by Jenika Snow
“First, what happened to going home with Bram Wylde?” Melissa shrugged at Ary’s question.
“I don’t know. I guess I just wasn’t feeling it. I mean he was hot and all, but when I saw Nick I just had to have a lion that night.” Melissa leaned forward, and Ary immediately worried about what would come out of her mouth. “First off, if I had known lions had such huge dicks I would have hopped on that bandwagon a long time ago.” Melissa fanned herself. “It wasn’t even the fact he wanted to shove that big thing in my ass—”
Candace started choking on her drink, and February and Melissa started laughing. The noise drew a few annoyed looks from the other patrons. “He was all into this domination shit, like tying me up in some weird ass contraption, and beating my ass with this homemade paddle.” She leaned back and shook her head. “This wolf is not into all that shit, so when I said hell no we went back for another round of wolfie and lion sex.”
For the next twenty minutes Melissa continued to go into great detail on the things Nick did to her, made her do to him, and how she could barely walk the next morning. Despite the entertaining, and somewhat shocking, details her friend provided, there was that small voice in the back of Ary’s head that wouldn’t give it a rest. Her period couldn’t come soon enough, because who in their right mind had heard of an ocelot getting knocked up by a bear?
****
Charlie wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm and looked at the construction site all around him. Wylde Construction was a family owned business that had been around when his great-grandfather had been alive. It was the leading construction company in Sweet Water, and he was damn proud of it. It was not only their livelihood, but their dream and passion. He and his two younger brothers had grown up watching their father sweat blood and tears to provide for them and their mother. When their parents passed away several years back they knew they couldn’t let it fall under, so the three of them had teamed up and made it what it was today. He looked over to where Bram and Ford were busy going over a set of blueprints. They were currently in the middle of building a new city hall named the Hampton. The last one burnt down a year ago. The frame was up, and his men were busting their balls on making their quota every day.
“Charlie, come over here and look at this,” Ford called out. There were three other shifters looking at the blueprints with his brother. Everyone was tired as the end of the day approached, and each one of them was just as soaked in sweat as he was.
“What’s up?” Ford started talking about the pipes and foundation, but Charlie’s thoughts were elsewhere. Ever since watching Ary drive away several days ago he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. He wasn’t the type of male that chased after a female and wasn’t about to start, but hell, he wanted to go to her so damn bad. Over and over he had asked himself what it was about her that drew him in, but he wanted everything about her, and therein lay the problem. At forty years old he should have been married to a nice bear shifter female and have a handful of cubs, but as it was he immersed himself in his work and gorged on females when time allowed. His parents had been so in love with each other, and even though Charlie wanted that, he didn’t want or need the heartache that came when the one that was loved above all else was gone. It might have been a baseless emotion, because in reality he knew he couldn’t live his life like that, but the way things were going had been good for him this far, and he might as well continue on the same path.
“Yo, Charlie,” Bram called out, and he glanced at his youngest brother. He couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible that Ford and Bram were just as single as he was. Their lives were about the business and letting off steam with random females. There was Ford, isolated because of some past relationship he refused to talk about. Bram immersed himself in bar fights because he needed an outlet for his anger. They were good men, but had he inadvertently steered them away from wanting something more than what they had? How many times had he been drunk and asked Ford about Mina even though he knew there was bad water between those two? He knew it was a sore subject, but he also knew that maybe if he made his brother remember what he had with the female, even if it had gone bad in the end, he might take the initiative and not let Charlie’s ridiculous fears consume him. It was cruel to bring up Mina, and after the last time when he saw the clear pain and rage on his brother’s face, Charlie never brought it up again. His brothers were old enough to make their own decisions, no matter how much he thought it was his fault or that they were going the wrong way.
“Yeah, I hear yah.” He told them what needed to be changed in order for everything to be stable enough and flow smoothly, and although some of the measurements seemed off, his mind was so fried from working and thinking about Kitten that he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He wanted to leave, get cleaned up, and throw back a few beers. It had been a rough couple of days, and only harder because he wanted to feel Ary again, and not necessarily in a sexual way. Maybe he should just look her up? He still didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed her before taking her to his cabin. She had this magnetism that drew him in like nothing else, that made him want to control her, take her, and claim every part of her body until she screamed that there was nothing of her that he didn’t own. His bear tried to take him over, wanted to shift and hunt her down, mate with her, and mark her flesh. He wanted to run his tongue along the mark he gave her, and show it to everyone until they knew that she was his. Shaking his head at his ludicrous and dangerous thoughts, Charlie knew he was treading on a very slippery slope, because despite the fact he desperately wanted Ary with a fierceness that actually stunned him, it was all around bad news. Thinking about her this way, and wanting her like he wanted to … mate with her … was not a place Charlie was going to go. His life had worked out fine with only himself and the occasional female to warm his bed at night, so any thought about taking on a mate was off limits. No, there would be no looking her up. He would go on with his life, put her behind him, and move on. She had been an incredible sexual partner, the best female he had ever been with, but that was where he needed to leave it.
“Come on, boys, let’s call it a night and get drunk.”
Chapter Six
Three days later
Ary stood in the center of her bathroom, that damn little stick of doom hanging loosely in her hand. She had known this was a possibility, but to actually miss her period, something that never happened, and to see those two pink lines show up on the pregnancy test, was like dropping into the seventh realm of hell.
“Are you sure that two pink lines mean pregnant?” Candace said, and Ary looked at her as if she lost her mind.
“Candace, I know none of us have been in this situation before, but damn girl, don’t you watch TV and the commercials for shit like this?” Melissa asked her incredulously.
“Good God, Melissa. Of course I know two lines mean pregnant, but I’m just trying to make Ary look on the bright side, or not feel so bad about it.”
Ary sat on the closed toilet seat lid and hung her head.
“It’ll be okay, Ary. I promise.” Melissa stood by her side and ran her hand up and down her back. They had showed up twenty minutes ago with a bag full of pregnancy tests. When she hadn’t had her period she thought maybe, just maybe she had stressed herself out to the point of her period stopping because of it. She had certainly been worrying enough since all of this happened and didn’t have any nails left because of it. Then she had made the call to Melissa and Candace, asked them to grab the tests because she was too much of a wreck to go and get them herself, and here she was, freaking the freak out right now.
Casting a glance at Candace, who was looking just as worried and nervous as she felt, Ary had no idea where to go from this point on. She was a single thirty year old woman, an ocelot shifter, and was currently knocked-up because she’d enjoyed one night of meaningless sex. To make matters worse the baby she carried was the child of none other than Charlie-flippin-Wylde.
“So, do you th
ink the baby will be an ocelot or bear shifter?” Leave it to Melissa to bring up something she hadn’t even thought about. There were no hybrid shifters. They were either one or the other, which meant her child would have her shifting genes or its father’s.
“You know we are here for you, right?” Candace moved next to her and got down on her haunches. Her strawberry blonde hair was twisted in a cute braid and hung over one of her shoulders. Her light blue eyes were filled with so much compassion they had Ary bursting into tears. There was a hushed murmur from both of her friends, which only caused her to cry harder.
Yes, she was so scared about what all of this meant, but she was also crying because she knew she was lucky to have these friends standing beside her. Their arms wrapped around her, and they held her tight. Ary knew she had to tell Charlie, but she also knew she needed some time to herself to come to grips with all of it. This was huge, and until she was comfortable with it, how in the world did she expect to tell the father?
Melissa and Candace pulled back, and each of them grabbed her hands and helped her to stand. “Come on, this calls for a monster bowl of ice cream over at Freezy Breezy.” Yes, that sounded like the perfect, temporary solution to her permanent, horrifying situation.
****
“Charlie, what the hell is going on with you?” Bram cracked open another beer and planted his ass beside him on his couch. The football game was on, a leopard shifting team from New York playing against panther shifters from Chicago. The teams were brutal as they tackled each other so hard against the ground pieces of sod sprayed all around them. There was nothing better than shifter football. Humans playing the sport were entertaining, but they couldn’t take a hit like a shifter could. “Hello? You with us?”
“He’s been acting all kinds of fucked-up since he slept with that cat. What did she do, drag her teeth across your dick?” Ford asked, but his attention was on the game.
Charlie didn’t bother responding, just flipped his brother off and sank further into the leather couch. He hadn’t talked about February with his brothers, the two people he cared about the most, because he thought if he didn’t talk about her and tried to block her out, he might be able to put her behind him. Yeah, that hadn’t worked out as well as he’d liked, and when Bram and Ford brought her up it only made things worse.
“It’s nothing. She just got under my skin, but nothing I can’t handle.” That was true, and also a lie. He wasn’t handling it well, because frankly he had never encountered feelings this strong before.
“Under your skin?” Bram was the one to ask, and Ford shouted out a string of curse words when a foul was called in the game.
“What’s going on?” Ford said and brought his beer to his lips. He turned and looked at them, and one of his brows cocked up in question. Charlie scrubbed a hand over his face and exhaled. Did he really want to get into this with his brothers, tell them about this girl that he’d only spent a few hours with one night in his bed? They would surely think he was an insane asshole, because how many times had he told them he would never claim a female? He liked one thing from them, and that was the momentary oblivion that being buried in their bodies caused. Yeah, it was a douche-bag thing to say, but he never claimed to be a knight riding in on a white horse.
“Dude, why are you clamming up right now?” Bram sounded confused, and Charlie couldn’t blame him. He looked at his youngest brother and noticed the day old cut above his right eye, and the fading bruise that covered his cheek. Looked like Bram was at his bare-knuckle fighting again. Taking a deep breath and deciding to just say it already, Charlie looked at his brothers. This was the first time he’d kept things from them.
“That ocelot female has been all I’ve been thinking about for days.” He looked between Bram and Ford. It seemed Ford now had his full attention on Charlie.
“What do you mean you’ve been thinking about her?” Ford turned the television off, and silence descended in the living room. Bram was already looking at him with interest on his face.
Charlie supposed he should just spit it out. Damn, why in the hell was this so hard? He was a grown-ass male, and this was his family.
“You got it bad for this girl?” Bram asked.
“It’s like my bear wants to take over and claim her.” He leaned forward and placed his forearms on his thighs. “I have never wanted to take a mate. You both know that better than anyone, but shit.” He exhaled and ran his hand through his hair. He gripped the short hair at the base of his neck and tugged on the strands. “I knew there was something different about her as soon as I saw her in the bar. The scent of her, the way she fucking looked. She drove me crazy, and I hadn’t even said one word to her. Then I had her under me, and my bear clawed to take control.” He looked between his brothers, and saw their intense, but shocked expressions. Yeah, he supposed this whole conversation was shocking given the way he’d acted before. “Then the fucking condom broke. I freaked, which in turn caused her to freak. So, I took her back to her car and haven’t seen her since, but dammit I’ve thought about her every fucking day, and it scares the shit out of me.”
For several long seconds his brothers didn’t say anything. The silence was deafening, and for the first time in his life he felt vulnerable for revealing how he felt. Charlie had always been the one to hold how he felt inside. He didn’t share all that shit, and kept his hard, armor-like exterior firmly in place. He liked his solitude, living alone, and didn’t want to have to worry about a female. But then there was February Felina, and all his preconceived notions on how he planned on living his life vanished.
“Well shit, man.” Ford chuckled, but there was no humor behind it. “The condom broke?” He nodded. “She wasn’t fertile, right?” There was a bit of a strain in Ford’s voice.
“Nah, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay away even if she was.” That was the first time he had spoken those words out loud. It was hard not to when he knew he had come inside of her, and if she had been fertile she could be carrying his child. Yeah, that was a slap of reality right in his face.
“The human side of you wants to mate with this chick, and so does your bear. Charlie, dude, you’ve found ‘the one’.” Although this was how he felt, and the conclusion he had come to, whether he wanted to embrace it or not, it was crazy hearing Ford say it.
“Damn, Charlie. It must be pretty serious for you to open up like this, and for your bear to want to mark her.”
He looked over at Bram and could only nod. He didn’t feel like the oldest brother right now, not when Bram and Ford could so easily admit what the hell was going on when he had held it in for so long.
“You need to call her.” Ford sounded so sure and confident that it had him and Bram looking over at him.
“Just like that, huh?” Yeah, it sounded easy enough, but he got the impression that she was done with him, especially when he had acted like an asshole during the whole condom breakage. He had given her his full name, and she hadn’t reached out to him. He might have said she could run and he would go after her, but with each passing day he felt himself going more inside of himself and pushing her back. He could admit it: he was scared.
“What are you really afraid of? You’ve just admitted to us that it isn’t just you that wants her, but your bear, too,” Ford said matter-of-factly. “How many years have we heard you talk about what you don’t want in your life, and how you don’t need the messy feelings that come with a relationship?”
“If this one female causes this type of reaction in you, why not just go for it?” Bram said.
“Bram, it isn’t that easy.”
“But it is, brother. And with that I need a fresh beer.” And just like that Ford was out of the room. His words were strong and honest, and despite Ford almost leaving nonchalantly after what he just said, it told Charlie that it really was that easy.
Bram stared at him, but didn’t speak. Ford returned with three more beers and handed each of them a fresh one. For th
e rest of the night no one said any more about it, but that was the way the three of them were. They said what needed to be said, and that was it. Now it was up to Charlie if he was going to take his brothers’ advice and let his bear out to take what it really wanted, or keep his distance and continue living his solitary life.
Chapter Seven
February stared at her cell for the hundredth time since she had decided it was time to call Charlie. His number was written on a scrap piece when she scribbled it down after finding it on one of the many Wylde Construction signs posted throughout the town. She had let herself have a little over a week to get used to the idea that she was pregnant, had even made an appointment with one of the town’s shifter clinics. Her pregnancy was in the very early stages, but a shifter’s pregnancy only lasted two-thirds of a human’s gestation. In just six months she would have Charlie’s baby.
She set her phone on the table and placed the slip of paper with his number beside it. Reaching into her purse she took out one of the ultrasound pictures the clinic had given her. The baby looked like a piece of rice, but warmth settled inside of her every time she looked at it. It was real, but looking at the picture of her baby seemed to cement everything inside of her. Setting the picture on the other side of her phone, she looked among the three items. Why was this so hard for her?
Because what if he is the hard asshole everyone in town makes him out to be? What if he wants nothing to do with you or this baby? And what if he denies that it is even his?
In all honesty she couldn’t blame him if his reaction was the latter. She had gone home with him, a virtual stranger even if she knew of him by reputation. No doubt that made her look like some kind of slut, regardless of the fact she had never done something like that in her life. There had just been something about him that called to her. She always went with her instincts, and they had been screaming for her to let the gorgeous bear take her home. But then again look at how well that worked out.