The Mermaid's Mate (3 page)

“Guess not. I wanted to stay to make sure you’d wake up all right, and you have. Do me a favor and just forget this ever happened. I’m out of here.” Shaking her head, Marian got to her feet and brushed herself off, then strode past Timber. “And you’re welcome, by the way, for saving your life.”

Chapter Four

Marian ducked out the cave opening, leaving Timber reeling in the wake of her intoxicating fragrance. The sweet, fresh scent filled the cave, his nostrils, and made his head swim in chaos. His muscles twitched and pulsed, aching to burst into werewolf form. Aggression often brought on the instinct, but he gritted his teeth together and squelched down the urge. Shifting now wouldn’t help the situation.

The nerve of that woman! To return to the mountain to snoop around, save him, then act like her
heroics
canceled out everything else that had happened between them. Timber followed Marian out of the cave and nearly slipped off a muddied ledge, right onto the rocky banks of the Feralon River.

“Shit!” As Timber’s feet skidded and slipped in mud, he clutched at the mountain. Rain poured over the rocks in a flood. The river was below him, but it could scarcely be called a river. The water trickled and wound around boulders that had fallen off the mountain.

There was no way Marian could’ve dived into the river from here—it’d be certain death.

Timber searched across the footpath through thick sheets of rain. He caught sight of Marian around a bend to the left. She was heading back toward Mer territory and a deeper part of the river.

“You want me to thank you for saving my life?” He hollered over the storm, his voice so rough it was nearly a growl. “Fine. Thank you.”

Startled by his voice, Marian spun around and threw up her hands. “Leave me alone, Timber.”

“But what kind of apology do I get from you for sticking your nose into my life two years ago?” Timber marched over mud, moss and stone, desperate to catch Marian and finish what she started. “Because of what you did, I lost position in my pack.”

“If you think your life is ruined, you did it yourself.” She continued to trudge across the narrow ledge, her hands skimming the side of the mountain for balance. “I’m not giving an apology for something I didn’t do.”

“Then don’t go throwing your heroics in my face, princess.” Another few steps, he could reach out and touch her. “I would’ve been fine without your help!”

“Oh yes, I could tell that you were going to be dandy,” she said, speeding her pace around a natural bend in the rock. “I must’ve forgotten that you can breathe underwater.”

Her feet slipped, and she cried out. She grasped at the rock, but her hands slid with the rain. Timber reached out, snatched her by the elbow and hauled her against him. Spinning her around, Timber flattened Marian against the mountain, and wedged his knee between her legs to pin her there. Something fierce passed between them as he gripped her waist.

“You’re welcome,” Timber said, gazing deep into her startled eyes. “Guess we’re even now.”

“I just want to get off this goddamned mountain and back to the bay.” Marian nearly gasped for breath. “What do you want from me, Timber?”

Oh, there was so much he wanted. Especially when the rain was drenching their clothes, making the T-shirt she stole from him cling to her breasts. He could peel it from her wet skin. He could taste her lips, the water mixed with the sweetness. But Marian was resistant. The desire he picked up from her body and her eyes didn’t match the anger flowing from her mouth.

“You saved me when you didn’t have to,” he said, thinking aloud, “and you stayed to heal me when you could’ve left. Why do you pretend to give a damn when it’s clear you hate me for the way we left things?”

“Because despite how I’d like to close off completely, I can’t. I’m not heartless like some other people around here.”

“Like who? Me?” Timber regarded the fierceness of Marian’s expression. Even in anger, her features were stunning. Utter perfection. Her cheeks were round and pink, her irises the purest blue he’d ever seen. She gazed deep into his eyes, and her breath hitched as if she, too, could feel what was coming.

The storm was about to break.

“You think I’m heartless? If I was heartless I wouldn’t be able to feel this.” He snatched her hand. Her skin was hot, flaming to the touch, despite the rain wetting her skin. An electric current surged between them, sparking through his body. “But damn it, I do.”

She gasped as he brought her hand to his chest.

“But it doesn’t matter,” he said, watching droplets of rain trickle over Marian’s lips, “because you can’t build a life on hurried heartbeats and stolen kisses. It’s not enough if you don’t have honor.”

“Give me my hand back.” She didn’t try to pull it away.

“Why are your hands trembling the way they used to when you were nervous?”

“I’m not trembling. And I’m not nervous.” She stuck out her chin in mock defiance. “Why would I be?”

“Because you feel the same things I feel and you don’t like it any more than I do.”

“I don’t feel anything for you.” The hint of a challenge sparkled in her eyes.

He longed to trace the petite ridge of her jaw with his tongue, to settle into those pillow-soft lips. No matter the lust spearing into Timber’s gut, he wouldn’t let the sparks between them turn to something fierce, something that could destroy him. Marian might’ve had control over him physically—damn if he knew how she’d gotten so good at torturing him—but he wouldn’t let her get close to him in any other sense.

He couldn’t trust her.

Hell if he could stop himself from touching her.

“I know you feel something.” His gaze dropped down her neck to the swell of her breasts. Her nipples had hardened to tiny peaks, pressing against his shirt, and her lips parted in silent invitation. “I’ve thought of you like this, Marian.”

Over two years, he’d thought about paying her back for betraying him. He thought about what he’d say to her if he ever saw her again. But mixed with those ideas of retribution, there was the undeniable feeling that he’d fall under Marian’s spell once more.

“You’ve though of me like what?” Marian asked, a telltale vein pulsing on her neck.

“I’ve dreamed of the day when I’d meet you again and you’d beg me to seduce you.”

“Timber Jax, if it’s one thing I know—” she licked her lips, taking in the rain, then stared into Timber’s eyes, ripping the air from his lungs “—I’ll never beg you to seduce me.”

“Tell that to your eyes.”

As she gave a small gasp, Timber crushed his mouth to hers and thrust his tongue past her lips. Marian’s mouth tightened, just for a second, before she moaned, and plunged her tongue deep into Timber’s throat.

Chapter Five

Don’t fall for him again.
Don’t do it.

Marian willed the words to sink in deep as Timber’s tongue traced the wet recesses of her mouth. God, he smelled good. Like fresh, clean soap and something a little woodsy. He smelled of danger and adventure.

“I can’t breathe when I’m near you,” he said against her lips. His voice was hoarse, with a sexy huskiness that made Marian’s heart lurch. “It’s like you rip the breath from my lungs before I can catch it. How do you do this to me?”

Before she could answer, Timber tunneled his fingers through her hair and dragged her mouth to his. His hands gripped her waist. His hips moved in a gentle grinding rhythm against her. Slowly, Timber’s hands slid over her shirt and palmed each of her breasts. Even through the fabric, his touch was electric, searing flames of desire across her skin. Never relinquishing possession of her mouth, Timber massaged her breasts, creating starbursts of sensation that surged to her middle. Between the passion of his kiss, the warmth of his hands and the swell of his cock pressing against her, Marian lost her breath.

She was panting. Lost in him.

Alarmed that she got lost so easily, Marian pulled back.

“What’s the matter?” Timber asked, his entire body going still.

She closed her eyes, stomach fluttering. Timber didn’t deserve her. He’d probably take what he wanted and leave her breathless and wanting more. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted him...
needed him
, anyway. She’d had other lovers, but none had ever made her feel this way. No one had ever made her want to forget everything and everyone. No one had ever made her want to forget herself.

After she got the information she needed from Timber, there was a very real chance that no one would make her feel this way ever again.

“Say my name again,” she whispered.

His hands were on her cheeks, achingly tender. “Marian...”

She burst. Threw her arms around his neck and drove her tongue into his mouth. He caught her, his arms around her back, his mouth opening up wide for the coming assault. They groaned in unison as Marian moved her hips against him and swept her tongue through his mouth with forceful strokes.

He ripped his mouth from hers, leaving her swaying on shaky legs.

“Wait,” he said. The word was spoken harshly, a whispered order.

“But I don’t want to stop.”

“Shh,” he said, his dark glare searching the way they came. “Someone’s coming.”

Marian moved behind Timber, though there wasn’t much room and he couldn’t block her completely. She felt foolish, losing control the way she had.

“Wait here,” Timber growled.

Before he moved a single step, a rugged beast of a man with white hair and a wide, crooked nose stalked around the path. The hard glare in his hollow-gray eyes warned that he’d just witnessed everything.

* * *

“What the hell are you doing over here?” Slater’s gravelly voice boomed over the storm. “With a mermaid? Damn, Timber, you got a trade going on the side or something?”

“She’s got nothing to do with Ryder or any kind of a trade.”

“Ryder ain’t gonna like it.”

Damn it, Timber had been caught red-handed. Messing around with a mermaid wasn’t breaking any pack rules, but Timber had been specifically assigned to keep mermaids and dragons away from the southern side of the mountain while Ryder did his blasting. Marian should’ve been dead. Instead, she’d been caught in his arms, with the pink plumpness of her lips giving away their kiss.

“Want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?” Timber wanted to rip his pack mate’s eyes out of his skull for looking at Marian the way he had. Instead, he squared his shoulders, blocking Slater’s view of her. “You should be back at the lair.”

“Ryder sent me. He called a mandatory meeting at noon, and when you pulled a no-show, he wanted me to make sure you weren’t getting into any trouble. Took me all damn day to find you. Thanks to the storm, I couldn’t track you by your stench.” Slater, the best tracker in their rogue pack, craned his thick, square neck to the side until it popped. “But from the look of things, you’ve found more than trouble.”

Timber growled from deep within his chest, and fought off the urge to shift into wolf form. If he wasn’t already indebted to Ryder for Rison’s death, he’d crack Slater’s head open and dump his body into the river. Sadly, Timber couldn’t afford to kill another one of his
brothers.

“Get your ass back to the lair,” Timber snapped, blood boiling. His muscles were taut with tension, and getting their strength back by the second. “Tell Ryder I’ll meet him at sunrise.”

“What about the blue tail?”

They exchanged heated glances that spoke more than words. If Marian saw or heard anything about their covert activity, she’d have to be taken out. Slater knew it. Timber knew it. And soon, when Slater reported back to Ryder, he’d know it, too.

Timber didn’t trust Marian. But he didn’t want to see her hurt, either.

“I didn’t see anything, I swear,” Marian said from behind Timber. “I’m on my way back to my territory now. Won’t be long until I find a place where the water’s deep enough to dive in.”

“Yeah, that storm surge is long gone now, isn’t it? But if you’re here, that means you were in the area when Ryder was doing this excavation. The river’s too shallow for you to have come upstream after...” Cocking his head to the side, Slater peered at Marian over Timber’s shoulder. “What were you doing upriver, so far from the rest of your colony?”

“She was exploring and got caught in the storm surge,” Timber interjected before Marian could continue.

A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating the skepticism in Slater’s expression. His lips were twisted, his scraggly eyebrows pitching for his hairline. “And you believe that bullshit? She’s gorgeous, Timber, probably one of the Emperor’s top seductresses. You really believe the words that come out of her mouth?”

“No,” Timber said, blurting out the truth. “I don’t. But she’s my problem to deal with, not yours.”

The pinch in Timber’s side warned that Marian was doing more upriver than exploring, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. It wasn’t like he wanted to take her back to the main pack and make her his life mate. He wanted to spend a little more time with her, that was all. He wanted to get closer to her. He wanted more time to figure out if, in fact, she did see anything that she shouldn’t have. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? He wasn’t prepared to let her leave after he figured out what she knew. He wanted more. God, what
did
he want?

“Know what I’m gonna do?” Slater said, stalking closer. “I’m gonna take her back to Ryder. I think he’ll reward me for bringing in a tail as beautiful as this. You mind if I get a few minutes alone with the slut before I drag her in?”

“Son of a bitch!” With a guttural roar, Timber bounded across the trail and snatched Slater by the collar of his leather coat. He slammed him against the stone face of the mountain, releasing the tension that had been coiling inside him. It shook from the collision, dusting small bits of rock over their shoulders. Marian squealed, though her voice was muffled and distant. Her whimpers were second to the sound of unfiltered rage banging against Timber’s skull. “If you don’t shut your mouth, Slater, I’ll shut it for you. Permanently.”

“Take it easy, killer.” Slater put up his hands in surrender. “It’s best not to take a liking to this one—she won’t survive the night. Whether she saw something or not, it doesn’t matter. Once Ryder has his way with her, he’ll silence her like the others. What I don’t get is why you haven’t killed her already and hightailed it back to the lair?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business.” Timber seethed, his vision blurring with streaks of red. “
She’s
none of your business.”

Didn’t Slater realize how close he was to losing his head? Couldn’t he sense Timber’s blood boiling, and his restraint slipping? Slater might’ve been bigger than Timber, but he was slower. There was no way he’d see Timber’s first strike coming.

“I always knew you were on the fence when it came to the loyalty of your new pack,” Slater said, nostrils flaring. “But defending a mermaid over one of your own? You’ve lost your mind.”

Timber hunched low, ready to let his muscles expand and his canines drop from his gums. Growling from the pit of his belly, Timber felt waves of rage blanket his body. Slater wasn’t taking Marian anywhere. He’d die before he let that son of a bitch touch her.

“Timber?” Marian said, her voice stronger than it’d been moments before.

Both Timber and Slater glanced at Marian, a momentary pause granting Slater another few seconds before his death.

“I don’t want this,” she said, backing away down the trail. “I don’t want you to fight over me—I’m not worth it. I shouldn’t have traveled this far upriver and I won’t let it happen again. I don’t want to see or hear any more than I already have.”

“She did see something!” Slater roared. “Timber, you have to take this bitch—”

Timber didn’t give him a chance to finish. He silenced Slater with an uppercut that hit square to his massive jaw. Slater’s slab of bone crunched under the force of the blow. Blood squirted from his lips as he bowled over, falling against Timber’s chest. Somewhere beside Timber, Marian screamed, but he’d just dived headfirst into the rabbit hole. There was no pulling him back now.

Something primal and possessive rose in Timber’s gut, taking over his body completely. Nobody talked to Marian that way. And nobody threatened her.

Snatching a handful of Slater’s hair, Timber jerked the asshole’s head back against the stone and rammed a fist into his gut.

As a rumble erupted from Slater’s chest, Timber continued his assault, firing his fists harder and faster into Slater’s gut, his chin and his temples. Slater blocked the attack, his hands by his ears, crunched low to defend against the stomach blows. He fired back with his own heavy strike to Timber’s head. Fireworks erupted behind Timber’s eyes as Slater’s hit connected to his skull.

“What the fuck’s gotten into you, Timber?” Slater yelled, grasping at his jaw. “All this over a damn mermaid? Wait...that’s not, she’s not—tell me this bitch isn’t the one from before.”

Rumors of his relationship with Marian and her betrayal had gotten around the pack. Timber had hoped two years would’ve made his pack mates forget. He’d been wrong. Slater wasn’t the dopey ass Timber thought him to be.

“No,” Timber said, rising to his feet. “She’s nobody.”

Slater kneed Timber in the groin. “Nah, don’t buy it. If she was nobody you would’ve gotten rid of her already.”

Timber’s knees buckled and he hit the dirt, but not before he caught sight of Marian running down the trail that led back to her territory. In the second Timber was on the ground, Slater leaped past him. Timber seized Slater’s leg, but he wrenched it free and took off after Marian at a dead sprint.

“Slater, damn it, get back here!” Getting his feet beneath him, Timber ran along the narrow footpath that was no wider than the breadth of his shoulders. Through the haze of rainfall and the blanket of night, Timber spotted Marian up ahead. Slater was close behind her, and closing in. “Slater, this is between us!” Timber yelled again. “Get your ass back here and let’s finish this!”

He didn’t know what else to say. He forced his legs to churn over faster, willing his feet, and Marian’s, to stay on the slippery trail.

She screamed, her shrill voice catching on a gust of wind. She fell to her knees. Timber’s world collapsed around him, the air stilling to an impossible halt. He ran hard, praying he’d reach them before Slater lost control.

Slater snatched Marian by her long mane of blond hair and dragged her to the ground. Her hands were clawing at his, her neck arched back at an uncomfortable angle as he yanked her back against him. Then, mere steps before Timber reached them, Slater bit into Marian’s neck. His head thrashed back and forth. Marian screamed, a shrill protest that penetrated the night before blending into a groan of thunder.

As Timber sprinted to their position, he realized Marian wasn’t screaming at all. Her mouth was closed. Her eyes were rolled back, her head limp. With horror gripping him cold, Timber realized his throat was strained. It was his howl that went unheard in the storm’s shrieking fury.

The screams were his own.

With unbridled fury flaring through his body, Timber raised his arms over his head, clasped his hands together, and brought them down over Slater’s head. The swing was like a battle-ax, powerful and true to its mark. Slater’s legs gave out. His clutch on Marian’s hair dropped and his teeth dislodged from her neck. Slater toppled to the side, his neck flopping onto his shoulders before he tumbled over the side of the cliff onto the rocky banks of the river.