The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3) (6 page)

“None of your business.” Nora swallowed and shifted uncomfortably. Rain hadn’t said anything about feeling the pull of Fate and she needed him to let her leave after this trip was over. She couldn’t—strike that she wouldn’t—have him risking his life to be with her. And if he hadn’t already figured out it was a mate pull between them, she sure as hell didn’t want the group informing him of the reason behind their supernatural attraction.

She rubbed a wrist where her long sleeve knit dress hid the tattoos left behind from her previous mate—the one her father had almost certainly murdered. Short sleeves were a thing of the past. The sight of the matching green-knotted tattoos only reminded her of what she’d lost. Plus, there wasn’t a wolf alive that would sleep with her after seeing her ink. Telling a potential lay that her father had probably murdered her mate never boded well for a second sleepover.

“You shouldn’t ignore it.”

“Leave me alone. I didn’t ask for your advice and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tomás growled. “I know a strong mate bond when I see one. The way you two can’t keep your hands off of each other isn’t exactly subtle.” He chucked as the sound of an approaching car caught his focus.

They both turned toward the car, and Nora tried to put his words from her mind.

Rain, Maggie, Dani, and what’s his name from Kentucky climbed out of the first taxi. Another car pulled up right behind them. The rest of the group joined Nora and Tomás at the front entrance of the suspicious building.

“What makes you think this is it?” Maggie stepped up beside Tomás, tapping away at the tablet in her hand.

“The fact that it’s in the right general area and says ‘
Touch a Wolf’
on the door.”

“It’s in the right place, plus we found the yellow dog, that was really a wolf, only a quarter mile from here. The progression of her recalled flight makes sense,” said the man from Kentucky.

His sweeter-than-molasses voice would’ve made Nora instantly interested in him, but the only thing on her mind was the way Rain smelled and how close he was still standing in relationship to Maggie and Dani. Images of ripping their hair out by the roots flashed through her mind and she took a deep breath, attempting to calm her flustered nerves.

Rain turned and caught her gaze, momentarily allowing her to glimpse the hunger burning brightly in his turquoise blue irises. Nora stepped closer to him and he countered her movement by backing away and mouthing ‘no’.

Damn him.
He seemed to be in complete control while she was about to come out of her skin.

The rough-looking tatted guy from Chicago stepped forward, messed with the lock for a few seconds, and then moved away holding the padlock in his hand. A broad grin spread across his face as he gestured for the rest of them to enter first. “After you, boss.”

Nora frowned. She hated that they were making him feel badly because of their relationship, but there wasn’t much to be done at this point. The damage was done. All they could do now was try to behave like they had control of their impulses. Of course, she didn’t really want to control her impulses around Rain.

Maggie pulled her backpack off and set it at her feet. She pulled out a flashlight and tossed it to Rain, then handed everyone else a light as well.

Nora took one and followed the Chicago male who’d introduced himself as Niko on the plane.

“Don’t let him discourage you, sweetheart. He’s a soldier. Having feelings for someone on a mission is probably his worst nightmare.” Niko nudged her shoulder as they entered the building’s large foyer. “The best things, you have to fight for.”

More advice?
Did everyone just feel the need to tell her what they thought she should do?

“Thanks,” she whispered. She might not want to hear his opinion, but she’d been bitchy enough to Tomás earlier. It
would
be nice if the rest of the group didn’t hate her more. She was already a Cavanaugh, and that alone put her on most people’s shit list.

The group moved through the lower level of the building, clearing room after room. The only things left behind by Mary’s captors were sheet-covered furniture and dust. No one had been inside this building for years.

“Rivera… Mobster… and Miami, you go upstairs and make sure we’re not overlooking anything,” Rain called out from down the hall. “Nora, stay in the foyer with…Seattle…to watch the entrance.”

Niko, whom Rain still called Mobster, left to follow Rain’s order and the little Asian wolf from Seattle entered the foyer and leaned against the wall.

“Can you imagine being stuck in a place like this? The rooms down the hall all have padlocks on the outside and the doors are made of steel. This guy wasn’t playing around.”

Nora shuddered. Nightmares were made of stories like this. She didn’t want to consider the reality of how many women had been raped, tortured, and killed here. The building was clean, but it still held the stench of pain and death. Maybe it was the way their magick let them experience the world, but Nora could’ve done without the extra senses at that moment.

Maggie returned shortly before everyone else. But it was only Rain that Nora noticed. The way he stood taller than almost everyone. The way his blue eyes were dark and hungry. His scent filled her lungs even though he stood on the opposite side of the room. Their magick reached for each other and her body ached to touch him.

“Nothing.” He ran his hands through his hair and frowned. “Miami…”

An angry snarl came from the Cuban wolf’s lips. “My fucking name is Alex, okay?”

Rain continued, as though he hadn’t just been interrupted, a masterful calm on his face. “I want you to watch the building from across the street. It’s empty, but cared for. So if someone shows up, we need to know. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“In the meantime, once I get back to the hotel I’ll start researching who owns this building,” Maggie added. “The signal out here is crappy, so I need to get on the hotel bandwidth to make a dent.”

Rain nodded. “Alex, you good?”

“
Si
, no problem.”

“
W
hat do
you mean you fucked up?” Francis’ voice was loud enough that Rain was pretty certain Tomás had heard it next door. And Niko on the other side. As if those two didn’t mistrust him enough without hearing his alpha berate him live via sat phone.

Rain hung his head and thought of Nora. They had fucked up by royal proportions. The team was falling apart. They were missing clues, and they’d probably just hit a dead end. But instead of that litany, Rain chose to focus on the one thing his alpha could control. “We need some more information from Mary. The building was a dead end.”

“No, I hear something else under there, Rainier. What’s going on? Is it you and that Boston wolf I found showering-but-not-showering in your hotel room?”

Rain’s mouth opened, but no words came out. There was no possible way Francis could read his mind from a thousand miles away. The phone didn’t give away that much tone—it was a shitty phone.

“I’m handling it,” he said, hoping for an end to the conversation. “I need you to get some more information from Mary. Something about the guy who was holding her that we can track.”

Francis sighed. “We tried everything. She gave us all she could remember. So if you’ve hit a dead end, then the mission is done and you should come home.”

Something rebelled inside Rain. They couldn’t go back yet. He needed a few more hours… Hell no, he wasn’t about to say that out loud. Francis would hear the admission in that sentence from a million miles away. “Maggie is following up on the building owner information, but given how long it’s taken her, I’m not hopeful.”

“Rain, this isn’t like you. Why won’t you just admit the mission is complete and come home?”

Rain jawed at the air.
Because the mission isn’t the point
, he wanted to say, but that wasn’t the truth. The mission was absolutely the point, and it wasn’t complete. The mission could go on forever, by his estimation, if they kept getting leads that ran into dead ends. But that wouldn’t fix what was eating at him. “As soon as Maggie has any information, I’ll call in.” He was about to hit the
End
button when Francis’ voice rang in his ear.

“You go talk to that girl, Rain. She may be a Cavanaugh, but she seems to have a good head on her shoulders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t salute me. This isn’t an order.” Francis took a long drink of something. “Or maybe it is.”

“I’m on my way to talk to her as we speak, sir.” Rain slid his arms into the blue button-up shirt he’d packed for casual wear. This was the definition of casual.

“And, Rain…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t be a jackass.”

Rain felt free to hang up on his alpha. His uncle was a good man, if a touch on the nosy side, and he was just trying to be a helpful uncle in the moment. Not an alpha. An alpha intrusion would have been a justified action if there was something of pack-nature going on. At this moment, it was just two wolves fucking each other. Albeit, at inopportune moments and in the worst possible taste, but it wasn’t anything Francis needed to be concerned about as an alpha.

A concerned family member, Rain would hang up on. He’d been in the Army long enough to tell the difference between commands and at-ease.

He was going to be completely at-ease when he went to talk to Nora. Like a maelstrom of at-ease.

Rain closed the door to his hotel room as though he was a teenager sneaking out to go party in a shed somewhere. Instead of a single adult male on his way to speak to a single adult female. They had no ties to bind them. They could easily talk like grown-ups about their completely adolescent behavior.

When he reached her room, he knocked in a very prim and proper fashion. The door opened and Maggie’s bright face answered. Rain froze. Did he have the wrong room?

He looked past Maggie, into the room. “How goes the search?”

“Good. Nora was just letting me use her charger. Appears I forgot mine in Nepal.” Maggie smiled and held up a white cord, squeezing past him into the hall. “I’m just next door.”

“You mean Vegas?” Rain asked.

Maggie laughed and pointed at the door as she walked toward it. “No, I’m just next door.”

“I mean, you were in Vegas. Not Nepal.”

“We were in Nepal before Vegas,” she said, like it was the most normal thing she could possibly have said.

“You were in Nepal?” Rain averted his eyes from hers when he saw Nora in the corner of his vision. She had changed into yet another uptight, conservative dress. This one was black, with a straight neckline, and a white collared shirt stuck out, all the way up her long neck. Two little white cuffs stuck out under the long black sleeves of the dress.

Gods, that woman covered every inch of her body except her pussy. She undoubtedly had
no
panties on, again. Rain shook himself and smiled at Maggie, trying not to think the word
pussy
while looking directly at her.

Pussy
.
Tits. Ass.

Fuck.

And every one of those words now came attached to a particular image of Nora’s body. Hot damn, he had it bad.

Maggie was saying something about jumping off a bridge and Nora’s mouth dropped into a wide
O
. Rain waved her off.

“She means BASE jumping.” Rain ticked them off on his fingers. “Bridge, Aerial…”

“Building, Antennae, Span, and Earth.” Maggie leaned in to Rain, giving him a hard elbow. “Bridges are spans, boss.”

Rain nodded. Honestly, he was lucky he still remembered to speak English with images of Nora’s naked body fluttering around in his brain, unfettered. Like her breasts.

Hot damn. He needed to get out of the hallway before he started sporting wood like a teenager.

“Nora, can I speak with you for a moment?” he said. Gods, he sounded so formal

“Yeah, I’ll let you two talk.” Maggie swung the cord around on her way to her door. She turned at the last minute and gave him a big thumbs-up and a kidlike grin before she turned the key in the lock. Hidden by the other door, Nora missed the gesture, and Rain almost rolled his eyes.

This was not his life.

Nora stood a foot or so back into her room. “Come on in.
Boss
.”

Rain sighed and followed her into the room, closing the door just as carefully as he had closed his own. Everyone was probably on high alert, even though he’d told them to sleep. They had no idea how long it would take Maggie to track down the owner. Someone would relieve Alex in the morning, and if he didn’t manage to get Nora to talk to him, that someone might be Rain. He either needed to get this out, or get the hell away from her.

“I think we should stop fighting this,” she blurted, but her back was to him. She was halfway between the door and the window that looked out on the city.

The giant king-sized bed took up a good portion of that space, and it was suddenly calling Rain’s name. He took his life in his hands. “Fighting what?”

“Look, I’m sure we both feel it, now. Fate. We should stop fighting it.”

Rain blinked at her. “Right. Yeah. I mean, why fight it.”

“Yes.” She flipped a switch and all the lights in the room went off.

He could barely make out the shape of her body in the light that filtered in from the streets. His eyes adjusted quickly, but he could still only see dark shadows. “Because it’s Fate, right?”

“Right.” She reached behind herself and unbuttoned the top of her dress. With a long zip, the fabric came away and the black dress dropped to the floor in a dark puddle around her feet.

His throat was so dry, he almost couldn’t swallow. “Can’t fight Fate.”

“Nope.”

“Tell me, Nora.” He took one step toward her. “What prompted this?”

She turned around, unbuttoning the light shirt with excruciating slowness. And she started from the bottom, so he saw a hint of belly, then a hint of abdomen, then the valley between her breasts, then her collarbone. “I decided to stop fighting it.”

“Thank the gods.” Rain crossed the room in two steps and had her in his arms in less than a breath. She opened her lips to the assault of his mouth and he kissed her harder with each battle, moving his head from side to side for better access. He couldn’t get close enough.

Nora’s hands were on his belt as he finally got a glorious handful of the breasts he’d been ogling since they were in Las Vegas. Her sharp inhale drove him forward, backing her against the bed.

He spread the shirt wide, baring her body to him. He licked at one breast, then bit one nipple, relishing the deep moans that started in her belly and moved up into her throat, and then into the stratosphere.

Her legs edged apart and he could smell her arousal. He was so hard, and he couldn’t remember if it’d started when she’d first opened the door, or when he started thinking about her back in his hotel room, or when he’d smelled her. It didn’t fucking matter. He could drive nails with the erection pulsing between his legs, but all he wanted to do was get inside Nora.

She ripped at the buttons on his shirt and peeled it off him. Rain pressed his chest into hers, relishing the feeling of their skin on skin.
Finally
. He’d been waiting for this moment for too long. She was always hitching her dress up and giving him access, but he didn’t really have access.

This
was access.

Something inside him soared when she touched his cock. He had to catch his breath to keep from coming right there, the magick was so crackly. So powerful. He had been trying to internalize what Maggie said all night—that Nora was there to teach him something. Only when he was with her, he couldn’t think or learn or process anything.

Nora guided his cock toward her opening and he felt the pressure of her surrounding him as he considered plunging into her. How many times had he fucked her now? And how many times had he been inside her? But he’d never been thinking about it. He’d just been responding.

Rain pulled back and rolled over on the bed, his dick bobbing in all its erect glory. He panted. “Stop, Nora. Just stop.”

Her hazy eyes shifted over to him. “What?”

“When I said I didn’t want to fight this, I meant…I wanted to figure out what this is between us.”

Nora smiled, almost wickedly, and crawled down his body. She pulled his pants all the way off, boxers and all. “No figuring needed, Einstein.”

She straddled his legs, the shirt fluttering open to reveal her breasts bouncing with gravity as she dipped her head toward his cock.

Rain caught her shoulders just before she had her mouth on him. It would be all over if she did that. “No, I figured it out.”

“So did I,” she pressed against his hands, crawling back toward his dick. “It’s Fate telling us we should be together.” Her eyes locked onto his. “Already got that memo. What does it look like we’re doing?”

For a long moment, he just stared. Did she really get it? Had she really figured it out? And it was just that simple? It was Fate? But it wasn’t like Maggie said. Because he didn’t just want to fuck her and have it be over. He wanted it to be forever.

That was the problem.

He had already started imagining her back in his old life, in addition to seeing her between his legs and him between hers. It was more than just sex, and more than just a fling. Somewhere inside, he knew it.

“We’re mating,” he said in a low rumble.

“Mmm. Yes, we are.” Her growl incited all kinds of fire inside him.

“You already knew that.” He relaxed his hands, as though it was time to give up. To release. If she knew it was mating, then he didn’t have to tell her anything. And they didn’t have to talk about it. They just had to…
holy fuck.

Her mouth sank down on his dick, tight and wet and hot. She grabbed his length and pumped him as she sucked him, and Rain had to bite his lip to keep from calling out the names of the gods and the saints.

She popped his wet cock into the air and smiled up at him. Rain groaned and jumped forward, pinning her down on the bed and taking her mouth with his. He fumbled for his already wet cock and she spread her legs wide beneath him.

As he drove into her and came , his wolf continued to growl inside.

Mine
.

N
ora stretched
her legs and froze. One of her legs was draped over a warm body and one of her arms lay across his rising and falling chest. She popped an eye open and squinted in the semi-lit room. The curtains were drawn, but just a little light filtered through the center crack between them, allowing enough pre-dawn light to see by.

She’d slept with Rain.

Actually slept, not just fucked and left. The feeling of escape she typically only achieved during sex remained wrapped around her like an electric blanket—an afterglow of contentment and hope. A tear rolled down her cheek.

She’d known Rain was a potential Fated mate ever since they’d arrived, but they hadn’t been together longer than it took to fuck over the last couple of days. The magick hadn’t really settled. But now, it was all around her, whispering to her wolf that she had another chance to be happy. To be complete.

Could she really throw that chance away and leave him? Walk away from a match that filled the gaping hole in her heart? That was the mistake most women made in movies, they left, thinking they were protecting the man from their problems—in Nora’s case, a psychopathic kingpin of a father who might murder him—but in reality they were just afraid and ran without thinking about what the man might want or choose.

She was afraid of her father, not for her life, but for the life of the man she’d found solace in. She didn’t care what her father did to her. But Rain was different. He was a soldier. Maybe there was a way.

His body shifted beside hers and his arms encircled her body, pulling her even closer. “Why are you crying?” His voice rumbled in his chest and he pressed a soft kiss against the top of her head before taking a deep breath, like he wanted to fill his lungs with her scent.

“I need to tell you something.” She pushed against his hold and sat up in the bed as soon as he released her from his embrace.

He stared up with a reassuring smile. “You’re mine, Nora. My mate. No matter what it is, we can figure it out.”