by Cecilia Lane
She slipped into speaking of samples and analysis, using words that sounded only vaguely familiar. Science had never been his strong suit. He was always more interested in physical things. He was at home in shop class, worked better with wood and gears than tubes and slides. And labor kept his bear calm and at ease. Trapped inside four walls without an end in sight made him restless.
Usually, anyways. Not with Rylee around.
She made him feel stupid. He didn’t understand half the words that spilled out of her gorgeous lips. Her big, blue eyes held an innocence that demanded he corrupt.
Dangerous, he reminded himself. She was dangerous. Human. Government. There to study, not to fuck. She’d rip his world apart given the right motivation. She couldn’t be trusted for even one moment.
Rylee surprised him by slinking up next to him and setting out the rest of her kit. He kept his mouth shut while she put everything to rights, placing the needle next to a sheet of stickers. She calmly wrote out his name without a hint of fear or nervousness entering her scent. She flexed her fingers in her gloves and settled his arm where she needed, all while still talking about alleles and phenotypes and a brief history of genetics.
By the Broken! He could feel the heat of her through the gloves. It sank into his skin and settled into his bones. She branded him with that single touch.
Cole inhaled sharply, savoring the scent of her as she leaned closer to clean the crook of his arm, then insert the needle. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder and whispered against his skin. His eyes slipped closed, and he barely swallowed the groan building in his chest.
Then she leaned back and stared at his elbow. A tiny dot of blood welled. The wound was so small, he didn’t even feel it closing. “Fascinating,” she whispered.
His bear preened in his head. She hadn’t said a damn word about the bloodsucker. She found him fascinating, not anyone else.
Fuck off, bear.
She made the big, dumb beast sing. There was no future with her. No safety. Nothing meaningful would come of pursuing her. She’d be an unnecessary complication to a duty he hated. He needed to watch her closely and find out if Bearden needed to protect themselves.
He clamped his jaw tight and rolled his chair to put distance between them. She was too close. He could reach out and touch her and it’d be all over then. “Not fascinating,” he said with gravel in his throat. His bear itched under his skin. He needed a run and it’d be hours before he delivered Rylee back to her room at Muriel’s. “Just me.”
Rylee blinked slowly, raising her eyes up to his face. Blood rushed to her cheeks, but it was only wildflowers and fresh rain and something sweetly addictive hanging in the air between them. “Both.”
Cole’s bear roared again in his head. Triumphant. Proud. Ready to chase the little woman down and claim her and warn the rest of the unworthy males away from her.
Fuck off, bear.
Humans weren’t meant for enclave life.
Chapter 6
“I don’t know what this is supposed to accomplish,” Cole grumbled and stomped two feet to the left and through the invisible barrier between hidden enclave and her human world.
Rylee followed after him and answered for what felt like the tenth time, “I’m just following my orders here. No one else is allowed into the territory, so the physicists are using me to collect data.”
Without any interviews scheduled for the day and pressure mounting from her counterparts back home, she had Cole take her into the woods to walk a small section of the border. She certainly hadn’t found much of anything that could be used in her research. Cole wore a heart monitor and she regularly noted the time and his vitals as they approached the enclave border. Border up or down, she couldn’t detect any difference.
He could sense a difference, though. While the sleeping figures hidden away under Bearden Town Hall touched an orb created by fae magic, Cole said he felt like he walked through a wall of chilly weather. A sudden shiver went down his back, even though his body temperature didn’t drop a bit. And when a police officer back in Bearden disconnected the Broken to their orb, Cole felt nothing when he passed through the same exact spot.
Frustratingly, she felt nothing with the barrier up or down. Her initial shiver when she entered the enclave had been nothing but her anticipation, it seemed. But she was glad to walk to border and test the theory, even if it got her out of her lab and away from her specialty.
Rylee reached for Cole, and a wave of heat flashed through her the moment her fingertips brushed against his skin. She hadn’t meant to touch him directly. She’d only been reaching for the sensor that spat out all his vitals so she could record them with the time and his verbal description.
Something had changed between her and Cole, but no amount of puzzling gave Rylee an answer. She spent two days setting up her lab and terrified of being alone with him, and that all magically disappeared the moment she touched him to take his blood sample.
Her fingers itched for more. More contact. More Cole. He was hot to the touch, always, and filled her with a welcome heaviness. The air pressed down on her when she connected with him. While it should have sent her running, she just wanted to press closer.
“How did you get into all of this?” Cole asked, steadying her hand against him.
She shrugged and jerked her fingers out of his. It was an excuse to avoid his eyes. They saw right through her and it didn’t make her uncomfortable, which in turn made her highly uncomfortable. She didn’t know why she reacted to him the way she did and she couldn’t trust herself around him.
He deserved some nice woman with tattoos and attitude of her own. She’d bore him with her talk of science and new discoveries, and that was if she could relax around him and forget her fears and insecurities. He probably went out at all hours of the night, while she preferred a quiet glass of wine and digging into a book. The days of staying out late disappeared when Peter took her life and her trust and ripped them to shreds.
Every instinct in her screaming not to turn her back on the bear shifter, she stomped further into the woods. “I’ve always been a bookworm, I guess.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.” He easily caught up and then passed her, silently correcting her path with his steps.
“Is that a glasses and nerd joke? Just get it over with and call me four-eyes if it is. I don’t care. The idea of touching my eyeball to insert a contact lens icks me out and I’m so used to how I look with glasses now anyways.”
Cole tossed her a smile as he bent and placed two plastic flags into the ground, one on either side of the barrier. Flags marked the path behind them, too. “Not at all, four-eyes. I meant that I don’t understand half of what you’re doing or why. If I hadn’t gone into firefighting, I’d be working as a mechanic. Nothing wrong with different interests.”
She was at a crossroads. She’d conjured up a number of images of Cole covered in sweat and soot, stripped down in the dirty yellow pants of his firefighter gear. But those warred with images of him bent over the hood of a truck, dirty rag hanging out of tight jeans, and hands rough from work. She didn’t know which she preferred, but she knew both were destined to be just thoughts she had late at night, nothing more.
“I grew up poor. Oldest kid in a single mother household type of tragedy. There wasn’t any money for college, so if I was going to go anywhere it would need to be on my own. I’m terrible at sports, so I had to get good at schoolwork. Math and science always made sense to me, so I dug right in and got the scholarships I needed. And then I found I had a real passion for genetics and wanted to be involved on the research side of the lab.”
“So you’re not some military brat?”
“Have you seen me? Do you think I could survive boot camp?” She snorted. “No, one of my professors recommended me and I was offered a contracting job on a super-secret military base. I was there for a few years before...”
She trailed off, words dying on her tongue when Cole turned her and eye
d her up and down. She could feel the path his wandering gaze look as surely as he trailed his fingertips along her skin. She was bottom heavy, with wide hips and thighs and not much on top. The quintessential pear shape of fashion magazines. That disparity didn’t seem to bother Cole one bit, as his eyes turned hungry. Red blossomed on her cheeks, but she refused to look away.
“Definitely not boot camp material,” he teased with a smirk.
Rylee let go of the breath she didn’t know she’d sucked in. Her shoulders sagged like someone suddenly released the strings holding her aloft.
Curiously, she hadn’t felt a whiff of fear the entire time.
She pursed her lips and trudged past him, following the gentle curve of the markers he’d already planted in the ground. There was nothing to do but continue spending the day alongside the maddening man and try to forget the things he sparked inside of her.
Her foot caught against an unseen root and she stumbled forward. A tiny cry of surprise bubbled out of her lips and she threw her hands out in front of her to catch her fall. But she never made it to the ground.
Cole snaked an arm around her middle and steadied her on her feet. “I got you,” he murmured.
And he did. She lifted her chin and met his eyes. Storms of grey peered back at her, churning with flecks of gold until his eyes were a mix of color.
She should run screaming from the man. She should feel fear down to her bones. He was huge and powerful. He could toss her around like she was nothing. He could cover her mouth so no one heard her screams and have his way with her.
Instead, she trusted him. He wouldn’t hurt her. He was a growly, grumpy giant, but some part she thought long dead wanted him. He was growly, yes. Those growls vibrated through her muscles and relaxed her. He was grumpy, sure, but he did it in a way that made her smile and soothed her nervousness around him. And holy cow, was he a giant. Those arms could wrap around her and keep her safe from her nightmares.
She’d left her lab behind to avoid potential trouble only to jump right into something even more dangerous and unfamiliar. She didn’t know how relationships worked. Her one attempt left her battered and broken.
No matter how calm she felt around Cole, she didn’t want to open that part of herself again. She’d locked those broken, ugly pieces away and built thick walls around them. She couldn’t deal with them and she didn’t expect anyone else to, either.
She swiped her tongue over her lips and his eyes dipped down to watch the motion. Despite all her objections and reasoning, despite talking herself out of wanting him, her heart sped up when he started to lean in. Her body was on fire, heat blasting up from her arms where his hands rested and filling her with desire.
He was going to kiss her. She wanted him to kiss her.
“Who the fuck let this monster out of his cage?”
Rylee spun around and found guns pointed at her and Cole. Major Brant Delano led the patrol and directed a fierce glower at Cole. The half-healed marks on his face made the look particularly menacing.
She whipped her hands into the air. “Don’t shoot! He’s here to guide me around the enclave!”
Major Brant Delano glared at her, then focused again on Cole. Slowly, the guns directed at them lowered, but none of the men on the patrol lost their intense looks. “That Gale woman put him in charge of you? Is she trying to piss me off?”
“Major, I don’t think she considers anyone or anything but the safety of the enclave,” Rylee said to the ground. Her heart fluttered in her chest, but it’d turned away from the thrill Cole instilled in her right into the dense fear she hated.
“You had your way in going into that forsaken place, but I can’t allow you to continue if this is the protection they give you. You’re taking these men with you. At least they don’t have claws to tear you to shreds.” Delano raised his hand, and the patrol stepped forward.
Rylee surveyed the men behind Delano. She wanted nothing to do with them. Their hard eyes made her feel cold inside. They felt hateful and uncaring. They wouldn’t loosen any tongues or put anyone at ease around her. They’d ruin everything she was trying to accomplish inside Bearden.
And from the way Cole growled next to her, he wouldn’t be able to keep his cool. She didn’t want to replace Cole with Delano’s men. She didn’t want Cole to leave her side.
The man had somehow pushed his way past her fear and panic, and she’d miss him if he was taken from her. She wanted him around. Gruff and rude as he could be, she liked having him near her.
“No,” she said softly. She repeated herself, louder and more firmly than before. “No. They will not be entering the enclave. The invitation has been extended to me and me alone.”
Delano ground his teeth together and stomped forward. He leaned down and put his face right near hers. “You don’t get to make that call, missy.”
“You don’t, either. Mayor Gale is in charge of the enclave territory. And call me Doctor.” The words poured out of her mouth without any thought. She felt apart from herself. Where she would usually be a tiny, shivering wreck with a man like Delano getting in her face, she was standing up to him. She didn’t know where the strong, steady woman had come from and she was scared that woman would disappear.
Delano reached forward and snatched her bag from her hands.
“Stop it!” she cried, but he turned his big body to block her from grabbing it back.
“What do we have in here? Nothing we wouldn’t want those people to get their hands on, I hope. Nothing that would put us in danger.”
“I’m collecting data for the lab back home. I need that back!” She quickly recounted everything inside. Nothing that would be missed if she lost it. Notes, mostly. Extra flags to mark the border. Cole wore the monitors and she could download that data as long as it wasn’t stripped from him.
But Delano reaching forward and simply taking what wasn’t his made her furious and want to shrink back all at once. He was just like Peter, taking what he desired and not caring for anyone’s objections.
She turned her head to catch the rush of movement at the edge of her vision. Cole inserted himself between her and Delano, reached around the man, and grabbed her bag out of his hands. “The doctor asked for her things back,” he snarled.
Guns once again raised and pointed right at Cole.
Danger hung heavy in the air. Rylee pushed herself forward. She couldn’t be scared. She couldn’t let anything happen.
Shaking like a leaf, she stepped between the two, large men. She wrapped her hands around the handles on her bag and pulled them open. “Notes and markers, only, Major. This was requested of me by my home lab. See for yourself, there’s nothing else here.”
Delano gave the bag a momentary glance and then shoved a finger in Cole’s face. “Don’t you dare mess with me or my men again, shifter. I’ll burn your whole fucking town to the ground to protect them from the likes of you.” He fixed his cold, dead eyes on her. “Finish your little science experiment so the rest of us can do our jobs and get out of this place.”
Delano gave them one last hateful glare, then marched away a few feet. He spat on the ground, then whistled sharply for his men to follow. One by one, they disappeared into the woods.
She didn’t move or say a word until the last crunch of their steps faded away. Only then did Cole usher her back the few feet into enclave territory. She shook when he wrapped his hands around her forearms. “Are you okay?”
She nodded shakily. The brief moment of tough bravery hadn’t lasted long. She wanted to curl up in a dark room and put herself back together.
Cole crushed her to his chest in a tight, quick hug, then let her loose. “We should head home. I don’t trust them to leave us alone.”
Rylee nodded again and silently followed after Cole back toward Bearden.
She couldn’t stop repeating Delano’s words in her head. Finish your little science experiment. That part was incredibly insulting to the work she, and others like her, performed. How many doctors h
ad it taken to develop some of the vaccines and other protections taken by anyone going overseas and into battle? How many years of research went into antibiotics or other medicines when someone got ill? There were no overnight solutions to the questions she wanted answered.
But the end of his sentence chilled her. So the rest of us can do our jobs and get out of this place.
The words made her nervous and sent her alarm bells ringing. What job had he meant? They were there to assess the threat. She was helping with that. She hadn’t seen anything threatening besides Delano and his men.
She glanced into the woods behind her. She hadn’t felt at ease with the man from the moment she met him and he’d done nothing to change her opinion of him. She vowed to make some calls as soon as she made it back to her room that night and see if Delano had orders other than the ones she knew.
Chapter 7
Rylee only managed a few hours of restless, anxious sleep before she gave up, switched on a light, popped on her glasses, and opened her laptop. She began sorting through her emails, adding flags to questions she needed to include in her future interviews and more measurements requested by the team looking into the mysterious Broken. They hadn’t been allowed into Bearden as she had, so she was following their instructions while conducting her research into the genetics of the supernatural residents.
But even work she loved couldn’t hold her interest for long. Major Delano’s words had haunted her all night and continued to do so in the chilly morning.
Nothing in her paperwork indicated Delano was there for anything other than surveillance. The United States government, and, frankly, the rest of the world, was alarmed at the sudden appearance of one town filled with individuals sunk deep in otherness. Delano’s assignment was to make sure there would be no threat to the people in the surrounding towns or the humans that turned up to camp on the borders.