by Holley Trent
She did, somewhat gracelessly and wincing a bit at his continuing pinch.
For a long moment, he sat very still, looking at her.
She wanted to know what he was thinking, and decided she wouldn’t be too forward if she asked. “What are you thinking?”
He grunted and held one breast in his large, rough hand. “The bear in me is thinking that I would be completely at your mercy if I were to come home to you every day and you presented yourself to me like this.”
She lowered her head and watched him fluff her nipples and caress the undersides of her breasts.
“The bear wouldn’t be wrong,” he said. “Every day, I’d walk through the door and I’d want to take your clothes off to see what’s mine.”
Yes.
“I’d want to touch everything. Prop you up just the way I like. Have you do things.”
“What things?”
He growled again and lowered his head to her chest. “Whatever I want. Your body would be mine to do with as I see fit. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.” She clenched her hands into fists at her sides, careful not to touch him, but hoping he’d do more soon. The surge of wetness pooling on her thighs should have been his clue that she liked what he was saying.
“I like having control, Andrea.”
“I’m sure you’re wired that way.”
“I enjoy my partner’s complete surrender.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” He gave her nipple another pinch and raised her chin up, forcing him to meet his gaze.
She couldn’t nod, so she whispered, “Yes.”
He narrowed his eyes and canted his head slightly. “And how would you come to know such a thing?”
She didn’t have a good response for that. It was just truth, discernible in part by instinct, and the rest by experience. “I just know what makes me comfortable.”
He released her chin and trailed his fingertips down her throat. “A man like me could hurt you.”
“A Bear like you could hurt anyone. But you’re not going to hurt me.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “If you believe that me being your mate is the truth, you can’t hurt me. You won’t let yourself.”
“And I won’t let anyone else, either.”
She nodded. “That’s the way these pairings are supposed to work.”
He leaned back against the sofa arm and raked his gaze over her body again. “The wise thing would be for me to leave you here.”
“But—”
The smallest tilt of his head silenced her.
“I’d leave,” he said. “I’d stay away from you until the season has passed and I’m in better control of my faculties.”
Unable to say anything, she kept flexing her fingers into loose fists and releasing them.
“But I can’t leave. The very thought paralyzes me. My feet and legs wouldn’t cooperate and I’d never get to the door.”
Good. If he left, he’d be leaving with her.
And how long do you think that’ll last? the bear in her asked.
She sighed inwardly and focused her gaze on the weave of the sofa’s fabric.
“Come here.” He motioned her forward, and as there was no place to go besides between his spread legs, she knelt there.
He dragged his knuckles down softly between her breasts and skimmed his fingertips along the elastic top of her panties. “Perhaps you should put your clothes back on.”
He doesn’t like the way you look, the bear teased.
Drea rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and forced back the tears.
You’re not like the other women in the office. You know that, right?
She refused to cry—not over that. She dropped her hands.
Peter stared at her with his brow furrowed.
You’re not one to draw the eye.
He pulled the pad of his thumb across her lips, and she realized then that she’d grimaced and held that contortion on her face.
“What’s going through your head right now?” he asked.
She shook her head and covered her chest with her arms.
“Did I upset you somehow? You smell upset.”
“No.”
The word and her quavering delivery of it were in stark contradiction.
Her eyes blurred and sinuses burned, and she looked down so he didn’t see those first few tears fall.
I’m a mess.
That was just Drea, not the bear. She didn’t need her critical inner bear’s input to tell her what she already knew about herself. While Drea hoped that the bear’s insights about Peter weren’t true, she knew that her demeaning statements about the lady she shared a brain with were factual. She wasn’t a deluded woman. She knew her shortcomings and though she tried to rise above them, the odds of her ever being much more than she already was were slim.
Peter pressed his hands to her cheeks and lifted her face. “Fuck.”
He pulled her against his chest and slid down on the sofa, holding her atop him again.
And she didn’t know why, but that made her cry, too.
Maybe the pity triggered the tears. Too many people pitied her, and while she might have been deserving of tenderness, she didn’t want the fact that Peter felt sorry for her to overshadow any other emotions he might have had for her. She didn’t want to start a relationship based on some misguided sense of obligation.
He pulled the covers up over her and murmured soothing things in one of those languages she didn’t understand.
She cried until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore, and then she stopped trying to.
CHAPTER SIX
Peter thought Andrea was never going to wake up.
If he didn’t worry that his bladder was about to explode, he would have been content to lie there on the sofa rubbing her back and nuzzling his face against what was left of her hair.
He hadn’t expected such a chaste act to be so fulfilling. He was comfortable and calm for a change, as if his inner bear had been tranquilized and the man part of him had been treated to a long massage.
The calm had to be due to Andrea. There was no other explanation he could think of. Mated shifter pairs complemented each other in unpredictable ways, and they weren’t always evident in the first few meetings. Sometimes, their strengths weren’t apparent until the relationship underwent some stress, and he’d certainly categorize abducting her as a stressful event.
He didn’t know what he’d done to make her cry—probably so many things given his usual tactlessness with women. He should have known what the trigger had been, though, because he was her mate. He should have been able to glean her cues, but hers was so unusual to start with. Like her brother, he read her as a born-Bear and obviously one of the same clan, but her energy was different in a way he hadn’t encountered before. He couldn’t even describe what made her different, only that she was.
“Okay, my peach,” he whispered. He had to move. The need to empty his bladder was becoming an or-else crisis.
He slid her off his chest and atop the sofa crease.
She didn’t move a muscle as he tucked the covers in around her. If his supernatural hearing hadn’t been able to pick up her slow, quiet breaths, he might have panicked.
He used the bathroom quickly, washed his hands, and then brushed his teeth. When he glanced out at the living room, Andrea remained in the same position she had been. He wasn’t exactly being quiet. Any other Bear might have waked.
Leaving the door cracked, he stepped into a cold shower and washed away grime and guilt-inducing arousal.
She was still on her side in the same spot he’d left her in when he stepped out of the bathroom in his towel.
He knelt at the sofa side and laid the back of his hand on her cheek.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and her body convulsed with a slight startle, and then her lids closed again.
“Andrea?”
“Hmm?” Her acknowledgement of his query cam
e on a profound delay.
“Are you well?”
“Mmm.” Another delay.
“We need breakfast. Will you come with me?”
“Mmm.”
She didn’t move. If anything, she relaxed even more into her repose.
What’s wrong with her?
Vigorously scrubbing the water from his hair with his towel, he found some jeans and underwear in his bag and stepped into them. He pulled on a T-shirt and clipped his knife sheath to his waistband. He put on socks and boots, and then inserted a gun into the holster he kept inside the right one. He stuffed his wallet into his pocket and returned to the sofa.
“Andrea.”
She gave no response at all.
He dragged his tongue across her slightly parted lips, trying to trigger a reflex of any sort, but none came. She didn’t smell stressed at the moment. Her scent was neutral enough, which only meant she wasn’t having a nightmare.
Raking a hand through his hair, he paced in front of the sofa for a minute, and then threw his hands up.
Just go.
Her not moving while he was gone wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing, seeing as how he wanted her to be there when he returned.
There was a donut shop a couple of blocks away. Peter was there and back in fifteen minutes with large coffees, a dozen assorted donuts, and a couple of breakfast burritos he’d grabbed from a food truck during the return trip.
He set everything on top of the table in the kitchen and held his breath as he returned to the sofa. She could have left while he was away.
She hadn’t. She hadn’t moved a muscle. As pleased as he was that she hadn’t, her listlessness scared him. Born-Bears should have been easier to arouse, especially that time of year. Bears became slower and less focused during the winter, but it was spring. The sun was back with a vengeance, trying to make up for the sad days of January and February.
He sat on the edge of the sofa in front of her and picked her up. Pressing his nose to the bend of her neck, he breathed in deeply, hoping to catch some note of what was wrong with her. If there was some illness building up, he could possibly discern a change in her scent. Some Bears did fall victim to healing sleeps, but he’d never heard of any of the Ridge Bears being affected by them. That evolutionary advantage—or disadvantage, depending on how he looked at it—seemed more typical of the Bears in Europe.
Andrea smelled as she always did. Sweetly fragrant and fertile. She smelled right. The only thing out of place was his scent that had transferred to her. He liked finding his aroma on her. The scent wouldn’t stick until they’d mated. He knew that, but he liked the idea of marking her as his in some way—some way that repelled other Bears.
That seemed a trifling consideration at the moment, though. He didn’t need to worry about other Bears taking a shine to her when she wasn’t even upright and paying attention.
He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “My peach? I have breakfast.”
She didn’t give him so much as a sigh.
He laid her back down, fixed the covers, and paced a bit more.
Pacing didn’t seem to be helping. If anything, the movement agitated him more. His inner bear was worked up again—agitated now, too, because something was wrong with his mate and Peter didn’t know how to fix her.
Fix her, the bear said.
“Okay, asshole,” Peter muttered. “Tell me how.”
Naturally, the bear part of him had nothing useful to suggest.
“Fuck.”
He didn’t want to resort to Plan B, but he could admit when he didn’t know enough. He wasn’t ready to hand her over to her brother just yet, or to participate in the clash of fangs and claws that would probably come immediately after, so the best he could tell, he had two choices.
He could call Soren and see what he suggested, or he could call their father.
He decided against Soren, figuring his brother was likely near Tamara at the moment, and Tamara was certainly with Bryan. So, he checked the time and called his father. As far as he knew, his father was in Romania, though he moved around so much, keeping track was pointless.
“You are in deep shit, boy,” his father said in lieu of hello.
“I see Soren or Tamara have gotten in touch, then.” Peter rolled his eyes and lifted the lid of his cup so he could dump sugar into his coffee.
“Tamara. Soren is…indisposed.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he’s obviously having the same problem as you, but being more closely watched so he doesn’t snatch some woman up and haul her away as if he were a stray dog and she was just a scrap of meat.”
“What woman?”
“I don’t know, and specifics don’t matter. Where are you?”
“That doesn’t matter, either. I have a problem.”
“Obviously, you have a problem. Actually, two problems. The first is named Dana Slade-O’Dwyer. You snatched her receptionist. You know how she is about her girls.”
“Yes, I’m certain she’ll try to castrate me at her earliest convenience.”
“With no anesthetic. And you’d deserve every second of the pain. You probably already know the second problem.”
“Bryan.”
“That’s right. What were you thinking?”
“Andrea’s my mate.”
“And?”
“And I did what I had to do.”
“You may believe that, and I’m not going to argue with you. I had a long night and am lacking my usual patience.”
Peter scoffed. “Patient” wouldn’t have been one of the traits he ascribed to the man.
“Obviously, you’re not calling to inform me of your whereabouts, so what’s wrong? Did you stumble into some county where you have an outstanding warrant out for your arrest?”
“Whatever. I don’t have any warrants right now.” As far as Peter knew, anyway. Keeping track was hard sometimes. “I called you because there’s something wrong with Andrea.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Tell me you’ll be discreet—that you won’t call anyone and say anything.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Promise me first.”
“You don’t trust me?”
Peter scoffed again. “I learned most of what I know from you.”
“So no.”
“Tell me you won’t talk.”
“Fine. I won’t call anyone or say anything.”
“Not even to Mama.”
“Is the circumstance that dire?”
“Possibly. I don’t know.” Peter walked to the coffee table in front of the sofa and sat on the edge.
Andrea had turned her head ever so slightly.
“Tell me,” Father said. “What is wrong?”
“I can’t wake her.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing!” Peter shouted.
Not even a flinch from Andrea. She should have heard—should have moved. Her nose might have been bad, but her ears worked just fine. He leaned forward and pressed a hand to her cheek. Warm, at least.
“When did she fall asleep?” Father asked.
“Around eleven last night, I suppose. I wasn’t keeping track.”
“Did you see her fall asleep?”
“Yes. I was…beside her.”
“Uh-huh.”
Peter would have had to have been deaf to have missed his father’s incredulous tone.
“Or under her. Whatever. Geography doesn’t matter. But she was crying, and I don’t know why.”
“I could think of some reasons.”
“I swear she wasn’t afraid. No more than she usually is, anyway. She’s not fighting me.”
“No?”
“No. Why do you sound so skeptical?”
“I’m just making sure. I mean, you’ve never had issues before with getting women to say yes, but obviously this one has created some troubles for you.”
“No, this woman has not created troubles for me. Tamara a
nd Bryan have. They’re in my way.”
“I’m not sure they shouldn’t be.”
“Easy for you to cast aspersions from afar when you’re the one who raised me to be who I am.”
Father growled. “Look, I’m not saying there’s no potential in the match. I’m just saying that perhaps she needed more time.”
“More time for what? And all this talking isn’t helping with my current problem. I called you for help, not a lecture.”
“Fine. I’ll talk faster, then. She needed more time to figure out on her own she wasn’t going to do any better than you.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Quiet. I’m speaking.”
Peter suppressed a snarl.
“You think your mother came gently to me? No. She and I both knew us being together was inevitable, but she hated everything about me. She couldn’t stand being around me at first.”
“That’s not a problem I have.”
“Even so. Later on, that initial reluctance made our bond even stronger because we waited and we understood what we were both bringing to the table. Do you know what you’re bringing?”
Peter gave his hair a frustrated tug. “What does any of this have to do with Andrea’s condition?”
“Nothing. The story was one I simply needed to tell while I had the chance. Now I’ve said my piece, so fine. Tell me specifically what’s wrong with her.”
About fucking time. “She won’t move. She’s not responding to sound or touch.”
“Is her skin cold or warm?”
“Warm.”
“Can you communicate with her telepathically? Sometimes, the beast is awake even when the person isn’t.”
“I can, but I haven’t tried since she went to sleep. Hold on.” Peter pulled the phone away from his ear and leaned down to skim his fingers along her jaw. “Are you awake?” He danced his fingertips over the shell of her ear gave the lobe a gentle tug. “Can you hear me, sweetheart?”
Nothing. Even her scent was fading.
Shit.
He put the phone back to his ear. “No response.”
Father grunted.
“That’s all you have? A grunt?”
“I’m thinking. Calm yourself, boy.”
“What can I do to fix her? Did I do something wrong? Is she just—”
“No need to jump to any rash conclusions, Peter. I don’t think her condition has to do with you. At least, not directly.”