Protected by the Claws: A Motorcycle Club Bear Shifter Romance

by Laura Wylde

  Dad wasn’t happy with my insolence, but I wasn’t going to back down. I had before, let him run my life while I was younger, but I was twenty-eight now, and there was nothing that he could do to me now, shy of firing me. I don’t know if that would be such a terrible thing. But I knew he wouldn’t because then he wouldn’t have a way to control me. Dad controlled everyone and everything. He called it love, and I just felt like it was suffocation.

  “I’ve not done near enough. I don’t want to hear about you being seen with him. You’re an officer now, a detective. You can’t be seen with people like him. He’s a felon, Kayla.”

  There was no winning this conversation, so I just shut my trap. I wasn’t going to argue with him. It was always pointless. As I’d always done, I agreed with Dad to get him to shut up, but that didn’t mean that it would last all that long. I just had to keep a smile on my face a few more seconds, and then I would be able to do what I wanted--what I planned to do all along.

  “Anyway, all of this is for nothing. I can’t control if he comes here or not, but now he knows that he is not wanted. Leave him alone, Dad. He hasn’t done anything wrong, and you don’t have an excuse to bring him in this time.”

  Dad mumbled something under his breath about his existence was wrong, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t need an excuse, dear, I’m the sheriff.”

  I didn’t want to start in with him, and I was thankful for once to see Freddy coming towards me. Something was wrong though. I could see it in his face, and I had a feeling that it was going to be something that I didn’t want to hear about.

  “What’s up, Freddy?”

  “We got another one.”

  I looked back at Dad, and he already knew. It was nice to not have to continue the conversation, but at the same time, I wish it would have been interrupted for something else. I didn’t have to ask Freddy what he was talking about. I knew already. He was talking about another person being mauled. This was no longer some freak accident. This was three victims now in two weeks. This was becoming worse and worse. We had to get ahold of this bear or whatever was doing this and stop it. My little town, that I’d grown up in, was becoming a scary place to live in.

  “Be careful out there, Kayla. There are bad things in the woods.”

  His words haunted me out to the crime scene. I let Freddy drive because it seemed to put him in a good mood, and I didn’t care either way. We were finally getting along a little better, and I didn’t want to mess it up with my need to drive. I was just going to have to learn to be a passenger.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your dad so riled up. Do you think that he is actually afraid of the bear? That he’s worried it is the same one?”

  I just shook my head. My dad wasn’t afraid of anything. He never had been, and there was a big part of me that knew that there was something else going on for him to act that way. The man didn’t know how to be afraid. Never had and never would.

  The area where the third attack was made me nervous as well. This wasn’t as far out as the other ones had been. It was closer to town, and that meant that there was a higher chance of someone else getting pulled into the fray. I don’t know why, but the idea of it all made me shiver.

  “There’s a witness this time.”

  Freddy must have been holding out on that one. I didn’t believe him for a moment, and then I knew that we would finally find out what was going on.

  “Good, I am anxious to see what they have to say for themselves. If we can get an actual person to say that they saw the bear, it would make our lives a whole lot easier.”

  Freddy agreed, and when I asked him what else he’d heard, he just shrugged. “Not much of anything. The witness is being held at the scene for us. It’s a woman in her fifties, and she isn’t one hundred percent sure what she saw.”

  I just shook my head and urged him on to go a little faster. I wanted to get to the scene and talk to the witness before she was gone. I had to know what it was she saw. If she’d seen a bear, I would think that it would be pretty easy to make that out, no matter how bad her eyesight may have been.

  When we pulled up and I saw a woman with thick glasses, I knew then that maybe she hadn’t seen as much as I would have liked her to. There was a smile on her face while she talked to a deputy, but I didn’t know what it was for. I found out quickly that she was flirting with the responding officers. With the fact that an elderly man had been attacked and killed, I didn’t think that this was normal behavior. After talking to her for a moment, I knew that she wasn’t normal at all. She was rather out there, and the smile on her face was brightest when I asked her about what happened.

  “Well, it was the strangest thing. I was out taking Poopsie for a walk. That’s my dog.”

  I nodded my head to encourage her to keep going. I could tell what kind of witness and story this was going to be. Some people were excited to be part of an investigation just like on TV, no matter if the fact that they were was because of some tragedy.

  “Well anyways, I heard a scream when I was going back towards the house, and it was the sort of sound that made all of the hairs go up on the back of my neck. I don’t know what happened over there at the time, and I knew that I wasn’t going towards the sound. Mr. Walters had never sounded like that before, and it really scared me. I almost called the police I was so worried.”

  The older woman had black hair with grey roots, and her robe was pulled tightly around her. She held the fabric tight like it was somehow giving her some comfort. I didn’t know what was going on in her head, but it was like she was reliving it, and it didn’t go well for her. She was so worried about the story that she didn’t seem to notice that her nails were digging into her arm she was gripping the robe so tightly. I wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, but that would have been a lie. We still didn’t even know what was happening, so to guarantee that everything was going to be okay was a stretch if nothing else.

  Her thick arms and stubby fingers were white from the pressure. She finally met my gaze, and then she breathed out heavily. “So, I looked, but I didn’t walk any closer. It was almost dark, and all I saw was a brief glimpse of a man running out of the back yard. The man was really tall and muscled. He had light hair and a square jaw. He was handsome, but then when I went to check on my neighbor, I could see that the stranger had harmed him.”

  “You saw a man?” This was not at all what I’d expected. I was supposed to be looking for a bear, not a man. Something was wrong, or this woman was mistaken. This couldn’t be, even though I’d thought from the beginning it didn’t sound like proper animal behavior. None of this felt good to me.

  My partner next to me clicked his tongue, and I could tell that he felt the same way. This one witness had changed everything, and now we had to start all over again and go back to the drawing board. We were apparently way off.

  “Okay, so are you sure that you saw a man?”

  She looked at me and cocked her head. “That’s what I said. I don’t know who it was, not someone from around here, but it was definitely a man. There is no way that a woman could do it.”

  “Well, we were thinking that it was another bear mauling.”

  I didn’t care for the fact that Freddy added that in. He was leading the witness, but we both did need clarity. So, this was a man? The beast we were looking for apparently was one of the two-legged variety. This changed everything.

  Chapter 8

  Baron

  After hearing about the bear mauling attacks that were going on here, I knew that I had to get away. My thoughts were running rampant, and I was worried that my sleepwalks were more sinister than I first suspected. I woke up this morning with marks on me, and I can’t remember for the life of me where they came from. I wanted to say that I knew, but my dreams were insane, and there was no way of telling if any of it had really happened. Or it could mean that there was a shifter around that I didn’t know about. They usually stayed with their clan, but
that didn’t mean that one of them hadn’t decided to branch out in Shady Way.

  I had left out of there so fast that I hadn’t even gotten a date and time for Kayla. I had it planned that we would go to the abandoned house that we’d been to before. We had history there, but something bad had happened there. I should have said something about meeting again, but the news had caught me off guard. Now I was kicking myself for it. I just wanted to see her, and I’d gone there for that very reason. It seemed to be all for nothing now.

  When the phone rang later, I didn’t even expect it to be Kayla. I was shocked to hear her voice, but I didn’t want her to know that.

  “Hey, Kayla. I’m glad you called.”

  “Well you left in such a hurry earlier that I didn’t have a chance to give you a meeting spot. Do you want me to just come to you, so we can talk? It’s been a long night, and I don’t think I’m up for going out anywhere.”

  I looked around the hotel room, and I can’t say that I liked the idea all that much. It wasn’t the best place, but I’d been here a couple of weeks and had quite a bit of my stuff in these two tiny rooms. I was here for many reasons and some were to learn about where I came from. The lawyer stuff was what brought me here, but my curiosity and Kayla was what was keeping me here even longer. I had a lot to learn about myself, and I knew that here was the best place to learn about it. My father was from here, or so I was told. I just wish that it wasn’t all strewn around the room now. I would have put her off if I didn’t think that she would just cancel it altogether. If this was the only time, then this was the only place that it could happen. I had hope in my heart, even if it really shouldn’t be there.

  “Alright, well I’m staying at the hotel. Just come down. It’s room 320.”

  “Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t know you were staying there. I will be there in a bit. At least it’s close.”

  I agreed and hung up. I smiled to myself for a moment before I started to look around. The place was a mess and some of these things she didn’t need to see. Kayla didn’t know a lot about me, but this was one of those things that she could never know about. I was going to have to figure out a way to hide it and I stuffed a lot of it into the closet until it was bursting at the seams. There was just too much of it to get into the vehicle, so it was just going to have to do. I was so worried about everything else that I didn’t even get to change or anything else before she was knocking on the door. It was now or never.

  Going to the door, I stopped and glanced at myself in the mirror and wished that I’d had more time. I wished that my face didn’t show my nerves. I wished a lot of things but would have traded anything for the fact that she was going to be in here and next to me soon. Now I would get the chance that I was waiting for. There was no way that I was going to lose her now. She was going to be mine; I could just feel it.

  I opened the door, and my heart started to pitter-patter in my chest. I was happy to see her, as was she for me. Kayla always was a sight for sore eyes, and this moment was no different. She wasn’t dressed up, her hair back and severe, but that didn’t take away her beauty. Kayla had never been one that had to put makeup on for anyone to notice her. She was stunning in her own skin without anything on to highlight it. Now she was practically beaming, even though her golden brown eyes told me that she was tired.

  “It’s good to see you, Kayla, come in.”

  She smiled at me in that way she did, and my heart flipped in my chest again. When I was around Kayla, my heart did all kinds of stupid things. Being around her sometimes was more like symptoms of a heart attack than anything else.

  I shut the door behind her, and I saw that her jacket was still on. It was hot out, so that told me she was most likely out on a case. From the girl that I’d partied with for so long, Kayla had really made something of herself. She had always said that she wanted to help people. I’d thought it would be as a therapist or in some other way. I would have never guessed that she would have gone the way of her father and became a police officer. Things must have really changed when I left.

  “So, what are we drinking? Wine or vodka?”

  “You remember.”

  “Of course. You used to drink vodka like it was your water source.”

  “I would say wine or beer most of the time, but I think I need something a little stronger after the day I’ve had.”

  I smiled at her answer and asked her what had happened that made her go back to her wicked ways.

  “Work stuff. There was another killing, but I really don’t want to talk about it. I’m not supposed to talk about an investigation that is still open. Why don’t you tell me about your day? It has to be better than mine.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was true or not. I wanted to ask more about the death, but I knew that I shouldn’t. She didn’t want to talk about it, and I wasn’t sure that I should be. It was a bad sign to have those kinds of deaths in town. It had happened ten years ago, and I knew the culprit that time. I was starting to worry that I may know more than I was supposed to know. I wasn’t sure, but I had a bad feeling about it, and I didn’t want to think about it either.

  “I didn’t do much today. I signed some paperwork, and my aunt’s house is now officially sold. The money is waiting to clear and then get transferred out. I didn’t think I’d come back here for this, but I’m so glad I did.”

  Kayla waved me off. “You always were good with flattery. You said you wanted to talk, so what did you want to talk about? Do you just want to go down memory lane again?”

  She was rushing me, and I knew that it was because she didn’t want me to know how she felt. Kayla was always the type to pretend that everything was okay, even though we both knew that it wasn’t. She wasn’t going to let me beat around the bush on this one, even though I really hoped she would.

  “There is a lot to talk about. A lot of time has gone by. What have you been doing for the last ten years?”

  Kayla took a shot of vodka and then moved her shoulders like she didn’t know. “Not much. I went to college and got my bachelor’s in criminology. Became a cop. Just made detective a few weeks ago and that’s about it. No husband or family. The career has kept my busy, and it keeps me out of trouble when I stay busy.”

  “I’m sure you’re great at what you do. You would have been great at anything that you did.”

  She smiled and then told me that she wished other people felt that way.

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Everybody at work that has a dick.”

  I was a bit thrown off by her comment, but I could see how that would be a problem. She was a cop, and they had a fraternity thing. I could see how it would be hard for a woman to walk into the lifestyle, especially someone like Kayla. She was pretty and had all the right parts, but she was also aggressive and was determined to get her way. If she put her mind to something or someone told her that she couldn’t do something, she would make sure that she proved them wrong. Kayla was a rare breed, and I was sure that she didn’t make it easy for the guys at work.

  “As someone that has seen your lady parts before, I wouldn’t begrudge it at all. Men would be nothing without women. That’s why they talk about you guys so much. We really just can’t help it. God made you guys look like that, and I wouldn’t know how to work with you. I would want to throw you down and slide inside of you every second of the day. I imagine it would be pretty distracting.”

  Kayla looked at me and had a bit of need in her sparkling depths that I hadn’t seen in a while, and it made me instantly hard. That was all it took from her. Just one look.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Baron. You’re being downright naughty at the moment. You have no idea what is going through my head that I can’t say. I wish things were as before. You would have already made me come by now.”

  Her observation was most likely true. If this had been before, I would have already made her scream out my name. and her body would be racked with orgasms. The very idea o
f it made me throb below the belt, and I had to grit my teeth from the thoughts. I really need to keep my mind out of the gutter.

  “You’re probably right, but it’s not how it used to be.”

  That wasn’t something that I wanted to harp on. I wanted it back to the way it was.

  “It can be if you want it, Kayla. You know that there is no one else for me but you. We made promises a long time ago, and I still feel the same way. I’m still in love with you, Kayla.”

  Chapter 9

  Kayla

  I’d never heard him say those words out loud. Not really. He would say that he loved the way I felt, wanted to be with me forever, loved fucking me, but never had he said it like that. I don’t know why those three little words could change everything, but they did. I wanted to believe that we were destined to be together. It had been a long time since we’d been together, and the memories still hadn’t faded. Some were just as clear as the day we lived them, and it was hard for me to think of Baron without the surge of feelings that went through me. Most were sexual, but not all of them. I’d been head over heels in love with this guy before.

  “It’s been a long time, Baron.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why did you leave the way you did? You didn’t even say goodbye, Baron. You just left and never came back. Ten years is a long-ass time.”

  I was mad at him and part of it was because he didn’t even know the half of it. The things I had to go through when he left, what my father made me do… It was just too much and even though feelings of Baron always made me smile and heat up in my nether regions, it wasn’t all good. There had been a lot of bad as well, and Baron had just left me to take care of it. Even if he didn’t know, I still wish he would have fought for us and stayed. He shouldn’t have let my dad run him off.