Rogue: An Imp World Novella (Northern Wolves Book 2) Read online

  The whole time I couldn’t stop watching his face. There was a muscle that tightened in his jaw, a hiss that escaped his full lips, an unfocused sheen in those eerie gold-flecked eyes.

  “You’re right. I think you might be too much for me.” I was only half teasing, and I didn’t just mean the size of his dick either. He was too much for me—too intense, too wild, too primal. He made me feel unbalanced, buffeted by a force greater than me. It was like a carnival ride gone crazy, with no safety harness whatsoever.

  “I think you might need someone who’s too much for you,” he growled. “And next time I’m ripping that shirt right off you. Pretty bra too. With my teeth.”

  I drew in a ragged breath at the suggestion and lowered all the way, feeling the incredible fullness of him balls-deep inside me. Then slowly I moved. His muscles tensed, fighting to hold himself back as he let me set the pace, his hands on my hips for support. As I increased the speed, leaning forward so I could rise all the way up, then sink completely down onto him, his fingers tightened, digging into my flesh. They’d leave bruises. I didn’t care. Actually, the pressure spurred me on and I rocked against him, tightening internal muscles.

  He groaned, and took over, thrusting into me, harder longer faster, pushing his hips upward to meet mine on every stroke. Everything merged together—the intoxicating wild scent of him, his cock pounding into me, his low growl of pleasure, the golden glowing flecks in his hazel eyes. It all became one sensation, and my muscles tightened around him, everything tensing as I felt my orgasm crest and crash over me.

  I cried out, and bit down on his shoulder hard enough to draw blood.

  “Bad girl,” he chuckled, then bucked into me harder, his rhythm going off the rails. I gasped and tightened around him once more, moaning something incoherent that sounded an awful lot like begging.

  “Fuck,” he shouted, closing his eyes and jerking his head back. I shook, muscles weak only to feel another wave of ecstasy, this one stronger than the last, rush through me. He thickened inside me, and I felt his release, felt it spill into me as I trembled with another wave.

  He was going to kill me. And what a way to go. I slumped on top of him, smelling the metallic tang of blood from my bite, the scent of our sex, the aroma of his skin, warm and woodsy.

  I was panting, like I’d just run a record-breaking sprint. I was sweaty. My hair was a tangled mess of red against his tanned chest. No doubt my mascara was smudged under my eyes and my lipstick smeared halfway across my cheek. I didn’t care. All I could do was lay there on top of him.

  He stirred inside me.

  “Seriously?” I gasped, using his chest to push myself upright. “You’re getting hard already? What are you, Superman?”

  “Better. I’m a bear shifter.” He grinned up at me. “Why? Got somewhere you need to be, wolf-girl?”

  I tried to lift off of him, but he held me tight, skewered on his cock. “Not until morning. Why?”

  That grin turned downright salacious. “’Cause I was hoping to make a night of this. You game?”

  Was I ever. “All night? Like we just did?”

  A concerned frown creased his brow. “That was gentle. Was hoping we could have some fun, maybe get a little rough.” His hand reached up to touch the bite on his shoulder. “I promise I won’t draw blood, but kinda like it when you do.”

  Yes, this man was going to be the death of me. I wiggled on his lap, thrilled to see that muscle twitch in his jaw again. “I’m totally game, wild man. And I’ve got all night.”

  The sky was peach and orange with the sunrise, birds chirping. I hadn’t slept a wink and was sore in all the right places. I wanted to stay and see how long this crazy grizzly could keep it up, but I had responsibilities. Someone had to help Brent with clean-up from the party, and I needed to check on an ad campaign I was running so I could have a weekend effectiveness report ready first thing Monday morning. So instead of going in for round six, or seven, or whatever we were at, I kissed Karl on the nose and stood, gathering up my clothes.

  “That was a whole lot of fun, wild man. Don’t be a stranger.”

  His hazel eyes were intent as they watched me walk away. “I don’t intend to.”

  1

  Chapter 1

  Eleven Months Later

  “Hey Sabrina.”

  I matched Kennedy’s high-five, walking out the door of the Alpha house as I walked in. I liked Brent’s new mate. And I liked him even better now that his woman was living here in Juneau instead of down in Seattle. Having her fly up to Anchorage for the trauma center every three days was better than having a grumpy Alpha who only saw his mate twice a month. They’d had a whirlwind romance this spring, and already she was an integral part of our pack. Kennedy was human, but a kick-ass human with a great sense of humor and a quick mind. She’d become one of my best friends, and I couldn’t wait for her and Brent’s mating ceremony this fall.

  “Is Brent in the great room?” I asked.

  Kennedy grabbed a roll-aboard suitcase and a slung a duffle over her shoulder. “Kitchen. We still on for a trail run next weekend?”

  “Absolutely.” I held the door for her, watching the woman jog down to her car before heading toward the kitchen. The Alpha House was enormous—eight bedrooms, a dining room that seated thirty, a great room that took up half of the first floor, and a commercial-sized kitchen. That’s where I found my Alpha, scrubbing a fry pan.

  “S’up, boss?” I plopped down at the long kitchen table, propping my feet up on the chair across from me and snagging an apple from a basket.

  “We’ve got a rogue bear down Ketchikan way.”

  I put the apple back, suddenly not hungry. “Who’d he kill?”

  Brent didn’t mean a regular bear, he meant a bear shifter. We were all descended from Nephilim, our diluted angel powers giving us added strength, speed, healing, and the ability to shift form. Ninety-five percent of us were wolves, but that other five percent could be bears, cougars, falcons. Heck, I’d even heard there was some badass boar dude down in Nebraska. Since werewolves were the dominant shifter breed, we were the ones with the big target on our backs. The angels might no longer consider us one wrong move away from extinction, but they still were pretty heavy-handed when it came to us following their endless rules and restrictions. Killing humans was a big no-no. Bigger than big.

  “A group of five human scientists studying fungal strains in glacier ice.”

  What the heck? Did they annoy the guy? Steal his smoked salmon? Play loud music in their tents at night? Bear shifters were weird. They were reclusive, introverted, quick to anger, insanely territorial, and notoriously grumpy. And I wasn’t being sexist in thinking the rogue was a male. Females, sows, were only one in ten of the bear shifter population. They tended to be slightly more social, living in cities, and having sexual relations with humans except for a few months in the spring when the bear shifter males reluctantly put on clothes and ventured into town to get laid.

  No wonder the males were grumpy. Their solitary existence, and the scarcity of females, meant they only got the chance to bury their sticks in some fur a few times per year. Of course it was their own fault that they didn’t make more of an effort. And sexual frustration was no excuse for killing five scientists.

  Even so, it wasn’t our problem. Well, maybe tangentially it was our problem, but there were others better suited to deal with this guy.

  “So let the bears deal with it. Did you call the sloth?”

  Brent put the fry pan in a cabinet and turned to me with a pained expression on his face. “I did. I called four of them. I’m sure you can guess how they reacted.”

  Yeah. Although it was midsummer and the bears should be downright jovial. Well, jovial for a bear, anyway. “Isn’t that Eric guy down near Ketchikan? Tell him he’s got a rogue trying to poach his fish and see how fast he gets his furry butt in gear.”

  “Eric’s phone is out of service, and from what I’ve heard he’s roamed east, over the mountains i
nto Canada.”

  That was the problem. Bear shifters were territorial, but many weren’t opposed to pulling up stakes and moving their “territory” five hundred miles elsewhere. No forwarding address. No social media or friends to tell you where the heck they’d gone. We had a hierarchy, a pack. Wolves didn’t just vanish without a thorough manhunt twenty-four hours later. Bears had their sloth, but it was more a loose affiliation of the shifter breed. Black bears were a little better since they tended to cluster in family groups, but the brown bears were as individualistic as they came. They had no Alpha, no directory, no regular meetings or check-ins. There were so few of them that the angels didn’t bother to keep track of them. And even if they did attempt to do so, I doubted even those all-powerful winged-beings could manage to find a grumpy, reclusive bear who’d been mostly off-the-grid from the day he was born.

  “Humans? Who’s that sheriff down there we met with last October? He seems competent.” I was grasping for straws. I really didn’t want to spend this week tromping through wet forests, battling a gazillion stinging insects while I sniffed out a rogue bear. I had a job, and although I could move deadlines around and manage my marketing campaigns on the fly, it wasn’t an easy thing to put aside my career for my pack responsibilities.

  But pack came first. Pack always came first.

  Brent folded his arms across his chest and raised one inky-dark eyebrow. “Rogue, Sabrina. Humans are working with us about the shifter-hunters up north, but it’s our responsibility to police rogue shifters and bring them to justice.”

  I winced. Justice for a rogue wolf would be exclusion from hunts, banishment, or a transfer to another pack. Our society was our life. But bears… Justice for a bear shifter meant death.

  “Fine. Who am I taking with me? I’m assuming at least six or seven other wolves?” I was Brent’s second, next in line for Alpha, but I wasn’t tough enough to bring down a bear shifter solo. No one was.

  “Normally, but one of the bears agreed to go, so it’s just you and him.”

  I felt my muscles lock up, my breath stuck in my lungs. No. Just, no. “Who?”

  “Karl. You met him at the barbeque last August.”

  I’d more than met the grizzly shifter at the barbeque last August, I’d gotten naked and sweaty with him in a crazy drunken night that still haunted my dreams and had me reaching between my thighs at least once a week since then. My whole life I’d lived in Alaska and I’d never met him—that’s how much a loner this guy was. For some reason he’d tromped out of the forest to eat burgers and drink beers with us wolves last year. We’d wound up down by the creek with a bottle of whisky. Just the two of us. And thinking about that night was bringing back the sort of memories that had me squirming in my chair.

  “You okay?” Brent shot me an odd look.

  “Yeah.” Crap. All I needed was my Alpha to scent the lust that was curling through me. There was nothing wrong with a hook-up between shifter breeds, but after that night Karl had walked back into the forest in typical bear fashion. No phone call. No flowers. Not even a thanks-for-the-sex text. Eleven months, one week, and two days. It was darned embarrassing. If I’d been like Zeph or Ella, known for keeping relationships strictly to one-night stands, it wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t. And I didn’t need the whole pack fussing over me, bringing over sympathy casseroles and chick flicks because they thought I’d lost my heart to an antisocial grizzly who probably didn’t even have running water in his den.

  “Does he know he’s working with me?” Okay, that was pathetic, but I had to know. Did Karl volunteer when Brent told him he was sending me in? My stupid heart thumped at the thought.

  Brent’s forehead creased into a puzzled frown. “I don’t think so. I told him I’d send someone down to Ketchikan to meet him, but I don’t remember specifying who. Why? Did you guys rub each other wrong at the barbeque?”

  No, we rubbed each other right. And that was the problem. I leaned back in my chair, trying for a casual, indifferent posture. “Nah, we’re good. When do I meet him?”

  “This afternoon.” Brent tossed me a set of keys. I caught them and blinked, wide-eyed. He was letting me take his boat?

  “Dude, that’s an eighteen-hour trip. Did you put magical motors in the boat?”

  The Alpha rolled his eyes. “Dustin is flying you down. That’s for a rental Jeep.”

  Oh. That made more sense, although I liked the idea of magical motors. Someone needed to get right on that. Still, a flight down and a rental Jeep came in a close second.

  I stood and gave Brent a quick salute and spun about to leave. “I’m on it, boss.”

  “Sabrina?” I paused at the door and turned to face him. His normally cheerful face was full of worry. “Be careful. If things get out of hand, get out of the way and let Karl handle it. Understand? Leave him to kill the rogue while you get to safety.”

  Grizzly shifters were brutal in a fight, and rogues even worse. I was hard to kill, but if a fight went south I didn’t have any problem with retreating. And normally I wouldn’t have any problem letting Karl take the lead, but I wasn’t about to turn tail and leave him to fight this rogue solo.

  So I looked Brent straight in the eyes, and for the first time ever, I lied to my Alpha. “Will do, boss.”

  2

  The Jeep was right where Brent said it would be. I hopped in and headed out of town onto narrow roads that eventually became gravel as they slid into the lush green on both sides of me. After an hour of bumpy travel, I saw the signpost—a two-foot thick stump with a metal pole driven through the center. Bears. Go figure.

  Parking the Jeep, I made my way down a well-traveled path marked on either side with clawed trees, their bark hanging in shreds. It made me shiver. Yeah, I’d had sex with this bear. Yeah, I was abnormally fascinated with him. Yeah, he scared the heck out of me—that was a good bit of the attraction.

  There was a tiny clearing in the woods, barely big enough to accommodate the postage-stamp-sized frame house with plank siding. Outside was a man wearing faded jeans and nothing else. His light brown hair hung to his shoulders in loose waves. Dark blond scruff edged his jaw. Muscles flexed in his arms as he swung an axe. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he picked up the split log and stacked it neatly. Judging by the pile, he’d been doing this for a few hours.

  Clearly he was busy, and clearly this wood chopping activity in late July was a critical activity because he didn’t even acknowledge my presence. He was a shifter. As quiet as I moved, he’d heard me before I ever came into the clearing, and even without that he surely smelled me. He was downwind of me. He knew I was there. And after our intimacy last year, he knew exactly who I was.

  My face burned with shame. A bear. Why couldn’t I have become infatuated with a wolf shifter, or even a human. No, instead I was hot and bothered over this guy who felt splitting an additional five logs was more important than greeting the woman he’d had sex with, the wolf who was partnering with him on tracking down a rogue.

  Karl stacked the last split log, and buried his axe in the stump. Then he turned to me, his jacked body glistening with sweat, those faded jeans tight. My eyes drifted lower, and I reluctantly forced them back up.

  “Ready to track down a rogue, or do you need to split another cord? Winter is coming, you know.”

  He grunted.

  “Was that a ‘yes’ grunt, or a ‘no’ grunt?”

  His eyes met mine. They were green with brown and gold flecks that I couldn’t see at this distance but remembered oh so well. “Want me to put a shirt on first?” he asked.

  No. No, I didn’t. “That’s up to you, wild man. It’s July. Bugs are gonna be nasty out there.”

  “Don’t care.” He walked past me and headed down the path. Sometimes sweat smells acrid and sour, but Karl smelled warm and wild with a hint of leather, clove, and pine. It was intoxicating and I turned and followed him like he was the pied piper. At my Jeep, Karl climbed into the passenger seat and sat silently, waiting for me to join
him.

  He didn’t care about being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Because he was so badass that even the bugs stayed away. I fought to keep my libido in check as I climbed into the driver’s seat and started the Jeep. Karl was freaking huge and my hand nudged against his thigh and knee each time I shifted. I couldn’t help myself from spreading out my fingers and brushing along the top of his leg as I dropped the Jeep down into second.

  A soft growl rumbled through his chest and I hid a smile. That wasn’t a growl of warning, it was a growl of arousal. Karl wasn’t as unaffected by me as I’d thought.

  “So you live here? I thought you were closer in to Juneau?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  He grunted. Clearly that was his go-to communication. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’m as far north as Skagway. Depends on how I’m feelin’”

  “What kind of feeling do you have when you’re in the Ketchikan area?”

  “Summer’s nice here. I like to chop my wood for winter. Smoke some fish.”

  “So what kind of rolling papers do you need to smoke a halibut? Extra wide, I assume?”

  He shot me a puzzled glance, obviously not getting the pot reference. It didn’t matter since it afforded me an opportunity to see his beautiful eyes.

  “Are you coming up to the barbeque in a few weeks?” I couldn’t help it. I’m sure I was pouring out all sorts of lusty pheromones right now. The guy might slap me down, but I needed to know.

  “Depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  Those hazel eyes with the gold flecks pinned me to my seat. I was lucky I didn’t wreck the Jeep because I just couldn’t turn away.

  “Depends on whether I’m gonna get laid or not.”

  Oh my. I swallowed hard and squirmed in my seat, every bump in the road ratcheting up the lust pouring through me, hitting the excruciatingly sensitive nerve endings between my legs.