by Holley Trent
When he didn’t elaborate, she asked, “Well?”
He groaned and pushed back up to his knees. “Fuck. Can’t reach it. Need to move the bed.”
Infuriating man. He always did that. Dismissed her questions as if he weren’t the one leading her on to them.
She picked up the closest thing handy, a cable remote control, and flung it at the center of his back with deadly accuracy. “Ass!” If that had been one of her knives, he’d bleed out completely within minutes.
He was on his feet in a second, and in her face in the next, growling at her.
“You move fast for a lumbering oaf.” She wouldn’t give up one inch of space. If he wanted to act like an animal, she’d be the trainer. She’d make him sit up and beg before long. They always did.
Well, almost always.
“You keep running that mouth of yours, and I’m going to stuff it.” His scent had changed. Before, it’d been his usual piquant masculine aroma, but now it held snatches of something more. Something wild and primal she couldn’t quite sort out. He didn’t smell like Bear. She’d gotten close enough to a few of those that she could say for sure.
He was so close, the movements of his lips were like phantom caresses at the top of her head. His hands, near the sides of her waist and clamped onto the dresser, tightened their grip on the edge.
She could hear the splintering of the wood.
She tipped her chin up and met his feral black stare. I shouldn’t push him…
But he deserved it.
“I don’t enjoy fellatio. Musses my lip gloss.” She smacked her lips and shaped her mouth into her coquette smile.
That hadn’t been what he expected. She could tell by the furrowing of his forehead. His eyes narrowed and he eased back from her.
“Did those mutations happen to trigger some mental instability?” he asked. He turned his back. Conversation over.
That’s the way it always happened, but this time, she wouldn’t let him have the last word. Who was training whom, after all?
“I was born this way, Bear.”
“I feel sorry for your parents then.”
She rolled her eyes at his back. If she hadn’t been what she was—who she was—she may not have survived that summer when she was fourteen and some prideful fools tried to root all the foreigners out of the Eastern European city her father was carrying out diplomatic duties in. By the time the Ursus got out, explosions were the norm and calm a luxury.
“To answer your question, you were wondering if anyone has a view of this window.”
Bryan’s skill at circular conversation made her head swim. She closed her eyes and ground the heels of her palms against them. Serenity now.
“This window faces a fenced alley. Further, the windows are tinted from the inside and I have blackout curtains as an extra barrier. I can see out, but no one can see in.”
“All that for a good night’s sleep?”
He wrapped one large hand around the bottom left post of his bed and cocked his head to the side. “No.”
She waited for him to elaborate. Naturally, he didn’t.
“Need to move the bed to get to a lockbox. I pushed it in too far, I guess.”
“So move it. You’re a big guy.”
His next blink was a long one.
She pushed up one brow and made a circular get-on-with-it gesture with her hand.
When he spoke again, his voice was low, modulated, and bearing a hint of warning. “If I drag the bed, the neighbors might hear. I share walls with their master bedrooms.”
“Bears?”
He crooked a thumb toward the wall to his right. “Yes. Gene buys blocks of these units with group funds and subsidizes the rent. Only good thing he’s done for the group, but the control has gone to his head. I only lived here about a quarter of the time. Stayed at my sister’s mostly, especially since the abductions. Anyway, that particular Bear is probably still running around the woods in animal form. He’s new, and has a harder time reining it back in at the end of the full moon. Don’t want to take any chances, though.”
“I see.” She accompanied her words with a nod and ambled to the bedpost opposite Bryan at the foot. Lingering there for a moment, she studied the wooden construction, and then sidled around Bryan to take the spot he’d been crouching on moments before.
“No need to move the bed,” she said. There were some benefits to being small, although she hadn’t thought so growing up. Her brothers Soren and Peter were big men. Her father, the ambassador, was large. Even her mother had a rather statuesque bearing. Tamara was more or less the runt of the clan. Her driver’s license said five-three, but at least an inch of that was attributable to the boot heels she’d worn the day she applied for it.
She pressed her body flat against the floor, just as Bryan had, and shimmied beneath the frame. The handle of the long, metal lockbox was just out of her reach. She grunted, dug the sides of her knees into the carpet, and inched a bit more beneath the frame.
By extending her left arm as far as she could past unmated sweat socks and dust motes, she could just barely skim the handle. One more little stretch, and she had it.
“Ah.”
She reversed her path through the dust, and once her head had cleared the sharp wooden protrusions of the frame, she pushed onto hands and knees and stood the case on its side. “Perhaps you should store that someplace easier for an oaf like you to reach.”
He didn’t respond, and when she turned her head around to ascertain why, she had her answer.
He was transfixed, and it wasn’t because of the locked aluminum briefcase. His gaze was locked on the ass she pointed right at him.
Something, perhaps the flare of his nostrils or the enlargement of his pupils, told her to tread carefully. She was dealing with a beast entranced by a prospective meal, and not a man with his wits about him.
There wasn’t a page in the Shrew handbook that addressed these sorts of situations, but Dana had insinuated more than once that it was easier to let these situations ride themselves out than to try to break the man free of them. Tamara sure as shit didn’t want to purposefully pick a fight with a Bear. Especially not one who outweighed her by about a hundred pounds. She could probably take him if she tried, but she didn’t want him to know that.
She’d watched him in his bear form through the little window of the metal door at the bunker, and she’d been taken aback by how incredibly large he was as he stalked the corners, and roared for his freedom. He had the height of a man and the girth of a black bear—a dangerous combination of both his halves.
She’d even feared a few times that with one well-placed swipe, he could free himself of his jail, but his ancestors had been smart builders. The barriers had held, although there were a few new runnels in the metal.
“All right, Bear,” she whispered in a slow, even voice. Carefully, she eased her hand away from the briefcase handle and rested her palm on the bed’s edge. “I’m going to stand, okay?”
He didn’t respond, but his hands drew into tight fists at his sides. His eyes rolled, then fluttered behind closed lids. His beast was likely drawing him in, making muddy mental tracks all over his subconsciousness, and Tamara waded in psychically just long enough to glean what she needed.
“Ugh, pula mea.” Maybe she could clasp the leash back on the beast and draw the man back up. If she were gentle about it, he may never know she’d been poking around in his headspace, intruding.
She slipped back in, her consciousness immediately meeting a barrage of fleeting images. Sweaty skin. A pouty bottom lip being pulled by teeth. Pale digits clawing at sheets for purchase. Dark fingers twined through blonde hair.
Bryan’s teeth in her shoulder…
White-hot pain.
She pulled out of his wanton wanderings, her back convulsing from the deep set of incisors into her flesh.
Her spine bowed as Bryan wrapped strong arms around her waist and pulled her ass against the hard protrusion originating from ins
ide his jeans.
Hell no. If she bedded this man, it would be on her terms, not the beast’s.
With his teeth in her flesh, and Bryan’s weight moving her toward his bed, she needed to be careful or she’d get away only to lose a pound of precious flesh in the process.
What did Dana always say? “Use your words, Tam.”
“Words. Right.” But to whom should she direct them? The bear intent on rutting her without even knowing her birth date or favorite color, or the unaware man whose body the bear needed for an outlet?
Since she had no clue how to deter a lusty Were-bear, she decided to cast her lot with the man. She needed to rouse him. She dove back into Bryan’s ongoing mental movie as her belly met the bed and his firm hands grazed her rear.
She gasped, toes curled in her boots as she arched for him.
Then she remembered what she was doing.
Back in.
She spoke to his id—the wild man, bear, that was on the inside trying to claim her as his mate.
The bear was only trying to do what was natural.
The beast was unconcerned with emotion or carnal pleasure, and wanted only for his species to survive another generation.
Somewhere in there, though, had to be the rational man. The one who despised her and wouldn’t touch her except to silence her.
“You’ll not mate with me, Bear,” she told him.
He was undeterred. He set his teeth into a fleshier part of her back, and shifted her so her ass was angled for his easy access.
Okay. Perhaps reason with the bear, not the man. What would the bear be interested in? Not her orgasm, that was for damned sure.
Think, think. Wasn’t her name “Ursu”? Bear? Was she not descended from a family notorious for hunting the dangerous beasts? She should have this creature wrapped around her little finger, no problem.
Think!
And then there was a glimpse of the Were-bear’s endgame. Cubs.
Bryan would likely be mortified if he knew. Her dream-self chuckled. Oh, she’d make sure he knew.
“I’m not fertile,” she said blithely. “Do you hear me, scruffy?”
The subconscious Brian paused his nipping, and Tamara vaguely registered him loosening his grip on her somewhat in the real world, only to draw her close again.
He must not have understood.
“You’ll get no cubs from me, scruffy. I have an IUD. Birth control.”
And beyond that, the Shrews were all of uncertain fertility. The ladies had so many experiments run on them, been flooded with so many untested drugs, that it was hard to say whether their womanly capacities had been diminished. Sarah was six months pregnant, and the conception had stunned them all. Sarah especially.
Sarah was currently on “light duty,” which was the closest to bed rest their shared doctor could negotiate. Sarah’s husband Felipe had a hell of a time keeping her out of the thick of things. Tamara understood. Really, she did. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if it weren’t for the sisterhood of her fellow private investigators and the cases she worked on. She loved being around women who were like her. Yeah, they gave her shit sometimes, but she gave it back as good as she got it. Work aside, Sarah wasn’t just her coworker and friend, but that baby she and Felipe made was a sign that maybe everything hadn’t been stripped away from them after all.
The sharp pain of broken skin subsided, and the hands at Tamara’s waist drew away.
Bryan pushed her out of his head, and she fell face-first onto his mussed comforter with an oomph.
He drew in a harsh breath behind her, and she turned to see his drawn expression, his almond eyes wider and rounder than usual. His skin took on a sickly green pallor.
She straightened up and crossed her arms.
He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably as if the action was a struggle. “I’m sorry, that’s never happened to me before. I never—” He blew out a breath and scraped his fingers through his hair as he paced. “I don’t know what triggered that. Usually…”
He let his voice trail off, and paused at the foot of the bed. Once more, he swallowed, casting a repentant glance at her.
She shook her head. “Nope. Don’t do that again. You got some words, spit ’em out. Enough with the word conservation.”
His posture straightened, and the hesitance in his face gave way to his usual stoic mask. “It won’t happen again. It was my beast, and not me. I hope you can understand the difference.”
Leaning back on her elbows, she stared at him. Watched as he walked to the aluminum case and set it on the bed a couple of feet from her right hip.
He didn’t look at her again. He just adjusted his bulging crotch, groaned, and dug in his jeans pocket for a small key.
He flicked his thumbs over the locks’ number dials to set them into the proper configuration, and turned the key in the little hole on each end.
The case popped open, and at the sight of the colorful paper collection, Tamara nearly forgot what it was he owed her an apology for this time.
Stacks of maps, schedules, and hand-written notes poured onto the bed in an avalanche, and her heart fluttered as she picked up one sheet of yellow legal pad paper scribbled with detailed notes about Gene’s habits.
Dear Lord, the man must have been plotting this upheaval for months. He had an actual, functioning, calculating brain in that handsome head of his.
No wonder he hadn’t been surprised when Tamara “found” him in that alleyway a week ago.
He wasn’t missing at all, at least not in the way his sister Drea, who’d hired the Shrews, feared. He was found when he was ready to be.
This man was bloody maniacal, and had been pulling Tamara’s chain all along. He didn’t need her help gathering intelligence the way he’d claimed when they’d assessed each other in that alley: her with a stun gun pointed at his chest, and him calm with his hands in his jeans pockets.
She’d believed him, because she was desperate for this shit to end and missed having routine in her life.
All he’d needed was a pair of non-Bear eyes watching his back, and he probably didn’t believe she’d trust him enough to ask outright.
Devious.
And maybe she liked that a little.
CHAPTER THREE
Fucking shit.
There were so few of his kind left in the area, he hadn’t known what to expect in certain…hormonal situations.
Most Were-bears nowadays, especially in the Smoky Mountains where his group roamed, were made and not born. Bryan was a born-Bear. He had Bear in his blood going back to before the English settlers came to the US. His line was pure Bear, more or less, and that’s what made him strong. His little sister? Not so much, but that was another matter. He still wasn’t sure he’d forgive Drea for calling the Shrews when he’d gone AWOL during the previous month’s full moon, but he’d torqued the situation to his advantage.
He’d been operating in stealth, more or less, since then. He hadn’t been to work at the dry-cleaning store he and Drea owned together, and he didn’t meet the Bears at their roaming grounds when it was time to shift. Nor had he been to Drea’s.
She had to be worried sick, but he couldn’t let himself be seen with her. Her fear, in a way, was part of his plan. It would buy him some time with Gene, and Bryan could only hope she knew he hadn’t truly abandoned her.
As one of Gene’s lieutenants, Bryan was meant to be at every full moon gathering to corral the Bears, and intimidate when necessary.
Well, Bryan was through. His bear was through.
He’d quit without putting in notice, and his plan was to topple the Bear group from the outside in, in his own time and in his own way.
Then the little blonde found him. How, he didn’t know. He knew someone would be looking, but expected one of Gene’s boys to find him first. He’d been ready for one of Gene’s boys, hoping they’d come to him instead of the other way around. They would have been weaker before the full moon, whereas he was
mostly unaffected. They were made, he was born.
He’d been loading his pickup truck with supplies for the bunker. Tamara had snuck up quiet as a leaf on the wind and had pressed the nozzle of her stun gun against his sternum. He’d been monitoring the air for Bear scents, and didn’t sense her coming. Apparently Bears had a blind spot for Shrews.
He’d had to think fast that day. Asked for help he said only she could give.
He’d convinced her not to check in with the Shrews or Drea, promised that with what he had in mind, they’d all get out of each other’s hair that much sooner. That with the bad Bear politics finally put to rest after a year of ongoing hostilities, she could go home to Durham and get back to her routines.
He’d hoped he wasn’t telling her a lie.
To add to the complicating factors, the beast part of him wanted to roll around on a riverbank and play with the Romanian brat.
No. Way.
That was the part of being a born-Bear that his parents had hinted about, but never explained outright. Figured it’d never apply to him, probably, loner that he was.
Made-Bears didn’t go into mating frenzies. They didn’t have the compulsion to bite, to claim. Although made-Bears could infect humans with the condition, they couldn’t conceive Bear offspring. Only born-Bears could do that, and there weren’t many. They just weren’t prolific propagators.
In The Smokies, in fact, there were only a handful of “Peacekeepers” left—that’s what they were called before Gene took over the group—and they were all related, save for a few men they’d absorbed from disbanded clans.
Something about this woman, though, was drawing out his mating instinct, and he needed to squash it immediately. His most pressing concern was ousting Gene: getting him the fuck out of Bryan’s woods, his state, and his life.
In the past, the Catamounts, Goats, Wolves, and others had all looked to the Bears as problem-solvers. Mediators.
Now, they were the animals the others told their children scary bedtime stories about.
Bryan needed to bring the Bears back to their roots, and not just for pride, but because their spirits hungered for it. He’d felt it before he’d opted out of the group’s empathic link. Someone—no, he—had to do this, because if he didn’t, they wouldn’t be Bears, just animals.