She held his gaze, wishing he could see what she did. An honourable bear. A bear who had fought to protect her from the worst of the compound, had devoted himself to taking care of her even though she had been nothing to him. He’d had no reason to step in to protect her that day they had met. No reason to take her under his wing, to keep her safe for years. No reason to keep her out of the arena.
But he had done it.
Because beneath that sometimes growly and dark exterior beat the heart of a good male.
He just couldn’t see it.
He only saw his faults.
Bronwyn stroked her fingers over his and looked at his scarred knuckles, the evidence of all the fights he had been forced to participate in and had survived.
She whispered to his hand, “You’re a good male, Maverick.”
His hand tensed beneath hers and he tried to take it back, but she seized it, refusing to let him pull away from her because he needed to hear this.
“A good male wouldn’t hurt a female like I hurt you,” he growled.
“True. I can’t excuse your behaviour and I don’t want to… but if you asked for forgiveness, I would give it to you.” She locked gazes with him, hoping he could see she meant that. “If you promised not to do it again.”
His eyebrows knitted hard and he muttered, “If you really knew the sort of male I am, you wouldn’t ask me to make a promise I can’t keep.”
Bronwyn huffed.
“You know, I can understand why you’re so hard on yourself, but at the same time, it’s infuriating.” She tugged his hand closer to her and turned it as much as she could, stroked her fingers over a deep scar that cut across the fleshy part of his palm near his thumb. “Remember how you got this?”
He looked at it and shrugged.
“I remember,” she whispered, her mind rolling back the years to that night. “You got this because you took my place in the cage. You got this because the hunters pitted you against a hellcat as punishment for making demands… for protecting me. That bastard almost killed you, because of me.”
“Winnie, watch your mouth,” he growled.
She rolled her eyes, because this wasn’t the compound. She swore now. She was grown up, mature. She had thoughts and fantasies that would probably shock him if he knew about them. She wasn’t little freckled-face Winnie the Pooh anymore. It was time he saw that.
“He was a bastard. The hunters were bastards too. They made you fight a shifter far stronger than you and then they beat you up afterwards. I know what happened, Maverick. I know what they did. You tried to hide it from me, but I know everything that went down that night.” Tears lined her lashes again as she thought about how messed up he had been, cut up and bleeding badly, and so agitated that he hadn’t been able to keep still while she and Rune had been trying to tend to his wounds. She swallowed thickly. “You don’t see it, but you’re a good male. The hunters tried to kill that side of you, did terrible things to you and put you into fights while you were maturing, and it messed you up to a degree. I’m not going to deny that. It shaped you into a fighter—a survivor. They could have done that to me too, or I might have been passed from male to male as some of the other females were, too young to defend myself and too innocent to— You protected me from that, Maverick. A monster wouldn’t have done that.”
“I am a monster.” He looked away from her but didn’t try to take his hand away this time.
She sighed.
He pulled the sleeve of her sweater back and stared her hard in the eye. “Look at what I did and then look me in the eye and tell me I’m not a monster.”
Bronwyn looked at her arm, at the handprint-shaped bruise on it that was dark against her skin and still ached a little, and knew she shouldn’t be so fast to forgive him for what he had done, that she shouldn’t make excuses for his behaviour, but deep in her heart she knew why he had lashed out at her.
She had hurt him. Not physically, but emotionally. She had betrayed him and it had wounded him, and he had thought everything she had done had been an act—including kissing him. He felt something for her and he felt she had used that against him, that her kiss had been a lie meant to lure him under her spell and into a trap.
It hadn’t been.
It had been real.
On a deep sigh, she lifted her head and looked him in the eye, searched their clear grey depths and saw the hurt she had caused him, hidden beyond a barrier she wanted to break down. He was trying to keep his distance, his trust shaken by what she had done to him, and she could understand his need to hold the part of himself he had been slowly revealing to her over the last few days away from her now.
But there in his eyes, she found a glimmer of hope for her.
She had wounded him, had probably put a crack in his heart as she had with her own one, but just as she was willing to forgive him for what he had done, he wanted to forgive her. He wanted to believe what she was telling him.
He just didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t know how to handle the things she was making him feel. His time in the compound had affected him far more than she had ever imagined. Maverick was struggling to adjust to this world. He didn’t know how to deal with his feelings, was caught up in a vicious cycle of believing himself a terrible person, that he was only good for one thing—fighting. The hunters must have drilled it into his head so deeply that he couldn’t shake it. He honestly believed he was a bad person, no good for her, and no good for this world.
A male made for killing.
For violence.
All Bronwyn saw was a male who didn’t know how to be soft, who had never been shown how to be careful or how to deal with his feelings.
He knew only the darker side of his instincts, of this world, gave in to them too easily because it was what had been expected of him. The compound had been no place for softness, for tender emotions. She had witnessed that for herself. The fighters had been hardened, taught through repeated violence to be just as violent and unforgiving themselves, had all of their softer feelings ripped away from them by the hunters and the cage.
Maverick had matured in that world.
For decades, he had been put through daily drills of the training ring, fights over perceived territory within the compound’s free-roam areas, and battles to the death in the cage.
And then he had spent an equal amount of time trying to overcome all of that, to adjust to this world where he wasn’t expected to be spilling blood and killing on an almost-daily basis, a world where the people around him weren’t his enemy, liable to jump him at any moment to deliver a blow that would weaken him ahead of the next fight.
“I don’t see a monster,” she whispered, holding his gaze. “I only see a male who is trying his hardest to overcome a terrible past… one that shaped him into something he doesn’t want to be. I only see a male who was never allowed to be soft and who fears that if he lets himself feel such emotions, he’ll be punished.”
She lifted her free hand and cupped his cheek, keeping his eyes on hers, aware that he would look away if she didn’t make him look at her.
“I see a male who is afraid he doesn’t know how to be gentle.” She raised her other hand when he did try to avert his gaze, framed his face and made him look at her as her heart broke for him. “I see a male I want to help overcome those fears.”
He wrenched away from her. “Because you pity me.”
“No,” she bit out and seized him by his nape, forcing him to look at her again. She gentled her grip when his eyes leaped to lock with hers. “Because I’m crazy about you, Maverick. Rune is right. It’s always been you.”
She gasped as he leaned towards her and captured her lips, as he kissed her. Hard at first, but he gentled it as she began to kiss him back, as she poured her feelings into it to show him that she wasn’t afraid of him and that he didn’t need to be afraid either. She was just getting into it again when he drew back and pressed his forehead to hers.
And breathed against her lips.
She nodded, her heart going out to him again as she sensed his nerves. It wasn’t difficult to agree to taking things slow with him when she wanted to savour this moment, this transition from her old life into one she had dreamed of for so long. She wanted this to last.
To be forever.
Rushing Maverick was a sure-fire way of ruining that.
Bronwyn stoked her courage and claimed his lips again, shivered at the softness of them as he brushed them over hers, their breaths mingling as he kissed her slowly. Tenderly. This was enough for her. This kiss. Being close to him like this.
Apparently, it wasn’t quite enough for him, because he pulled away from her and stood.
When he held his hand out to her, her gaze leaped to his face, the soft but nervous look in his eyes hitting her hard and making her nervous too. She slipped her hand into his and let him pull her onto her feet, and squeaked when he scooped her up into his arms. She looped hers around his neck and looked at him, into eyes that held a hint of affection now and made her want to stare into them forever.
He glanced towards the cabins on this side of the creek and she looked there too, and realised why he had stopped kissing her. Everyone had gathered there to stare at them. She didn’t want an audience either, so she didn’t complain when he carried her across the creek, preventing her from getting wet.
Maverick set her down when they reached the other side of it and she tried to act all business when she walked ahead of him towards the cabin, but the feel of him trailing behind her, his eyes drifting over her, from her head to her ass, made it hard. She wasn’t sure why she was pretending they weren’t going to the cabin to pick up where they had left off, putting on a show for Rune and the others. It wasn’t going to fool anyone. Everyone had seen them kissing.
Everyone probably knew where this was going.
What was going to happen when they were alone in the cabin.
She blew out her breath, suddenly nervous as hell, and feeling awkward at the thought of Rune knowing she was doing her damnedest to get together with Maverick at last. A cursory glance over her shoulder in Rune’s direction had her grimacing. He didn’t look very happy about it as he watched Maverick like a hawk.
Like a father watching some male luring his daughter away to do wicked things to her.
Maverick was going to get a talking to later.
If he was aware of it, it didn’t show on his face. His grey eyes were locked firmly on her nape, heat blazing in them that had another shiver traipsing down her spine as that spot tingled with awareness of his gaze upon it.
When she reached the steps up to the deck, his gaze lifted to her face, the hunger building in his eyes and heating her blood. She ached to have his lips on hers again, couldn’t concentrate as she stared at his mouth.
And snagged her foot on the top step and almost fell flat on her face.
Maverick caught her around her waist, stopping her from falling.
Making her hyper-aware of his chest where it pressed against her back and how close he was to her. He loosed a low growl as he twisted her in his arms and kissed her again. His arms tightened around her, the show of strength sending an electric thrill through her that stoked a need to press her hands against him and fight him a little. She leashed that need, determined not to push him too hard. If she let her primal instinct to goad him into dominating her take the lead, she wasn’t sure what would happen, but she knew Maverick wouldn’t be happy with the outcome.
He was trying to be gentle.
His primal instincts were probably roaring at him to do the opposite. Like hers, his were no doubt pushing him to dominate her, to bend her to his will. She broke the kiss and brushed her hands over the flat slabs of his pectorals as she gazed up into his eyes, seeing the war playing out in them.
“We’ll take this slow,” she whispered and dropped her hand to his, caught hold of it and turned away from him to lead him into the cabin for a serious make-out session on the couch.
Kissing only.
Bronwyn tensed and froze as her phone jingled.
Her gaze lifted to the loft bedroom where she had left it.
Her heart pounded.
“You think it’s them?” Maverick growled, and she wasn’t sure whether he was unhappy about the interruption or the fact the hunters were contacting her again.
She swallowed hard and nodded.
Couldn’t convince herself to go and check it because she knew what it would be—the location where she was supposed to take Maverick and Rune.
“I can’t do this,” she murmured and her heart hurt, whispering to her that if she didn’t, Andrew was as good as dead.
“You can do this.” Maverick took the lead, tugging her into the cabin, and settled her on the couch.
He crouched in front of her, the softness gone from his face, his expression hard and unyielding and his eyes cold and fierce.
“We’re doing this. You and me. Together.” A flicker of warmth entered his eyes as he growled those words, as he held her gaze and stroked her cheek. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I won’t let them get their hands on you. I’ll keep you safe.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
His handsome face softened and a hint of disbelief shone in his eyes.
He smiled tightly.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Bronwyn.”
He could say that, but it wouldn’t stop her from feeling that way. It wouldn’t stop her from thinking about how badly things could go, or how dangerous this was and that she might lose him.
He lifted his hand and smoothed his palm across her cheek, his eyes locked with hers.
“I can handle the hunters. I can handle whatever happens. I never really had a reason to fight before, but I do now.”
He leaned in, bringing his lips close to hers.
And stole her heart.
“I’m going to fight for you… and the forever I want with you.”
Chapter 13
Bronwyn pulled her car into a space overlooking Ghost Lake, butterflies fluttering in her stomach as she stared out at the dark water. Maverick placed his hand on her thigh as she clutched the steering wheel, battling the desire to put the car back into gear and get the hell away from the meeting place.
She had the feeling something terrible was going to happen, couldn’t shake it as she glanced at Maverick and tried to breathe through her nerves. The corners of his lips twitched, as close to a smile as he had gotten since they had set off from the car park of The Spirit Moose after swapping his truck for her smaller hatchback.
“Everything will be fine, Winnie,” he murmured and she nodded, but she didn’t feel it.
When his hand slipped from her knee and he turned away from her, she wanted to grab him and tell him not to open the door. He was out of it before she could move and she followed suit, opening the driver’s door and easing from the vehicle. Her gaze scanned the dark lot, butterflies becoming a hurricane as her senses stretched around her.
Nothing.
There wasn’t a soul for as far as her acute senses could reach.
Maverick rounded the car to her, his face a black mask as he slipped into his role.
“Why did you bring me out here, Winnie?” he snarled and she tensed, reminded herself it was just an act and that they had to make this look good. He needed to look like he wasn’t in on things or the hunters would grow suspicious.
Not that there were any nearby.
She stilled and stared at Maverick. Unless he could sense further than she could and had detected danger.
“It’s just a stop off before we continue. I wanted to stretch my legs.” That sounded lame even to her but at least she sounded flustered.
He folded his arms across his chest, causing his black cable-knit sweater to stretch tight over his biceps.
Distracting her.
Her bear side growled in approval of his visible strength, had her growing restless again. K
issing him had only made it harder for her to concentrate when she was around him. She kept thinking about how good his body had felt against hers, how firm and dominating his kiss had been, but also how tender it had been.
His eyes narrowed on her and he inhaled, growled as his jaw flexed and his gaze seared her.
A thrill chased through her, lighting up her blood, rousing that ache again—an ache only he could satisfy.
Maverick took a hard step towards her and she shivered at the thought he might grab her and kiss her, but instead he hissed, “Dial it back, Bronwyn. I can’t focus for shit when you’re looking at me like that.”
She tried to tamp down her desire, wrangled her body back under control and squared up to him. “I told you, we need to get to Calgary. That’s where he’s waiting.”
It was a risk to talk about a third party, but one Maverick had decided would be worth it. She had needed a reason for bringing him so far from his pride and the mountains, into the plains, and he had come up with needing his help with someone they had known in the compound.
“I should have had Rune come too. He’ll want a piece of that bastard. Klaus deserves to die for what he did to Grace.” Maverick prowled away from her, his agitation not an act.
She knew all about Grace and what had happened to her, how Rune had been forced to fight a polar bear called Klaus. Rune had failed to defeat him and so the hunters had made Grace take his place against the enormous male. She hadn’t stood a chance.
Bronwyn tried to remember her next line.
Grunted as something hit her in her right shoulder, knocking it back, and cold spread outwards from that point.
She looked down at the dart protruding from her shoulder.
And then at Maverick.
“Run!” she screamed.
It was too late.
Maverick was already lunging for her as her legs gave out, trying to catch her, worry shining in his grey eyes. He growled as a dart hit him in his right thigh and went down hard, colliding with her and taking her down with him, landing on top of her.
Awakened by her Bear (Black Ridge Bears Shifter Romance Series Book 5) Page 11