Bear Meets Girl

by Catherine Vale

  Hey, at least they still welcome her amongst them, a voice in his head pointed out. What’s there to complain about?

  His ears couldn’t pick up the conversation through the glass, but he surmised by the seriousness of the expression on her father’s face that Angela was talking to him about Raina’s kidnapping. The shifter’s face tightened as she went on, and his eyes narrowed dangerously as they shot over her shoulder to glare at Cole. Cole’s spine stiffened, his instincts urging him to challenge the man, but out of respect for his daughter he lowered his eyes a fraction, using his body language to tell the Chieftain he meant him no harm.

  A few moments later, Angela’s father came around the front of the car, clearly expecting Cole to get out of the car. Ignoring the – mostly – irrational fear clawing at his belly, Cole killed the engine and got out of the car. He was going to meet Angela’s father with his head held high, not stinking of anxiety and with his tail tucked between his legs. He’d lived too long and worked too hard for anything less.

  “Good evening,” Angela’s father said gruffly as Cole exited the car. He looked bigger up close, around Cole’s height, but without the strange coloring of his eyes, and he was dressed in a simple flannel shirt, jeans and boots – the type of clothing you’d expect from a man who lived in a cabin. “I am Saul Mason, Chieftain of the Redstone Clan.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Cole inclined his head and held it there for a few seconds. “I am Cole Avery, currently contracted by Commander Madison of the Order of Protection to retrieve Raina Madison. I’ve been working with your daughter, and she tells me you may be able to help us.”

  “Well at least you’re straightforward.” Saul crossed his arms as he studied Cole, his grey eyes still narrowed. “Angela tells me you’re a hybrid, which inclines me to throw you off my property as mage hybrids tend to be very unstable. But she also tells me that you’re trustworthy, and that you’ve lived for over two thousand years, so I’m inclined to believe that you’re safe enough to have around my people.” His steely gaze turned deadly. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good. Now come inside.”

  He led them inside the house, past the now deserted fire pit – he must have told his clan mates to head home for the night and into the living room. “You have a beautiful home,” Cole said quietly as he admired the soaring log-beam ceilings and large windows. The furniture was all oak, but comfortably padded, and colorful rugs decorated the wooden floor. A brick fireplace crackled cheerfully in the corner, the kindling and logs’ nearby, telling Cole that it was the genuine article rather than a gas fireplace.

  “Why, thank you.” A woman with long blonde hair and Angela’s green eyes and heart-shaped face bustled in with a tray laden with spiced cider and cookies. She smiled warmly at Cole, apparently not at all taken aback by his presence, and leaned in to kiss Angela on the cheek. “I do my best to keep things going around here.”

  “My wife, Genevieve,” Saul said, losing some of the gruffness in his tone, especially when his wife swooped in to plant a kiss on his own bearded cheek. “She makes the best cookies in town.”

  Genevieve straightened with a laugh. “That’s not saying much considering that hardly anyone lives around here.” She winked at Angela, who grinned back at her mother, and Cole was struck at just how similar they looked. Shifters aged slowly, so they could have been sisters – certainly no human would mistake this gentle woman for Angela’s mother, much less a shifter. It was clear to see that Angela was a perfect mix between the two – she had both her father’s toughness and her mother’s kind acceptance of people. The realization made him relax a little more – he doubted that Saul would do anything to hurt him, at least not unless he tried to bring harm to the clan, which he had no plans on doing.

  “Well, I can tell you all have much to talk about, so I’ll leave you all alone. I’ve got children to tend to upstairs.” She bustled off, the skirts of her dark green dress swishing in her wake.

  Cole frowned down at Angela. “You have other siblings here?”

  Angela shook her head, sadness in her eyes. “They’re more foster cubs. My mother takes it upon herself to care for the young of clan mates who have passed away.”

  Right. “That’s a noble thing to do.” He should have known; that was how her brother had become part of her family.

  “It’s our responsibility to make sure all of our clan members are cared for, regardless of age,” Saul said, but it was without heat, his grey eyes sad like Angela’s. He cleared his throat then, keen to change the subject. “Now, tell me what it is I can do to help retrieve your partner,” he told Angela.

  Angela took a breath. “I need you to find out where the Black Moon Clan is currently located.”

  Saul stiffened. “You want to know where Garrison is? Why?”

  “Because he’s the one who kidnapped Raina.”

  “No.” Saul jumped to his feet and started pacing the rug. The firelight played off the planes of his face, which were drawn into harsh lines. “That’s not right.”

  “Dad, we’ve know that Garrison has been ‘not right’ for a long time.” Angela didn’t move from her spot, simply following her father around the room with a steady gaze that Cole had to admire. She didn’t flinch or back down even though her father outranked her. “He’s been out for vengeance ever since he left us, and he’s clearly on the verge of getting it now that he’s the Chieftain of a clan who hates mages.”

  Anger smoldered brightly in Saul’s eyes as he turned his harsh glare on his daughter. “Maybe the mages are deserving of his hatred.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded, “but not the entire supernatural community. If he succeeds in his plan to destroy the Order, chaos will ensue, and our treaty with the humans will be on tenterhooks, the more unstable we become. Besides, I can’t let him do this to Raina. The fact that he would kidnap her knowing that she’s my partner tells me he’s gone far past the point of right and wrong. He needs to be stopped.”

  Saul stared at her for a very, very long time. Finally he sighed. “It’s going to take some time for me to locate him. I don’t think I’ll have anything for you until at least tomorrow. Can you wait that long?”

  “Oh, thank you Dad.” Cole watched as Angela launched herself into her father’s arms and hugged him tight. He returned her hug fiercely, burying his bearded face into her shoulder, and Cole felt the stirrings of sympathy for the man, who was clearly caught between the love for two of his children as well as the duty of doing what was right. The shifter community would not necessarily look fondly on him for giving up the location of a clan that did not want to be found, even if it was for the greater good. But then, Saul was clearly a strong individual – he would deal with whatever flack came his way. “I know the position I’m putting you in, but I just couldn’t bear if anything happened to Raina, and – ”

  “It’s alright.” Her father gently stroked her back. “Just promise me that you won’t kill Garrison.” He lifted his head to look at Cole. “Not unless you absolutely have to.”

  Cole nodded. “I’ll do my best to bring him back to you safely, if I can.”

  * * *

  “I think my father likes you,” Angela said with a sniff, sitting back down next to Cole. Saul had left the room, presumably to go be with his wife, but not before insisting they stay the night. She smiled a little, leaning her head against Cole’s shoulder.

  Cole put an arm around her and drew her in close, feeling oddly at ease with the role of being a comforter even though he’d never done it before in his life. “Well, he hasn’t tried to kill me yet, so that’s got to be a plus.” He reached over and caught a tear glimmering at the corner of her eye. “Are you okay?”

  Angela sighed. “Yeah. It’s just… I guess it just didn’t hit me how scared I was until I was faced with the possibility that my dad would refuse to help, and that we might not ever be able to find her.” She swallowed. “I don’t know how they’re treating Raina
right now, and the idea of my brother inflicting any kind of pain or torture on her… it tears me apart.”

  “I’m sorry.” Cole pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and just held her there against his chest for a long while. In a way, part of him was glad that he’d never had any siblings or partners or anyone particularly close to him – he’d always had to keep everyone at arm’s length for fear of them finding out who and what he was when he was growing up – because he’d never been forced to go through this kind of pain, this constant anxiety and fear that Angela was clearly suffering from because she didn’t know whether or not her friend was going to come back dead or alive.

  I get the feeling you would go through that if anything happened to Angela, a voice whispered in his head, a voice that scared the hell out of him. He shoved it away, not willing to listen to it, not willing to examine just how deep his growing feelings for Angela went.

  “Hey Cole?” Angela mumbled into his chest.

  “Yeah?”

  “What do you say we go outside and wrestle?”

  He arched a brow. “Is that some code way of telling me you want to have sex in the dark outside?”

  Angela let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “No, silly. It means I want you to come outside with me and roll around in the dirt. As bears.”

  Chapter Ten

  Angela had never seen Cole so uncomfortable in the short time that she’d known him. She’d have thought she’d dragged him over to the edge of a pit filled with fire-breathing dragons, instead of a clearing in the woods nearby, where the biggest, baddest things around were themselves.

  “Well, are you going to shift? Or not?”

  Cole shifted – as in, he moved the weight off one foot and onto the other, rather than changing forms as Angela wanted him to. “I’ve never really had to stand up in front of anyone and do this before,” he said uneasily.

  Angela reached up and pinched his cheeks, gratified at the surprise in his eyes and the knowledge that, probably, no one had ever done that to him before in his two-thousand years of existence. “It’s not show-and-tell, sweetheart. It’s just me. Now shift, already. We don’t have all night.”

  Cole glared at her for a moment, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He lifted his face to the moon, drawing on the power that was there, and his form rippled briefly. One moment he was a tall, broad shouldered man with chestnut hair, and the next he was a towering black bear, his fur dark as midnight as he loomed over her. His eyes glowed that same strange blue they usually did when he used his magic, rather than the fiery orange of their kind, and a shiver of awe and fear rippled through her.

  “Well,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “You don’t really blend in.”

  You think? His voice, half-amused and half-irritated, echoed in her head. That’s why I don’t do this too often.

  Rather than responding, Angela shifted into her Kodiak bear form, and then pounced on him gleefully. He went down hard on his back, anger flaring in his eyes as instinct took over, but Angela quickly nipped him on the shoulder, just lightly, to let him know that she meant no harm, and remind him that they were just playing.

  He relaxed, his tongue lolling out adorably and then next thing she knew she was flat on her back and he was gnawing at the fur on her arm. Growling, they wrestled for the next hour, rolling around in the dirt and biting and scratching at each other, in a similar manner to what kittens did when they played with each other. Angela couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun – it had been forever since she’d rolled around in the dirt and played with a fellow clan mate, easily a hundred years. She’d wanted Cole to experience this while she had the chance to show him, but she didn’t realize how much she’d needed it herself. It humbled her; the knowledge of just how much she’d missed having a kindred spirit around.

  “Well that was… something else…” Cole panted, as they lay on the forest floor, back in human form. “Usually when that kind of thing happens someone’s trying to kill me.”

  “Who says that I wasn’t?” Angela stuck her tongue out at him.

  Cole chuckled. “I might be bigger than you, but you’re clearly a better fighter than me in bear form.”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t you worry. I’ll get you up to snuff in no time.”

  But as they shuffled off back to her father’s house to turn in for the night, she wondered just how long she would have with him. Would he leave once Raina had been found, off on his next job, selling his skills out to the highest bidder? It wasn’t as if she could blame him – he had to make a living and it was the only respectable way that he could. But a tiny hole opened up in her chest every time she thought about him leaving, a hole that got bigger as more time passed and her affection for him grew.

  There’s nothing you can do to stop him if he decides to leave, she reminded herself. The best thing you can do is enjoy the time you have together as best as you can, and hope that he enjoys it so much he decides to stay.

  “Is this your old room?” Cole asked as she led him into the bedroom, looking around. It was a simple enough room, with pale oak furniture and a four-poster bed with powder blue bedding taking up most of the space in the room. A large closet with a full-length mirror on the closed door awaited in the corner for someone to fill it with clothes, catty-corner to a small bay window that gave them a great view of the ocean.

  “It is. How can you tell?” There was nothing of hers that remained here, not even the bedding that she’d slept in.

  He smiled at her a little. “Something of your scent still lingers here. I imagine this is where you stay whenever you come to visit.”

  She nodded, then grabbed his hands and drew him toward the bed. “This is the first time I’ve ever brought somebody with me, though.”

  “Oh yeah?” His eyes darkened with desire as she gently pushed him onto the bed. Rather than laying him down, she nudged his knees apart so she could stand between his legs, then laced her fingers in his curls and kissed him gently, savoring him. He was so tall that even when he was seated she didn’t need to bend her head to press her lips against his, something she appreciated.

  “Angela…” his brow furrowed when her hands began to drift lower, unfastening the button at his jeans. “What are you doing?”

  “You.” She sank down to her knees as she freed his cock, and admired it in the moonlight streaming through the window. “You’re so big,” she whispered, stroking his satiny length. She traced the tip of her finger along one of his veins, then drew a circle around the base of his mushroom tip before flicking her tongue across it.

  He shuddered. “More.”

  She obliged happily, taking him into his mouth and not caring the least that he cried out loud enough that her parents would surely hear him. She wanted them to know that he was hers, if he would have her, and that she had no qualms about loving him with her body. His fingers sank into her hair, drawing her closer, and she felt needed and cherished all at once, something she never thought she’d feel while going down on a guy. Usually it was just a kind of chore, something done as reciprocation, but with Cole it was a fierce desire, a need to show him how much his satisfaction and pleasure meant to her.

  “Angela,” he gasped as she massaged his balls, stroking and sucking him at the same time with a slow, but sweet tenderness that pushed him closer and closer to the edge. His powerful thighs caged her in, taut with strain like the rest of him, and then he suddenly gave a full body shudder and came, right there, in her greedy mouth. She took it all, in no hurry at all, and just continued to lick and stroke him until he rested his forehead atop her head, completely spent.

  “I think that was the best orgasm I’ve ever had in my life.”

  She grinned at him. “You’re welcome.”

  He stripped off the rest of their clothes, then scooped her up in his arms and cuddled her against his chest. “Are you alright if we just go to sleep?” he mumbled sleepily into her hair.

 
; “Of course.” Smiling, she closed her eyes and sank into him, enjoying the feel of his hard body cradling hers. And with his soft snores gently tickling her ear, she dropped off to sleep.

  * * *

  “Breakfast is ready!”

  Grumbling, Angela cracked open her eyelids and took a look at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 6:00am. Couldn’t she get just a little bit of a break and sleep in? Especially considering that she was practically away from civilization, as the first world countries knew it? Surely mom would just save her some if she rolled over and caught another hour of sleep…

  “Is that bacon I smell?” Cole lifted his head, his eyes suddenly bright and alert even though he’d been dead asleep not that long ago.

  “Umm…”

  “It is bacon.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked down at her. “Are we allowed to have any?”

  “Yes,” she said with a sigh, and he instantly bounded out of bed, searching for his clothes. Groaning, she found her underwear and dragged it on, then shuffled to the closet and grabbed a robe hanging inside the door.

  By the time she turned around, Cole was already gone, probably halfway down the stairs. As she trudged down the steps, rubbing her eyes, she heard voices chattering away, and her eyes widened when she realized that there were other clan members in the kitchen, eating as well.

  Shit. I can’t go down there looking like this! Cursing, she dashed up the stairs and pulled the rest of her clothes on, then hunted through the bathroom drawers until she found a brush. Three minutes later she was back down the stairs again, in a hurry while trying not to act as if she was in a hurry.

  “Oh, there you are honey.” Her mother turned away from the stove, where pancakes were busily cooking away on the griddle, to smile at her. “Why don’t you have a seat and start eating.”

  “You don’t need any help?”

  “Not at all, and I’m sure your friend could use the company.”