Deacon’s twin was standing off to one side, looking bored; evidently, he’d seen so many teenage girls losing their shit over his bear of a brother that it had lost all meaning to him. Meanwhile, the boy I’d been crushing on for the better part of six months had finished shifting from human to animal, and the beast trudged towards me, his gaze fixed intently on my torso.
Strangely, the most disconcerting part of the whole experience was not the boy-turned-werebear steadily making his way to his next meal. That honor went to the bear’s eyes. I couldn’t get past the fact that his eyes looked just like Deacon’s.
It—he—whatever it was—snarled and snapped his jaws at me, and that jarring sound forced me out of my stunned daze and threw me back into reality. The reality in which I was about to be eaten by a bear shifter if I didn’t stop twiddling my thumbs and figure out a way to get the hell out of there.
I inched backwards, trying to discretely put as much distance between me and Deacon as I possibly could, but he wasn’t having any of that. His front legs—paws. Jesus, I was never going to be able to wrap my head around this—dug into the ground, and with a low growl, he pounced.
And I yanked three bobby pins out of my hair and threw them into his gaping mouth.
But I hadn’t moved far enough away, because Deacon the bear wound up crashing into me. We tumbled to the ground, him choking and trying to cough up the pins, and me trying not to get crushed by the immense weight resting on my chest. His paws scratched my dress as he attempted to regain his bearings, but I ignored that. His teeth were dangerously close to my shoulder, but I ignored that too.
Instead, I focused on putting all my weight behind me as I shoved the still-sputtering Deacon off of me—and it worked.
He flipped over me, moaning in pain, and I scrambled to my feet; the last thing I needed was for him to come back and smother me while I was lying on the ground, too dazed to move. Over by his perch against a tree, Deacon’s twin had straightened. His eyes were wide with shock, and if the situation hadn’t been so absurd, I’d have been kicking myself for not realizing that he wasn’t Deacon earlier in the night—his eyes were a pale shade of blue, and at that moment, he looked far too weary for a boy his age.
Behind me, Deacon whimpered again, and I took that as my cue to stop dawdling. With one last glance at the brother, I ran into the shrubbery behind me. I didn’t care that I had no idea where I was or that I hadn’t the first clue how to get back home. As long as I was heading away from Deacon, I was moving in the right direction.
From a distance, I heard a male voice yelling, “Deek, shift back! Shift back, and I’ll drive you to the hospital.” A low growl sounded and then, “Don’t be so fucking stubborn, just shift back. I don’t want to have to tell Dad that you died on me because you were too proud to go to a hospital.”
I had to admit that a tiny, insignificant part of me was curious. What kind of messed up family situation was that? One son was a homicidal shifter, another son was his personal enabler, and their dad was in on the whole thing? As far as I knew, there hadn’t been any reports about an increase in bear attacks in the area. And there weren’t any strange rumors about people shifting into animals before their eyes. How had they managed to keep it a secret for so long?
My thoughts chased each other around in circles, with no end—or answers—in sight. Before my curiosity got the better of me, though, a stray branch whipped me across the stomach, right where one of Deacon’s scratches had landed. Hissing in pain, I shoved the branch away and bent to make sure the damage hadn’t gotten worse. Something glistened near one of the tears in my dress, and I wiped it away, expecting the stickiness of sap.
I could feel my heartbeat in my eyes when my hand came away tinged with blood.
A car horn blared from a nearby street, and instead of being pissed at the driver for being noisy in a quiet neighborhood, I blessed his horn-loving soul and took off in that direction. Sooner than anticipated, I stumbled onto a sidewalk—one that I recognized as being two blocks away from school—and I rushed to the nearest streetlight. When the dull orange glow hit my skin, I blinked once, and then twice more. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Scratches. All over my abdomen. And not one of the cuts was superficial. Each wound was still—or had just stopped—bleeding. There were wounds on my arm that looked like bite marks, but I couldn’t remember being bitten. I’d been preoccupied, but I would have noticed a bear biting me—nipping me, even. Wouldn’t I?
A random thought popped into my head, and I had to clap my hands over my mouth to keep from crying out in horror.
Was I going to turn into a bear, too?
As I found out a week later, the answer to that question was yes.
***
“Sierra!”
His voice pulled me out of the extended trip back to my less-than-pleasant past, and a goofy smile curved my lips. It was just like him to save me from myself—even when he had no idea he was doing it.
Pausing a block away from my dorm, I turned to find a familiar face jogging up the sidewalk. His dark blonde hair was as shaggy as ever, and apparently he’d been too lazy to shave that morning, since his jawline was peppered with stubble. His jeans were faded in all the right places, and what should have been a ratty sweatshirt wound up looking like it had been tailored to fit him. He was grinning at me, and it struck me that it hadn’t changed one bit since the first time I saw him. It still had that edge of danger, and while I knew exactly how dangerous he was capable of being, I also knew for a fact that he’d never bear his fangs at me—metaphorically, of course.
“Hey, Dex,” I said, my smile warm and my arms open. He walked right into them, and a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding slipped away. “I didn’t think I’d see you tonight.”
Dexter Myers—yes, the same one—buried his face in the curve between my neck and my shoulder, and my fingers tightened in his hair. “I got done early,” he mumbled. His lips moved against my skin, and with every word, my pulse spiked higher and higher. “You weren’t at that douche’s party, so I figured you’d be at home.” He pulled away, head tilting just far enough for me to catch his amused smirk. “Apparently, Tate is very taken with this girl who had the balls to tell him that his party blew and his beer was godawful.”
“Oh, good,” I deadpanned. Moving to Dexter’s side, I looped my arm through his and started walking again. “If he ever sees her again, someone should tell him to be careful. I hear she has this tendency to claw people’s eyes out.”
Dex grinned wide, leaning over to kiss the top of my head. “It’s adorable that you think you’ll ever be that violent.”
“Hey!” Slapping his shoulder, I sent him a mock frown. “Maybe I have hidden depths.”
“Sure you do.” He patted my hand, snorting with laughter when I pretended to bite him. His smile faded as he asked, “What were you thinking about back there?” I shot him a startled look and he added, “I called out to you a couple of times, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t hear me.”
“No, I don’t think I did,” I murmured. My face felt warm. It had been years since I’d ignored Dex—intentionally or by accident. I didn’t like the fact that I’d done it again after so long; it reminded me of unhappier times. Chewing on my bottom lip, I said, “I’m really sorry. You know I’d never—”
“I do know you’d never,” he interjected, gently pulling my lip out from between my teeth. He stroked the injured skin with his thumb, and my eyes flew up to meet his. His unblinking stare was trained on my lips, and being the focus of that much concentrated intensity sent tiny sparks of electricity up my spine. We stood there for a long minute, unmoving and silent, and for one crazy second, I was sure that I’d die happy if we could stay that way until the end of time.
Then a car alarm went off and shattered our magical bubble into nothing.
Dex brought his arm to his side, and I blinked rapidly, willing myself to remember why things were the way that they were. There were reason
s—good reasons, even though I hated every single one of them—for Dex and I to continue being just friends, even though the universe and its mother knew we’d be explosive together. I just needed to remember what they were, and I’d be fine. Back to normal.
I grimaced as my heart rate slowed down again. Normal was the worst.
Dex held his arm out for me, and once I took it, we resumed our walk back to my dorm. His steps seemed off-kilter somehow, like he was forcing himself to stick to a certain pace. My neck felt unnaturally stiff, and the awkwardness in the air between us was making my hackles rise.
Before I could say—or do—something that couldn’t be taken back, Dex cleared his throat and said, “So. Back there.” He cocked his head in the direction we’d come from. “What were you thinking about so much that you were lost to the world for a while?”
I bit back a smile and shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Just recalling the first time we met.”
Predictably, Dex’s expression shuttered. “Any particular reason you were feeling morbidly nostalgic tonight?” he asked, trying and failing to come across as nonchalant.
“Yeah, actually.” When I didn’t immediately elaborate, he quirked a curious brow at me and nudged me with his elbow. Sighing, I crossed my fingers behind my back in the hope that he’d understand, and then blurted out, “I thought I heard a bear—you know, our kind of bear, not an actual bear—and I’ve been searching for bear shifters for so long now, and every single time I’ve come up empty, and I really thought college would be different, but it hasn’t been, and I know you told me not to go looking for them, but I have to, Dex, I just have to find one—you know, someone like me.”
Slightly out of breath, I looked up at him, willing him to see it from my point of view. His frost blue eyes gave nothing away, and when he finally spoke, he didn’t touch the topic of my rant. “So thinking about bears had you reminiscing about the time you got turned into one, huh?”
“Yeah.” I dug my fingers into his arm and pulled him to a stop. His brow creased in bemusement, and I asked, “You do get why I’m doing this, right?”
His gaze was fixed at some point in the distance, and almost absently, he responded, “Yeah, Sierra. I get it.” A sad smile pulled at his lips as he went on, “You want to belong. And you probably could, if you managed to find one of your own. Preferably someone who doesn’t resemble the homicidal maniac who tried to eat you,” he added, with a sardonic grin.
Frowning, I tried to get a better read on what Dex was feeling. He was saying all the right things, but something about the way he said it—I couldn’t tell if it was his words or his tone of voice or his lack of expression, but something wasn’t right.
“Dex,” I whispered, placing my hand on his sandpapery jaw. “Is everything okay?”
In response, he leaned into my touch and cupped his palm around my fingers. He threaded his other hand in my hair, and his voice soft, he posed a question of his own. “Why don’t you hate me?”
I blinked—I wasn’t expecting that. “Why would I hate you?”
“Because,” he snapped, dragging my hand away from his face. “I look exactly like him. I sound exactly like him. And worst of all,” he grimaced, shaking his head, “I’m the reason you’re here trying to find other bear shifters, instead of being at Columbia or Stanford, with people who challenge you intellectually, with people just as incredible as you are.” His hands fell away from me, and for a brief moment, it felt like he’d taken my heart with him. Looking lost, he stated, “You shouldn’t be here, Sierra. And you should hate me for being the one to put you here.”
I took a deep, calming breath; slapping him would accomplish nothing. “Are you done?” I demanded through gritted teeth. “Or are there more things you’d like to take responsibility for, even though very little of what happened that night was under your control?”
Dex looked unmoved. “I could have said no. I could have told Deacon to go to hell and find someone to eat down there,” he shot back, ticking each point off with his fingers. “I could have told you the truth from the get-go. I could have made him stop eating human beings!”
He was yelling by the end, and hurriedly, I stepped close to him and touched his forehead to mine. “Dexter Myers,” I admonished, my voice whisper-soft. “You couldn’t have done any of those things, and you know it.”
“But—”
Placing my palm against his mouth, I cut him off, saying, “But nothing. You know as well as I do that if you had tried any of those things, Deacon would have killed you and your father wouldn’t have stopped him.” His palm cupped the back of my neck, and our foreheads pressed together hard enough to bruise; neither of us moved. “And given the choice,” I went on, sliding my hand from his lips to his hair. “You picked your own life over the life of a girl you didn’t know.”
“Sierra,” he rasped, squeezing his eyes shut. “That doesn’t make any of it okay.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. My fingers stroked the soft hairs at the nape of his neck, and involuntarily, I moved even closer to him, until there was barely any space left between our bodies. “But what you did after—that made up for everything.”
His eyes flew open, and despite how perplexed he looked, I held his stare unflinchingly, forcing him to see that I wasn’t lying to him. “I didn’t do that much,” he protested, but it sounded weak.
With a small smile, I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “It meant the world to me then,” I admitted, inhaling the woodsy scent that I’d discovered was unique to Dex. “It means the world to me now, too.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice strangled.
I draped my free arm around his shoulder and pulled him into me; soon there would be less than a millimeter between us, and it would still be too big a gap. “You’re here,” I replied, suppressing a shudder when his hand fell to my hip. “You’ve always been right here, no matter where I went or how weird I was being. You stayed with me the whole time.”
His fingers dug into my scalp and my hip, the pressure making my back arch. The sensation of him against me, around me—just pure Dex everywhere—was starting to become too much, and with no small effort, I dragged myself back to reality just in time to catch Dex wondering aloud, “What if I was doing all of this out of guilt?”
It was like a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped over my head.
Yanking myself out of his grip, I glared up at him. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t thought the same thing hundreds of times since he’d first shown up at my doorstep, sheepish and slightly terrified, one week after the night of junior prom. Through all the lessons he’d given me on shifter lore and all the help he’d provided when I’d felt myself losing control of my body and my mind, I hadn’t once forgotten who he was and what he’d done to me. I’d appreciated every midnight text checking in to see if I was okay and all the hunts he’d accompanied me on—animal hunts, not human hunts—but I’d never accepted his endless apologies nor had I ever trusted him.
At least, not until the week before I’d left home for college.
***
I’d been pretty successful at avoiding Deacon—primarily because he transferred to a different school after junior prom—and I’d gotten far less jumpy over the months, thanks to Dexter’s insane—but apparently helpful—training exercises. Which was why shrieking like a bat out of hell when I ran into Deacon on the way back from a grocery run had been both irksome and embarrassing.
“Whoa, calm down,” he’d drawled, raising his hands in the air. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Asshole. “Tell me what you want and then get the hell out of my neighborhood.”
He’d grinned at me, that same one that I’d thought was so lovely all through junior year. Why hadn’t I seen the depravity, too? “What I want,” he’d replied, giving me this look like it should have been obvious, “is to know how my baby brother Dex is doing.”
“What?” That had stumped me. Why wouldn’t he know the answer to that? �
��I have no idea.”
Deacon had peered at me then, as if searching for the lie in my response. Finally, he’d straightened. “No, I guess you don’t. Would you like me to fill in some blanks for you?”
“Will that get you out of here faster?” I’d snapped, which he’d clearly taken as an affirmative because that had been when he’d turned my world around—again.
“See, Dex has been acting really strange for a while now,” he’d revealed. “He doesn’t help me with my kills, he doesn’t give a shit how much Dad threatens to make a coat out of his skin—yeah, don’t ask me why, but Dad would love to have a rug made out of human skin,” he’d added at my horrified gasp. “Anyway,” he’d continued, “The weirdest thing is, it kinda seems like Dex is trying to get Dad or me—or maybe both of us—nice and riled up, so we’ll lose our shit, shift, and then cut him.” He’d given me a meaningful look, but I hadn’t the first clue what he’d expected me to deduce. Well, except that he and his father were batshit crazy. With an exasperated sigh, Deacon had stated bluntly, “Dex is trying to get one of us to turn him. Do you have any idea why he might be doing that?”
I’d been stunned into silence. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Dexter about being lonely or tired of having a secret that nobody would ever understand, but was it possible that he’d picked up on it somehow? Why else would he want to be turned into a shifter?
Something in my expression had probably given me away, because Deacon had crowed with joy. “Oh, you know the answer to that one! Feel like sharing with the class?”
“No,” I’d shot back, my voice flat. “You’ve said what you wanted to. Now please, fuck off and die.”
He’d waved me off. “Sure, whatever. Listen, if you ever feel like hurting him,” he’d said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Like really hurting him, just tell him that he’ll never be a shifter.” At my confused frown, he’d elaborated, “I’ve scratched him so many times, and I think I’ve even gotten a few good bites in. So has Dad. But Dex is still fully human.” He’d grinned at me, like we were partners in crime, and I’d wanted to throw up. “Dad and me, we don’t know what it is, but something in his blood probably makes him immune. Tell him that,” he’d snapped his fingers while saying, “and he’s done.”
Interracial Romance: Gay Romance: Bound By His Own Desires (MMM Endowed Black Men Bondage Threesome Romance) (A Billionaire's Freedom Book 3) Page 119