10. Cody

 

 

He was so proud of his family. Although it was no surprise that they liked Crystal; of course they welcomed her. She was beautiful and smart, kind and funny. Who wouldn't like her?

But still, as the group prepared to give up their day to help Crystal search her family farm, Cody couldn't help feeling a fierce, devoted love for all of them.

"So you have no idea what we're looking for?" Tara asked, handing Lexie to Daisy, who was taking the first shift watching the kids. Saffron was helping Crystal drag one of the mattresses that had been airing on the porch into the shade of the house for a makeshift play and nap area.

Crystal shook her head, dusting off her hands after depositing the mattress on the grass. "No, I'm afraid I haven't a clue. I have a metal detector; we'll have to take turns with it. Other than that, I don't know what else to suggest. My dad seemed to think Grandpa had something worth a lot of money stashed away somewhere, but it could be anything."

"I expect you've already checked for a bank safe deposit box or that kind of thing," Tara said. Cody gave her a quick, respectful glance; after helping run her family's foundation for years, she was used to dealing with money.

"It would've come up when Mom and I were dealing with Dad's estate," Crystal said. "If 'estate' is really the right word for a small savings account and a farm. There wasn't anything else. Whatever Grandpa had, it's right here, on this farm. If there is anything at all."

"Well, if there is, we'll find it," Saffron said firmly.

They spread out into the sun-drenched fields. Tara and Saffron took the first shift with the metal detector; Cody could hear their friendly bickering as they tried to decide where to start.

Crystal looked up at Cody with a smile and slung a shovel over her shoulder. "I was thinking we could look together," she began, and then her eyes widened and her dusky cheeks darkened further as she looked past him. "Er ... why is he taking his clothes off?"

Cody followed her gaze to Gannon, standing thigh-deep in long weeds just inside the pasture fence and unashamedly stripping. "I expect he's going to shift."

Crystal wrenched her gaze away. "Yes, but why?"

"Bears have an incredibly keen sense of smell, and Gannon is very in tune with his bear side. If there's anything buried on this property, he'll be more likely to find it that way."

"Oh. I ... uh ..." She blushed darker yet as she looked up at him again. "Is that what you are planning to do?"

"Tempting though it is, I think it might be more fun to spend the afternoon on two legs rather than four. After all, as a bear, I can't do this." He dipped down to kiss her.

"I like your logic," she said, breathless and laughing when he finally let her go.

She carried the shovel and Cody picked up the brush cutter. They walked up the field as the sun beat down on them. Cody was glad for his hat shading his head; he glanced at Crystal, next to him. "You doin' okay in this heat? You're not used to working outside; need to remember to stay hydrated."

Crystal held up a bottle of water. "Way ahead of you." She uncapped it and drank deeply, then passed it to Cody. The water was still cool, the mouth of the bottle slightly warm from her lips.

The women's cheerful voices faded behind them. Occasionally Cody caught a glimpse of Gannon at the edge of the trees, a big dark-colored grizzly, working his way methodically back and forth with his head down to the ground.

"There's just so much to search," Crystal said quietly. Cody glanced down at her and saw that she was looking back toward the farm buildings. "I really appreciate your family helping, and maybe someone will get lucky, but if he did bury something out here, we could search forever and not find it."

"You have to consider that he would have wanted it to be found, though," Cody pointed out. "If he hid something here, it would be hidden from casual searchers, not from the family. Do you ever remember anyone saying something that might give you a hint? Something that would have suggested a solution the family could find but no one else could?"

Crystal shook her head. "It would help if I'd even met the guy since I was a tiny child. I still don't know what happened between him and my dad, though if I were going to guess, I'd say it had something to do with Mom."

"Because she was a shifter?"

Crystal nodded. "My parents never really talked about it, but I think it says a lot that our family moved close to her family rather than Dad's."

"I never remember him acting weird towards us," Cody said. "Of course, I didn't know him well, either. He didn't talk much and didn't like strangers around. That's just a pretty typical old rancher for you, though."

She stopped again, turning to look down at the house and outbuildings. They'd come high enough that they could see the whole farm spread out below them. Tara and Saffron, both of whom were dressed in bright-colored blouses, were little splashes of color against the green backdrop.

"What was it like when this place was in full operation?" Crystal asked quietly.

"Not too different from how it is now. The pasture was less overgrown, with cattle grazing on it." Cody hesitated. "You gotta remember, though, the place was already in decline when I knew your grandpa. He was old and in poor health. I never saw your family farm in its prime."

Crystal looked around. Cody looked, too, seeing it for a moment not even as it used to be, but how it could be: the trees behind the barn loaded with apples, the hills covered with grazing cattle and sheep, the outbuildings in good repair. He pictured his own farm truck parked in front of the barn, and a couple of horses grazing in the pasture.

He saw himself with Crystal, picking baskets of fruit to take to the local farmer's market, carrying buckets of grain to feed to flocks of chickens with beautiful-colored feathers, while a little boy and girl (one with sandy curls, one with Crystal's wavy dark hair) scampered along at their side ...

In that instant, it felt like a true vision of their future.

And then he shook himself out of it, and saw again what was really there, the fields swamped in bushes and blackberry canes, the fruit trees nearly lost among young willows and other kinds of trees that had taken over during the many years they were untended. The barn needed a new roof before it would be suitable for livestock. All the fences needed to be checked and probably replaced. He had some doubts about the well pump; it was probably going to need to be replaced soon. And so on, and so forth. When he looked over the farm with the eye of a professional rancher, it was nothing but an endless series of necessary repairs, most of which Crystal probably didn't even know about. She was eager to learn, but she didn't have the years of experience that Cody did.

She needed him. The farm needed him, in a way the Circle B no longer did.

And she hadn't been at all afraid of his bear—

Of course not, his bear rumbled contentedly.

—and, though not a shifter herself, she even came from a shifter family. Her soul yearned for the forest, even if she didn't know it.

"Crystal," he said, her name singing on his tongue, and she turned to him, breaking out of whatever fantasies about those overgrown fields she had been entertaining. "If we can find your grandpa's treasure, pay off your family's debts—"

"Those are some big 'ifs,' you know," she said, smiling.

"I know, but ... if we could do that, do you think you might consider keeping the farm?"

All the world seemed to hang on her answer.

"I ... don't know," she said slowly, and relief rolled through him. True, it wasn't yes, but it wasn't no either. "When I came here, I didn't expect ..." She looked across the fields again, down to the cluster of buildings where Cody's family, marked by their bright splashes of color, worked their way through the expanse of green on their impromptu treasure hunt. "... any of this," she finished, spreading her arms. "Cody, I like it here. No, I love it here." Then, even as his heart leaped with hope, she brought him crashing back to earth. "But I can't stay if it means abandoning my mom to a mountain of debts. It's either the treasure or the farm, and if there is no treasure—"

"Don't think that way," Cody said quickly, taking her hand. They were so close. She wanted to stay; it was just a matter of finding a way. "C'mon, think about your grandpa. What kind of treasure might he have owned?"

"Well, that's the problem, I don't know. The guy was an old rancher. What could he possibly have that was that valuable? If there's one thing I know about you guys, it's that you put everything back into your ranches and farms. He wouldn't have just been sitting on a bunch of money if he could've used it to keep up the farm."

Unfortunately, she was right. Cody couldn't imagine his parents or Alec doing something like that, hiding a bunch of money when they could have used it to pay for improvements to the ranch's infrastructure or fresh breeding stock for the herd.

"So forget about the treasure for a little while." He tugged her gently after him. "This is the nice thing about having a whole clan to help you. My family's searching for it, so you can take a little time off."

"No I can't," she complained, but she allowed herself to be led into the sun-dappled shade of the trees. Cody leaned the brush cutter against a tree, but she stubbornly hung onto the shovel. "It's not fair to let everyone else work while I goof off. And anyway, there's so little time; I have to use every minute of it ..."

"My grandma used to say," Cody said, "that the best way to find something you've lost is to stop looking."

Crystal laughed. "What, so I should just wander around and hope to stumble across it by accident? That's a good strategy, all right."

"No, it's just that sometimes you can get caught up in trying the same thing over and over, even when it doesn't work, and forget about other options."

"The same thing over and over," Crystal murmured. She tipped her head back, her full lips parted. "Like me and the St. Louis dating scene. I tried Craigslist, OKCupid, heck, I even tried speed dating one time. And it turned out, all I had to do was go out to the middle of nowhere and the first unattached guy I met would be my ... soulmate."

She might not be a shifter, but she wore her soul in her eyes anyway. Cody was drawn down as if by magnetism to take her mouth with his, exploring those sweet lips, drawing her to him with a hand at the small of her back. When their lips parted, she rested her head against his chest, and he stroked her hair. The shovel lay forgotten at their feet.

"I don't want to talk about leaving any more," she murmured. "You're right, I've been thinking about nothing but finding that stupid treasure since I got here. I just want to enjoy this day for a few hours, and—"

"Shhh," Cody breathed into her hair.

"I'm sorry, here I go talking about it again—"

"No," he whispered, "just stop talking, and look to your left."

He felt her tense slightly as she turned her head, and then she breathed out a soft "ohhhh" of wonder.

A deer had stepped out of the edge of the woods. Cody often saw them around the ranch while he was out checking on the herds, to the point where he'd almost stopped noticing them, but this time he saw it anew through Crystal's eyes, tinged with her open wonder. It—she—was a beautiful creature, with large liquid eyes and slender, delicate legs. She moved through the dense brush with a light, high-stepping gait as if she was dancing on those tiny hooves.

Cody leaned down so he could whisper into Crystal's ear, "See the fawn?"

The deer paused at the sound of his voice, then took a few more steps, hardly seeming aware of the couple just a few yards away.

"No," Crystal breathed. "Where?"

"Behind her. In the woods."

It was almost invisible with its spotted coat. Then, as the mother deer looked around and saw nothing to alarm her, the baby trotted out of the woods in a quick scurry of steps to catch up with its mother.

A sudden, distant burst of laughter drifted to them on the wind, coming from the yard of the farmhouse. The mother deer swiveled her head around, big ears pointing forward, and with hardly a sound, she and her baby ghosted back into the woods, vanishing like smoke.

Crystal relaxed with a giggle of released tension and delight. "That was amazing," she said softly, staring into the woods where the deer had gone. "It's like they didn't even notice us. I've never been that close to a deer before."

"Animals often recognize shifters as their own kind," Cody said. He, too, kept his voice quiet, though the two deer were probably long gone. It seemed somehow disrespectful to be loud. "Maybe they recognize you too, because of your shifter heritage."

"But you're a bear."

"Doesn't really matter. I'm not hunting right now, and they can tell. I've seen a fox and a rabbit come down to drink from the same spring together, not bothering each other." He brushed a wind-tousled lock of hair away from her cheek. "You have so many wonders to see, Crystal."

"I'm starting to realize that," she murmured. "And I want you to show them to me."

Cody grinned. "Want to start with your first tracking lesson?"

"Oh! I guess—okay?"

With her hand in his, he walked through the tall grass to the place where the deer had stood. The grass was bent down, the ground underneath scuffed by small, pointy hooves.

"You can see that something's been walking here by the way the grass is bent," Cody explained. "The stems bend in the direction she went—see?" He brushed a hand through the grass, parting it with his fingers. "You can't see the actual tracks very well here. If you want to walk back into the woods a little ways, we might find a place where the ground is soft and they'll show up."

"Is it safe?" Crystal asked, glancing at the shade under the trees.

"You're with a bear. What could be safer?"

She smiled and followed him into the edge of the woods. "Oh, there's a path!"

"Deer trail. Look here." Cody knelt and showed her a delicate, cloven hoof-mark in a patch of disturbed earth. "This is what their tracks look like. If you keep your eyes open, you might find them around the barn in the morning, or under the apple trees. Deer love windfall apples."

"Oh right, I forgot I have apple trees. Wow." She looked ahead of them, where the deer path wound in and out of patches of sun and shade. "This is all part of my land too, right? Can we follow this and see where it goes?"

"Sure." Cody's heart lifted at her phrasing. My land, she'd said. She was already thinking of the farm that way, with the loving pride of the born rancher ... or shifter.

She's not a shifter, though? he queried his bear.

No, the bear answered back. We would be able to tell. But there is a lot of shifter in her.

You could have mentioned this before, you know.

Deep, rich amusement from the presence curled in his mind.

Crystal started to take a few steps up the path, then stopped and looked back. Leaf shadows drew patterns on her shoulders. "We won't bother the deer, will we?"

"No, they've probably headed off to find somewhere a little more private."

Together they followed the path through sunlight and shade, pushing their way through thickets where the deer had beaten out little tunnels. Every time they passed a stand of wildflowers or an interesting-looking plant, Crystal asked its name. Cody could only tell her about half of them.

"We'll have to get a flower book too," he told her.

"I'd love to. I want to learn all of them. Oh!" She looked up at a flash of movement as a bird flew between the trees. "That was a bluebird, wasn't it?"

Cody hadn't seen it well enough to tell if it was blue or not, but he agreed readily, "Looked like one to me."

Crystal beamed.

Sunlight showed through the tree trunks ahead. A meadow, Cody thought, but then they pushed through the hanging branches and he found something even more lovely: a hidden glade with a spring in the center.

"Oh," Crystal whispered, staring in wonder.

The spring bubbled up from the base of a jumble of rocks that formed a natural pool. They'd climbed higher in the foothills without really noticing, and now that they'd come out of the trees, the side of the mountain reared above them. The forest changed here, the willows and birches they'd been walking through changing into mostly pine trees as the hillside got steeper. Around the spring, ferns and moss grew thickly, their rich greens a noticeable contrast to the pale greens and dark, dusty pine colors of the drier hillside above.

Cody dipped a hand into the spring. The water was very cold and clear. From the animal tracks around its sandy edge, it was obviously a well-used watering hole for the local wildlife. The spring twisted away into the forest and was lost to sight.

"Can we drink this?" Crystal asked, kneeling beside the water.

"Sure. No better water in the world." Cody flashed a sudden grin. "And I see we're not the first people to have that idea." He reached between two rocks beside the spring and retrieved an old, faded mug with a chip in the rim. A piece of twine had been tied to its handle and then to a fat, gnarly willow beside the pool. Cody dipped it full of water and handed it to Crystal, who took it reverently.

"Do you think my grandfather left this here?"

"I can't think who else would have."

"Oh," she murmured, turning the cup around in her hands as water trickled down her fingers from its wet sides. To her, Cody thought, her grandfather must have been an abstraction, a person she remembered vaguely from early childhood, but perhaps, not quite real.

And now here was this cup, a tangible reminder that he'd found this spring too, that he'd knelt where they were on its sandy edge, and dipped a cup of water to slake his thirst.

Crystal took a cautious sip, then a deeper one, closing her eyes. "I thought the well water was good, but you're right, this is incredible. I don't think I've had better water in my life. You could bottle this and sell it for Perrier prices. Not that I'm going to, of course."

Cody took back the cup and dipped it full for himself. "You know," he said thoughtfully, trying to map the direction they'd come in his head, "I think this might be the headwaters of that creek across your driveway. No wonder the water supply down there is so consistent, even in the driest, hottest part of summer."

"Yeah, I remember what you told me about how water is important for ranching."

"More than just important. It's key to the whole operation. Well, that and good grazing land, which you also have here—thanks to this spring."

"So in a way," Crystal said quietly, trailing her fingers through the water, "this spring is the reason why the farm was able to survive all these years."

"It's probably the reason why it's here in the first place. Whoever picked out this land, your grandpa or his dad or whatever far-back relative bought this place—they would have known that a good, reliable source of water would be necessary for running cattle. This side of the mountain was pretty dry even back then. A lot of the water sources were only seasonal. A spring like this would be a real stroke of luck. Worth its weight in gold."

"I'd rather have the actual gold," Crystal sighed. Then she looked up at the trees rustling in the wind above them. "No, that's not true. I'm glad we found this place. It's absolutely lovely. Do you feel like ..." She hesitated, then looked up at him, a little nervous, like she expected him to laugh at her. "Does it feel to you like this place is special?"

"I know exactly what you mean." He'd felt it ever since they'd stepped into the glade. There was a hushed sense of ... not magic, exactly, in the same way that shifters had their own kind of magic, but a reverent feeling, a little like being in church. It was as if the land itself knew that this spring, this source of water on an arid mountainside, was the reason why this hillside was so lush and green. It was, quite literally, the wellspring from which life on this mountain arose.

"Cody ..." Crystal scrambled to her feet. She touched her fingertips, still wet with spring water, to her neck. "That thing we talked about earlier, claiming your mate. I want you to do it ... here, right here, beside the spring."

His heart seemed to seize in his chest. The very woods were hushed, as if the forest itself hung on his answer.

"Crystal—if I do this, it'll bind us together forever. Where one of us goes, the other will go. There won't be any going back."

She nodded. "That's what I want. Do you?"

He flung himself forward, taking her mouth with his, a silent "yes" more eloquent than words could ever have been.

In the leafy shadows under the willows, they undressed each other with mounting urgency. Cody could smell her eagerness, lending extra intensity to the passion growing inside him. And yet he also wanted to savor every moment of this. The most powerful moment of a shifter's life was the moment they bonded with their mate. There was nothing else like it.

So he tried to memorize it all: the background music of the rustling leaves and burbling spring, the warm bronze of her skin in the sun-dappled shade, the heat of her body writhing against him, the smell of arousal coming off her like a hot tide.

And, in the part of his mind not overwhelmed with desire, he knew that he wanted to make this as special for her as it was for him. He didn't know what mate-bonding felt like to a human, but if this was going to be the best sex of his life, he wanted it to be for her as well. It needed to be a consummation of their bond that she would never forget.

And that was why, though his member throbbed to enter her waiting heat, he dropped to his knees instead. She was like a goddess, his goddess, standing beside the spring, naked to the sun and the breeze. She was his forest goddess and this was the only way he could worship her. He gripped one generous buttock in each hand and nuzzled at the softness of her inner thighs, teasing her by lapping delicately at her folds before burying one finger in her, then two.

Oh, she was so open, so wet. Even without having forged the full bond between them, he could feel her arousal and need, echoes traveling back and forth between them, her desire building on his own.

She clasped her hands in his hair. Her tiny moans drove him onward, encouraging him as he found her small hot nub and worked it lightly.

"Cody—!" she gasped, and then her body jerked and stiffened as she came with a hard thrust of her hips, pulsing around his fingers.

His engorged cock was quivering on the edge now, her scent unendurably good. He had to hold down his own desire along with the powerful urge of his bear to rise up and claim his mate. As her aftershocks began to fade, he struggled to his feet, and was startled when she turned around and pressed her enticing, round backside against him.

"Like this," she whispered, looking at him over her shoulder.

She didn't have to ask twice. As she spread her legs and opened up for him, he slid into her eager heat. She was so wet and ready that there was no resistance. She took him entirely, leaning forward to brace her hands against the rocks. Her hair tickled his nose, driving him made with her scent. The soft nape of her neck was right there. He bent forward, lips brushing across her neck, then dragging his teeth over it. Each time he did, her whole body jerked in an electric reaction.

Instinct told him to wait, to hold it down, to keep the beast within him contained until they both teetered on the edge of their shared climax. And then—then he unleashed it, gave her the bite that a shifter could give only once in his lifetime, and she cried out desperately as they both gave in to the wave that crashed across them.

The others were right. He'd never felt anything like it. They both felt the orgasm sweep across them. It was impossible to tell where his pleasure ended and hers began. It went on and on, endlessly, until finally the wave began to recede and he became aware of the sand under his bare feet, the press of her buttocks against him, the wind cooling the sweat on his back.

"Oh ... my ..." she whispered. Her legs wobbled, and Cody pulled out of her carefully, kissing her neck beneath the fresh half-moon of the bite mark, and helped her sit down shakily beside the spring. Her rib cage heaved with her breathing as she came down from the high, lips parted and eyes half closed. He could look at her like this forever, beautiful and rapt in her pleasure, with the taste of her salt still on his tongue.

Cody sat down beside her and, after another long moment, she opened her eyes. Her pupils were still blown. "I didn't know sex could feel like that. Is it, uh ... always going to be like that?"

"Not quite. But it'll always be good. I promise you, I'll always make sure that it's good for you." He reached out gently to wipe at a trickle of blood on her collarbone, though the wound was already closing. "How does that feel? Does it hurt?"

"It hurts a little, but in a good kind of way." Crystal twisted as she tried to look down at it. Of course, she couldn't see her own neck. "What's it look like?"

"Here. See for yourself."

He steered her to the edge of the pool. She bent over the gently rippling water, and Cody held back her mass of sex-tousled dark hair as he leaned over with her, deliciously conscious of her naked body against him and the smell of sex that lingered about her.

"Hmmm." She touched beneath the bite mark with her fingertips.

"It'll be healed by tomorrow," Cody said. "And if you don't like how it looks, you can probably cover it with makeup." Although, come to think of it, none of the Circle B ranch women did that. They all wore their claiming mark proudly.

And Crystal looked similarly startled at the idea. "Of course I won't do that. It's just something new, that's all. Actually, I like it." She turned her head to kiss him lightly on the corner of his mouth. "Will it change me in any other way?"

"You'll be more aware of me, and I'll be more aware of you." It was already working; he could feel the opening of the channels between them. They wouldn't be able to read each other's minds or anything of the sort; at least, he'd never heard anything about that. But there was still a sense of her presence that he hadn't had before. He would need to ask Alec whether—

Alec.

What was Alec going to say?

Thinking of his alpha was like a bucket of cold water dashed over him. Alec had mellowed out a lot over the last couple of years—he was no longer the cold, stern alpha who had fought Axl over Tara—but he still didn't like the other bears on the ranch making important decisions without consulting him.

For his entire life, Cody had been the peacemaker, the one who smiled and got along with everyone. He wasn't a rebel. He'd always assumed that if he ever did find his mate, he would do everything properly. He'd bring her back to the ranch, present her to Alec, get his alpha's blessing ...

Instead, he'd been stumbling through this, making mistake after mistake. He hadn't even thought about it, but with the impromptu lunch gathering at the bridge, he'd introduced her to almost everyone on the ranch except Alec. And now he'd put his claiming mark on her.

"What's wrong?" Crystal asked, looking up at him with wide, anxious eyes.

The idea of lying to her didn't even cross his mind. He didn't think he could lie to this woman, not anymore. "Just trying to figure out how I'm going to explain this to my alpha."

"Your alpha. That's right, if you're a shifter, you have an alpha, don't you? Who is your alpha?"

"My cousin Alec." Cody smiled at her with a confidence he didn't entirely feel. "Don't worry, it shouldn't be that big a deal. I'm the last one on the ranch who hadn't found my mate yet. Everyone but me has been expecting it."

"What do you mean, everyone but you?"

"I mean ..." He brushed his thumb across the corner of her full lips. "They all kept telling me to be patient, but I didn't think I'd find this. Have this. I was starting to doubt there was someone out there for me."

"I felt the same. It seemed like I'd dated half of St. Louis, but every prince turned out to be a frog." She put her bare arms around his neck, her body pressing wonderfully against his. "I never thought I'd find my prince on a ranch, of all places."

Cody luxuriated in a long kiss before coming up for air with a regretful sigh. "You know, as much as I've enjoyed this, I should probably be getting back to work on that bridge. Gannon and I can get the rest of the crosspieces into place today, and it should be ready for you to use after a little finishwork tomorrow."

"I guess not being stuck on the farm is a good thing." She smiled playfully. "You know, though ... before we put our clothes back on ... I was thinking about trying for a personal best."

"Personal best?"

"Yeah, you know, how many times you can make me come in one day?"

"Oh God," he murmured, as she laid him back on the soft moss beside the spring, and lowered her luscious, curvy body on top of his.