by Zoe Chant
Suddenly David remembered the bear cub from the river bank. Could she be its mother? There was something about her scent that tugged at him, but as usual, no memories surfaced no matter what he tried. If she was the cub’s mother, was there anything he could do to reunite them? He had been asleep by the time they had stopped at Fran’s house; he didn’t even know where it was.
The safest thing he could do for both humans and the bear would be to keep her well away from the town during daylight hours. He growled louder, standing tall and holding out his arms in a threatening pose. As he leaned toward the bear, she turned tail and fled. He tracked her further through the woods, till he was sure she was headed away from town and away from Lauren.
As he hiked back downhill toward town, he tried hard not to think about a suspicion that was forming in his mind: that not every person could have made that savage, animal sound, or fearlessly stared down a bear.
He emerged onto town streets again. Though he hadn’t passed this way before, he had a general idea of how to find the creek. There were still fallen branches littering the streets and sidewalks, and he tried to calm himself by being useful, dragging debris out of the way as he passed.
On one street, he found a large limb dangling from a tall oak, suspended almost in the middle of the street. He tugged at it experimentally. When it seemed to shift a bit, he put more weight into it and pulled. Then he heard a crack and a crash, and saw what looked like a third of the tree hurtling down at him. He threw his arms up over his head, and a strange convulsion ran through his body.
The falling branches battered his paws and bruised him, but slid off his thick fur with hardly a scratch.
My paws? he thought in confusion, staring down at the heavy claws and leathery foot pads as he held his front limbs before him.
Then he heard a woman scream. He looked up to see Alicia Valenti at the end of the street. Looking terrified, she stumbled and ran, yelling for help and screaming again.
David ran on all fours for the forest, moving faster than he would have thought possible, crashing blindly through the brush when he reached it. He ran until all sound from the town fell behind him. Then he crouched down, staring in dismay at his furry limbs.
Change back, his mind insisted. Change back, change back, change back. It didn’t happen until he stopped panting and finally relaxed. He collapsed back on the forest floor, staring up at the sky, shaken to his very core.
It just didn’t seem possible, and yet at the same time it felt distressingly familiar. He was a bear. He tried to calm his breathing, counting through the inhales and exhales, until he felt in control. Then he tried the indirect method of testing his memories, just as he had with the year and his name. He tried to make it a simple, straightforward question, no more threatening than “Is it 2015?”. Hey, do I turn into a bear?
In response his mind gave him a whole cacophany of emotions all shouting at once: fear, anger, grief. The feelings raging through him made his heart pound and his muscles twitch. He jumped to his feet and he paced.
His mind swerved from one crazy scenario to another: had he hallucinated the whole episode with Mrs. Valenti just now, thanks to a slow bleed in his brain? Had he been attacked by some sort of werebear before losing consciousness on the mountain? (He remembered now that the first words he had spoken were “the bear …”) Or had he always been some sort of monster, half man and half bear?
He could test one possibility right away: he could try to turn into a bear again. If he could, then either he hadn’t imagined it, or it was a really detailed, ongoing hallucination. With sinking dread in his stomach, he willed himself to become a bear.
Nothing happened.
So was he crazy, then? Or was he just afraid to change? He stalked deeper into the woods,
If this bear had always been a part of him, it obviously wasn’t something that made him happy. Maybe it was a Jekyll and Hyde situation, with the mild-mannered doctor turning into a ravening beast when threatened or angered. Maybe that’s why he’d become a doctor in the first place! Maybe he was trying to save lives to atone for the mayhem the beast had caused!
He took another few deep breaths and returned to testing his theory. What would the process of becoming a bear be like? He tried to see the forest as a bear would see it: he looked around to see what he could eat and where he could shelter. Then he closed his eyes and smelled the air, exploring each sniff for signs of food or of danger.
The woods around him became vivid, rich and detailed. He tried again to change, and this time it worked.
Now that he had prepared himself for the experience, it wasn’t so horrifying. There was even a part of him that wanted to test out his new form and see what those massive claws and jaws and muscles could do. As soon as that thought came to light, he shut it down and turned human again with a shudder.
At any rate, “hallucination” seemed to be off the list of possibilities. But now it was time to set aside the useless speculation and focus on what to do next.
It was clear to him now that the forest held no dangers for him. He could take off over the mountains and wander back to wherever he came from. He still didn’t know where that was, but he couldn’t stay here and endanger Lauren and the rest of the town while he figured it out.
Who was he, really? Was he the bear who had attacked Mrs. Valenti last week? No timid forest creature like the little bear he saw today would have chased her all the way to her door and left claw marks on her house. But a monstrous man-bear with no fear of humans would have no problem with it.
He didn’t want to believe he could be violent or dangerous. He didn’t feel like a killer. But who knows what strange motives he might have in his other life, and when they might return to him and guide his actions again? What if he ended up hurting or betraying Lauren? Lauren. The thought of being without her was like a punch to the gut. He loved her, body and soul. But the only way to keep her safe was to leave.
But if he left tonight, without saying good-bye, he knew exactly what would happen: Lauren and the whole town would turn out to search for him, putting them in danger from actual full-time bears and who knows what else out in the woods. He would have to return to her and give her some sort of explanation before departing.
He dreaded what would have to happen tonight. He tried and tried to think of some way around it, pacing in the dim, shadowed woods until the sun started to lower and the mosquitos started to whine around him. Without thinking, he felt the wave of shifting start to wash over him, ready to fend of the pests with his armor of fur. He squelched the impulse immediately, just like flexing a newly discovered muscle. He swatted bugs unhappily as he trudged back into town.
Chapter 12
Lauren was surprised not to find David waiting for her at home or on Main Street when she and Hannah returned from their futile quest for cell service. When she started asking around and found that no one had seen him all afternoon, she got downright scared.
“We need to send out search parties while it’s still light out,” Ella told her.
“Damn it, I knew I should have taken that head injury more seriously. What if he’s passed out somewhere?” Pete said.
“Wait, isn’t that him?” said Hannah, pointing down one of the side streets.
Lauren jumped up and ran to him. He looked tired and grim, and when she took his hands, he gripped hers almost desperately.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Where have you been all this time?”
“I got turned around in the woods.”
“Really? All you had to do was follow the trail back down the hill.” She smiled up at him, expecting him to joke about a lousy sense of direction or something, but instead he sighed.
“Well, there’s more to it than that.”
Pete, Ella and Hannah had caught up with them by then. Before they could start adding their questions, David continued his explanation.
“I was clearing some street debris on my own when I saw a bear at the edge of town. Af
ter what happened at the town meeting, I didn’t want to get people all riled up, so I just followed it at a distance to make sure it wasn’t going to cause any problems. It wandered back into the woods and I tried to follow it there, just to make sure it kept heading away, and that’s when I got lost.”
“What, you’re a bear tamer now?” Lauren joked fondly.
“No, it was a stupid idea. I was kind of freaked out.”
He still seemed weary and distant, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Lauren couldn’t stop thinking about that moment up on the ridge when he suddenly changed and left the scene with thin excuses.
There was more going on here than just a bear – Lauren was sure of it.
Quite a few people waved to them as they walked back toward town hall.
“Oh good, you found him!” called Mrs. Randall.
Lauren tried to look happy and relieved, but she couldn’t tell how convincing her mask was.
Her friends all sat down to eat dinner together, and Lauren let them carry most of the conversation. People kept coming over to thank David for saving Mr. Mitchell, and that seemed to lift his spirits a bit. She wouldn’t say he looked happy, exactly, but at least he wasn’t distant anymore.
“No, thank you,” he was saying to Mrs. Mitchell’s cousin. “Everyone here has been so kind to me. You welcomed a total stranger at a time when you all had your own huge crisis to deal with, and that’s something that I will never forget.”
Sometime around the third variation of this, it hit her: that was just the kind of thing you would say to people when you’re getting ready to leave.
David seemed to be in no hurry to get back to her place after dinner, so they stayed there on Main Street as another impromptu party took shape. Someone started up a hula-hooping contest, and someone else found a bunch of sparklers left over from the Fourth and passed them out to all the kids. She and David sat on the steps of town hall watching all the action.
Tired and hurt by the confusions of the day, Lauren sagged forward, her elbows on her knees and her head hanging down. Then she felt David’s hand on her back. He started with slow caresses of comfort, then pressed harder, finding all the knots of tension in her muscles and kneading them out.
Lauren made little humming noises of appreciation, and tried not to gasp or moan out loud when he hit some of the really sore spots and slowly worked them out. His touch was soothing, and much as she might want to deny it, it was also electrifying. Pretty soon she was feeling as aroused as she had up on the ridge that afternoon, just from a good back-rub.
Finally she sat up and looked him in the eye.
“Are you going to explain what’s going on?” she asked in a level voice.
“I don’t think that I can,” David said sadly.
So many conflicting responses came to mind, all demanding to be said out loud, and she bit them all back. Lauren was not a woman afraid of arguments; she’d grown up in a family that debated everything passionately. But something told her that words were not the solution here. Instead, she decided to trust in that almost-mystical connection that they had had since that first moment on the river bank.
She stood and held out her hand to him. He took it, and together they walked back to her place. All the way there, up the stairs and into her apartment, neither of them said a word.
In the dark of her living room, she asked him one last time: “You still can’t explain?”
Wordlessly, he shook his head.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She couldn’t even say who moved first, but suddenly they were enfolded in each other’s arms again. Just like every time, it felt like coming home.
David was kissing her hair again, then tilting her head to kiss her forehead, her eyelids, her cheekbones, lightly but with such intensity, as if he was committing every inch of her to memory. Even your kisses feel like good-bye, she thought, but didn’t say it.
As he nuzzled down to her jaw, she turned and captured his mouth. Their kisses were deep and slow, soulful and compelling. Part of her mourned the loss of the happy, uncomplicated lust they’d shared on the mountainside just that afternoon and she felt her frustration with the inexplicable change begin to rise again, but she shoved it away. Her only goal right now was to connect, and she held onto it with all her determination. Whatever he was feeling, whatever was weighing him down, it could not break their bond.
Lauren stepped back far enough to push David’s shirt up. He followed her lead immediately, stripping down and then setting to work on her clothes. Once they were both naked, Lauren had a thought: what if this did turn out to be her last night with the most beautiful man she’d ever been with? She’d hardly had a chance to really see him with no clothes or blankets in the way – just a quick glimpse this morning as he arose from bed and went to the shower.
David was already reaching for her, ready to pull her back into his arms, but she ducked his hand.
“Wait,” she said and lit the candle on the table by the door. Then she lit a second candle to take with her. “Close the curtains. I’ll be back in a second.”
Lauren ransacked the kitchen for every candle she had left, and brought them back to the living room with a stack of dishes to put them on. As she lit the candles around the room, David followed her, the magnet pull of attraction between them keeping him always within reach.
“You don’t need to do this on my account,” he said with a shaky smile. “You’re all the ambience I need.”
“Oh hush, this isn’t ambience, it’s task lighting. I want to see what I’m doing.” Then she gave him a challenging smile of her own.
She could see the wave of desire hit him, as his eyes widened and he drew a sudden breath. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him, then started bestowing wild kisses along her neck and shoulder and as far down her chest as he could reach. She was this close to just blissing out and letting him take complete control of their lovemaking, but if this might be their last night together, there was one more thing she wanted to make sure to do.
She maneuvered him over to the sofa and they fell onto it together. David immediately took the chance to move his kisses further down her breasts, and as his tongue made contact with a nipple, Lauren decided her plans could wait a few minutes.
His mouth felt amazing as he circled each nipple with broad strokes of his tongue. She brought her arms down in a way that pressed her heavy breasts together, a view that previous boyfriends had always appreciated.
It did indeed wring a groan of lust from him, but what made him special is that before disappearing into Cleavage Valley, he looked up at her face.
“Lauren, you are so beautiful,” he told her. “Everything about you is beautiful.” Then he pressed one soft kiss to her lips before heading south.
Lauren surrendered to overwhelming sensation as he played her like an instrument. As he buried his face between her breasts, his stubble rasped against her sensitive flesh with the kind of intense pleasure that was just short of pain. He read her twitch and gasp perfectly and experimented with other sensations, licking, sucking, nipping and scratching to find the perfect combination of feelings to drive her wild.
Lauren had always had mixed feelings about her breasts. There was no denying they were magnificent to look at, and they were so sensitive that she could almost always get turned on from the right attentions paid to them. But she had often felt like some of her exes were only there for her breasts; they tolerated her other, less-fashionable curves so that they could have access to the curves up top.
What ever else might be going on with David, she knew that that wasn’t him. She knew that their connection went soul-deep, and so she was able to relax and just revel in the maddening pleasure that he was creating. When he sucked hard on her right breast, it sent a lightning bolt straight to her clit and made her back arch like a bow. It only took a single touch of his hand between her legs to set off the chain reaction, and he kept suckling her all through it until she was almost sobbing in relief.
&n
bsp; He moved up and kissed her again, just tender little kisses as she finished catching her breath. Before she could get distracted again, she pushed him to sit back against the couch. She knelt on the floor between his feet and gazed up at him, finally getting a leisurely chance to enjoy the view.
He reached for her and she held up a hand.
“Wait.”
Once he understood what was happening, he almost looked a bit embarrassed, though heaven knows what he could possibly have to be embarrassed about. He was sculpted like a statue, a classical god come to life. He was broad and strong, but the lines that defined his muscles were almost delicate. She traced the faint shadows with her fingertips all along his chest and down his abdomen onto his thighs.
His cock jutted up from his lap, hard and eager. This was what she’d been imagining ever since Hannah interrupted them up on the ridge. She leaned over to taste it, licking the delicate skin of the head and dipping her tongue into the tiny slit on top. He threw his head back and moaned, and his hands rose to her shoulders, moving in trembling caresses.
She took the head in her mouth, swirling her tongue around and sucking gently. He thrust up minutely, and she could tell he was working hard to restrain himself. She moved one hand to his hip, holding him down, and with the other she encircled the base of his cock.
She took him deeper. She concentrated on the taste and the feel of him, the stretch in her jaw and the hot slide of him over her tongue. She was doing this as much for her pleasure as for his, but it pleased her to hear him getting frantic as she sucked and worked him.
Just when she thought he might be getting close, though, he pulled back.
“Please, Lauren, wait,” he said. “You are so amazing – but I want to be with you when I go. Can we?”
“Of course!” she said, as his slow, sexy smile kicked the heat up yet another notch.
He left to grab a condom, and when he came back he sat back on the sofa and pulled her onto his lap. She straddled him and put her hands on his shoulders.