Outfoxed by Love (Kodiak Point Book 2) (3 page)

C
hecking and cataloguing his gear helped distract him from the inappropriate thoughts— backpack with bedroll, clothing, rations, light, satellite phone. On his feet, he strapped on snow shoes, the only way to truly travel where the fluffy stuff piled high, ready to suck unsuspecting trespassers into its icy jaws.

Reid shouted
, “Good luck,” as Boris adjusted his straps.

Boris grunted.
It wasn’t luck he needed but patience because when he found the disobedient fox, he’d tan her hide until she couldn’t sit for a week. She’d known of the danger stalking clan members. How dare she put herself in harm’s way?
Fool woman should learn to stay out of trouble.
She needed a man to keep her in line.

Me.

No, not him. But who?

Yeah, who’s crazy enough to touch my fox and
die?

Sigh. For a man with no interest in her, he really needed to do better when it came to jealousy issues.

Adopting a lumbering stride, the snowshoes requiring more of a lift in order to keep him upright when he ran, Boris followed the tracks. They meandered in and out of the woods. Sometimes he lost them for a stretch as Jan’s fox form nimbly vaulted from exposed rock tips that jutted from the ground. But when that happened, he just had to locate the wolf marks in the snow to regain her trail.

The first body took him by surprise.
The wolf, who’d obviously died too quickly to make the change back to man, stared sightlessly, his neck torn at the jugular, causing a massive and quick bleed out that few could hope to survive, although Boris knew a guy in the war who had. Tough fucker.

What he found harder to credit was all
the signs pointed to Jan doing it. Ladylike, prim and proper Jan?

Jan who
supposedly likes guns.

Or so he’d heard. He found it hard to believe.
The Jan he knew and had first met when he accompanied Reid on a military leave had him meeting a demure young lady who inspired a man to wash his hands, hold open doors, and use the words please and thank you. That kind of femininity did not shoot guns for sport or tear out jugulars.

But still
… he eyed the corpse.
Lucky bite?
Had to be. Sweet delicate Jan wasn’t a killer.

He moved on, following the lupine
and cougar prints chasing after the smaller vixen ones. Morning darkness eased into the few hours of daylight Alaska got this time of the year. The sunlight didn’t make anything much warmer, but it did illuminate the landscape, sometimes too much at times as the sun refracted off the snow.

Tinted goggles solved that problem, but they
didn’t help him when he hit a rocky ridge, the fluffy snow having a hard time clinging to the solid stone surfaces. Here, at the foot, he found the second body. Also dead. A shifter in his naked man shape, a male who’d morphed in his last moments.

Boris gazed to the top of the ridge and shook his head. If he didn’t know better, he’d say the dead bugger was pushed. He might have said slipped, but slipped would have placed the corpse closer to the edge of the promontory. However, the ignoble splay and face
-first plant seemed to indicate foul play.

By Jan?
Desperation for survival could make even the nicest person do murderous things.

Removing his snow shoes,
Boris attached them to his knapsack and climbed, his heavy-duty gloves protecting his hands from the sharp edges of the rocks, but making his grip hard to maintain.

At the top, he found himself able to see for a fair distance.
Nothing jumped out at him. No movement, no tracks, the top of the ridge windswept, at least the parts that were somewhat flat. Who knew what hid behind the rock boulders and humps?

Without a scent or tracks, Boris paused to take stock.
Jan, the fox, was proving more resilient and wily than he would have credited. He took out a flask for a gulp of vitamin-infused liquid. He pondered his next move. Which direction would she have gone in?

“Dammit, Jan, where are you?”
he muttered aloud.

“Right here,” she announced before pouncing on him.

Okay, so Jan should have known better than to scare a man who’d served in the military.
As soon as she hit his back, legs wrapping around Boris’ waist and arms around his neck, his body moved.

Boris
clamped a hand around her forearm and yanked, flipping her over his head. She slammed onto her back in the snow, thankfully not atop jagged rock. But she shouldn’t celebrate yet.

Still reacting to her playful attack,
Boris leaped atop her, pinned her to the ground, and pointed a gun at her head. At least he didn’t shoot her.

But boy, did he look annoyed.

“Hello, Boris,” she said with a bright smile. “Fancy meeting you out here.”

“What is wrong with you?” he yelled.

“Did I scare you?” she asked, not at all perturbed by the situation because, really, despite the violence of the act, this was the closest she’d gotten to Boris in years. And hey, he was actually looking at her. Not a point above her head. Or at the floor. Of course, his expression wasn’t exactly filled with happiness, but she considered it a start.

“Are you okay?”
How grudgingly he asked.

She arched a brow.
“Depends. If you mean am I hurt, then no, not really. Just a few bruises and scratches. But, as for frostbite… While I’ve been wanting to have you lie atop me for years, Boris Sobolev, I’d prefer a bed to a snowbank.”

He growled, which
, considering he was a moose, made it pretty special. As usual, she drew the most ornery of responses out of the man and had for years, especially since he returned from the war. Unfortunately, for him, she no longer cared. She’d accepted the fact Boris would never admit they were fated mates, but it didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy needling him every chance she got.

“You are the most irritating—
”

“—
ly beautiful.”

“Annoying—
”

“Yet utterly captivating,” she interrupted with a
grin.

“Woman I’ve ever known,” he grumbled as he rolled off her to his feet. He held out a hand to help her up. Jan ignored it and lay there sprawled, naked and
, yes, shivering, but the moment of frigid teeth chattering was worth it. Boris couldn’t help but stare at her.

Really stare. As in eyes
-devouring, body-stiffening, definitely-noticing-she-was-a-woman stare.

It did more to warm her than a pair of cashmere socks would. Although, given he wouldn’t act upon the smoldering interest he forgot to hide, the socks would do her more good in the long run.

The moose took the term bullheaded to all new levels. From the moment she’d first met him, when Reid brought his new army buddy home on leave from the military, she’d known he was the one for her, and she’d thought he recognized it too.

During that short
holiday stint, Boris flirted with her, and they even shared one long, delicious kiss goodbye as they exchanged a few whispered promises. But the man she dreamed of claiming was gone the next time he returned. Oh, he came back to Kodiak Point intact, no missing body parts even if he sported a few new scars, but the wounds in his soul had changed him.

Jan didn’t know the exact details, but she’d heard the
rumors. Reid and others in his platoon, Boris included, got caught by insurgents. More than caught, they were held captive for months and, if the gossip was true, suffered torture.

Whatever happened, the boys who’d left with smiles and boasts of kicking rebel
butt returned changed men. Grimmer men. The Boris she’d fallen for, the one who made her heart race faster, who ignited all her senses, lost his easy smile. Refused to acknowledge her, and when she confronted him and asked him about murmured promises spoken before he’d left?

“Things have changed. I’ve changed. You need to move on and fix your sights on someone else.”
Bluntly honest. She could respect that, she just wished she could accept it.

But she didn’t want anyone else.
Although she’d tried. No other man, human or shifter, ever made her pulse quicken, her blood warm, and, with a single kiss, make her just about cream her panties.
Boris is my mate.
Even if he denied it.

Lying splayed in the snow, wanton and
naked, Jan couldn’t help but prolong the moment. When else would she get a chance to see this side of Boris, his eyes smoldering with fire, his need in plain sight? For a foolish moment, she harbored the hope he’d finally admit his feelings for her. Or act upon the arousal she could see. If only she could get him to kiss her, touch her, then maybe he’d—

“If you’re done trying to give your girly parts frost bite, you should think about getting dressed.” He turned away from her as he dropped his loaded backpack on the snowy ground. “I’ve got some spare clothes in here.”

Clothes? Only Boris would ignore her clear invitation and focus on the practical.

Well, Jan could be practical too.
“What about a gun?”

He tossed her a look over his shoulder. “What
the hell do you need a gun for?”

“To protect myself of course.
There’s still at least one cougar out there hunting for me. I’d like something more than just my bare hands to fight him off with.”

“You’ve got me.”

Such a chauvinistic response. She rolled her eyes. “And what if he’s not alone?”

The cocky smile on anyone else would have made her laugh, but on Boris
? She shivered. Even at his most menacing, the man oozed sexy.

“You are such a moose,” she exclaimed under her breath a
s she dressed in the clothes he’d brought, not hers but small enough to fit, except for the boots. Those required three layers of socks to stay on her tiny feet.

With the chill cut, her body covered
, and her prospects for getting ravished nipped in the bud, Jan focused on the situation at hand. “What’s the plan?”

Without looking at her, Boris said, “We should either head back to where I left my truck. Or call in for someone to pick us up on sleds.”

He called that a plan? “What about the cougar who was trailing me? He’s still around here somewhere I’d wager.”

“What about him?”

“Shouldn’t we set a trap? Maybe take him in for questioning.”

Boris turned to face her, and his tone was mocking as he said, “We? We won’t be doing anything except getting your little ass back to town where it’s safe.”

“Safe? We’re under attack. Nowhere is truly safe.”

“Correction, Reid is under attack. You would have been perfectly fine if you’d obeyed orders and stayed put. But no, you just had to meddle and p
lace yourself in danger.”

She planted her hands on her hips.
“Well excuse me for helping out a friend.”

“You are not excused. You could have been killed,” he
grumbled.

“But I wasn’t.”

“By fluke.”

“It wasn’t fluke that took out the guys following me,”
she snapped, tired of him acting as if she were a useless girl. Partially her fault given she’d hidden her less-than-ladylike side from him all these years.

“You got lucky.”

She growled. She couldn’t help it. There was chauvinism, and then there was Boris. “I’ll show you lucky.” She stepped closer to him.

He frowned, but he held his ground as she invaded his space. “What
do you think you are doing? I don’t have time to play games, Jan. We need to call Reid and let him know you’re safe.”

“Only once you admit it.”

“Admit what?” he asked with suspicion.

Admit you want me.
Ha. Fat chance of that happening. One battle at a time. First things first. “Admit it was more than just luck.”

Before he could reply, probably something that would irritate her to no end, she disarmed him. Stepping close, she placed her hands on his chest, smiled up at him sweetly, watched his eyes cloud in confusion—and then hooked his leg and shoved.

Had she not taken him by surprise, it probably wouldn’t have worked, but Boris was so convinced she didn’t have it in her that her trick worked.

Down he
went, her atop him. He landed on his back with an “oomph,” which might have had to do with the fact she brought her knee up against his chest to pin him. To keep him further off balance, she plastered her mouth to his.

Sweet electricity.
Caught unaware, his lips were soft against hers, but nonetheless enjoyable. She almost forgot her main objective in the pleasure of finally touching him. Almost. But she’d spent too many years dealing with his moose-headedness.

She aimed the gun she pulled from his holster at his forehead and whispered against his mouth
, “Bang. You’re dead.”