Wrangler (Sheppard’s Shadow #3)

Chapter 5

Wrangler had had enough of phone calls from the jail to his home. How they’d gotten their cell phone numbers as well was a mystery, but he was going to figure that out while he was there. Someone was going to have their heads roll, especially if it was one of the cops on duty.

He couldn’t stand to see Amber crying herself to sleep at night or even during the day when she was called to answer. Yesterday he’d yanked out all the phones and the wiring, along with calling the phone company to have them come out and remove all the wiring that would annoy the shit out of him.

Being taken back to the cells where William was first, he sat down in the chair he’d brought with him and told him who he was. Why he was there didn’t seem to be a question in his mind, but he wanted him to understand who he was. William launched into a tirade that pissed him off more than he’d ever been upset with anyone, with the exception of his mother.

“That’s another thing too. I want to know why you’re keeping my kids from coming in here and bringing us snacks and better blankets? We see others coming in and bringing things like candy bars and shit. Why are you keeping them from doing the same for the two of us? We’re their parents, you know.” Wrangler told the older man that he wasn’t keeping them from anything. “Then why ain’t they coming in here and seeing us. I have me a list of things that I want them to bring to me. One of them being a cell phone. I can’t make any deals without one of them, and I’m sick of having to walk all the way to the phone hanging on the wall there. You tell them to get their asses in gear, or it won’t go good for them.”

“No.” William sputtered around a little bit about how he didn’t like that word and that he wasn’t to use it on him again when Wrangler told him no again. “I’m not going to tell them to do anything for you. For that matter, I might tell them that they can come and see you and bring you treats, but it’s doubtful that either one of them would go out of their way to do that for you two. You’ve been terrible parents, and I can’t believe that you think that they’d want to do anything kind for you. I know that I wouldn’t.”

“You tell them that I said that they’d better, by god. I’m not messing around with them. I want out of here, and there ain’t no reason that they can’t be making my stay here better than it is now. A nice thick blanket would be nice, too. You tell them that.” He told the man no again, enjoying watching his face turn several shades of purple while he worked with his mouth to form words. “I know who you are. You’re one of them Sheppard bastards, ain’t you?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I am a Sheppard but not a bastard. My parents were married when I was born. All six of us, as a matter of fact, were born during their marriage. It might not have been a good one, but it’s legitimate. So that makes us legitimate children of theirs, not bastards. Was there a point to you asking me if my parents were married?” He called him a bastard again. “Either I’m not explaining things right, or you haven’t any idea what a bastard is. Shall I look it up for you? It won’t be an issue. Here you go. Bastard is a term that can refer to various topics, such as illegitimate children, people, films, music, books, and more . I didn’t know that part. Also, here’s one. The meaning of BASTARD is a child born to parents who are not married to each other. That’s the one that you were referring to, myself and my brothers, I take it.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He asked him what he meant. “What are you going on about. I know what bastard means, damn it. Why are you spouting things off like you—do you think that I’m stupid or something?”

“I’m not going to give you an answer to that, I’m afraid. Not that you can reach me. I did put my chair far enough away from you so that you can’t touch me, but I don’t want you to toss anything at me either.” He asked him why he was here. “Oh, that’s easy. I want you to stop calling my wife and son my family if that suits you better. They’re not going to help you, and that’s from them, not me. There will be no candy bars brought in. No nice blankets. Unless, of course, it’s to wrap your cold dead body in if you continue to annoy us with your calls.”

“They ain’t neither one your family. Where do you get off claiming that they’re yours? They’re mine, much to my shame.” Wrangler having a great deal more fun than he thought he should have been told him that he had the proof that he was married and that Wills was his son. “You’re a liar. They ain’t no more your family than you are to me.”

“You’re wrong about that as well. I’m your son-in-law. Like you, it’s much to my shame.” He asked him when he was going to start acting like he was his son-in-law and helping him get out of jail. “Help you? Oh, that’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. I like you right where you are. At least we don’t have to keep looking over our shoulders all the time to see where you are.”

“You don’t have to look far when I’m stuck here.” He grinned, loving how confused the man looked when all he was doing was talking to him. “Why are you looking for me anyhow? You neither one seemed to want a thing to do with me when I was out and about. See there. That’s the reason that I need to be out of here. So I can keep an eye on you. Just so you know, I’m going to get them kids of mine back. There ain’t no reason that they can’t be helping us out now that they’re in with some money. You got a lot of it I hear tell.”

“Yes, my wife and son do as well. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to get any of it. Not ever. Unless, of course, Amber wants to hand some over to you. But I’d not hold my breath on that happening. Or perhaps you should hold your breath. That might be kind of nice to have you out of the way permanently.” The confusion on his face was delightful to him. It made him laugh, and for the first time since hearing from the man, he was excited about just fucking him up by simply having a conversation with him.

Then he remembered that he needed to go and see Patsy. She was giving the officers here a hard time, and he was going to see if he could put an end to her ways as well. Putting an end to the two of them was sounding better all the time. But it wasn’t up to him yet, and he only had to wait three more days before the judge came into town.

He was excited about a great many things that were going on around the little town. Weston was going to ask to be put in the mayor’s vacated position since the man and his entire family had left town in the middle of the night. They’d not even taken their furniture nor any of their large ticket items.

They left a boat, camper as well as a couple of cars that no one had known that they had owned. He didn’t look for them to get too far, however. The FEDs had locked them out of their accounts and made sure that they didn’t have any credit cards that worked either. He’d heard that they were finding all kinds of things that the family had been involved in that wasn’t above board. It would only be a matter of time before they were all in prison. After they were gone and the money returned, some things that they’d been working on might well start to happen in their little burg. He thought that it was well past time that some of the buildings were redone or taken down, too.

Patsy was a mess when he made his way to the other end of the cells to talk to her. He’d had enough of William calling him a bastard, and his good humor started to wane a bit when he told him what he was going to do with Wills, or Junior as he called him, and Amber when he was set free. He really believed that he was going to be able to convince the judge that he was only getting what he deserved in the form of payback from his kids since he’d raised them to be what they were today. Hopefully, the judge didn’t think along the lines that the other man did, or they’d all be fucked over.

It was more of the same with her. However, she was more vocal about what the kids should be doing for her. And what she was going to do to them once she was set free. Her idea was to throw William under the bus, as the saying goes, and then move in with him and Amber. There was no way in hell he wanted anything to do with the other woman other than to see that justice was served and she went to prison with her husband.

“Since you’re related to me you’ll pay for us to get a good attorney. Not one of your brothers, either. I want someone that knows what they’re doing.” He said that his brother wouldn’t represent her anyway. “Good. Then we can see eye to eye about that. Also, I don’t want to live in some small part of your home. I want to have my own set of rooms where I can come and go as I please. Actually, I think that I’d rather have my own big house. But it has to be bigger than yours is. I don’t want you to think that just because you’re going to buy me a house that I’m going to be stuck paying on it either. You’ll make sure that I have the finest shit around. I’m sure you don’t want people thinking that you’re laxing in how you treat your family, do you? It’s the least that you can do, considering that you’ve fucked everything else up for me.”

“No, you’re wrong about that. The least that I can do, and what I am going to do, is not do anything for either of you. There will be no special treats for you nor William, and once you’re away in prison, I’m going to have a good old fashion ‘you’re gone party’ that might well last for weeks.” She told him that he was going to do what she wanted. “And what are you going to do to me if I don’t? I’ll tell you what you’re going to try and do and that’s nothing. You’re going to prison with William, and that will be the end of it.”

“If it comes to that, and I’m not saying that it will, you’ll do right by me and make sure I have everything that I want. Including my own cell with a comfortable bed and some pretties to put around so that I can at least feel better about being in prison.” He explained to her that she was in prison, and there would be no favors for her that he’d pay for. “You fucking bastard.”

He started to explain to her about him not being a bastard but he didn’t want to go into that again. His good mood playing with William was gone now, and all he could think about was going home and being with Amber and Wills. Just as he was standing up to leave, he heard from Wills.

“I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but I’ve been hurt. I don’t want to tell my sister because she’ll freak out. Again. I was doing that avocado thing and cut my hand up bad.” He asked him where Amber was. “In her office working. I don’t want her to take me to the hospital because she’ll drive like I’m dying or something. So can I call an ambulance or something?”

“I’ll contact my brothers. Not that I don’t think that they’ll freak out either, but they’ll be able to be calm with Amber.” He was able to reach Nash, and he said that he was just pulling into his driveway. “Nash is in the driveway and is coming into the house. I’ll have him take the two of you to the hospital, and that way, you’ll be able to stay calm and not have to worry about your sister freaking out. And if I were you, I’d not tell her that you thought that she’d freak out. You might hurt her feelings.”

“Yeah, you’re right. She’s already upset about the way things were left undone with the house that her parents lived in. They’re not mine…you don’t care. I’ve washed my hand up, and I hear the doorbell. I sure hope that it’s Nash. I’m beginning to feel lightheaded.” Worried now, he made small talk with the boy to keep him from passing out.

Nash was able to get to him just as Wills passed out. He told him that it was bad and that he’d meet him at the hospital. He was going to call an ambulance to get him help sooner.

Going straight to the hospital, when he left the jailhouse, he pulled into the emergency department just as the ambulance was pulling in. He didn’t know what to do but held onto Amber while they wheeled Wills into the trauma bay.

They couldn’t be in the room with them, but he was so glad that Sunny showed up and was able to get Wills’s wound to stop bleeding so that he’d not bleed out. He was immortal, but losing that much blood wouldn’t bode well for the young man. The rest of Wrangler’s family showed up just as Wills was taken to surgery.

“Why didn’t he call out to me?” Before he could answer, Amber answered her own question. “He was worried that I’d be irrational, and that would scare him too. I’ll have to tell him that having an ambulance pull up in front of the house without anyone telling me about it freaked me out more than I think him cutting his hand would have. Is he going to be all right?”

“He’s going to be just fine. Sunny said that once they were able to get his wound closed, he started to improve. They’re giving him plenty of fluids to help him replenish his loss of blood. Also, since he was brought in by the squad, he fared much better than he might have if Nash would have driven him in his car. She suggested that once he was in his room that I give him a bit of my blood, too. I don’t know what it will do for him, but it will be powerful enough to help him out.”

“I want you to change me.” He started to tell her that he didn’t know if that was possible. He didn’t know that much about shifters changing their loved ones. “And I want to have a baby with you. I talked to Pancake and he told him that we should start soon if we were going to have a million babies. They’re very literal, aren’t they?”

“You have no idea. He told me that you were ovulating now. As soon as you’re ready to have a child, I can impregnate you.” She said that they’d have to have lots of sex so that they could make lots of babies. “I have been waiting for you to tell me that for days now. I’m hard enough right now that I’m fearful of breaking something.”

They both laughed, just as he had hoped that she would. If it wasn’t for them worried about Wills, he’d find them a dark place and fill her with his child. She turned and looked at him when they heard from the staff that Wills was doing much better but still sedated. They could only see him for a few minutes at a time, and he told her to go first. He needed a few minutes to get his head on straight. He couldn’t wait to have lots of sex with Amber, even if they didn’t have a baby right away.

~*~

They left Wills at the hospital so that he’d be watched over all night. She didn’t care for leaving her little brother there, but it was needed after he lost so much blood. The hospital staff was going to monitor him for a couple of days. One of the surgeons came into the lobby with them and showed everyone there how to take the large seed out of an avocado. She’d seen it done both ways and was surprised that more people weren’t hurt by trying to chop the blade of a knife into the seed.

“Every year, there are an estimated fifty thousand people injured this way between the years 1998 to 2017. The more health conscious people get, the more people are injured by showing off.” The doctor shook his head. “Sometimes it’s a minor cut, but what we’re seeing now is terrible cuts that do nerve damage to the hand and wrist.”

After checking on Wills, who was sleeping soundly in his bed with his hand wrapped up, she kissed him on his forehead, and they were headed to the elevators. It had been a long and stressful evening, and she just wanted to go home and relax. Or have her bones jumped. However she really wanted her bones and body taken care of and hoped that Wrangler was up for it.

Once they were in their driveway, Wrangler telling her everything that had been said to him with her parents, she was more than happy that they were in jail and not out lurking around every corner to take her brother. They knew how to keep other people away, knowing that her parents didn’t give up easily when they had something in their heads. Then he did the most incredible thing, he smacked his hand to her ass, and the burning pain and pleasure took her breath away.

They made their way up to the bedroom, neither of them saying much but she was nervous. She was about as nervous about having sex with Wrangler as she had anything in her life. Once they were in the room, he pressed her to the door and took her mouth. She was breathless with anticipation and said as much to him.

“If you can talk, honey, you can certainly breathe. I love having you in my arms right now, but I want you. Now, here is what’s going to happen. I’m going to strip you down to that delicious bare skin of yours, then I’m going to start at your feet and work my way up your body until I get to your pussy. Once there, I’m going to—”

“If you think for one second that I’m going to have sex with your feet, then you’re crazier than I first thought.” He looked confused for a second, then laughed. It was a heady sound, his laughter, and she wanted to be able to hear him doing so for the rest of their lives. “You didn’t really want to have sex with my feet, did you?”

Wrangler lifted her up just enough that he could nuzzle her breasts. They ached. They were so full feeling, and she wanted him to do what he’d said and strip her down. Then Wrangler brought her down his body but held her close.

She’d heard someplace that were’s couldn’t shift if they were held too close to another being. Also, the silver that was used to cuff them on either their wrists or ankles. And the way that he was holding her, Amber’s mind went off in several directions at once. None of them would get them invited back to anyone’s home if this were happening at Nash’s or Archie’s home either.

Wrangler reached down to her backside again, and she felt herself tensing up. Instead of hitting her butt again, what he’d done when they’d gotten out of their car in the driveway, he grabbed the waist of her pants and ripped them from her. The sound had been deafening in the quiet of the large room. Wrangler ran his hand up the curve of her ass and then down again. She knew that he could smell her. Her cream was sliding down her thighs from her pussy. He had to be able to smell her response to him. It was hot and immediate.

“I’m going to enjoy this, taking you. I have looked forward for a very long time. To drinking from you, making love to you, with you. I want to make you mine, Amber.”

“Please, I need you, Wrangler. I’ve not been with many men, and…please don’t stop what you’re doing to me. I can’t think when you…oh, Wrangler.”

Her body shifted at his chest as he entered the long crack of her ass with just the tip of his finger. His moan went straight to her pussy and made her need to reach down and adjust him before she caused serious damage to his cock. But he didn’t stop what he was doing. It was like he wanted to get her nearly screaming with need before he took her to untold heights.

“You’re so wet, love. I can smell it. Your heat and need are making your scent strong and irresistible to me.” He deepened his finger into her, gathering her cream and moving up to her tight bud. “Hummmm, this is where I want to be. Deep in you here, my cock moving in and out of your tightness.”

Wrangler seemed to have decided that now would probably be a good time to move to something they could lie down on, something with a lot of room. He stood next to the bed but continued his torment of her body. As he gathered more of her juices on his fingers, he pressed his little finger against her bundle of nerves and entered her. She nearly tossed them both to the floor with her jerk against him.

“Wrangler, please. I don’t…I need you there too. Please. Fuck me. Now, please fuck me hard.”

“Make us naked, Amber. I know that you can do that. I’ve heard that you’re able to do a lot of delicious things with your magic that will bring us both to a lasting climax. I want to feel you against my skin. Take our clothes now, Amber.”

He was naked. Just like that, his cock was stiff and straining from his groin where she could see it. His body was hot and hard for hers. His canines moved, she thought, so he could mark her. Not that she could see them, but she could hear the slurring of his words as he readied himself to claim her. Slowly moving his palm along her thigh and up the curve of her waist, Amber savored the feel of his skin on her body with the warm silkiness of his cock.

“Wrangler, please, I hurt with need. Let me…I need to touch you, to feel you.” Amber was practically sitting up in the bed. She had sat up so high. It was all she could do to keep herself still for him, to hold herself for his exploration. Slowly, he moved her down her chest, bringing her breasts to his mouth before she let him go any further. Holding him to her so that he could suckle her breasts as much as he liked.

Hungrily, he fed at them, her nipples first, then her whole breast. They felt ripe and full, her nipples hard pebbled at the tip of her breasts. Wrangler scraped his canines over them and lightly nipped at her; to taste her there, to feed from her, would be epic. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, it freed his hands to cup the heavy flesh and bring them both to his mouth to suckle. Her pussy curved around the tip of his cock, wetting them both with her juices. His small moans and growls were doing things to her that she’d never felt before. Her blood stirred and heated his body to the point of near pain for her.

With her legs around him, Wrangler lowered them to the bed. She wanted more than anything to turn herself to her belly and allow him to plunder that ass. But the need to have him be deep inside of her wet hot pussy was driving her to the brink. Her scent, strong with her own need, was making her as close to the edge as she’d ever been in her life.

“Bite me, Amber. Christ, I’m so close to spilling my seed in you that I’m dizzy from it. Bite me over my heart, please. I’ll…I will feed from you when we come. I want to mark you, make you mine, but if we don’t hurry, we’ll—Amber, baby, don’t do that, not yet.”

She was suckling at his nipple. Her teeth, her small teeth she could feel now, were just to the point of breaking skin, almost but not yet painful. She could feel Wrangler’s heart pounding as he reached for her, pulling her into the cradle of his arms while he held her. She didn’t want to be finished as yet, she didn’t want this to end. But she also knew that if they were to hold out any longer, neither of them would get the fulfillment that they desperately needed.

“Amber, I need you to want this as well. I want you to tell me that you will willingly take me as your mate, please. I don’t want this to color our future together.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and then she sat up on her elbows. His need was still in his eyes, his body, but she was feeling no less needy and more prepared as the seconds ticked by.

“I want to be your mate in all ways. I need you in my life to protect and care for me.” She didn’t know where the words were coming from, but Wrangler nodded at her and told her to go on. “I will stand beside you forever, behind you if that is where you need me. But I will forever be your stand-in whenever I need to do the same for you.

Wrangler’s hand morphed into a paw, the nails at the tips were long and sharp looking. Then he did the most incredible thing, the sexiest move that anyone had ever done with her, and he sliced one of his sharp nails across his chest just over his heart. She could imagine the pain of it; his blood began to flow from the wound, but he didn’t try and stop it. He leaned down his paw, looking like a hand again, and looked her in the eyes.

“I want you to drink from me because you want to. I want you to be my mate because you need me as much as I need you. Love me as much as I love you. I want to have children with you, raise them to be good men or women, and the other half of them strong and powerful.”

Wrangler rolled to his back and threw his arm over his eyes, awaiting her to make the next move. If she left him now, he would die. She wasn’t being dramatic. He was being honest. He was honest with her as much as he was himself. She knew too that she couldn’t do it, couldn’t not be his mate, not if it would cost them to trust. Amber didn’t trust a great many people. In fact there were more fingers on her one hand than the people that she trusted. But she loved him. With all of herself, Amber loved Wrangler with the entirety of her heart and life.

Straddling him, guiding his cock into her body, she rode him slowly until his hands came up over her thighs and to her waist. Licking along the wound, she felt the power of it roll over her. Then, as if she’d stuck her finger into a light socket, she took even more of his blood, rich and warm. She came so hard that she screamed. Not a girly one either. Amber knew that she was going to be hoarse in the morning and found that she didn’t care.

Flipping her to her back, Wrangler took her hard. His hands never stopped moving over her skin. When he paused, just for a few seconds, she felt his cum fill her body, and she came apart once more. Not caring at all if she survived this or not, the darkness came up and slapped her body hard enough to have her passing out.