by T. S. Joyce
The man’s eyes narrowed, and he swung his attention to Jesse. “Since you took it upon yourself to lead her into my camp, without my consent or knowledge, she’s your responsibility.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and tightened one side around Rae Lynn’s wrist.
“I like where this is going,” Jesse joked.
Ethan gritted his teeth and yanked Jesse’s arm, then closed the other side of the handcuffs to his wrist. “I’ll give you the keys when I can trust she won’t run away again.” Turning on his heel, the alpha strode off toward a blond-haired woman who was holding Samuel.
“Wait,” Jesse called out as he frowned at their joined wrists. “Are you serious? I’m still on the job. How am I supposed to work with her attached to me?”
“You picked her. You figure it out.”
“No, no, no. I didn’t pick her. I just—Ethan!”
The alpha disappeared into a log cabin at the end of a row of homes. The sign over the door read Ranger Station Office, and the woman holding Samuel followed him inside.
Rae Lynn tried to slide her hand out of the manacle, but Ethan had secured it too tightly for escape. Devastated, she dragged her eyes up Jesse’s chest to the injury across his shoulder. It looked like it wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was still raw-looking and open.
Her attention dropped between his thighs again, and she jerked her gaze away, embarrassed. “Can you put some clothes on before you drag me to whatever job you have to do?”
“Huh?” Jesse dropped his eyes to his unclothed body and nodded once. “Oh, yeah. Come on. My house is the third from the end.”
The man didn’t even cover his dick with his hand as he walked with confident strides to his house. She had to jog to keep up, averting her eyes from his swinging shaft. She wasn’t so comfortable with her own body. She even avoided mirrors when she was changing in her apartment. She couldn’t even imagine waltzing around this place naked as the day she was born and not feeling utterly humiliated.
Jesse, on the other hand, waved to a couple of women walking toward the ranger office. “You going to Reese’s party tomorrow night?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” one of them replied with a grin. They waved back, as if his bare body wasn’t on display, and continued talking quietly amongst themselves.
“Are you all so comfortable with nudity?” she asked, her curiosity too much to stay quiet any longer.
“Yes,” was his only response, and she got the distinct feeling she wouldn’t get much out of him about his people.
He didn’t trust her, and looking around at the small existence these people had carved out for themselves, it made sense. They didn’t have much, but they seemed to have each other, and she could put them all in danger.
A woman drew in a sketchbook as a small child played on a playground near the last house. Two men laughed comfortably as they disappeared down a thin trail in the tree line. At the end of the cabins, Ethan emerged from the office, only to turn around and give the blond-haired woman behind him a lingering kiss.
Embarrassed at witnessing their private, intimate moment, she turned away and bit her bottom lip. She’d give her knees for a man to kiss her like Ethan was kissing his woman.
She could only imagine what humans would do to these people if they found out. Maybe they’d annihilate the bear people completely, or maybe they’d do experiments on them. Maybe they’d use them as weapons for some covert government agency. Her gaze slid to the little boy on the swing set, and sadness washed over her. She was angry that she was being forced to stay here, and scared as hell, but could she really blame them for being overly cautious?
It seemed like Ethan and Jesse had a lot to protect.
Jesse cleared his throat as he opened the heavy wooden door to his home. He watched her as if he was gauging her reaction, and for some reason, his scrutiny made her self-conscious. He was powerful and different, and with every breath, his rigid muscles flexed. His moss-colored eyes seemed to miss nothing, and under his dry wit was obvious intelligence. And that hair. God, she wanted to touch it. He looked like some wild Viking, all scarred and fierce-looking, and here he was, a stranger, watching her as if her first impression of his home mattered.
Jesse seemed to be many things—man, bear, brawler—but above all of that, he scared her in ways she hadn’t been scared by a man before. She shouldn’t feel safe in the care of a bear shifter who was holding her here.
Jesse was clouding her escape plans.
His home was small but tidy. The living room opened up to the kitchen, and a rustic table sat in a small breakfast nook. A door on the longest wall of the living room was open, and though it was dark inside, she ventured a guess that was the bedroom Jesse slept in. Arching her neck back, she studied a ladder that led up to a loft above. She could make out the edge of an unmade bed, red and blue quilt hanging over the side.
“Who sleeps there?” she asked.
Jesse blinked slowly, and when he opened his eyes again, it was obvious he’d shut down. “This way,” he murmured in a low rumble that sent chills up her arms.
Sidling a plush armchair, she followed Jesse into the dark room off the living room. She’d been right. When he flipped the light switch, a small bedroom with a neatly made bed greeted her.
“You’re very clean,” she observed.
“I like my den organized,” he muttered, then gripped her hand like he’d known her for years and pulled her toward a dresser. “You need better shoes than those.” He pointed to the red wedges she’d pulled back on. She’d nearly rolled her ankle three times on the hike back, but she was determined not to complain anymore. Jesse didn’t seem the type of man to have patience for complaints.
“Well, if you’d like to track down Shay with my car, I have a pair of tennis shoes in the bag I packed. Otherwise, this is all I’ve got.”
He made a single clicking noise with his tongue and reached into a small closet, then pulled out a pair of sturdy-looking hiking boots. “Try these on.”
“You keep woman’s shoes in your closet?”
He offered her another dead look, and her heart fell. Right. He probably had a girlfriend or wife or bed buddy. Oh, stop it! He was a bear person, and no matter what he looked like, or how firm his abs were, or how attractive the strips of muscle over his hips were, or how powerful his legs looked, or how soft his hair probably felt, or how sexy his mouth was when it was all serious and downturned like that…she couldn’t afford to grow an inconvenient crush now. It was weird, and maybe wrong, to be attracted to a bear shifter.
Wasn’t it?
And even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t ever make a move on another woman’s man…er…bear. She had more class than that.
She slid her skinny jean-clad legs into the mid-calf boots and laced them up. They were a little big, but better than too small. She peered at herself in a full-length mirror leaning against the wall. As far as shoes went, they weren’t awful. She wouldn’t have chosen to wear tight-fitting jeans like this with them since they accentuated her shorter legs and curvy hips even more, but beggars and choosers and all.
The jingle and slight pull of the handcuffs drew her attention away from her reflection, and when she looked up, Jesse had a sexy smirk on his lips.
“What?”
His eyebrows hitched up. “Nothing at all.” But the smile remained in his words.
“Spill it, manimal.”
A surprised sounding chuckle burst from him, and he shook his head. “You’re a sassy little thing.”
“Were you laughing at my shoes? You were the one who gave them to me.”
His eyes danced as he raked his gaze down the length of her body. “I like the boots much better than your other shoes.”
Rae Lynn narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe that at all. Men like women with long legs, and these bad boys make me look like I’ve got no ankles at all.”
“That’s not the way I see you.”
Her breath froze as the smile fell away from
her face. “How do you see me?” His answer scared her. He could hurt her, and she’d opened herself right up to the pain. If he damned her body now, she’d only have herself to blame for the insecurity that would follow.
He twitched his chin to the mirror. “You want my first impression?” Angling her body, he stood behind her and stared at her reflection.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Beautiful. Curves like a woman should have, the kind that would make a man worship you in bed. Hair just the right length, just the right color. Classy. You seem like a woman who takes care of herself and her appearance.”
She was growing drunk on his soft words, as if he were putting her in a trance. Maybe this was a power he possessed because of what he was. “I’m short,” she argued half-heartedly.
“Makes me…makes men want to protect you. And more important than your looks, you dove for that car when you thought Shay would hurt that little baby in the back seat, no matter the risk to yourself. That’s admirable.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “But that’s just my first impression. You stabbed me after that, and it’s all been downhill from there.”
Jesse laughed and ducked out of the way of her swat. She didn’t want to encourage him, but he made her want to laugh. In fact, his sense of humor and his ability to lighten the mood had her more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. Which was insane, because she’d just found out an hour ago that werebears existed.
“You probably say that stuff to all the ladies.” A man who looked like him wouldn’t have any problem in the women department.
“Not so,” he said as he pulled a pair of forest green cargo pants off a hanger in his closet. “You’re the first one to ever stab me in the back, literally speaking. I don’t think I’ll ever forget you, Rae.”
Even if he was teasing, she liked the way he said her shortened name like that. She’d always thought the name mannish and used to give her mother grief for naming her after her great grandfather. When Jesse said it though, it sounded like the prettiest name in the world.
“Jesse?”
“Yeah?”
“Were you born like this?”
He shoved his foot into a boot that looked like a bigger version of what she was wearing, then sighed. “My parents were both bear shifters, and I turned for the first time when I was four. I’ve always been like this. Does that make you think less of me?”
She shook her head and wanted to cry with the words she would admit to him. Words she hadn’t said out loud since she’d let her ex-boyfriend go. “I’m different, too.”
He frowned and opened his mouth like he was going to ask her a question, but a great pounding at the door rattled the cabin.
“What?” Jesse yelled.
“We’ve got two missing hikers,” came a muffled reply through the door. “Teenagers. Their parents just called it in. They were due back midday and never showed.”
“Shit,” he muttered, rushing to tie his boots. “We’ll be right there.”
Rae knelt down so she could loosen the strain of the handcuffs for him, and when he stood, he grabbed her hand like he’d done earlier, then led her back through the living room.
“What about your shirt?” Because if he didn’t put the damned thing on, her ovaries were going to explode.
“I can’t get the sleeve over the cuffs. Sorry, princess. You’ll have to suffer until Ethan decides to give us the keys.”
The word suffer was funny when used for his perfectly sculpted torso, but on the other hand, he was causing a whole lot of inconvenient stirrings between her thighs. A shirtless Jesse made her want to simultaneously run away and rub up against his leg like an attention-deprived kitty. She’d have to try real hard to look at anything other than his perfectly rippling abs and the impressive bulge he was currently buttoning into his pants.
Jogging behind Jesse toward a big tent in front of the cabins, Rae looked longingly at the road she’d almost escaped on. She had a real life to get back to. One where she needed to call the police on Shay for stealing her car, and one that didn’t involve an off-limits sexy werebear who was shooting warm tendrils into her stomach as he intertwined his fingers with hers. Sure, he was probably just trying to lessen the strain of the handcuffs, but she hadn’t held hands with a man since her ex, Matt, and even then, it hadn’t made her feel all tingly inside like this.
This must be another bear shifter power. All of the males probably had the ability to seduce a woman with a glance or a touch so they could get what they wanted—whatever that was.
“What trail?” Jesse asked as he pulled back the heavy looking canvas tent flap.
Ethan looked up from a huge map laid across a scuffed table. Red pins were pushed into it by a winding line. “They headed up the bank of Snake River and were only supposed to go a couple of miles and turn back. Tarran and Reese are already up there looking, but I need all eyes we can spare in the woods right now. I have Landon at the tower, and he’ll be coordinating grids, but you and I need to be out there now.”
“And what do I say when I find them and I’m still handcuffed to Rae?”
Ethan’s bright, inhuman eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t give a fuck what you tell them. Kinky game, cops and robbers, whatever. I can’t afford for her to escape out there in the chaos.”
“I have a name. It’s Rae, and I swear I won’t run away. I can help look for the missing hikers.”
“Oh, you’re going to help,” Ethan growled out. “You’re going to see exactly what we do, and how we live, and how little a danger we pose to the unsuspecting humans around us. Because if I choose to let you go, it’ll be because you know exactly how many lives you carry in your hands and because I trust you. And if I don’t feel like I can ever trust you, I’ll have you turned into one of us.”
“Hey, man, that’s enough,” Jesse said low. “She doesn’t need to be turned. We’ll stay handcuffed. Just ease up. We’ll take this area right here. I’ve got my radio on if you need us, and we’ll stay in contact with Landon. We’ll find them, Ethan. It won’t be like last time.”
“Jesse?” Rae asked as he pulled her toward his truck. “What happened last time?”
He helped her onto the bench seat of an old Ford that was so jacked up, she had trouble climbing up into it. Jesse slammed the door beside him and yanked her hand toward him to turn over the engine.
Rae’s heart was pounding as she imagined a couple of scared kids out at night in the woods. Already, the stars were twinkling above them, and someone was lighting lanterns in front of the row of cabins.
“What happened last time?” she asked louder when he jammed the gas and skidded onto a dirt road at the tree line.
“Ethan isn’t a bad guy, Rae. He has a lot to shoulder. He has to keep his clan safe, and he has to keep the people visiting Hells Canyon safe, too. All while trying to control his animal. He’s special—a Cress alpha. He’s strong, or he wouldn’t be able to run this place. Not with Bear inside of him, but he hates intruders, and that lion showing up in his territory today is setting him off. He has a lot to lose. And right now, he doesn’t have a second to help him maintain control. He only has his mate.”
“Second. You mean like a second in command?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Why aren’t you his second? He seems to depend on you.”
His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply and took a sharp turn around a rotten tree stump. “I’m trying, but it’s not that simple. I have to fight a lot, and my bear isn’t as dominant as some of the other challengers. It’s prolonging everything.”
“You didn’t answer my first question,” she said softly.
“Last time a hiker was lost, he died, and it shredded Ethan. He was out all night, unprepared, and we didn’t get to him in time. He fell down a ravine and Ethan found him. We aren’t killers, Rae. We’re protective of humans, especially the ones we feel responsible for—the ones in our territory.”
Burning tears stung Rae’s eyes, and she b
linked hard, then looked out the window. The moonlight was bright enough for her to make out the passing spruce, firs, and pines in a blur of dark green. What an awful way to die, scared and alone. She was mad at how Ethan talked to her, but how much of his soul had he given up to shoulder those kinds of burdens?
“I’m sorry.”
Jesse clenched his jaw and released her hand between them. “It’s not your problem.”
And just like that, he’d pushed her away. Reminded her she was an outsider. She’d only been here a little while, but something about this place had called to her, and Jesse was making sure she didn’t get too comfortable here beside him.
She was human—other—and he was bear.
The revelation about their utterly different worlds made her clench her hands against the disappointment.
Chapter Four
Jesse pulled a handheld radio out of the sling of a utility belt slung low around his waist. “What are their names?” he asked into it.
“Braylan and Courtney,” came a masculine voice on the other end. “They are brother and sister. The girl is fourteen and the brother seventeen.”
“Thanks, Landon. C’mon,” he said, pulling gently on the handcuffs.
Jesse had parked beside a black mustang that probably belonged to the teenagers. The road was a dead-end as far as Rae could tell.
“I’ve never been in the woods at night before,” she admitted. Damn her voice as it shook. She was nervous for the kids and scared of the dark, too, and the result was sweaty palms and trembling.
“You’ll be fine.” He lifted their manacled hands and gave her the ghost of a smile. “I swore not to let anything hurt you, remember?”
Right. She should definitely feel safer in the woods with someone who had turned into a freaking bear.
“I sure wish I had my multi-tool with me right now,” she gritted out as she slid out of the giant truck.
“I don’t,” he deadpanned, then adjusted a hat he’d had on his dash and pulled it over her head.
With a click, a pair of flashlights in the bill turned on. She angled her chin toward the forest floor, amazed that she could see again thanks to the convenient beams of light.