A Green Valley Christmoose Disaster Read online

  He willed himself back to human form, and if he had been dismayed to suddenly be a moose, it was nothing compared to the sudden panic of not being able to be anything else.

  He carefully lowered his head, hearing the fan blades scrape off of his antlers as he carefully tried to clear it and back away into the kitchen. There was a light at the bottom of the fan, he didn’t want to—

  Glass shattered as he misjudged the swing of his broad antlers and he froze, feeling shards scatter down over his back with a spit of sparks. Dammit, he couldn’t see where he was going at all in the tiny dim-lit room with his moose’s poor vision, unable to turn his head without endangering the fan further. He took a few ginger steps backwards and ran into a bookcase, rattling everything on it; he was longer than he realized, as well as taller.

  If he couldn’t shift back into a human, he had to get out of the house before he destroyed it, and Turner had no idea how to do that. He thought he might be able to squeeze his mass out of the door if he turned his head sideways so the antlers would pass through, but he had no idea how to manage a doorknob without hands. His mouth, maybe?

  He managed to make a slow, seven-point turn, bumping off of the television and the bookcases, taking down one of the curtains with the prongs of his antlers. He was facing into the kitchen; the back door had the straightest access and there was no way he could fold himself through the porch outside the front door.

  His phone went off twice while he was attempting to orient himself, and Turner tried nosing it on with absolutely no luck. His hooves would definitely not unlock it anyway. It skittered away under the couch as he tried mouthing it, hoping he could dial it with his tongue and he gave a groaning sigh as he saw Linda’s number flash across the screen.

  He wouldn’t have been able to answer anyway.

  He turned his attention back to trying to get out of the house. Maybe he could find someone who could help. Turner was sure this had something to do with the thing at Stanley’s ice shack, the thing that had given him an electric shock and made his moose feel so supercharged. It had probably stuck Officer Stakes in his shifted form, too. Turner wouldn’t have guessed that the police officer was a shifter, but it seemed like an obvious answer that he’d been the bull out by the Andersons’.

  This didn’t bode well for Turner being able to get back to his human form; Stakes had been missing for a few days now.

  Turner had to fight down the impulse to simply lower his head and charge through the back door. He was easily strong enough to take out the entire door and jamb together, but his property value was not going to be improved by destroying his back door. Besides, he was still hoping that he’d be able to bring Linda back here, though that hope was becoming dimmer and dimmer as he continued to remain stubbornly in moose form.

  The kitchen was narrow, and the doorknob was hard to reach from his towering moose height. Turner had to wedge himself against the stove to angle his mouth to it, and his antlers kept getting in his way. He mouthed at it uselessly, craning his neck in every possible way to manage to get his moose lips around the doorknob. Several times, he almost had it and slipped off, turning it only part way.

  He was so tightly focused that didn’t recognize the clicking sound until he smelled the gas. The sharp, garlic smell somehow changed through his moose’s nose. He’d rubbed up against the controls on the stove and turned on all the burners. The snick-snick sound was the temperamental lighter mechanism he was leaning into; Turner usually used a lighter wand that he kept beside the stove.

  He realized the danger too late, whipping his head around just in time to see a fireball whoosh up from the burners. He knocked the blender from the counter directly onto the flaming stove with the antlers that he’d forgotten about again, and when he staggered away from the stove, it was to run into the pantry cabinets on the opposite wall so hard he heard something crack.

  The fireball was short-lived, but the curtain by the kitchen window caught fire and flames from the burner licked around the fallen blender.

  Turner bellowed because he couldn’t curse, and had to stuff his head directly over the flame in order to get his moose mouth around the knobs of the oven. He’d gotten close to figuring out the doorknob, but these were smaller and turned further. His giant head couldn’t swivel enough to turn them off with his teeth, so he had to use his tongue, while his ears got hotter and hotter above the lit burners.

  The smoke detector went off then and if his ears had hurt before, they were in agony now; a moose had sensitive hearing and the alarm was painfully shrill.

  His terrible vision made the room seem even more smoky than it was, and between the heat and the wail of the alarm, Turner was fighting down panic.

  He’d trained in burning buildings, of course, but he’d been wearing turnout gear, and he’d had working hands to use. Green Valley didn’t have a lot of actual house fires; people here tended to be sensible and the population wasn’t large. Turner was proactive about teaching fire safety and forward about making sure everyone had fire extinguishers. Every fall they did a big safety drive and he went door-to-door with reminders and checked people’s alarms and exits for them. He’d put out a few contained oven fires, and gotten to houses where they were just finishing their own suppression. He had responded to fires in larger nearby communities, but usually the Green Valley team arrived with the truck in time to assist the outside crew, watering down the nearby houses and working containment.

  There had only been one time he’d had to go into a burning building...and he’d been too late.

  It all came rushing back now: the angry heat, the rushing noise, the black, disorienting smoke. The overwhelming helplessness as he found Jamie’s mother and carried her out of the collapsing house...too late.

  He’d never forgotten how Jamie looked, in her short, sooty nightgown standing on the neighbor’s lawn. It was late morning, and they’d rushed Beverly to the nearest hospital. She’d died of smoke inhalation the following day.

  Jamie hadn’t held it against him, of course, but Turner couldn’t help but blame himself. If he’d turned out just a few moments sooner... If he’d found her in the house just a little faster…

  He was licking and gumming at the knobs on the front of the stove with his tongue, but he’d never mastered tying cherry stems, and his moose tongue wasn’t nearly as dexterous as it needed to be for the task. His neck felt wrenched, pinched around in the tight space his tongue ached. The plastic blender began to melt and smolder merrily, blue flames dancing up around it.

  Turner felt despair wash over him and he nearly bit off the knob in frustration.

  He was going to die in a house fire, stuck as a moose, on the day after he’d met his mate.

  Even just thinking about Linda brought a measure of peace to his soul, and he was somehow not surprised when there was a sudden sound of pounding on the door. He knew exactly who it was.

  CHAPTER 14

  Linda found Turner’s house with ease, despite the vague instructions Andrea had given her. It turned out that “really ugly blue house” and “giant broken tractor” were perfectly viable landmarks to follow. It was a small neighborhood between farms that looked like every other small neighborhood between farms in the valley, with tiny houses and snowy yards. His house numbers were large and easy to see and the fire truck was parked right out front.

  As she pulled up and opened her car door, she recognized in dread that there was smoke leaking from several of the windows and there were fire alarms screaming a chorus inside.

  Linda scrambled out of the car, leaving the door wide open as she pelted for the front door and fell upon it.

  She only knocked a few frantic times before testing the knob. It was unlocked and she burst in, crying, “Turner? TURNER?”

  The door opened into a small living room where it appeared there had been a struggle. Books and mail and broken glass were scattered across the worn plush carpet. It was thick with toxic-smelling smoke. Linda could see back to a kitchen where a gigantic shape was hulking between a pantry cabinet and a counter with a stove and sink. There was a lump of something burning on the stove, and one of the curtains was smoldering.

  For a moment, she was alarmed. Was the creature a bear? Some kind of huge, horrible monster? Then it gave a snort and shuffled in place and she saw the rack like a great comic crown above it.

  Turner. Of course, he was a moose!

  Saying he was very large was one thing, but seeing his massive size crammed into a ridiculously small space was quite another and Linda might have been quite terrified if she had the time to digest it.

  But the alarm was still shrieking and the stove was still on fire. Linda paused to cast around and find a fire extinguisher right next to the door where it ought to be. She picked it up, adrenaline making it lighter than it probably was, and yanked the pin from it, dashing to Turner’s side.

  “Turner, why are you a moose right now? You’d be a lot more useful with opposable thumbs!”

  There was no room in the kitchen for both of them, so Linda aimed her extinguisher and shot it right past him at the stove. She knew that you were supposed to put out grease fires with a special kind of extinguisher, but she didn’t have time to look for one, and this didn’t look like a grease fire anyway. It looked...like a blender.

  The fire sputtered and the curtains, with one short blast, went out entirely, but Linda could see that the controls for the stove were still set full-on. Putting out the flame would only risk filling the room with gas.

  “I need to get in there, Turner!” she cried. Clearly, he was not able to shift to human or he would have long ago. Was it a stress response?

  The moose—Turner!—gave a snort and started to back up into the living room with careful, shuffling steps. Linda squeezed past him and twisted all the knobs to off. The last flame sputtered and went out.

  The blender—what was left of it—slowly slumped and groaned as it started to cool onto the surface of the stove.

  For a moment, Linda only stood there, her legs shaking and the extinguisher, which was plenty heavy now, trembling in her hands.

  Finally, she could turn and look at Turner.

  He was a monstrous wall of mooseflesh and he had backed into a bookcase, knocking a picture off an upper shelf onto his broad back, where it was wobbling drolly in place.

  Linda had been next to plenty of horses, but this was half again the size of the largest one she had ever ridden, with comparatively delicate legs that were nearly as tall as she was. He couldn’t even fully lift his head in the house, and his huge, spreading rack must have been more than six feet across.

  He also looked mortified, which was not an expression that Linda had expected to find on any deer.

  “You’ve been burnt,” she exclaimed as his ears flickered back and forth. His whole nose was blackened, but Linda wasn’t sure what was soot and what was singed. She reached a hesitant hand to touch him and his nostrils flared as he gave a sigh and his head drooped.

  To her surprise, his nose was velvety soft, and his breath was warm and gentle. “Are you stuck like this?” Linda wanted to know, then could have kicked herself for asking the obvious. He wouldn’t be rattling around destroying his own house like an oversized pet if he could shift back. “What happened?”

  Turner snorted, an alarming sound, and pawed the ground and shook his head like he was trying to mime something, but it was clearly far too complex for charades. Something had clearly gone wrong, but Linda didn’t have the foggiest idea what.

  “Are you sick?”

  He cocked his head thoughtfully and then shook it.

  “Did someone do this to you?” Linda wracked her mind to think how someone could.

  Turner shrugged one giant shoulder and shook his head again, rattling the broken fan above him.

  Linda took a deep breath that came out as a cough and shook her head. “Let’s air this place out,” she said practically. She put the fire extinguisher—which was now heavy enough to make her arm shake—down on the coffee table and went to open each of the windows in turn. It was cold and breezy outside and the smoke eased considerably. She flapped her hat at the smoke alarm and it finally silenced.

  She returned to Turner, where he still stood in the center of the room, watching her but not offering to move around in the cramped space and risk more of his furniture.

  “You have the most gorgeous eyelashes I’ve ever seen on an animal,” Linda said with a shaky giggle.

  Turner fluttered them at her like a teenage girl trying to catch a boy’s attention and Linda’s chuckle swelled and turned into a whole body laugh. She had to cling to Turner and gasp for air, she laughed so helplessly. It was probably partly shock, and partly joy that Turner, however he’d gotten stuck as a giant ungulate, was still in there.

  Linda was not sure she had ever laughed as completely and when she could gather her wits again, she kissed Turner on his broad nose and said, “I love you, Turner. I’m not a shifter, and I don’t have an animal who can tell me that you’re my one, but I know that you do, and I trust your moose and know that you are a good man with a good heart and I’m already absolutely crazy for you. I don’t know how we’ll work things out, but I know that we will. I think I’d even love you if you were stuck this way forever.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Linda’s words were like a salve over a sunburn. Making her laugh—really laugh!—had been a moment of triumph, but hearing her say that she loved him felt like a band across Turner’s chest had been released.

  She loved him.

  Stuck as a moose or on his ass in the snow wearing a Santa Claus suit, it didn’t matter to Linda because she loved him the same way that he loved her, like he was standing at the edge of a bluff knowing against logic that he could fly. This was the mate he’d been waiting for, and she’d been waiting for him.

  “Linda,” he said, and because he needed a human tongue to say it, he was suddenly human again, standing in the tossed chaos of his house in the center of the space that his moose had taken up. “Linda, my love!”

  “Oh, thank heavens!” she exclaimed. “I really would love you as a moose, but I do vastly prefer you this way!”

  Turner stepped forward to gather her up into his arms, only noticing at the last moment that he was completely naked.

  That didn’t seem like much of a problem for what they clearly each had in mind as she lifted her head to meet his kiss, but it wasn’t long before she noticed that he was shivering in the icy wind blowing in through the open windows.

  “You’re cold,” she scolded him, pulling back. Then she grinned. “Though, perhaps not that cold.”

  There was no hiding that he was hard as a rock for her, his cock more interested in claiming his mate than cowering for the warmth of his body. “There are blankets in the bedroom,” he growled.

  The door to the bedroom was shut, out of long fire safety habit, so it was both warmer in there and almost completely free of smoke.

  Turner kicked the door shut behind him and carried Linda straight to his bed. He didn’t care that it was small, or worn, or that he hadn’t managed rose petals or music or candles, and he knew that Linda didn’t care either. All that mattered was that they were here together, now, and would be forever.

  “Turner,” she said between kisses. “Turner, my love. My dear.”

  Or maybe it was deer?

  He undressed her with care, kissing down her neck as he exposed it, pushing her coat back off of her arms and holding her pinned a moment while she whimpered and begged and pressed herself against him.

  He unbuttoned her shirt as she kissed his neck and the place where his jaw met his ear, which proved a powerful distraction; it took several tries to free the fragile garment without simply ripping off the remaining buttons.

  It was a task worth the extra effort, and Linda made intoxicating noises of pleasure as he slipped her out of it and kissed down to the tops of her breasts. He lingered there, as delighted by her responses as the fascination of her soft, perfect flesh.

  “Turner, please, please,” she begged. She shimmied out of her own pants and Turner lay her down on the bed, pausing to gaze at her in wonder as she spread her legs in welcome.

  Both naked at last, raw with hunger, they met mouth to mouth, cock to hot, wet, ready lips. It was a slow, careful entrance, tiny adjustments for the most pleasure and deepest access, his hands at her hips, hers at his shoulders clawing him closer, further, harder.

  When he was fully buried in her, his whole body on fire, focused on all of the places they were touching, Turner began to thrust, and he felt her body tense in answer as she pulled back her mouth gasping for breath.

  “Turner,” she panted. “Turner!”

  When she cried out again at her crest of desire, Turner had to force himself to slow. He wanted to pound her desperately, but at the same time needed to prolong their joining. He wanted to make love to her in every position, find every spot that made her whimper and beg.

  She was writhing beneath him and his world seemed to narrow to where they met, and how badly he needed release.

  His name changed to something wordless and desperate in her mouth and she gave a cry of pleasure and arched beneath him. Turner lost his battle with himself at the sound of her climax and fell with her at last.

  CHAPTER 16

  Linda lay in Turner’s arms feeling completely full of bliss, and like she’d never been so comfortable in her life.

  It wasn’t just the toe-curling sex, and she didn’t need an animal to tell her that this was exactly where she belonged, cradled in Turner’s big, gentle arms. “You burnt your nose,” she observed, because she was lying very close to him and could see that it was red. “Does it hurt?”

  Turner shrugged. “It’s not bad,” he said, but he said it mournfully and held Linda closer. She could feel the tension all through him, in his shoulders and hands.

  “What is it?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”