To Tame a Bear

by Emilia Hartley

  “Good for you.” There was no bitterness in Aimee’s voice. She wanted her best friend to have the kind of happily ever after that she deserved.

  Aimee only wished she could have her own. Perhaps her only true love would be food and seeing the joy on the faces of others when they ate what she created. She told herself that would be good enough.

  “I’ve narrowed it down. I’m thinking either Monterey Bay because the temperatures are pretty mild all year, or one of the Great Lakes. There are some quaint towns on the coast of Lake Ontario.”

  Callie shook her head. “Monterey has a bunch of wild bear shifters last I heard. And do you think Central New York is going to be all that welcoming? It’s nothing like the city from what I’ve heard.”

  Aimee’s shoulders sank. She wanted something. Anything. She just wanted a dream that was her own.

  “How about Austin, Texas? I heard the food scene there is wild.”

  “I’m an otter. I don’t think Texas is the best place for someone like me. Florida either. I’m not looking to get eaten by an alligator.”

  Callie’s hopeful grin sank. “Point taken.”

  The webpage finally loaded, but there was no point. The Monterey travel guide was a moot point now. Aimee angrily slammed the laptop shut and leaned back in her seat. She wanted to relax, but there was a knot forming between her shoulders. It pulled them back and sent a nervous pain up and down her spine.

  “Why don’t you just stick around? The guys will be moving soon. You might like the next location.”

  Callie didn’t understand, but that was partly Aimee’s fault. Aimee wasn’t trying to express what she was feeling. She hadn’t talked about Dom or the aching desire to find a place where she belonged.

  Maybe Aimee would never belong. If she moved from place to place, she would never have to worry about anyone noticing that she was an outsider. Or, at least, she would always be the outsider, and no one would be able to see how absolutely lonely she was.

  Aimee sighed and let her head fall against the table. Tears burned her eyes, but she fought them back. She wasn’t going to cry. That would make Callie feel bad and she didn’t want that. Maybe, later, she would let them come flying out while she was in Dom’s presence. Maybe then, he would show some sort of emotion.

  She heard the sliding of a chair over the floor before Callie’s scent enveloped her. Her friend’s arms wrapped around her and pulled her close. Aimee leaned into her, glad that even if their time was short, she still had Callie.

  Just when she thought about asking Callie if she wanted to watch a bad movie online, the door swung open and Morgan appeared. When Aimee looked up, the wind ruffled his hair as if to beg Callie to come to him and touch it herself. Even nature was beckoning Callie away from Aimee and toward Morgan.

  Aimee would just have to get used to it.

  Callie gave her friend a look. It was all at once apologetic and begging. Aimee smothered her sigh and flashed a tight-lipped smile before nodding. Immediately, Callie bounced up from her seat and practically ran into Morgan’s arms.

  Unable to watch them spread love all over one another, Aimee grabbed her notebook and went into the kitchen. At first, she planned on slamming her head in the fridge until she forgot about everything that hurt. But, when she opened the fridge, the ingredients spread across the shelves grabbed her attention.

  She guessed this was better. One by one, she pulled them out and arranged them into piles. This flavor went with that. This one needed a bit of sweetness, a bit of vinegar, some heat. Aimee’s mind worked over recipes she would put on a future menu.

  Sizzling oil filled the air with the smell of fried garlic. She added chili flakes and it began to heat up, clearing her senses from the tears she’d almost spilled earlier.

  When the door opened again, she didn’t bother looking. She figured it would be Callie or Morgan coming inside for an after-sex snack to fuel the next round. What she didn’t expect was Dom to pull up a stool on the other side of the counter.

  Wide-eyed, she took him in. He didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he looked over everything she’d put on the counter. When he licked his lips, Aimee’s stomach clenched. Angry at her own reaction, she turned away and decided not to acknowledge him. If he wanted to be silent and withdrawn, she could do the same.

  It didn’t last long.

  Aimee couldn’t do it. Eventually, she cocked her head and asked him why he was there. His presence grated on her mind. His silence wrung her dry. If she had a mean bone in her body, she would have told him to take a long walk off a short bridge. She was tempted, just to see what kind of conversation it would drum up.

  “It smells good in here and I’m hungry. I figured I’d wait until you were done to make my own food.”

  Jab. Right in her heart.

  “Why not ask me to make you something? I mean, it’s obvious that I’m already cooking. I can just double the recipe.”

  He moved to shake his head but seemed to stop himself. “I, ah, didn’t want to be a burden on you.”

  “Well, since you didn’t ask five minutes ago, you kind of are asking a lot of me.”

  The horror that crossed his face was short lived, but real all the same.

  “I’m joking,” she told him. “It was a joke.”

  Aimee didn’t know how to do this. She wanted the Dom that she met before the big fight, the man who was slow to smile but revealed a grin with wattage out of this world and whispered dirty jokes in her ear when no one was looking. This Dom was angry and scared.

  It didn’t change the way she felt about him, but it weighed on her. She wasn’t sure how to step around the anger. It wasn’t like he would turn it on her. She had the upmost confidence that he would never hurt her. If anything, she was sure he would baby her.

  “Did you end up flooding the tub? I don’t see any water damage.” Dom looked at the ceiling where the bathroom would be upstairs.

  It took Aimee a long moment to realize he was making a joke, too.

  “You are really bad at this,” she teased. “And no, I didn’t flood the tub. If anything, I was careful not to ruin the cabin anymore than it’s already ruined.”

  ***

  Dom wanted to vault over the counter and pull her into his arms. Greedy and ravenous, he wanted to devour her lips and explore the other parts of her. An image of him slamming her down on the counter filled his mind. He could almost hear the echo of her moans in his ears.

  “Are you listening? I asked you a question.”

  He snapped back to the present. The Aimee that stood in front of him was impatient, her short hair sticking up in every direction.

  Dom swallowed. He didn’t want to admit that he’d missed everything she’d said in the past five minutes, but he had no clue what she’d asked.

  Her sigh broke him. It was a chisel in an already cracked spirit, picking him apart. The beast inside him growled. It demanded that he take control of her lips and quiet her. It begged Dom to claim her like they should have days ago.

  Dom fought it back. He was no good to her. He was a broken man who could do nothing for her. He wasn’t sure he could please her, let alone protect her. Not in the state he was in. Not when every small movement hurt the way it did.

  Aimee deserved better.

  “Forget it. If you can’t answer me then you’re getting spicy and you’re just going to have to deal with it. If you start crying, don’t blame me.”

  She slid a bowl in front of him. The heat of the dish cleared his nose, and a fine sweat broke out on his forehead in anticipation.

  “Did you just serve me…” Dom was at a loss for words. “I can’t believe you would give me chicken and waffles.”

  Aimee paused. Her eyes went wide, and she slapped her hand over her mouth. As soon as she did it, the expression dropped away, and she pointed her tongs at him like a weapon.

  “I was making this before you showed up. Don’t act like anything I do is for you.” She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “Thi
s is a scallion waffle and fried garlic and sambal glazed fried chicken thigh. I’m testing recipes for my future restaurant.”

  Dom took a bite and realized exactly why the Den hadn’t let her open a restaurant. His eyes watered from the heat that blazed over his tongue and crept down the back of his throat. No one in the Den would have been able to handle what she’d concocted. He quickly followed it up with a bite of the soft and savory waffle.

  Truth be told, it was delicious. Dom kept eating even though it hurt him. Across from him, Aimee smiled softly to herself. This was what he could do for her, he realized. He might not be able to protect her or love her the way she deserved, but he could tell her how great her food was.

  Yet, when he opened his mouth to speak, the first breath set his lungs on fire. Before he could panic, Aimee set down a glass of milk. He laughed and threw it back.

  “Slow down or you won’t get anything out of it.” She smiled and laughed at him.

  He would do anything to keep that smile on her face.

  Wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, he then jerked his chin at the stove top. “Mind if I try? I think I can make something just as hot.”

  Aimee bit her lip, a smile spreading at the corners. There it was again. He would die for that look. Before she could answer, he jumped into the kitchen, hands on her shoulders to carefully direct her out of the space. While the kitchen might have fit two human chefs, Dominic was so large, he took up most of the room. She claimed the chair he’d left a moment ago.

  “The dishwasher is going to cry tonight,” she quipped.

  Dom took a container of marinade out of the fridge. He’d had chicken thighs sitting in it for a couple of days. When he pulled them out, pieces of habanero peppers clung to them. The scent of clove and onion danced in the air.

  Aimee sniffed, eyes narrowed on the meat in his hands. “Is that lime juice I smell? Is this Thai?”

  He wanted to laugh at her assumption, but his shoulders barked with pain as he pulled out new pans. This had been a bad idea. He should have retreated earlier. His body no longer wanted to move after he’d pushed it all day. Still, he told her he was going to do something and so he was going to see it through.

  His movements slowed. As his cast iron pan heated to the point of smoking, he had a moment to pause and breathe. “Normally, this is put on chicken halves and roasted over an open grill. I do what I can with what I have. Someday, I’ll have Orion make me a barrel grill using one of those industrial sized metal barrels.”

  “Is this…Caribbean?”

  Dom flipped the chicken over, excited by the dark crisp on the outside. Before responding, he turned the heat down and covered it. While the chicken finished cooking, he could turn his full attention to Aimee.

  “I have a great-aunt from the islands, on my mom’s human side. She taught me a lot about cooking after I left the Den. She wasn’t at all bothered by a bunch of boys crashing on her floor. When it came time to feed everyone, she didn’t have the energy to do it herself, though she tried. I will say she had the energy to tell me how to do it. She would shout at me from her chair and fling her hands in the air.”

  Aimee was quiet while he spoke. He couldn’t believe how easily he slipped back into the past while she was in his presence. He’d almost forgotten about his aunt, about the days shortly after Morgan had been expelled from the Den and they’d had no place to go.

  “Do you feel like punching your friends when you’re cooking?”

  “Aimee. No. I don’t always feel like punching my friends. It was…In the moment, I…”

  “You felt weak,” she supplied. “Your beast wanted Reid to know it wasn’t weak after what happened.”

  Dom’s throat tightened. How she could see through him so easily, he didn’t know. While he stood silent, he wondered if he liked it or not. Being this transparent to a person was not a comfortable feeling. It was the same when Orion looked at him.

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  The smell of burning filled the air. Dom jumped to attention, but the pain in his shoulders slowed him down. By the time he took the chicken off the heat, it was too late. The entire outer skin was burnt.

  Aimee stood and peered over the contents of the counter to see into his pan. He tried to hide it, but it was too late. She’d already seen his failure. He wanted to throw the pan, chicken and all. The metal handle groaned in his grip. The whole pan trembled as he fought back the urge to break something.

  All he’d wanted to do was share with her and he couldn’t even do that right. His beast was broken, a wild creature that bent Dom to it’s will. Now, even the basic things he’d once loved were ruined.

  He didn’t know how long he could go on this way. Failure after failure, disappointment after disappointment, slowly beat him down to nothing.

  “Now it’s going to have that authentic grill flavor,” Aimee said with a nod of her head. “If the skin is too bitter, it can be taken off. The meat beneath will be a bit smoky, but that’s more than alright. It’s going to be the bomb.”

  Dom fought against the urge to throw the pan. Aimee’s words sunk in, helping him push it back until he could set the pan back on the stove. His plating wasn’t great, putting a sprig of cilantro over the blackened skin if only in a last-ditch attempt to hide it.

  “Sorry I don’t have anything to go with it.” His voice was even, but the shame inside him weighed him down. It felt like the world was crushing him. His joints wanted to burst. His bones wanted to crack.

  “Holy shit, this is packed with flavor. Do something stupid later, so I have something to blackmail you with because I need this recipe.”

  Dom arched a brow, the weight of the world lessened while he processed Aimee’s ability to be cute and drastically dangerous in the same sentence. “You’re like a chihuahua. Tiny, but you might actually rip someone’s face off.”

  She just grinned, shoving another piece of chicken into her mouth.

  “You aren’t sweating at all.”

  She let loose a maniacal laugh. “If you think I’m going to fold under a few chilis, then you don’t know me very well. If there was one thing I took from my family, it was my love for hot things.”

  She winked at him. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the eye, a tic revealing her lie, or if she was flirting with him. Maybe before the battle, before he’d been kidnapped, she would have flirted with him. He wasn’t the person she deserved anymore. So, he ignored the gesture.

  “How did an otter shifter grow up in a Den of bears? That’s what I would like to know.”

  If he thought she looked happy a moment ago, the change in her mood was almost seamless. She scowled down at her plate as if it had been the chicken that insulted her. Dom swallowed any words that might have risen. He wasn’t going to push the issue.

  Everyone had a right to their secrets.

  “I’m going to do the dishes. You should get ready for bed or something. Do shifter women do face masks? You could do that. Or paint your toenails. Whatever shifter women do before bed.”

  Aimee stepped back, a wall slamming down between them and rendering her face unreadable. He wished this wasn’t how it had to be, but he wasn’t right for her. Not anymore. Perhaps not ever. Dom feared everything he had become when he was in her presence. The beast was quieter near her, the pain was muted, but he worried about the day the beast lost control, and she was too close.

  Dom couldn’t trust himself to give Aimee what she deserved. If anything, he would only cause more pain and that was not what he wanted. So, he turned his back to her and plunged his hands into the sink filled with warm water and suds. The heat of the water soothed away some of his aches.

  The beast rumbled in his head, so loud his skull vibrated. It tugged him toward Aimee. His ears strained to hear her take the stairs up to the loft, one by one. The beast wanted to prowl after her and breathe in the scent of her. It wanted to climb into bed with her and show her exactly how they felt. The urge was strong, nearly over
whelming. When Dom tried to ignore his bear, the beast sank it’s claws deep into Dom’s soul and pulled. Dom cringed and dug in his heels. The foolish beast would not get a chance to hurt her. He refused to let it happen.

  The beast was not going to take no for an answer. It roared and threw itself forward. Dom’s body staggered. Soapy water arched through the air. He caught the lip of the counter at the last minute, but the beast’s desire was already pulling him toward the staircase.

  Chapter Three

  He was sweet, she thought as she folded herself into the cold blankets, but she didn’t want sweet. She wanted sassy and warm. Hell, she wanted warm most of all. The chill that swept through the house as the Montana temperatures dropped were going to send her into hibernation.

  She didn’t know how the bears managed to stay awake all year. Didn’t the cold grip their souls, too? Could they not feel it dragging them toward the little death that was sleep?

  Aimee clutched the tiny stuffed otter to her chest and pulled the blankets tighter around her. The giant otter that Morgan won her at the festival slept in the empty cot beside her bed. It was big and cute but meant nothing to her. He’d only done it to make Callie jealous.

  While the two jilted love birds had been trapped together on the Ferris wheel, Dom and Aimee had walked around. Their feet led them back to the carnival games. She’d gotten to laugh at his complete inability to get a hoop around a bottle neck, though she suspected he’d done it only to hear her laugh.

  When it was over, he’d picked out the little otter and handed it to her. She’d kept it on her person ever since, tucking it in her purse as if it were a love charm that would bring him closer and closer to her.

  The small beast in Aimee’s mind screeched in warning. Aimee shot up and scanned the darkness around her. Her heart beat wildly, hammering against her narrow ribs. Near the stairs, she recognized the dark shape of Dom, and her heart steadied. There was nothing to fear.

  Not so long as he was there.

  Aimee threw one foot to the floor, but before she could stand, Dom disappeared. His form blurred down the stairs. She let out a sigh, unable to hide her disappointment. The desire to rattle him was not far away, though she knew it would do no good.