by Kate Rudolph
Or maybe he was coming to her.
She could feel the dull presence of him just beyond the trees. As was normal, she didn't hear his thoughts, just felt the shape of them. She followed that feeling like a beacon. It took her a few minutes and when she saw the small hill she almost gave up. She was so tired that it seemed easier to just lay down and let the forest have her. Who cared if Ruth found her?
But she put one foot in front of the other and made it up the hill. Derek was only a little ways away. She was sure of it. Just twenty more feet. But she made it those twenty feet and there was no man around.
There was a bear, but no man.
This time Sandra didn't faint. She screamed.
Shit. Shit. In his entire life, Derek had rarely come this close to other humans in his bear form. And now he’d come within spitting distance of Sandra twice in as many weeks. Her scream was loud enough to make his ear drums snap, and he waved his paws in front of him, trying to get her to stop. Of course that was the wrong move. He realized it only a second too late.
This called for extreme measures. Derek forced the change quickly, holding tightly to the image of his human form. Under better circumstances, he’d allow himself several minutes for the shift to take hold. If done properly, it was painless. When done quickly, well, at least the pain didn’t linger once it was over.
The shift left him naked and panting in the woods in front of a woman who’d had no idea that his kind existed. Sandra didn’t scream again, she paled, but the only sound coming from her was a sad huffing. She held up a hand and opened her mouth, but after a silent circular gesture as if she could wave him away, she closed her mouth once more, speechless.
He’d probably be the same if their situations were reversed.
Then her head jerked back and her eyes widened. She sprinted towards him and grabbed onto his arm, pulling him with more strength than he thought she had.
“We need to run. Now.” She’d been running before she saw him, and now it was clear that she was running from something. Derek would have stayed and fought, but she looked ready to drop any second, and he didn’t have enough power to shift back to his bear form so quickly. The energy for the shift took time to build, and he’d just about used his reserve up.
They sprinted through the woods with Derek in the lead. She’d made it nearly all of the way to his house, and they covered the last half mile in a few minutes. Once they were safely inside the cave, he slammed the door shut. He hadn’t seen anyone following them, nor had he scented anyone. But he knew that Sandra wouldn’t run so fast if she wasn’t in danger.
She leaned back against the wall, her dark hair half-tangled and her bangs falling against her face. Her cheeks were flushed a bright red. God, she was beautiful. After gulping in air, she turned her steely gaze on him. “Tell me that I didn’t see what I think I just saw. That’s impossible.”
Of course she said that. Humans never believed what was right in front of their eyes. “There are some things in this world that are unexplainable.” And some things could be explained, but it was far too complicated to do so in one night. At least she wasn’t screaming anymore. Besides that, Derek had the strangest sense of deja vu.
What Sandra said next surprised him. “Believe me, I know.” She pulled her legs in close and wrapped an arm around them, resting her head on her knee. She made herself tiny, as if she could hide from the world.
“Okay, you're actually taking this pretty well.” All things considered. He’d heard of men driven mad, or driven to murder, by witnessing a shapeshifter shift. But he was in no state to have this conversation. He reached into the small chest pushed up against the cave wall and pulled out a pair of sweats to put on.
“This explains why I can't read your mind,” she mumbled.
So she was rationalizing it, finding little things that could possibly make a man changing into a bear make sense. She couldn’t read his mind because of it. “Wait, what?” Mind reading? That was insane.
But Sandra didn’t seem to get that he knew nothing about that. She lifted her head up from her knee and looked at him. “Did you know that you're immune to psychics? Is it all mental powers? Or is just your mind blocked?”
Now Derek was on the defensive. He crossed his arms and took a step back. He was nearly in the middle of the room and there were several feet between them.
“Okay, now maybe you did get a little crazy.” Maybe now wasn’t the time for jokes, but he couldn’t resist.
Sandra rolled her eyes and sat up straight. She still looked tired, but the conversation seemed to give her a boost of energy. “I'm psychic. I can read minds. Well, most minds.” She corrected herself. “You're a bit... opaque.”
“Opaque?” He’d seen a lot of things in seventy-four years, but never anyone who could actually do what Sandra was claiming. And was she calling him dumb?
“Like I get the idea of what you're thinking, but not the details.” She waved her hand in front of her as if that would give him an idea of what she meant.
Frustration surged through Derek as he tried to wrap his own mind around what she was saying. “You can read my mind?” He wanted to be absolutely clear.
“Didn't I just say that?” Now he wasn’t the only one on edge. He could hear Sandra’s heart pounding and at this point, he knew it wasn’t just from their run. She was getting antsy.
“So you're a witch?” He’d met witches when he traveled to the East Coast. They’d said nothing about reading thoughts, but they were a cagey lot. Maybe Sandra was just trying to make the explanation easy on an opaque man like him.
“What? No.” She pushed herself up slowly, as if her muscles were protesting every inch she rose. “I don't think magic exists.” Her face screwed up, eyes crinkling. “Or I didn't. Does it?” Derek wanted to hug her.
“Okay, let's back up.” They were talking past each other. “I've learned that making assumptions is about the dumbest thing you can do. It only took me fifty years to learn, but, well, whatever.”
“Fifty years?” Her eyebrows shot up, her eyes as wide as saucers. She squeaked out the question.
“Um, I moisturize?” It was a bad joke, but Sandra nodded. At this point, it probably wasn’t the weirdest thing they had to cover.
She started pacing as she ticked off what she knew. “Okay, so you can shift into a bear. And you're older than you look. Can you shift into anything else? I've heard of werewolves.” She was closer to him now, five feet away instead of ten. Her tantalizing scent tickled his nostrils.
And then her last words hit him and he groaned. “It's always freaking werewolves.” That was more growly than intended, but damn it, he was a bear. He had some pride. “Bears are much fiercer.” All of the stories seemed to speak of werewolves, they never expanded, never included his brethren. It was good for secrecy, but bad for morale.
“Okay.” They both knew she was merely humoring him by agreeing.
So it was Derek’s turn to lay out what he knew. “You can read people's minds. But not mine. Not totally. Is that it? Do you just hear everything? Or is it like flipping a switch.”
Sandra shrugged. “Everything, more or less. But I have to concentrate to get anything beyond the basics.” She made it sound so normal. Then again, normal for Derek was turning from man to bear in a matter of minutes.
“Is that what you did at your old job? Read minds?” There was no way that she’d worked in association with the military and they hadn’t known. He didn’t trust the government, and they’d done stupid shit before, but her talent was exactly the kind of asset that shadowy forces would want to cultivate.
“Among other things. I can't go into much detail.” She closed off speaking of her old life, but Derek pressed.
This was the moment to lay everything out. “I can clearly keep a secret.” He didn’t think he needed to elaborate.
She pressed her lips together hard and a little sound of frustration escaped. “It's a clearance issue.”
“So you were re
ally working for the government? Our government?” He didn’t think that she’d lied to him, but he needed to be sure.
Sandra rolled her eyes. “I worked with the US Government. There's not like some super-secret supernatural government is there?” That she even had to ask nearly convinced him that she’d been completely cut-off from his world. He believed her, but she was still hiding something and it was nagging at him.
“Not really, not that I know of. We bears keep to ourselves.” The most extensive governing his people did was vote on which TV channel to watch at Thanksgiving dinner.
“So do you have a pack?”
“That's wolves!” He was ready to launch into a tirade about their differences when he saw her smiling. She’d already learned it was a sore spot and just wanted to tease.
She grew serious. “That was you on that first day? You were the bear?”
He nodded and explained. Now that she knew about him, there was nothing to hide. “I was fishing when you found me.”
“It's weird...” She trailed off, her eyebrows drawn down as she thought.
“What?” Was there anything about this that wasn’t weird?
“I could hear your thoughts then.” She didn’t expand on that, and Derek didn’t press. Sandra sat down on the sofa and he joined her, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She turned into the heat of his chest and he pulled her close.
He didn’t know what danger she was in, but he wanted to help. “What were you running from today?”
Sandra stiffened against him and tried to pull back. When he resisted letting her go, she didn’t fight it. “I can't bring you into this.”
“Is this a clearance thing again?” He wasn’t going to let meaningless paperwork interfere with her safety.
“No, it's a danger thing.” This time she did force herself back, placing her hands on his shoulders and making him meet her eyes.
He loved that she was worried about him, but that didn’t mean he’d let her get into trouble by herself. “I'm pretty tough.” And he was practically built to be her muscle.
But Sandra turned away, putting a few inches of space in between them. Derek didn’t like that. He didn’t want her running from him, not even symbolically. “I only ran towards you because you're the one person I know.” Even to his ears the excuse was flimsy.
Derek circled his arm back around her shoulders, but he didn’t pull her back. He wasn’t going to force her into intimacy. That didn’t mean he’d let her lie to herself or to him. “I think we both know that's not true.”
“That doesn't matter. Even with bear powers this is out of your league. Hell, it's out of my league.” She leaned forward as if to stand, but the effort was too much and at the last minute she sank back onto the couch beside him.
“Sandra, tell me. You're terrified, you're shaking.” She was building this monster up in her head. He knew she had enemies, they’d probably trashed her house. But she wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t powerless.
“I'm exhausted, actually. Too tired to be scared.” Her smile was rueful at best.
“Now you're avoiding answering.”
A change came over her. She straightened her shoulders and her face went almost blank. It only lasted for a second before Sandra nodded and gave him the details. “A woman from the Sector broke into my house. She is... was... the scariest person among us. Like Rambo or Rocky or, well, are you familiar with 1980s Stallone movies?”
He smiled. If she liked 80s action films, he’d have to show her his DVD collection. “Passingly.”
That satisfied her. “There you go. She's terrifying. And I got a call a few days ago informing me that she took off after stealing something. Now she's come to me, talking about how the Sector screwed us over. Her name’s Ruth, she’s like me. Not exactly like me, but she has powers as well. She controls lightning. She threatened to shoot me!”
“Is she the person who trashed your place?” If this woman was as scary as Sandra made her out to be, things were not great.
But she shook her head and said, “It's not her style.”
“So you've got several people after you - one of whom could pummel the entire Soviet Union - and you want to go this alone?” He’d lock her in the basement before he let her risk her life without backup.
“If I go back to the Sector, they'll give me help.” She made the Sector sound as appetizing as a meal of nails in piss.
“But they just leave you to dry when you're in danger?” She’d worked for them for years and now she thought she was alone in the world except for him. What kind of people were they? She didn’t need to rely on them. Not when she had him.
“Resources are limited. Most people don't retire.” She sounded so resigned that Derek pulled her close. She needed comfort, something a band of mercenaries wasn’t likely to offer.
“You look ready to drop.” He could tell that if she didn’t sleep soon, she’d pass out where she sat.
“Going against Ruth took it out of me.” The terrifying, Rambo-like figure. Of course.
Even without the battle, Derek was tired himself. “Shifting like that is tiring. How about we catch some shuteye and then figure out what we're going to do over dinner.” Sleep had to bring her to her senses. She’d opened up, and by the time she was done with her nap, she’d realize that she needed him. At least for the moment. They could work on forever later.
“Derek?” She leaned into him again and he hugged her.
“Yeah?” If she wanted to stay sitting like this for the rest of the week, he wouldn’t complain.
“I'm still pretty freaked. Can that nap be with you?”
Despite the danger, despite the distance she wanted to put between them, fire surged in his veins. “You are more than welcome in my bed.” And once she was there, he planned to keep her.
CHAPTER TEN
The most delicious scent woke Sandra up. It was earthy, masculine, and a part of Derek, who had his arm wrapped tightly around her. A glance at the clock revealed that she’d slept for nearly two hours. That was enough rest for her to make it through the remainder of the day, but Derek’s bed was soft and warm and he was holding her close. She didn’t want to get up.
Funny, she probably should have felt a lot more freaked being held by a man-bear. Werebear? Was that the proper term? Ursine American? She was tempted to wake Derek up and ask him, but he had looked just as tired as she was, and with his eyes closed and face relaxed, he seemed at peace. She’d torment him after he woke. Touching him so closely, she could read that his sleeping thoughts were calm and content.
It had been almost ridiculously easy to accept what he was. And that wasn’t just because she’d seen his little trick right in front of her eyes. Since the first moment they’d met, well, the first moment when he’d been human, she’d known there was something different about him. Why else couldn’t she read his thoughts most of the time? Did his bearyne...werebe...
She couldn’t even wrap her mind around the word. Was she drawn to him because of the fact that he was a shapeshifter? Was it a pheromone? God, she hoped not. She wanted to like him as much as she did because of him, not because of some magic bullshit.
Wait, did that mean magic was real, too? Sandra had never considered what she and the other women of the Sector could do as being magic. They were just talents, quirks of evolution or something like that. Neither she nor any of the other women she’d met had ever communed with the dark forces. Unless whiskey counted.
And the one or two Wiccans in their ranks had never called anyone’s powers anything but natural. The Sector disavowed all knowledge of magic. It was just another thing she had to add to the list of things to ask Derek. Even while she napped, the list had grown.
He moved a little, as if her own restless thoughts threatened to wake him. Sandra drew her finger up and down the tanned arm wrapped around her, tracing her way through his short dark hair, it was soft against her fingers. His skin broke out in gooseflesh and he shivered when she traced up his inner arm a
nd over the veins at the bend.
“I’m not a statue.” His lips were against her ear and he kissed along the ridge, making her shiver.
She gently poked into a bit of soft flesh, “You mean this isn’t marble?” She arched her neck to the side, giving him better access to keep kissing her.
“Believe me, beautiful, I’m plenty hard.” It should have been cheesy, but the huskiness of his voice went right to her core. If he was hard, she was hot, wet, and more than ready for him.
She could feel the thick length of him pressed into her back. Sandra turned over so that she was facing him. She was fully clothed, wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his sweats. They were a little small for her and skin tight on her ass. But even with the constriction of the fabric, she felt like she might as well be naked.
Derek was similarly dressed. He hadn’t said anything when they laid down, but now she was certain that he slept in the nude. He’d tugged off his shirt sometime while they slept and now his naked chest was on display before her.
She should look at his face. Moments of intimacy were best when they were shared, but she was enraptured by the ridges of his abs. She must have looked silly, staring at him as she was, but she couldn’t help it.
“I’m starting to feel objectified,” Derek said.
That jerked Sandra’s head up and she could feel the hot red blush spread on her cheeks. But Derek was smiling, a playful light in his eyes. He looked beyond pleased with himself. Sandra wanted to tease him back, but there was something she needed even more than that. “I want to touch you.”
The smile faded, replaced by a serious expression. “I want you to touch me.”
But she hesitated. Derek was so grave when he said it that she felt that taking this step would tumble them into an abyss. And not necessarily the good kind. “There’s not any weird bear thing that you do in bed, is there?” It came out a lot higher pitched, more worried, than intended.
Derek shook his head, the movement abbreviated so that he didn’t squash his face into his pillow. “No weird bear stuff.”