The Shifter's Embrace

by Selena Scott

  Jean Luc was pretty sure that there was nothing going on between Tre and Celia the whole time they’d been in Michigan. They were friendly, but not flirty. But things changed. People changed. Circumstances changed.

  Had something happened last night between them? Had he slept like a giant dope in the other bed while something had changed between them? It mortified him to think that maybe they’d kissed or touched while he’d sawn logs in the other bed. Damn! He should never have fallen asleep that quickly. If he hadn’t been so tired he would have realized that at least one girl was going to sleep in that room and that he’d been hogging an entire bed. If he’d been awake when they came in, he could have slept on his side, taken up less space, at least given Celia a choice about where she was going to sleep.

  He took the bar of soap and scrubbed it over his short hair and over his face, working it into his beard. He scrubbed at every bit of his skin. He felt like such an ass. It had been really rude for him to fall asleep like that. What if she’d been uncomfortable with the sleeping arrangements last night and it had been all his fault?

  Or what if she’d been thrilled with the sleeping arrangements last night and that had been all his fault, too?

  Jean Luc suddenly couldn’t decide which alternative was worse and that confused the heck out of him. He liked Celia. She was bite-sized and interesting to look at and funny and smart. He thought she was an interesting mix of spunky and shy. But he wasn’t interested in her. He just liked being around her.

  Jack and Thea had already gotten together, in what seemed like a pretty permanent way. He figured that the idea of Celia and Tre together made him feel sick because he didn’t like the idea of the group pairing off. There was an odd number of people. Yeah. That was it. They shouldn’t pair off because somebody was gonna get left out.

  Jean Luc did one last rinse and stepped out of the shower, scrubbing himself down with the towel as aggressively as he had with the soap. He realized he hadn’t thought to bring any clothes in with him so he just slapped the towel around his waist. He almost hesitated going back out into the main room. God forbid he… interrupt anything.

  The thought made his stomach turn. But he couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever. He settled on rattling the door handle around for a second so if they were in flagrante delicto they’d have an extra half second or so to get decent.

  He stepped out into the main room and saw, to his immense, sweeping relief, that Tre wasn’t in bed at all. He was standing at the window, pulling back the drapes and peering out, one hand scratching at his belly.

  “Hey, man,” Tre said in a lowered voice. One glance told Jean Luc that Celia was still sleeping.

  Tre watched Jean Luc stride over to his bag and zip it open.

  “Whoa,” Tre said, dropping into the swivel chair at the desk/TV stand in the corner. His eyes stayed on Jean Luc. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”

  Jean Luc sighed. Of course Tre would know that he was over here all mortified and mad and uncomfortable. He and Tre and Jack were all psychically in tune with each other’s emotions. Yet another lovely side effect of that fateful night in Northern Michigan. Another gift from Arturo. And now Jean Luc couldn’t keep a lid on his feelings and Tre was reading them loud and clear. Just like Jean Luc was reading Tre’s confusion loud and clear.

  Jean Luc cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just wanna get on the road is all.”

  “Yeah. Okay. You’re lying.”

  Jean Luc snapped his head up to stare at Tre and Tre immediately lifted his hands palms out. He was a smart guy and he knew better than to rile up a 260-pound former professional athlete who was currently bubbling like a pot about to boil over. But still. It had to be said. They were all still figuring out how this connection between the three of them actually worked and Tre wanted to be clear on the fact that he could tell Jean Luc was lying.

  “I’m not saying you have to tell me why you’re lying. I just wanted you to know that I could sense it, alright?”

  A little of the steel went out of Jean Luc’s glare. He opened his mouth to reply, but across the room Celia hummed a little bit, coming out of sleep. She sat up, her silver hair sticking up in a hundred directions. The sheets fell away from her shoulders and pooled at her hips. She’d worn a tank top to sleep in and though it was covering all the essentials, her essentials were doing their best to break free and live their best lives. Even in the dim morning light, Jean Luc could see the dark shadow of her deep cleavage. His eyes couldn’t help but be drawn.

  “Oh,” Tre said, like something had just started to make sense to him. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Morning, C.”

  “Morning,” she yawned, turning her back to the men and slipping out of bed. “Everybody sleep okay?”

  Jean Luc saw that she wore what looked like a pair of men’s boxers on her bottom half, though they were tight around her peachy ass in a way that made them anything but mannish. He frowned. Hard. Tre had been shirtless and she’d been wearing a Kleenex for a shirt and some dude’s boxers? He forced his jaw to unclench before he loosened his molars.

  Tre’s eyes bounced back and forth between them almost gleefully. Jean Luc’s hard glare at her back, her pink cheeks as she rummaged through her bag for another layer to quickly put on. Yeah, things were definitely clicking into place for Tre. So why not stir the pot a little? He’d always had just a touch of bastard in him.

  “Best night of sleep I’ve had in a very long time,” Tre said, barely able to contain the shit-eating grin on his face.

  Jean Luc turned to him, glacier-slow, and the look on the big man’s face could have frozen the Sahara. Tre could feel the fury seeping off of Jean Luc. But he could also feel the confusion. Tre realized, with no small amount of confusion himself, that he could see something about Jean Luc that Jean Luc couldn’t see for himself.

  Damn. Feelings were weird.

  Celia grabbed some clothes and slipped into the bathroom. A moment later the shower came on. Tre’s joy at having teased Jean Luc into a reaction dimmed when he realized that he might actually be making things awkward between him and Jean Luc.

  He cleared his throat. “Next time let’s get King-sized.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s spring for King-sized beds so one of us doesn’t have to sleep on top of one of the girls.” Tre nodded his head toward the bathroom door. He wasn’t exactly saying that there was nothing going on between him and Celia, but he was pretty much saying it. To directly say it would be a little too, ah, direct, in Tre’s mind. If they didn’t have this psychic emotional thing going on, then Tre would never have known there was a reason to say anything in the first place. He didn’t think it was his place to push too far.

  Some of the tension left Jean Luc’s shoulders. “Shouldn’t have crashed so fast last night. Sorry if it put you two in an awkward position.”

  “Not awkward,” Tre shrugged. “We’re friends. And she’s cool. Nothing’s ever awkward with C.”

  Jean Luc turned back to his bag and rooted through it for clothes. He wondered for a second if that meant that he wasn’t friends with Celia. Because pretty much everything was awkward with her. He knew that she was smart and funny with the others. But basically every time they talked, the two of them misunderstood one another or ended up tongue-tied. It was annoying. He just wanted things to be easy and drama-free with everyone.

  Jean Luc nodded and pulled his clothes on. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. The last dregs of his mortification were still slowly receding and he knew it wouldn’t take much for it to return full force. He wanted to get the hell out of this hotel room and on the road. “You gonna shower before we hit the road?”

  “I’ll be fast,” Tre nodded.

  “I’m gonna find breakfast for us so that we can get going.”

  Jean Luc was up, dressed, and tossing his bag over his shoulder before Tre could say anything else.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Celia got dressed in some high-waisted jeans
and a black and white striped T-shirt. She tied a red headband over her hair that she’d teased up into a little bit of a pompadour. She didn’t have the breathless-effortless beauty of the other women in the group and this morning she’d needed a touch of confidence. Her septum piercing gleamed as she swiped on a little mascara over her thick lashes. The tattoos at her collarbones and shoulders peeked from the edges of her shirt and she lightly dusted her fingertips over them. Confidence. That was the whole point of those tattoos.

  She could hear the group from the other hotel room calling to one another in the hallway, so even though Tre was still in the shower, she decided it was time to head down to the van. She hoisted her bag and tried not to feel as if she were trudging to her doom. But damn. Twelve more hours of carsickness felt akin to a death sentence.

  She was just jogging down the outside stairs to the parking lot when Jean Luc appeared in front of her. She skidded to a stop, one foot in the air balancing over the edge of the step. He steadied her shoulder with a hand the size of half her torso, reaching out for her bag as if it were second nature. Peering over her shoulder, he tossed her bag onto his back. “Tre coming?”

  She shrugged. “He was still in the shower when I left. Hey, I can carry that, you know.”

  He ignored the second half of her statement, instead shoving a bagel with cream cheese into her hand. If she’d looked harder at the wrapped food, she would have seen that it was a poppy seed bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese, a favorite of hers. But she just shoved the bagel back into his hand and reached out for her bag.

  “Trust me, it’s better if I don’t eat. Seriously, you don’t have to carry my bag.”

  He just turned and strode down the stairs to the van. Celia sighed as he loaded her bag into the trunk along with everyone else’s luggage. He turned and tossed the bagel back to her and strode around to the driver’s seat. She sighed again when she saw that everyone was settling back into the same seats as yesterday.

  They only had to wait maybe five minutes more for Tre and then the van was screaming down the highway, tearing through Middle America and on its way to Florida. About five soupy, dozy, nauseating hours passed before Jean Luc pulled off at a gas station. Celia exploded from the car as fast as she could. She’d been hoping for a burst of fresh air and had been dismayed when hot humidity had hit her full in the face like somebody’s breath. The group all went into the gas station, lining up at the bathroom and buying snacks, but Celia took a turn around the empty field next door. She swallowed past her sickness and took long, calming breaths.

  When she turned back, she saw that Jean Luc was already waiting at the car so she jogged to the bathroom and came back to join the group, stretching and chatting and waiting for her.

  “We need to change the seating arrangements,” Jean Luc told the group. “Celia gets sick in the back seat.”

  She glanced up at him in total shock. She hadn’t said a word to anybody! How had he known?

  “Cece!” Caroline said, stepping over and pressing a palm to her shoulder. “Why didn’t you say anything? Of course you can have the front seat.”

  “Have you been sick this whole time?” Tre asked, concern knitting his eyebrows together.

  Celia waved her hand through the air. “Seriously, I’m used to it. I could get carsick on a skateboard. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Celia,” Thea said from behind her, “we have at least seven more hours in the car and we’ve already been driving for a day and a half. It’s a big deal. Take the front seat.”

  Celia shrugged, certain there was a blush brighter than the sun on her face right then. “Thanks, guys.”

  She slid into her new seat in the front.

  “That’s for you, too,” Jean Luc said as he pulled back onto the highway. He tapped on the cap of an ice-cold ginger ale that he’d apparently bought. “It’ll help your stomach.”

  “Wow. I…” she trailed off. She was shocked. “How did you know I was sick?”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. “It wasn’t exactly subtle. You were white as a sheet and grimacing every time I so much as changed lanes. Seriously, the ginger ale will help.”

  She popped the top and took a small sip. “Thanks.”

  He didn’t say anything more and neither did anyone else. The passengers in the back of the car drifted off one by one. Celia was pretty sure that Jack and Thea had pretty much slept every hour of the past two days. Tre was zoned out, earbuds in his ears, Caroline was snoozing, and Martine looked like she was just a few minutes from sleeping herself.

  “It’s so weird that the maps are leading us back to your hometown,” Celia said, finally unable to keep her thoughts to herself for another second. The ginger ale had really helped, as did sitting in the front seat, and for the first time in two days, she felt that she could speak without having to be worried about puking her guts out.

  “Is it weird?” Jean Luc replied. “I’ve been thinking about that. The first image on the map led us to where you used to spend your summers with your family. Maybe it makes sense that the next location would also have something to do with one of our pasts.”

  “Right,” she said thoughtfully. “And Tre had a connection to the last place as well.”

  Jean Luc nodded. “I don’t think any of this is a coincidence.”

  “You think the demon has some sort of master plan for getting one of our souls?”

  “I would. If I were him. I mean, if he thinks leading me back to the place where I grew up would make me weaker somehow, throw me off my game, make me easier to attack, well…” He cleared his throat. “He’d probably be right.”

  Celia treaded very carefully. She’d been on the receiving end of Jean Luc’s sudden shutdowns way too many times at this point. She knew that asking questions might get herself frozen out, but she had to. “Bad memories?”

  Jean Luc chuffed in surprise. “No. The opposite. Good ones.”

  She wondered for a second why returning to a place with good memories would weaken Jean Luc and throw him off his game. If he were someone else, she might have just asked outright. Instead, she used her literary mind to answer the question. How many books had Celia read? As a librarian and lifelong literature enthusiast, the number was probably four or five digits long. She knew how to analyze a character. She knew how to use bits and pieces of information to make educated guesses about their actions and feelings. She also had an advantage where Jean Luc was concerned. Because the man was stupid-famous and though he was retired now, for a long time, every aspect of his life had been under the microscope for the entire world to see.

  It was how she knew, for example, that he’d grown up in Southern Florida with his brother and his Uncle. Ah. There it was. The pieces fell into place. He’d grown up in Southern Florida with his brother and his Uncle who had both passed away. Returning there now would remind him of good memories that were painful in their absence. She pursed her lips and studied his profile for a second.

  As one of eleven children, Celia simply couldn’t conceive what it would be like to be alone in the world. For as famous and beloved as Jean Luc was, he didn’t have family.

  “What?” he asked, glancing over and catching her by surprise with those light brown eyes of his.

  She blushed and scrambled for something to say. She couldn’t exactly say ‘I was thinking about how sad it is that your whole family is dead’. “Ah, I was just wondering what it’s like to be a bear shifter.”

  Jean Luc grunted. After half a lifetime in the spotlight, he’d grown considerably fatigued of the press always asking him questions about this and that. Especially considering that he wasn’t the most articulate guy on Earth. He wasn’t witty, he couldn’t think fast on his feet. After games on the field or in the requisite press conferences, Jean Luc could always feel the reporters willfully restraining their eye rolls at his one-word answers.

  Hugo used to make so much fun of him for his ‘caveman impression’ whenever he got put on the spot to answer questions. Je
an Luc had spent years wishing that he could have his charismatic, funny, charming brother do all the press obligations for him. Everyone would have been happier. Jean Luc could have been out of the spotlight and Hugo could have stepped into it. The press would have gotten the media darling they’d obviously wanted and Jean Luc could have stuck to the athletics, the way he wanted. But that wasn’t the way the world worked. And now, Hugo was gone, so dreaming about that was even more useless.

  Celia looked at him expectantly, waiting. Because, of course, asking questions and answering them was a normal part of the human experience. And of course she would be curious about this crazy shit. He sighed. Besides, they were the only two people awake and they were trapped in a car together for hours. hHe couldn’t exactly ignore her questions.

  “Well,” he half grunted, “I guess it’s still a pretty big surprise. None of us were expecting Arturo to turn us into bear shifters.”

  As long as he lived, Jean Luc would never forget the soul-slicing pain of Arturo’s blue light as it had arrowed through his heart. He, just like Jack and Tre, had passed out cold. And when he’d woken up, he’d known something was different. As a former professional athlete, he was extremely in tune with his body. He knew that something was healing and thrumming and growing within him. When Martine had told them all that the new, unexplainable thing inside the men was, in fact, the ability to shift into a grizzly bear, Jean Luc had been more than a little surprised.

  “I mean,” he continued, “I didn’t really know that being an animal shifter was an option, you know?”

  Celia laughed. It was a bright, light noise. Unfettered and un-self-conscious. It surprised him a little. He would have expected a more guarded sound from her. She usually seemed to keep herself half hidden, like she was peeking out from around the edge of a curtain. Not that Jean Luc was a great reader of people or anything. It was just that he happened to have considerable practice keeping parts of himself hidden from public consumption. He’d recognized the trait in Celia almost immediately.