And she couldn’t describe a single one of them, either. Her attention was focused on one man only. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She also spent half her time wondering where Jackson was. Was he asleep? That seemed unlikely. The more reasonable scenario was that he was pacing his apartment and thrumming his fingers on any surface he could reach just like Cooper.
It was the middle of the night. The three of them had first entered the same space at the same time at approximately nine o’clock Friday night. That was six hours ago. How many hours could mates go without solidifying the claiming?
“There,” Cooper shouted, tapping his pointer to a spot on a map spread out all over the table. “That’s the epicenter.”
The other guys nodded.
Cooper turned toward Sharon, grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair. “Let’s go.”
“What? Now?” She sat up straighter, thinking he’d lost his mind.
“Yep.”
“Boss?” Apparently one of the guys thought it was ludicrous too.
Cooper waved him off. “Just going to get closer so I can be ready to access the area when the sun comes up.”
“Okaaay.” The guy drew out that one word in a way that suggested he thought his boss had lost his marbles.
Sharon couldn’t blame him.
Cooper shrugged into his jacket and tossed Sharon’s into her lap. “Come on.”
She hauled herself off the couch, stuffing her arms in her sleeves, and followed him.
As he led her to the car, he made a call. “Stuart… Yeah, I didn’t figure I would be waking you… Yeah, I’m on my way there now… Okay, will do. Later.”
“Who’s Stuart?” she asked as she put her seatbelt on.
“My boss. In Spokane. He’s up, of course. Watching the data.” He turned to smile. “And he’s a shifter, so he understands what we’re about to do.”
“Which is?” She wasn’t sure she was going to like this.
“Park as close as possible and shift. We’ll get to the epicenter in no time, check it out, and be back at the car before dawn.”
“Why would we do that?”
He grinned. “Because we can.”
“Uh-huh.” She closed her eyes and shockingly was able to sleep for about twenty minutes, which was how long it took them to get to the spot. She woke up when Cooper pulled the car onto a gravel road, the crunch of the tires jarring her.
“Sorry, baby.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her gently toward him, setting their entwined fingers on his thigh. “Feel better?”
“Marginally.” She wiped sleep from her eyes with her free hand, wondering what the state of her makeup was.
A few minutes later, he pulled the car over and shut off the engine. “We’re going to shift here, leave everything, and run the last bit to the location. It’s not far.”
“And what exactly is this going to tell us? I mean, earthquakes are way underground, right?”
He nodded as he tugged his shirt over his head and reached for the button on his jeans. “Yes. But my gut tells me there’s something happening above it.” He lifted his hips and shrugged out of the denim covering his cock.
Sharon’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t move. She simply watched as he gracefully tossed all his clothes into the backseat and then reached for the door. “Come on.”
She still watched as he turned and stepped out, his ass so unbelievably fine she wanted to clasp it with both hands. “How about if I wait here,” she suggested.
“Not a chance in hell, Sharon.” He grabbed the doorframe with one hand, the top of the open door with the other, and leaned in to meet her gaze.
She couldn’t blink. Her eyes trailed down to his impressive package, where she stared without moving. She didn’t give two fucks that he watched her ogle him. It was the second time she’d seen him naked, and she liked it as much as the first. If only they could…
But she knew it wouldn’t be possible.
“Do you want me to remove your clothes for you?”
She jerked her attention back to his face when he interrupted her. “No.” Hastily, she undid her seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped out. Without giving him a chance to watch, she quickly shed her clothes, shut the door, and shifted before he rounded the car, also in wolf form.
“You’re beautiful,” he communicated. When they finished the claiming, the three of them would be able to speak to each other telepathically, even in human form. That was part of the unique bond of mates, but for now, they at least had the ability to project their thoughts in wolf form.
All wolves could when they were shifted.
Cooper was a gorgeous brown, a deeper shade than her own fur. He was huge too. And when he batted at her with his paw, he took her breath away. He nodded behind him. “Let’s go.”