Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  She blew a raspberry. “Shrews don’t respond well to threats. Remember that.”

  ___

  Tamara had hardly gotten down the stairs of the bunker and handed Dustin’s takeout box to him before she keeled over.

  Dustin earned kudos for quick thinking, as he dropped his food on the little writing desk just beyond the corner of his cell and caught Tamara under the arms.

  “Shit.” Bryan hurriedly unbound Tony and locked him in the cell across from Dustin. He took the faint Tamara into his arms and jogged up the stairs to his truck. He strapped her under the seatbelt on the passenger side, and quickly dragged the second slumbering Bear downstairs. Bryan put him in the cell two doors down from Tony. Didn’t want them too close while he was gone.

  “Hey, before you leave, could you turn that television a little bit this way?” Dustin pointed with his fork toward the corridor’s ceiling-mounted unit. It was Bryan’s old television. He’d installed it a month ago anticipating Bear boredom.

  “There’s a glare when the lights are on,” Dustin said.

  Bryan rolled his eyes, but swiveled the television the way the man wanted. Dustin had been pretty laid-back about his situation, but perhaps he hadn’t metabolized all of the weed out of his system yet. When he did, maybe he’d be a bit more agitated.

  “Who are those guys?” Dustin asked around a mouthful of cold steak.

  Bryan busied himself with parceling rations into two kits to distribute to the slumbering Bears. They’d probably need some Motrin when they got up, too, the idiots.

  And that reminded him. He strode to the guard desk, opened the drawer, and pinched a yellow sticky note off the pad. On the tiny square, he wrote, “Replace clothes in shift bag.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t recognize them,” he said after folding the paper into his jeans pocket.

  “Should I?”

  “You haven’t had any transactions with them, huh?”

  Dustin shook his head. “Naw. Where are they from?”

  “Had Pennsylvania plates.”

  Dustin stopped chewing. He swallowed, and the act looked far more difficult than it should have.

  “Maybe you should take a sip of water,” Bryan suggested.

  Dustin did. He unscrewed the cap of his refilled water bottle and took a long drink of the lukewarm stuff.

  “Start talking and make it fast.”

  Tamara would probably be an ice cube by the time he got back to the truck. Stupid. Should have turned the heater on.

  “Hey, I don’t know much. You know how Gene is selective about whom he tells what?”

  “I’m aware of that tactic, yes.”

  “I don’t know a lot about them, but one of the other bouncers—Eddie G., you know him?”

  Eddie G. was actually next on Bryan’s list.

  “I heard him on the phone one day. Only caught half the conversation, but best I could tell they were talking about opening up a new transport line from here up to Philly. Hardcore stuff, you know?”

  Leaning his back against the iron bars, Bryan studied the sleeping men and grunted. “Now if they don’t show up where they’re supposed to at the previously agreed-upon time, Gene’ll probably go on the rampage.”

  “Yeah, that’d do it.”

  Looked like Bryan was going to have to accelerate his plans.

  But how was he going to swing it when the one woman who could help him was morphing cell by cell into an iceberg? He might have to call in backup, and that was a concept he was still hugely unaccustomed to. Teams meant an unpredictable margin of error, and he didn’t want to risk it.

  ___

  Bryan drove himself and Tamara back to the hotel and carried her through the side entrance, avoiding the glower of the front desk clerk. They would need to move on soon. Staying in one hotel so long hadn’t been his original plan, but some sort of convention being held in the area meant every hotel rated two-and-a-half stars or higher was booked. He may not have been a snob about most things, but he refused to lay his head on two-star pillows except under duress.

  He shifted Tamara into a fireman’s carry, and patted his pockets for his room key while checking the hallway for witnesses. The sight of him carrying a limp blonde over his shoulder like a sack of animal feed would have imprinted on anyone’s memory, and that’s exactly what he didn’t want.

  Footsteps behind the door across the hall indicated the room’s occupant was near enough to utilize their peephole, and Bryan eased out of the peephole viewing area until an inner door closed and water drummed against the shower floor.

  Finally, he found his key wedged between two business cards in his wallet, eased into the comfortably cool room, and let the door close softly behind him.

  Pausing at the thermostat, he nudged the temperature up to seventy-eight, and groaned. Under normal circumstances, he’d be sweating at seventy-two, but under the covers with a body pressed against him? He’d probably lose all his water weight within an hour.

  “If I knew your doctor’s number”—gently, he lay Tamara on his bed and worked her combat boots off her feet— “I’d call her and tell her to come get you.”

  His hands, holding her right foot and poised to peel off her sock, stilled. No, he wouldn’t call her doctor. He couldn’t. He couldn’t do what needed done without help, and he didn’t really want to call the Shrews into the mess, either. He didn’t want to have to break in a new partner. He was used to the one he had.

  A chuckle escaped his chest. Used to. He was a little more than used to her. Maybe he was even a little bit attached to her.

  He let the sock fall, then the other.

  He stripped her as much as he’d dare, and not so much that she’d malign him for it later, down to her tank top and the high-cut pink briefs he tried not to pay much attention to. That was hard. They had ruffles at the sides and a little bow at the front. Unusual tastes, this woman had. Surplus store boots and pretty panties?

  All the while as he undressed her and then disrobed himself, her phone rang. Again and again, sometimes just a couple rings here before it stopped, and then started up again seconds later.

  Annoyed, he wrested her phone from her jacket pocket and studied the screen. Tată, it read.

  He had no clue what or who a tată was, but he activated the call all the same. “Tamara is unavailable,” he said, pressing the phone between his ear and shoulder so he had use of his right hand to unfasten his wristwatch.

  Heavy breathing came in lieu of a response. Bryan was about to disconnect, when a deep voice with an accent like Tamara’s, only thicker, asked, “Who are you?”

  Bryan didn’t have shit to hide from whoever this person was who had access to the Shrew’s phone number. There had to be a very small amount of people, if he knew Tamara as well as he thought. “Bryan.”

  “Why do you have my daughter’s phone?”

  Ah.

  “She’s unavailable. It rang. I answered. Should I take a message?”

  That breathing again, this time with increased speed and more rasp. Agitation. He was holding in his temper, just like Bryan was. He had a woman with blue lips and fingertips on his bed, and her father was playing the slow-and-steady conversation game.

  “Yes,” Mr. Ursu said after Bryan had paced the foot of the bed four times. “When she is…available…tell her that her mother and I are at the Cambria Suites in Morrisville. We expect to see her tomorrow.”

  Good luck with that, buddy.

  “Should I phone her employer and leave a message that way as well?”

  Fuck. “Not necessary. I’m sure Tamara will return your call as soon as she’s able.”

  Mr. Ursu grunted and hung up.

  “Goodbye to you, too,” Bryan mumbled as he powered down her phone. He set it on the right nightstand and pulled Tamara up to the head of the bed after pulling back the covers. He slipped into the bed next to her and drew her in close, her back to his front, and got to work rubbing her side beneath the sheets.

  Her s
kin having such an unnatural chill probably did more to kill his libido than any cold shower he’d ever taken in the past, but regardless of the fact he was holding the human equivalent of an ice cube against his chest, he couldn’t deny the allure of what was there.

  After what he’d seen earlier, he knew she was strong, but under her clothes, she wasn’t muscled the way he’d expected. She was fit, but had curves he now trailed fingertips over. Back and forth over the jut of her hip, and down into the indentation at her waist. He skimmed over her belly and lingered there with him marveling at the contrasts of soft and hard. She could be a killing machine, if she wanted to be. No one would expect it of her, little blonde thing with phenomenal tits and pink lip gloss. But in two days, she’d broken one nose and at the very least, cracked a few ribs of a Bear stupid enough to get close.

  A killing machine that smelled like honey shampoo and that cloyingly sweet purple shower gel she’d insisted he go out to the drugstore and buy that first night they’d bunked here.

  She was a study in contrasts. Not at all the bimbo he’d assumed she was that first day. That’d been his first mistake. The first item on her list.

  He pulled her a little bit closer, pulling her ass more snugly against him, and forced her legs to mold against his bent ones. Somehow, I’ve turned into a brooding mama bear. He rolled his eyes, and reached for the remote control. Drea would never let me live this down.

  Drea had always joked he’d probably be the kind of bear who’d eat his cubs instead of nurture them because he was so distant. But he really wasn’t. It was a simple matter of compartmentalization. His mind was always churning. He always cared, even if he didn’t immediately act. Some things required calculation. Assessment. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be trying to fix this Bear problem like some kind of part-time furry sheriff. He’d quietly gather up his family and leave the territory.

  He’d waited long enough. Done enough assessing and calculating. Now was the time for action.

  Tamara whimpered as his fingers cinched around the remote control, so he drew his hand in and put it back beneath the covers atop her right thigh.

  Less cold now. Idly, he rubbed circles on her smooth skin and settled his chin atop her mussed hair. Good.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wherever her brother was, Drea hoped he had a plan, because she was nearing the point of desperation. The point where she’d have nothing left but tears, and she’d hate herself for shedding them.

  She wasn’t a fighter. Never had been. That’s why it was her fault she and Bryan got abducted all those months ago. She’d been behind the counter at the dry cleaning business, and was careless with who she thought was a customer.

  He’d known she was Bear, and even though he didn’t smell like Bear or resemble any local shifters she knew, she’d let her guard down. She’d turned her back, laughing at the man’s flirtatious little joke. Next thing she knew, she had a dart in her neck, and when Bryan came out from the back to investigate the reason she’d shrieked, she watched another dart fly, this time toward his neck. Then she’d passed out.

  During that demeaning ordeal when they’d been kept chained in a cramped trailer in a circus back lot, Bryan had kept her sane. Brave. Made her keep her head, so when the opportunity came for them to escape, she’d be ready.

  Even after everything that had happened in the Bear group, she’d expected their rescue to be facilitated by Gene. It was those damned Pollyanna ideals of hers that everything would work out; everything would be fine, if she just gave people the chance to do the right thing.

  “You’re too nice for your own good, Drea,” Bryan had whispered into the dark in that trailer. He’d spoken with a slur, because the tranquilizers they had him on around-the-clock made his brain and tongue slow.

  “I can’t not be nice.” She’d rocked in her corner, curled into a fetal ball, terrified to move for fear her shadows would tell their jailers it was time for them to fill another syringe. “I can’t think that way.”

  “You conflate nice with weak, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Think about it. If angels were on Earth, people would torture them, too,” was the last thing he’d said before he passed out again.

  Torture.

  Here she was again. Nice and weak.

  She swallowed and closed her eyes, mentally soothing her agitated bear, and praying for the strength she didn’t possess. Think like Dana. Be calm. Give nothing away. She repeated the mantra, even as Gene’s fingers tightened around her throat.

  He gave her a little shake that forced her already-bruised ribs against the sharp counter edge.

  She balled her fingers into fists at her sides and concentrated on the pain. She needed to stay focused, and she’d rather use pain than self-pity.

  “He missed another shift, Drea. I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is he?”

  Even if she knew, she wouldn’t tell, but oh, how Bryan was going to get it whenever he turned up.

  When she was eight and he was fourteen, she’d been afraid of water. He’d tossed her into the creek, forcing her to swim. She had, but she hadn’t been ready. Traumatized her. She feared Bryan was far to willing to remind her of that old lesson.

  She opened her eyes and tried to keep her face a blank, and her voice calm. Fixing her gaze on the diminutive megalomaniac, she stifled a scoff. He didn’t deserve the title he’d made for himself. He didn’t deserve their mercy after taking advantage of their hospitality, nursing him back to health when he was a new, weak Bear. What did he do when he got back on all four feet, healthy? He’d shit on them as if they were a forest floor.

  “I’ve told you the same thing each time you’ve called, and every time you’ve sent one of your Bears here, Gene.”

  She couldn’t get angry enough. Black Bear women never really got good and angry unless their children were threatened. She’d care about her kids, if she had any, more than she cared about herself. She wished she could get angry—to force her beast out—but her beast wasn’t like Bryan’s. Her bear was passive. Too hospitable.

  “I don’t know where Bryan is.”

  Gene’s bloodshot eyes narrowed as his fingers tightened around her throat.

  Her instinct was to cough, but the air caught in her chest. She scratched at his fingers uselessly, panting through an open mouth.

  He loosened his grip. “Wanna try again?”

  “If I thought a lie would help, I’d tell you one.”

  He let go of her with a push, and she fell back onto her ass, groaning as she rubbed her neck.

  “We gotta go, Gene. Got that stuff comin’ in,” Eddie G. said from the open shop door.

  Gene leaned over the counter and stared down at her. “We’re watching you. Don’t get too comfortable.”

  She hadn’t been comfortable since the day he rolled into town twenty years ago, and she’d only been two then. She kept that view to herself and just nodded. That was the way most of her interactions with Gene ended. With a nod and a broken will.

  “Gene?” Eddie G. nudged.

  Gene blew a kiss at her, and as he walked away, she wished there was some way to set the air on fire to purify it of his presence.

  If Bryan didn’t resurface soon, she’d need to call the Shrews again. Already, the lines were drawn with the Shrews firmly on the side of the Cats. Now, they’d have to step in and pull Drea and her cousins across that line, because sometime during all those centuries of peacekeeping, the Bears in the Smokies had forgotten how to fight back.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Tamara opened her eyes, the room was dark, but Bryan’s familiar scent and his press against her back soothed her. She was safe. The last thing she remembered was handing Dustin his take-out container, and then there was that surge of adrenaline from Bryan that overwhelmed her systems and knocked her out cold.

  Literally.

  Now, though, she was quite warm, and judging by the way Bryan had kicked the covers off, he’d been suffering for the room temperature all nig
ht.

  Sitting up, she rested fingertips on his brow and found it burning hot and damp. Figuring she’d nudge the thermostat down a few ticks, she swung her legs toward the bed’s edge, but before she could stand and pull her hand away, her tired brain was inundated by images from Bryan’s dream.

  Moans, fingers curled against white sheets, sweat-drenched skin. A growl as bear fangs descended.

  There in his dream he was losing control, but when Tamara shook her head, psychically dislodging herself from his thoughts without him knowing she’d been there to spy, she looked down on his sleeping form to find him still. Calm…but aroused. She hadn’t noticed, because she’d been too busy observing the temperature.

  And now, too, she noticed her near-nudity. She wasn’t ashamed of her body. Never had been, but was less than amused at the reasons she’d had to be stripped down in her slumber in the first place.

  After turning the thermostat down to sixty-eight, she picked up her phone from the nightstand and opened the door between the two rooms. Sitting on the edge of Bryan’s bed, she scrolled through the backlog of text messages, did a late check-in with the Shrews, and paused when registering the missed call list.

  Several back-to-back calls from her father. Investigating further, she found one of those calls had connected for about two minutes.

  “Shit.”

  Bryan had answered? Of course, after ten repeated call attempts, he probably would have been annoyed by the shrill ringtone. What must that conversation have been like?

  Her parents must have landed in the US. They’d expect to see her soon, but they’d have to wait.

  She sent one terse text message in Romanian to her father, telling him she’d connect with him after the sun rose, and shut off the phone’s power.

  Leaving the device on the dresser on the way back into her room, she laid her eyes on Bryan in the dim light, now rolled onto his back, lips slightly parted in sleep.

  The Y of his boxer briefs bulged open, no real barrier for the turgid shaft beneath it.