“You’re surprised I’m small town?”
“Hell, yeah. From your fancy power pants, I pegged you as a big city girl, come down from your high rise to free the shifters.”
“Ha! No, but I did come down from my second floor apartment a few hours away to try and help. This is my first experience ever in a trailer park.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?”
“Very. Did you know there are two mice in here that prefer jalapeño potato chips to the healthy mouse food I’ve been trying to feed them? I think they are addicted, and it makes me like them more because jalapeño potato chips are friggin’ delicious.”
Mason’s grin grew bigger. “I did know about Nards and Nipple’s love of junk food.”
“And did you also know that Clinton might be a bona fide psychopath? I caught him ripping a rosebush out of my landscaping in the middle of the night, and he tried to convince me it was all a dream. And then he flipped me off and went back to his trailer. And this morning when I woke up to have my coffee on the porch, he climbed onto the roof of his trailer and pissed right off the front into his yard. And he smiled at me as he did it.”
Mason laughed and rested a hand behind his head, relaxing bit by bit beside her. “I definitely know he’s a psychopath. He’ll grow on you, though.”
“And did you know Bash really, really misses you? He’s asked me if you’ve called about a dozen times. I tried to explain to him that you aren’t my driver anymore.”
The smile faded from Mason’s lips. “Yeah, I knew that part, too. I’m moving back into my old trailer.” He heaved a sigh and rolled his head toward her, leveled her with a somber look. “I give it a week, and they’ll wish I would’ve stayed gone.”
Beck dipped her voice to a whisper. “You’re not as broken as you think, Beast Boar.”
The corner of Mason’s mouth ticked up and, slowly, he reached for her, pushed her hair back off her cheek with the barest brush of his fingertip—his first voluntary touch. “You’re wrong.”
Chapter Seven
The trailer park was a ghost town right now, not exactly the return Mason had imagined, but this was better. It would be easier for everyone if he slid back in quietly. He’d had a hard time ripping himself away from Beck after she’d been so open with him. After he’d heard the conversation with her ex. After talking to her until she drifted off to sleep, right there in the middle of the afternoon, as though she felt safe with him. After he’d tested himself, touching her cheek and reveling in the warm, comforting sensation that drew up his dick.
He couldn’t push too hard with her, though. If her quiet sobbing after she had gotten off the phone with her ex was anything to go by, Beck had been wounded badly. All Mason had been able to think about all afternoon was covering her, fucking her until she screamed his name and forgot about that douchebag who talked to her like she was nothing. Asshole didn’t even realize what he’d lost. God, Mason hated people like him. Robbie. He wanted to rip his throat through his mouth-hole for calling Beck “boring” again.
Beck was the most interesting woman Mason had met since Esmerelda.
Letting off a steadying breath to cool his blood, Mason pulled a moving box from the bed of his truck and took it inside his trailer. The second he stepped through the doorway, he froze. Such a strange sensation washed over him, prickling his skin. His room at Damon’s house hadn’t ever felt like home, but this place…this dilapidated, thirty-five-year-old singlewide came pretty damn close.
He set down the box and ran his fingers over the neck of his old guitar in the corner, and then along the back of the couch to reacquaint himself with the place. It smelled like wood polish, floor cleaner, and soap. Someone had been in here to keep the dust at bay. Bash, he would guess, and an accidental smile took Mason’s face at the vision of that big clumsy brute in here with a dust rag, humming off-key to himself.
Mason made his way to the bedroom, and sure enough, Beck had been right. His covers were still unmade, just as he’d left them. A vision of Beck on her hands and knees, back arched and wet sex ready for him flashed across his mind, and there it was again—that instant boner. Geez, he felt like he was a rutting breeder again since she’d stumbled into his life in that fucking sexy, muddy, see-through outfit of hers. Was that was this was? Maybe he was rutting, encouraged by his broken boar, or from how damn fuckable Beck was. He had to be careful with that one. She wasn’t some sow in heat. She was human. Fragile. He would have to open her up slowly. Fuck. Stop thinking about her like that. She isn’t yours.
But he wanted her to be. And she had Ryder, so maybe she wouldn’t be as disappointed in the fact that he couldn’t give her a child. She already had one. Mason winced at the pain of that thought. He’d missed her being pregnant. Missed that entire part of her life, and why did that seem like such a huge thing? If he went after her, he would never see her belly swell with child. Would never press his hand against the movement there. Would never be there for her when she gave birth. She would never bear a child with a tiny piglet just waiting to present itself in that first year of life. Maybe he was biased, but boar shifter babies were the cutest.
Stop it! He couldn’t lose his mind over things that would never come to fruition. Beck wouldn’t have his child. No one would. That wasn’t the life that had been meant for him. At least she had Ryder. Good strong name, and Beck was a good mom for gifting it to him. Something inside him said that McFartFace hadn’t come up with anything so good.
“They’re coming.”
Mason hunched and spun, but no one was there. It had been Esmerelda’s voice, just a whisper over the drone of the AC unit. Chills blasted up his skin as he narrowed his eyes and searched the kitchen behind him. Shit. She really had followed him here, just like he’d feared. He would have to call Clara and ask if she knew a way to get rid of her. Or maybe he would pay Jason of the Gray Backs a visit. He’d somehow banished the ghost of a dead ex-mate a couple years ago. Or maybe Beaston, who saw so much more than everyone else, would have some advice for him. Mason had to do something because Esmerelda had only visited his dreams until now, and she’d never been powerful enough to speak to him in broad daylight.
His inner boar roared to Change. To fight…something.
If it was the last thing he did, Mason had to protect the Boarlanders from whatever was happening to him. He had to protect Beck from his past.
Outside, trucks rumbled through the trailer park, siphoning his attention away from the empty kitchen. Here we go.
Mason made his way out of his trailer and locked his arms against the porch railing. He watched the parade of cars filter into the park. The dumbfounded looks and slow smiles on his crews’ faces as they drove past made him think that maybe Damon had been right sending him back. If Mason ignored the skittering fear that he would hurt the people he cared about, this feeling of homecoming was actually nice. And about now, he would take any balm for his soul, no matter how temporary.
Beck opened the door of 1010, and her eyes immediately locked onto him. With a boner-inducing smile, she lifted her hand and waved. Mason’s heart beat against his chest. If that woman even knew how his beast was laying claim to her, she would run away as fast as those long, sexy legs could carry her.
He nodded a greeting and twitched his head, inviting her over. She should see this—the good, bad, and ugly. She should see the celebration at him moving back in, sure, but she should also see the shit the Boarlanders would give him for leaving in the first place.
She’d said she felt weird around the crew, and that had to change. Mason needed her to fit in here for selfish reasons, and he didn’t give a single fuck what that said about him.
“Mason!” Bash yelled at the top of his lungs. He waved his arms all around like Mason could possibly miss the titan hanging out the window of Harrison’s eye-scorching red pickup.
Mason waved back and jogged down the stairs to the new sod on his front lawn.
The trucks skidded to a stop, kicking up dust, and the Boarlanders piled out of them like an ant colony hunting a cherry flavored sucker. Mason couldn’t help his laugh when Bash picked him off the ground and slapped him on the back hard enough to beat the air from his lungs.
“You C-Team again?” Bash asked, his voice heartbreakingly hopeful. “Tell me you’re movin’ back, Mace!”
“I’m back, Bash Bear. I ain’t leavin’ again.”
Bash let off a long relieved sob, and his shoulders shook as he hugged him harder.
“Aw, come on, ya big crybaby,” Kirk said, peeling Bash off Mason. “Let him breathe.”
Mason stumbled to his feet and winced as the gorilla shifter gripped his shoulder hard enough to grind his bones. “Leave again, and I’ll kill you.” Kirk had said it through an easy smile, but his voice was completely serious and utterly believable.
Harrison pulled him in for a manly, painful hug, but the girls were much gentler, holding on longer, wiping the corners of their eyes after releasing him. And then Beck was there, eyes full of emotion, and that’s how Mason knew she was a good one. She was affected by a dynamic she knew little about. She was rooting for him already. Rooting for all of them.