Chapter 31 Fire in the Garage
Liza POV
The garage was lit by a single overhead strip, the kind that flickered when the heater cycled. Shane’s boots stuck out from under the second snowmobile in the row, and the only sound was the ratchet in his hand and the tick of cooling engines.
I stood in the doorway watching him work.
He’d been under there long enough that his knuckles were black with grease.
One knee was drawn up, the other flat on the rubber mat, and he was running his fingers along something beneath the cowling with the focused attention he usually saved for a cornice or a wind slab.
Every machine in the row had its access panels open. He was checking them all.
The patrol crew had secured whatever avalanche equipment they could reach before dark, but the upper cache sat above the closed tour route on a slope that had stayed too loaded to cross all day, and nobody was going near it in the dark.
Shane had told Dominic he’d ride up at first light.
Dominic had nodded once and gone to the cabin, which meant his ribs hurt worse than he was letting on.
Now it was late. The lodge windows were dark, the yard empty. Shane was alone in the garage doing the thing he always did when trouble piled up. He fixed what he could reach and left the rest for morning.
I pulled the bay door shut behind me and threw the lock.
The ratchet stopped.
“Liza?” His voice came from under the machine, muffled by fiberglass and cold steel.
“Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
I crossed the oil-stained concrete and looked down at him. His shaggy hair was flat against the creeper’s headrest. Grease streaked his jaw. His flannel hung open over his thermal, the sleeves shoved to his elbows, and his forearms were filthy.
He’d spent the day watching two Alphas circle each other in the yard.
Before that, he’d spent days doing the same thing while also running tours, tracking a hostile former Beta, and sleeping in whatever hours were left.
He acted as if the mark he’d put on my neck left no room for jealousy, even after I came back from Everett’s bed and Dominic’s fear filled the lodge.
His easy grin made people think nothing bothered him.
Tonight, it didn’t hide the tightness around his green eyes or the way his jaw stayed set when he smiled up at me.
“Come here,” I said.
“I’ve got two more machines to check.”
I grabbed the creeper by its steel frame and hauled him out from under the machine. The wheels squealed across the mat, and Shane came sliding into the open with the ratchet still in his hand and his eyebrows halfway to his hairline.
“Liza, what the hell—”
I dropped my jacket on the concrete, then the layers under it, and the cold air tightened everything. Shane propped himself on one elbow and watched, the ratchet forgotten. I unhooked my bra and let it fall.
His gaze tracked down my body.
I shoved my patrol pants and underwear down to my boots. Then I knelt over him, one knee on each side of his head, my hands braced on the snowmobile’s broad vinyl seat.
Shane said, “Oh, fuck yes,” and put his mouth on me.
His hands came up and gripped my thighs, pulling me down against him. He knew where I needed him.
I rocked against his mouth and clutched the seat.
The vinyl creaked. The frame shifted. Cold air moved across my bare back.
Hot breath moved between my legs. Shane’s thumbs dug into the insides of my thighs, holding me open, and his tongue circled and pressed and retreated until I was grinding against him and cursing under my breath.
He sucked and licked without letting up. My thighs shook. The machine rocked harder under my hands, its skis scraping over the rubber. Shane groaned against me, and the vibration of it went through my whole body.
I came hard with both hands locked on the seat and my head thrown back, and my voice came back to me off the metal walls like a stranger’s. Shane kept his mouth on me, easing but not stopping until the last pulse faded and my arms nearly gave out.
I slid down his body. His thermal was damp with sweat, and I could feel him straining against his jeans before I reached his belt. I opened the buckle, popped the button, dragged the zipper, and freed him with both hands.
He was hard enough that he hissed when I wrapped my fingers around his length and stroked.
“There you are,” I said.
Shane’s laugh was breathless and rough. “I was right here the whole—”
I tightened my grip and ran my thumb across the head, and the sentence died.
I stroked him with a rhythm I’d learned in the days since he marked me, firm and deliberate, twisting at the top.
His hips lifted off the mat. His hands found my hips and squeezed, and I watched his face come apart, the grin dissolving into something open and wrecked and completely honest.
“You’re close,” I told him.
“Yeah.” His voice was almost gone.
“I can feel it.”
“Liza—”
“Not yet.”
I backed off. He swore until I laughed, and the laugh felt good in my chest because so much of my life was contested and unfinished, but this was simple. This was Shane under my hands, and all I had to do was touch him.
I kept him right at the edge for another minute, and then another, working him in long strokes that made his abs clench and his breathing go ragged. Every time he got close I slowed, and every time I slowed his fingers dug harder into my hips and he thumped his head back against the creeper.
“You’re killing me,” he said.
“Later.”
Shane sat up in one motion, caught me around the waist, and lifted me off his lap. He stood, turned me, and bent me forward over the broad seat. One hand pressed between my shoulder blades. His other palm moved up the inside of my thigh.
“My turn,” he said, low enough that the words landed against the back of my neck.
He lined himself up and pushed into me in a single hard stroke, and my hands slammed flat against the vinyl as the machine rocked forward on its skis. Metal and suspension creaked beneath me.
Shane didn’t ease in. He didn’t go slow.
He fucked me the way I’d come in here wanting, hard and steady and selfish enough to make it good, one hand gripping my hip and the other braced beside mine on the seat.
The fuel smell thickened in the cold air, and the heater kicked on above us.
Every impact drove me higher against the vinyl until my cheek pressed against the cold seat and there was nothing left but the stretch of his cock inside me and the rough, even rhythm of his hips.
I reached between my legs to touch myself.
Shane pulled my hand away and replaced it with his own.
His fingers settled on my clit, and I let them. He rubbed in time with his thrusts, and the dual sensation built so fast I lost my grip on the seat and had to brace against the handlebars.
“There,” I said. “Right there. Don’t—”
“I know.”
He did know. He pressed harder, moved faster, and the orgasm hit, sudden and violent and thorough.
I came with my face against the cold vinyl and Shane buried deep inside me, and the seat muffled most of the sound, but he heard it.
He felt it. I could tell because his rhythm broke and his fingers went still against me and he groaned something that might have been my name.
He thrust twice more and finished inside me, hips locked against mine, his forehead dropping between my shoulder blades. His breath came hot against my spine.
Neither of us moved.
The heater rattled and cycled off. Outside, the wind pushed against the bay door. The concrete floor was cold beneath my boot soles, and the vinyl seat was cold against my cheek, and everywhere that Shane touched me was very warm.
After a while he eased out and pulled me upright, steadying me with both hands on my waist as my legs protested the sudden change in angle. I turned and leaned against the machine, and he stayed close, his forehead against mine, his jeans still open and his thermal soaked through.
“Hi,” he said.
I laughed. My voice came out lower than usual. “Hi.”
“Was there something you needed, or did you just come down here to wreck my maintenance schedule?”
I took his hand, grease and all, and laced my fingers through his. The chosen bond went quiet and sure. It never wavered.
“You’ve been carrying everyone else’s problems for a week,” I said.
“That’s my job.”
“No, it isn’t.” I tightened my grip. “You’re Dominic’s Beta and my mate. That’s a lot. But you’re not a shock absorber. You’re not here to make two Alphas feel better about sharing a yard.”
Shane’s green eyes held mine, tired and fierce and glad I’d said it.
“I know what I am to you,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” His fingers closed on mine. He was quiet long enough that I thought that was all. “You smelled like Everett this morning. I told myself it didn’t cost me anything.” He shook his head once. “It did. I know what I am to you when things are simple. I don’t know what I am when they aren’t.”
“You’re the one I chose. The Goddess didn’t decide it, and there was no jolt the first time we touched.
” I felt the mark pulse against the cold air.
“And when everything else is a knot, you’re the one I can put my hands on and know where I stand.
I don’t have that anywhere else, and I’m not going to. ”
He kissed me. It was softer than anything else we’d done tonight, and the contrast made my throat tight. His mouth was gentle against mine, and he tasted like sweat and the last of me.
We ended up on the rubber mat with our backs against the snowmobile’s front ski, his arm around my shoulders and my head against his neck. My pants were still at my boots. Shane’s jeans were still open. The concrete was freezing and the mat barely helped, but neither of us moved to fix it.
“I want all of it,” he said.
“All of what?”
“Your complicated future. The whole tangled thing.” His thumb moved slowly against my bare shoulder.
“Dominic and whatever Everett becomes and Kurt and whatever’s up on that mountain and the part where you sleep at Dom’s cabin and come to my garage when you need to remember the rest.” He turned his head and pressed his mouth against my hair.
“I’m not asking for the simple version. I don’t think there is one. ”
I closed my eyes. The bond between us settled deeper, the way it did when he stopped pretending and said the real thing.
“There isn’t,” I said.
“Then I want exactly that.” His arm tightened around me.
Through the bay window, snow had started falling again. I could see it drifting past the single light above the yard gate, white and steady against the black ridge of the upper mountain.
By morning, fresh snow would cover whatever remained of Kurt’s trail. Shane would ride up at first light to see what was left.