tongue inside.

A swooping gull startled us apart.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Tristan said. He ran his hands through his already ruffled hair. “You scared the hell out of me, dangling off that cliff. I thought I’d lost you.”

“I don’t want to you apologize.” I stepped closer to him, shivering partly from standing around naked in forty-degree weather but also because of him.

“I thought you only liked me as a friend?”

“That was eons ago.”

“But your marriage to Ted—”

“Over before he died,” I said quickly.

Tristan’s head pulled back in surprise. My stomach clenched. I knew how close he was to Ted, at one time. They were like brothers. Would Tristan see any chance of “us” as a betrayal to my dead husband?

“I wish I’d known that . . . earlier.”

My heart rate accelerated. I tried so hard not to hope. I could never tell him that he was who I wished to be with now.

Tristan bent his head again to kiss me. My eyelids dropped in anticipation. And then his lips were crushing mine again.

The guy could kiss. If I’d been wearing panties, they’d have been moist.

“We need to talk.” Heat poured off this guy as if he was standing next to a bonfire. “After we get you back to town. We wait any longer, Gary’ll send out a search party.” He pulled a blanket from his backpack and handed it to me.

“You can come over later. Gary won’t mind keeping Leo a while longer.” I wrapped the blanket around me. Never have I been so glad for a piece of cloth. I almost didn’t notice it smelled like wet fur. Almost.

Tristan ran his thumb over my lower lip. “We will. Tomorrow.”

“Thanks a lot!” I couldn’t believe he was ending this super-sexy rescue by telling me he’d stop by tomorrow.
WTF?
The noise of an approaching four-wheeler drowned out my muttering.

After Tristan got my ride back to town arranged, he stripped. Tossing me his clothes, he winked before sprinting away. Before my eyes, the man morphed into a galloping ice bear.

I blinked in disbelief when a weaselly lesser demon pulled up on the four-wheeler. “I’m your transport back to town. Hop on.” He winked and revved the engine, jerking his thumb at the empty seat space behind his. What a gentleman.

This demon compensated for his skinny neck, small head, and below-average height with an impressive tat collection. Seeing as how he wore a muscle shirt and I was sitting behind him, I got an eyeful. I sat as far back as I could on the shared seat and held onto him with the lightest pressure that would keep me on the vehicle. As we headed back toward town, he sneezed. Flames shot out his nose, scorching the tundra as we rode. When I checked behind us, I saw charred pits smoking. Even the hair on my legs was singed.

“’Cuse me!” he hollered over the engine. “I’m getting over a flu. Still got some congestion. Good thing I didn’t have beans for lunch, though.”

I inched back even farther on our seat.

“Hey, want to stop by my place and see my collection of shrunken heads?”

Tristan was a dead man when I saw him.

Back in Icy Cap, I took my time in a tepid shower and painful blackberry-thorn removal session. I’d only just finished when a disheveled Gary showed up to return Leo.

“You OK?” I asked him after I’d briefly explained most of what transpired in the wilderness.

“Did you get any more snowdrops?” His eyes darted around the kitchen table.

Double damn! I’d left my pre-accident stash back on the cliffside.

“They were lost in the fall.”

His already downcast face drooped lower.

“But I can get more soon. From Barrow. Don’t worry. I promised to keep you stashed with soap, and I will.”

His eyes slid away from mine. He didn’t believe me.

“I promise you, Gary, that I won’t run out of soap for you.”

“Shhh,” he hushed me. “I don’t want any other guys to know I use it. I just like it because it masks my smell, not because I like flowers.”

Leo, in cub form, trotted into the house with his head down and circled the living room once. The intermittent squeaking from his mouth alerted me to what was probably a vole he’d caught. I had no problem with Leo learning to hunt. I didn’t expect an ice bear shifter, even such a young one, to be a vegetarian. However, I did not expect to share my living quarters with his victims.

“Leo, whatever you have in your mouth, you return outside and release it
away
from the house. Then come right back in. This time as a boy, not a cub. You’re due for a bath.”

Leo padded slowly to the door.

Where had I packed the broom? I could see that the way things were going, I’d be better off to keep that by the door.

“Gary.” I turned back to my sitter. “Sure you’re OK? Do you feel sick?”

“I need some rest. I’ll take a nap after I clean up.”

“Take care of yourself. See you tomorrow?”

He nodded and sloped out my back door.

By midafternoon, Leo had bathed and eaten his lunch and we’d played hide-and-seek around our property. It was now quiet time for both of us. I unpacked a few more boxes, then worked on taking inventory. Having this much daylight was exhilarating. I wasn’t sleeping much. Gary had suggested I cover the windows in the bedrooms. I had for Leo, but for me, I like all the light. It made me feel a bit like Superman. I may not be a paranorm myself, but having this much energy was probably as close as I was going to get.

BOOK: Theirs to Bear: Icy Cap Den #3 (Alaskan Den Men)
12.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Haunted by Alma Alexander
Under Enemy Colors by S. Thomas Russell, Sean Russell, Sean Thomas Russell
Destiny: Book of Light by Allen, Paul
The Darkest Hour by Erin Hunter
When a Heart Stops by Lynette Eason
Explaining Herself by Yvonne Jocks