by Chant, Zoe
Clawed paws reached down.
She cowered back, but the huge paws scooped under her back and her knees, and lifted her as if she were a featherweight. It’s going to kill me, she thought frantically as the beast cradled her against itself. Her helmet, cracked and loosened by the fall and the gathered water, fell away, and her head dropped against a furry chest. Beneath it she heard the steady boom and rush of the creature’s heart.
Somehow that steadied her as the beast marched uphill, rain pouring down over both of them.
Ten, twenty, fifty paces . . . after an immeasurable time, as she shivered, beyond thought or emotion, the rain abruptly ceased hammering her face though the roar continued: she was carried under a rocky overhang, where the creature gently set her down against a rock. Her limbs had gone numb; she was vaguely aware of her teeth chattering so hard her head shook.
The creature stepped away, back, back, and bent to look into her face.
Her eyes met honey-brown eyes. She knew those eyes.
Mick?
She tried to talk, but her lips had gone as numb as her legs and arms, and shock blinded her.
***
Hypothermia, Mick thought as he scrambled back into his clothes beside the car. He started the engine, rammed down the emergency brake, and set the heater on max.
Then he splashed back to the overhang under which he’d had to set Shelley, as his bear could not manage car doors. He picked her up and cradled her against him as he hurried back to the car and set her in the passenger’s seat.
Watching her anxiously every few seconds, he drove out as fast as he dared. Shelley lay against the seat, streaming with water, but gradually she shivered less as the heater blew over her.
Where to go . . . where to go . . . his instinct was too strong: home.
He pulled up at his house, carried her inside, set the hot water going in the tub, stripped her down and got her into the water. She lay back with her eyes closed, her muddy hair tangled in her face. He eased a towel under the back of her head then kicked off his own clothes. He got into the tub beside her, where he chafed her hands, then her feet, until she finally stirred, and turned his way with eyes still marked with the imprint of panic.
Her lips worked, then she said softly, “That was you.”
All his careful plans, his meticulously thought out explanations—it all vanished like smoke.
“Yes.” And he waited, sick to the heart.
***
Shelley didn’t remember how she got there.
Her senses began to assemble details—the warmth of water, the feel of floating safely against warm skin. The sight of anxious blue eyes.
Memory reassembled as well: the skid, the rising stream. The huge blond-furred beast—a blond bear. With Mick’s eyes.
“That was you,” she said.
“Yes,” he whispered, his expression bleak.
She couldn’t think at all. Lassitude stole over her in waves, as inexorable as the rising water of the flood. She raised a shaky hand to push gritty hair out of her eyes.
Tentatively, carefully, she felt his touch. “Shall I shampoo it for you?”
Gratitude swept through her in a sigh. “Oh, yes.”
Her hand dropped, and she floated blissfully as a clean-smelling shampoo dropped in a cool puddle on her scalp, then his fingers worked gently over her head. The rinse felt like ribbons of velvet, and then he soaped her all over.
When she was clean, he said, “Easy up.”
His hands steadied her as she stood up, and a second later a huge, fluffy towel enveloped her. Before she could move a foot he swept her up and carried her to a bed.
A rustle of cloth and he lay next to her, also enveloped in a bathrobe. “You’re safe,” he said. “You’re home. Nothing will happen to you here.”
She believed him. Her eyes began to drift shut. “Hold me,” she said.
Arms gently enfolded her. She gave a great sigh, and dropped gratefully into sleep.
She woke to the smell of fresh-ground coffee.
She opened her eyes and raised her head to find Mick dressed in a silk shirt and jeans, sitting on a hassock next to the enormous bed she lay in. She looked around, not recognizing the curve of broad windows looking at the night sky. The room was done in shades of gray, with natural wood furnishings, the discreet lighting soft. A fireplace to the right contained a cheery fire.
“I brought you to my place,” Mick said, and lifted a tray from somewhere behind him. “I thought you might like some coffee.”
“Oh, thank you.” She sat all the way up, still wearing a huge bathrobe. She took the cup and breathed in the heavenly aroma, then sipped gratefully.
The coffee worked its way down, reviving her.
“Do you like miso soup? There’s a very good Japanese restaurant at the bottom of the hill. I go there often.”
“I love Japanese food,” she said.
“Good! I ordered a lot. In case you were hungry. I certainly am.”
She discovered was ravenous. She ate right there, sitting up in the bed, Mick sitting beside her on a hassock, though there was plenty of space. Strength flowed back into her, along with energy, then memory, and awareness, such as the gallantry of him letting her wake up in the bed on her own. Though it was his bed. In his room. The space felt like Mick, a realization that woke up the shimmery heat that had banked down to a spark for what seemed like ages.
And with awareness came the questions.
When she looked up, a crispy piece of tempura-battered carrot in her fingers, he seemed to see the question she couldn’t find the words to frame.
He said, “I wanted to tell you. But I didn’t know how. This is a first for me.”
She considered this as she finished off the tempura. “Are there other . . . bear people?”
“We call them shifters. Yes,” he said, his unwavering gaze signaling how important this conversation was to him.
That sense of unreality had opened yet another trap door beneath her, just when she was getting used to . . . everything. Yet she remembered the strength of that bear lifting her dad’s ruined bike away as if it were nothing. And the care with which those same paws had picked her up. That steady heartbeat under the furry chest. That bear was Mick. Mick was a bear.
“If you need time,” he began. “Or feel a need for distance . . .”
His low, chesty rumble was always sexy, but she intuited how much those words hurt him to speak.
She set aside the tray and turned to face him. “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you’re asking. But I’m so curious! Is it like werewolf legends? You have to be a bear under the full moon?”
He actually blushed, and she adored him for that. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said quickly. “The moon does exert its pull, but the bear comes out only when I let him.”
“And that’s why you know those mountains around Idyllwild so well?”
“Yes. I bought the house so that I could let my bear roam free.” He added in an even lower voice, “Your friend Jan said that night that you don’t like lies. Or surprises. I never lied to you. I just hid what I realize is a very big surprise.”
“I think I sensed that you were hiding something.” And at his look, she tried to assemble her thoughts. “I wish Jan hadn’t said anything, but she probably thought she was being protective. My ex was a con artist. If you could call his B.S. art. Con scammer. He played me so well—supported feminism in having everything in my name while encouraging me to include him in my bank account and savings because we shared and shared alike, right? He moved into my place, used all my things, encouraged me to do stuff while he was cheating . . . When I caught him in one too many lies, he disappeared along with my bank account. And when I went to the police, and showed them some photos, the face recognition software revealed a bunch of aliases and warrants for him in three states. Surprise!”
“I’m sorry that dirtbag betrayed your trust, Shelley.”
“The thing is, I walked right into it,
and I wasn’t even that into him—I was more into the idea of being into him, and he played it. He played me.”
Mick ran his hand over his jaw and said, “I know my track record is pretty crappy. And you now know one of the main reasons why. Bringing us back to how you don’t like surprises.”
“I like this one.” She grinned, and saw an answering smile and a flash of honey-brown in his eyes as she added, “Your surprise—your bear—adds something wonderful to the world. Like, oh, my second brother, Finn, always knows who’s on the other line when an important call comes in. Or my great-grandmother always knew when a quake was coming. And like finding out that whale song is communication, that dolphins have names for one another—finding out about shifters makes the world bigger and more wonderful. The surprises I hate make the world mean and petty. Discovering Dominic the Dickwad’s surprise made me feel stupid, in a world of stupid. Yours, oh, opens a new door. And questions. Like, would our kids be shifters?”
She realized what she was saying, and it was her turn to blush to the ears.
He laughed, reached to kiss her, and murmured into her still-damp hair, “I love you so much.”
“And I love you. I’ve wanted to tell you for days.”
He sat back, his eyes gleaming honey-brown. She caught her breath at the promise there, and her lips met his in a long, sweet kiss that slowly gained in urgency.
When they broke, he said in that rumbling purr that zapped heat straight to her core, “will you let me give you another surprise?” On her nod, he said, “But first, how do you feel? Do you need a doctor? Or more rest?”
She stirred. Yes, she ached, but it was only slightly worse than some of her tougher martial arts workouts. “I’m fine,” she said. “I would have landed that okay if it hadn’t been for the big boulder. And the water.”
He smiled down at her, then whispered, “Shut your eyes.”
She did, and his hands eased her back down onto the pillow. For a moment there were soft noises: the rustle of cloth, the heady, sweet scent of roses. Roses? She kept her eyes shut, burning with curiosity—and desire.
With infinite care, he parted the warm robe that she had slept in. Soft air moved over her flesh, her skin tingling with anticipation.
But then a silky, cool ruffling sensation blanketed her lightly.
“Ready,” he breathed.
She opened her eyes to discover that she had been covered with rose petals: white, shell pink, deep burgundy. “Oh,” she breathed.
“Don’t move.”
She stilled, and he knelt on the bed, as naked as she. Still moving with that slow deliberation, he lifted a petal from her shoulder, and then pressed a kiss to the bit of skin bared.
Elbow. Inside her knee. The hollow of her throat. Her ankle. Her belly.
Her left hip. Her cheek, her throat, the outside of her right breast.
She had never understood the appeal of two-day stubble until she felt his bristly jaw brush down her neck and over her collarbones as he continued his playful game, an erotic strike of lightning sparking the thunder of her pulse.
And when he reached for the last petals, he initiated a trail of kisses leaving fire at each point, a pleasure echoing deep in her belly.
He blew the last one away then stretched out beside her, leaning on one elbow. He returned to her lips, his kisses leisurely and exploring as his tongue flicked and teased and thrust.
She broke off, her thighs trembling with the heat of desire, her breasts aching. “If you don’t take me now I will explode.”
“Patience.” He laughed against her neck as his hands caressed her skin, up and down, pausing to cup her breasts as he teased each nipple into fiery heat, and then he skimmed his nails down her ribs and over her belly to cup her sex. She opened to him, and he stroked back and forth, as she pulled his head to hers, and licked the sweat from his neck, then bit his lip in playful urgency.
One hand reached down for his cock.
“Oh, no,” he said, “my turn will come, and I will lie at your mercy. But this time is all for you.”
She stretched back as he resumed kissing down her body with that same leisurely deliberation. When he reached her mound he kissed, lipped, and then sucked each fold. She widened, her breath coming hot and shuddery as he found her clit and sucked. Pleasure lapped inside her like glowing lava, rising and rising until it spilled over in bright waves.
He let the last shivering pulses die away, and then began to stroke her inner thighs, and she heated up again fast, still wanting him inside her—and he was there between her knees, lowering himself slowly in.
She tipped her hips to held him slide all the way home, and they began to rock. She locked her legs around his back, his cock a shaft of white lightning as he thrust and thrust. Oh, it was so perfect, he was so perfect, the rhythm built and heated until the top of her head blew in an explosion of stars and they fell together, tumbling over and over in a pulsing waves, her body ringing in pleasure that streamed on and on and on.
They cuddled together, limbs tangled up, and both fell asleep.
And so she woke to the exquisite pleasure of finding him next to her on the bed. As soon as she shifted, he lifted his head, his eyes very blue as he smiled at her.
“Time?” she asked.
“Is ours,” he responded. “They’ll cancel location shooting—that area is going to take a couple days to dry out. My guess is, they’ll rent a studio for the finishing shots, and then go out there as soon as the ground is firm. Or do you want out?”
“No, I’ll finish it,” she said, smiling to herself.
She knew she’d nail those aerials. And he had stuff to do. And their pilot might not sell. But none of that mattered. She and Mick still had plenty of questions, but now she saw those as the open door to a conversation that might take a lifetime to finish, bounded as it was by trust, and sharing, and wonder.
“Okay,” he said. “But I want to sweep you out of that closet you’re stuck in, and I want to give you a decent car, and take you to meet my grandparents, and show you where I shot that terrible first zombie film. And introduce you to my friends, once they roll back into town . . . You’re smiling,” he said.
She rolled over onto her elbows. ”I’ve got some plans for you, too. Starting with some very naughty ones.” And when he laughed, she murmured into his chest, “I’m just beginning to understand how very much I love you.”
“I have loved you since the moment I saw you,” he said, his voice rumbling delightfully below her ear. “I didn’t even understand it, except that I kept having to see you but the bear knew right away that you were my mate.”
Though she could not see him, she sensed the bear deep inside him, blissfully happy.
She began to walk her fingers down his stomach. “Prove it,” she whispered, and pounced.
***
A note from Zoe Chant
Thank you for buying my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to be emailed when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list.
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The cover of Hollywood Bear was designed by Augusta Scarlett.
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