CHAPTER TWO
Sierra
“What the…”
For the second time in less than twelve hours she wished she had a gun.
Throwing the covers off, she leaned over the edge of the bed. Chupa wasn’t in her box. Sierra looked behind her and the fox was curled on the second pillow asleep. It’s good she’s sleeping. Sleep meant recovery and faster healing.
Easing out of bed, Sierra rushed to the front room, hoping to stop the next barrage before it woke Chupa.
Unlocking the door, she swung it open and glared up at a very tall, very shirtless, very lean and ripped man with shoulder length red—like very red, like crimson red—hair.
Unlike most redheads she’d seen, this man was not pale.
His skin had a bronze undertone that didn’t come from the sun or a spray bottle.
Which one could easily discern if one’s eyes happened to travel to the band of his boxer briefs where his warm skin didn’t wasn’t a lighter tone.
The man held a hunting rifle in his left hand.
His right fist, still suspended midair, dropped to his side.
He tilted his head to the side as if a Black woman in her pajamas was the last thing he expected to see at six fifteen in the fucking morning.
The anger on his face shifted to blank curiosity.
“If all you wanted to do was gaze lovingly into my eyes, you should’ve picked a time when they weren’t still crusted over with matter,” she said, weirded out by his silent observation.
The way he looked at her was eerily similar to the way Chupa had gazed at her the night before. Both fox and man had the same amber colored eyes.
Sierra narrowed her gaze. They also had nearly the same shade of hair.
Was he Chupa’s kin? Had he come here thinking she’d killed his kin? Were they both shifters or something?
Sierra reached out and touched the man’s hair, letting the long thick strands flow through her fingers just to verify it’s realness. This is all so strange, she thought. All of it. Everything from the fox’s appearance to this moment was just...weird. And a little?—
He grabbed her wrist; held it like a shackle.
Her skin heated with embarrassment. She shouldn’t have taken liberties; her heart raced with something akin to fear…and a trace of arousal. What is going on with me?
“Where’s the creature?” the man asked.
His voice reverberated through her like thunder before the lightning. It was like tumbled stone, hard and smooth. She half believed that until now, words just recycled through his head never to be spoken. Or maybe this is his morning voice and I’m the one being weird. Which wasn’t unusual.
“Sir,” she said. “It is six fifteen in the morning. I’m going to need you to greet me and beg my damn pardon for scaring me awake. Do that before you ask me anything.”
His amber eyes flared before banking into something cool and detached. Her gaze flicked down, making sure the grip on his rifle remained loose.
It was.
She took a breath, waited as he battled with his response—the jaw ticks, the narrowing of his eyes, the looking to the side without moving his head said he was losing the battle.
“Look lady, you got a?—”
“Ah awt!” she said, brow and chin raised.
He dropped his head, long red hair cascaded over his sharp features. She wanted to reach out and brush the strands aside.
“Ma’am,” he mumbled eventually, face hidden behind his veil of hair. “Sorry for waking you; although the sun’s been up for nearly an hour. Well after the time that decent folks have begun their day?—”
Did this man just call me lazy?
“That creature killed two of my roosters and five of my hens. I’m obligated to put it down.”
“The creature?” she frowned. Did he mean Chupa? Was he talking about putting down her Chupa? After all the work she’d done to save her!
He raised his head. The cold determination in his gaze guaranteed Chupa’s death unless she intervened.
So she lied.
“Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about. There is no creature here. Now, I suggest you get off my property before I call the police.”
A smile spread across his face.
She gripped the door, steadying herself as her heart thrashed against her ribcage like it wanted to escape her body and leap into his.
The early morning humidity was causing her to lose her good sense. Or maybe it was that this man had the most beautiful, porcelain white smile she’d ever seen...and dimples. Dimples that bracketed each side of his mouth. And maybe it was the way his hypnotic gaze seared her with mocking humor.
“Lady, I own everything within sight of this place. Including this house.”
He couldn’t be the owner. The realtor said the person who lived here last was an older woman who’d been on the land for over three decades.
“Prove it,” she challenged him.
“I don’t have to prove shit to you. Especially when I know you’re the liar.”
A liar! She swung the door wider ready to...ready to... She didn’t know what she was ready to do, but before she could do it he backed up, all the way off the porch and down into the wild grass growing beyond the white picket fence separating her front yard from the paved road.
She should’ve slammed the door shut then, but she’d been too curious to see what he was doing when he bent down and plucked long blades of grass from the earth. Even from here she could see red marring the green brush.
As the man approached, he pointed out the drops of red that tracked to her front porch like he was a crime scene specialist.
She hadn’t seen the droplets of blood last night, but where Chupa had lain on the porch there was a large settlement of blood. And where the fox scratched against the door, there were short streaks of blood in the gouged wood.
“I’m not a liar, per se,” she said as he walked back up onto the porch and towered over her again.
With his tall self.
He lifted the blood-streaked vegetation and pointed into the house where there were a couple of missed drops of blood which led straight to where Chupa now sat on her haunches watching the man as if he was her human male counterpart.
“Are you a shape-shifter?” Sierra asked him cautiously. “If you are, you can tell me. I know weird things exist in the Florida backwoods. I believe Chupa’s a chupacabra. Hence the name.”
He widened his stance, crossing his arms over his chest, the gun tucked at an angle between his biceps.
“Are you some unknown kin of Ms. Cassandra?” he asked.
“Toward the end she was as confused as a two-headed rattler. Maybe you’re not a liar, just got that overactive imagination thing families pass on through their blood that leads people to assume you’re prone to lying.
Now, kindly hand over the fox and I’ll let you get back to your sleep. ”
She squinted at this man in his gray khaki pants and thin flip-flops with brown strapped material between his toes.
He had large feet. Just an observation. She avoided looking at his groin once said observation was made.
She didn’t want to come off as a perv, more importantly, she didn’t want to give him any indication she thought he was sexy in an untamed animalistic way.
Chupa pressed against Sierra’s leg, and she looked down. The fox didn’t seem scared. She wasn’t trembling like she’d been the night before, she and the man were going at each other stare for stare.
“You can’t kill her, she’s a baby, fighting to survive, half starved. I can practically see her ribs.” Sierra said.
Outside of her wounds Chupa seemed as healthy as a show horse.
“I’m taking her to the vet today,” Sierra continued. “She won’t eat any more of your chickens.”
“Maybe I wasn’t clear, lady. She killed my chickens, and two of my roosters. She didn’t eat them, she killed them and left their bodies lined up outside the coop for me to find.”
“Well, what did they do to her!? They had to do something first,” Sierra exclaimed, uncertain why was she defending the fox like it was her child? Especially when she believed Chupa was guilty as hell.
With a speed and fluidity that left her stunned, the man raised the gun and aimed it at Chupa who yipped as Sierra stepped in front of her.
Was she really about to take a bullet for a wild fox?!
Apparently, she was, because when Chupa leaped into her arms, Sierra held her tight against her chest and placed a hand over Chupa’s head as if blocking the fox from the sight of its impending death.
“Okay, listen, I know you’re angry,” she said urgently, extending her arm as a deterrent.
“You have a right to be. It’s hard to have something you value violently taken from you.
I’ll pay for your lost animals if it keeps Chupa alive, if that isn’t sufficient, just let me know how we can make this right,” she said, shifting Chupa, who was baring her teeth and growling at the redheaded man.
Nah, Sierra thought, this man and his chickens, and two roosters, absolutely did something to warrant the deaths.
She tried to smile placatingly. The man squinted like he was two seconds from shooting them both, then lowered the gun.
“I don’t need your money. But I’ll think on what I do need and you’ll give it to me when I ask, no matter what, no questions.”
Normally she wouldn’t agree to open-ended requests with no time limits and no parameters. But Chupa yipped as if giving consent and Sierra wouldn’t gamble with the fox’s life after winning this concession.
“As long as it’s not illegal, you’ve got a deal.”
“I’ll agree to no murder and no felony level charges. That’s it.”
She looked at him from beneath slightly lowered lids, intrigued.
“Deal.”
He stared so long she wondered if he was having a dissociative moment.
“Um...thanks for stopping by?” she smiled.
He blinked. His gaze strayed from her face, lowering to her bare feet before slowly raising his gaze to meet her eyes again. Sierra was braless in an orange camisole with the matching shorts. The sleep set suddenly felt too little and too much at the same time.
Because the hoe-ish part of her...wanted.
“You’re being rude,” she snapped, too breathless to be the stern rebuke she intended it to be.
“You cook?”
“I cook a lot of things...except fox.”
His bark of laughter made her tingle, flipping the switch of the internal furnace she long believed was burned out.
His eyes and smile turned nasty and knowing. Then it all went away and his dead-eyed amber gaze returned.
“If I see the kit again, she dies.”
Slinging the rifle onto his shoulders, he looped his elbows over each end and walked away.
Once he’d made it to the road, she found her courage.
“I don’t know why you’d want to kill her, she’s probably your kin. And you point a gun at me again, I’m going to point one right back at you!” She shouted then slammed the door as he swung around.
“Fuck that dude,” she muttered, heart racing as other parts of her body throbbed. Sierra ignored the sensation and looked down at Chupa.
“Now that I’ve saved you from dying a second time, it’s time to get ready for your doctor’s appointment.”
Chupa sighed.