Fuck it all, he was standing in the street again.
His bear was straining to find her scent. The sweet, delicious fragrance underneath that strange scent of wrongness she had.
She’s sick, he told his bear. We can’t take care of a sick human. And we sure as shit can’t bring a human out to the compound.
His bear whined, and Tank’s stomach contracted in pain.
Fuck it all twice. Tank slammed his truck door much harder than was necessary, and walked back into the diner, pointing toward the rest room when Anna, the waitress, asked if he forgot something.
Tank strode between the tables, just barely keeping himself from growling. He needed to get his truckload of lumber back to the compound. He needed to pick up groceries for Jasmin, the jaguar shifter who did most of the cooking for the crew. He needed to smack the shit out of Xander, the panther shifter who kept stealing his construction supplies instead of asking Flynn, their alpha, to buy his own damn lumber and nails for him.
He didn’t have time for this.
He stood outside the ladies’ room door, inhaling deeply. She wasn’t in there anymore. As he’d expected, her scent led out the back door at the other end of the hallway.
Tank followed the trail out into the back lot by the dumpsters, wrinkling his nose at the stench of garbage. It was harder to follow her scent here, but he picked it up again by the delivery entrance.
He tracked her down a small side street, then over a few blocks toward the edge of town. Across a vacant lot, and around the used-car lot. Behind some houses, through a copse of trees…
The scent was growing fresher—he was moving faster than she was. He came out of the trees onto the edge of a weedy parking lot. He knew where he was now. The old abandoned service station just outside of town—he’d passed it dozens of times. The pumps had been removed and the building was boarded up.
The woman was standing by the side of the abandoned building. As he watched from the shadow of the trees, she glanced surreptitiously around, then moved one of the boards on a side window. It swung aside, and she climbed through the window and let the board drop so it covered the opening once more.
What the hell?
Tank jogged across the parking lot to the window she’d disappeared through. Slowly, carefully, he moved the board aside, trying not to make a noise. The window had been broken out underneath the wooden cover.
Tank eyed the opening dubiously. It was going to be a tight squeeze, getting in there—this was not an opening built for grizzly shifters.
Was it worth the trouble? What was he planning on saying to her when he got inside?
Are you sick? What was he going to do if she was?
Do you need help? Obviously she did—she looked like she was homeless and hungry. That didn’t mean he was the one who was supposed to help her.
Why did you kiss me? Because she was a crazy woman.
Why won’t my bear let me leave you? That was the million-dollar question, and the one he really didn’t want an answer to.
It was also the one he couldn’t ask—not just because she wouldn’t have an answer either, but because how the hell was he supposed to explain to her that he had a damn grizzly bear inside him? A monster bear, who would probably claw her to pieces if he decided to come out. And Tank was no longer in the position where he could control him.
This was such a damn stupid idea.
Tank threw one leg over the windowsill and squeezed himself through, mentally cursing the whole way.
Chapter 3
Lissa felt better as soon as she was inside her squat. It was nice and dim in there, the only light coming from the gaps where the boards didn’t quite cover the windows. Somehow lately, she liked the dimness. It was soothing and made her feel safe, like an animal in its burrow.
She made her way between the empty, littered shelves of what had once been a convenience store, back to the office where her main squat was. It felt even safer in there.
She sat on the worn old couch that served as her bed, kicking it first to scare away any mice that might be thinking about nesting in it.
It was harder this time, being out on the streets. She couldn’t stay put and she couldn’t work, and now the money she’d stolen was almost gone.
She’d gone soft, that’s what it was. She’d spent over two years with the People of Ursus, a backwoods cult in Arkansas. They lived in isolation, farming and baking artisan bread, selling their wares at local farmers’ markets and waiting for the return of the Bear God Incarnate.
They were nutcases, clearly, but harmless ones with plenty to eat and comfy beds in individual little cubicles, and there was no abuse or crazy sex stuff. They just baked and planted crops and had drum ceremonies where they walked on all fours and roared like bears, and prayed that one of them would be touched by the Bear God and gain the power to turn into a bear at will.
As if that would ever happen.
Still, as long as Lissa went to the rituals and played bear, nobody actually seemed to care if she believed any of it or not. She did her work and got food and shelter in return, and it was all awesome until Brother Damien showed up.
But she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about the demon that was riding her ever since she’d left, or the aggression and the blackouts and the driving hunger.
The demon’s not real, she told herself. Traumatic delusion, remember? Or a brain tumor. Or a tapeworm, that would be good.
No, a tapeworm would be gross and disturbing, but it was better than a brain tumor. Or some kind of mental breakdown. Or becoming a vampire, or a flesh-eating zombie, or the Bear God Incarnate.
Okay, that was enough of that. She’d never believed in that woo-woo stuff, and she wasn’t going to start now.
She kept telling herself she should go into Nashville and find a free clinic. There must be one somewhere. Maybe they could tell her what was wrong with her.
But whenever she thought of doing that, she felt even sicker, like it would be wrong to let anyone know what was going on.
Yeah. The paranoid delusions all say that.
Out in the empty convenience store, she heard a faint noise, and she stiffened.
Someone was in her squat.
Lissa reached under the couch cushion for the hunting knife she always kept there. Slowly, she slid it from its sheath and tiptoed to the door, pressing herself against the wall and listening again.
There was a soft crinkling noise, like someone had stepped on one of the empty snack packages she left scattered over the floor. Between those and the empty soda cans, she had a top-notch early warning system.
The person was still out in the convenience store area—they hadn’t found the hallway to the office. Lissa glanced at the bookshelf that hid her emergency exit. Should she bolt? Or see who it was?
Her curiosity overcame her. And if it was another vagrant, looking for a place to stay, she wasn’t giving this place up without a fight.
Lissa stole down the hallway to the entrance to the convenience store, flattening herself against the wall.
She didn’t hear anything, but she could feel someone out there. A heavy, menacing presence that pressed down on her chest. And a faint scent, like a dark forest with something feral in it…
A huge figure loomed up out of the shadows, reaching for her. Instinctively she slashed at the figure, and felt the knife blade slide along the skin of their arm, drawing blood.
Tank ducked, but not fast enough. The knife sliced across his exposed forearm below his pushed-up sleeve, and blood ran down his arm.
Dammit, he should have been paying better attention.
He grabbed the woman’s wrist and twisted her around, pinning her against him with her knife hand held out to the side.
She stiffened. “You better not be here to rape me,” she said. “Because my vagina has teeth that will bite your dick right off. And also lately I go wacko and attack people, and it’s not pretty.”
Tank couldn’t hel
p a huff of laughter. She really was crazy. He knew he should let go of her, but his bear kind of liked the feel of her rounded ass rubbing against his thighs. And she still had that knife.
“Vagina teeth?” he asked. “Is that even a thing? Because I’m pretty sure it’s just an urban legend.”
“I wouldn’t take the chance, if I were you,” she said coolly. “What if you were wrong and your dick got chomped off? How would you feel then?”
He had to give her props for having stainless steel balls. Not many women would take on a guy his size with nothing but a knife and trash-talk. Although, that could be more evidence of the crazy.
“I’ll keep my dick in my pants, thanks,” he said. “I really wasn’t planning on taking it out.”
There was a silence.
“Okay, in that case you should let me go,” she said. “You’re bleeding on me.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” He let her go, stepping back out of knife range. His bear didn’t like letting go. It made him feel cold and empty and agitated.
She gave a derisive sniff. “Your fault. You sneaked into my squat like a squat-stealing rapist thief. You might not believe this, but some guys would think they were entitled to have sex with me, just because they bought my lunch.”
Tank sighed. “That’s not why I did it.”
“And yet, here you are. Following me home.”
“Well, you did kiss me in the diner,” he pointed out. “And you bit me. Some people might interpret that to mean you wanted to have sex with me.”
“Oh.” She smelled embarrassed now—but also aroused. And there was that odd scent he couldn’t identify—the one that smelled wrong. “Good point.”
“But you don’t want to have sex with me, even though you kissed me.” No, of course she didn’t. He didn’t want to have sex with her either. Nobody was having sex with anybody.
But he did want to know why she’d kissed him.
She sighed. “I don’t actually know why I did that. Although you have to admit, you are pretty hot, even if you’re the size of the Incredible Hulk. When he’s Hulked out. If you asked nicely and maybe took me on a date, I might have sex with you sometime, but I don’t feel like it right now.”
This conversation was nuts. He’d been right the first time—this was a damn stupid idea.
He blew out a big sigh. “You have sex on the brain, you know that? That’s not why I followed you here.”
“Well, why did you? If you weren’t after my attack vagina.”
Tank flinched at the thought of imaginary vagina teeth, and shook his head. “This is stupid. I should never have come. I just wanted to see if you were okay. You seemed sick, in the diner, and your scent is strange.”
Damn, he shouldn’t have said that, either. She was making him lose his sanity.
She hunched in on herself a little at his words, as if embarrassed, but then she stood up straighter and raised her chin. “I can’t help the way I smell. I do the best I can, but I can’t afford fruity shampoo and fancy-ass body wash. And anyway, it’s not like squats with showers grow on trees.”
Squat. Following her ‘home.’ Suddenly the words sank in. “You live here?”
Tank looked around at the desolate room, full of dusty metal shelving and littered with snack wrappers, empty soda cans and miscellaneous trash. Of course she lived here. Her scent was everywhere. It was just…why would she be living in an abandoned building?
“We don’t all get to live in McMansions,” she said, as if she’d heard his thoughts. “There’s no call to be all judgy about it. This is my squat, which, in case you’ve never been on the street, means a place you stay in when you don’t have a regular place to live. For your information, this is an A-number-one squat.”
He’d been homeless, a couple of times. But he’d lived mostly in the woods—his bear wouldn’t like living in the city. He wouldn’t have minded this place, though, in those desperate days. It didn’t make a bad den, for a bear.
But he didn’t talk about those times. Not the first time, after Angie died, or the last time, when he and Flynn and Tristan had hidden out in the woods before they took over Alexander Grant’s hunting cabin.
He couldn’t tell if she was serious about how great this place was. But he could see she had pride—she wasn’t going to let his opinion of her drag her down. Suddenly, he wanted to know more about her. Where she came from. What she was doing here. Why she was alone.
“So what makes this an A-number-one squat?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes, as if wondering why he was asking. “You have to promise not to poach,” she said. “I still have the knife and the attack vagina.”
“Stop saying that,” he muttered. The very idea made his balls shrink up.
She just gave a little grin. “Attack vagina,” she whispered. “Grr.”
Tank flinched.
“Okay,” she said, giggling. It was a surprisingly sweet sound. “Squats 101. It’s isolated, so people don’t see you coming and going and start complaining and get the cops to run you off. No electricity, but it has a kitchen area where they used to make the coffee and hot dogs and stuff.”
She walked over to one side of the convenience store and knocked on the metal counter. “Stainless steel,” she said. “So when I get my hands on a camp stove, I could put it right here, and cook and heat water without setting the place on fire.”
She led the way down the narrow hallway she’d burst out of, and gestured toward an open door. “There’s an office with a door that locks from the inside, so I can feel safe at night. It even has an old couch so I don’t have to sleep on the floor with the mice. And there’s no rats.”
Her matter-of-fact tone gave Tank chills. She really did feel genuinely lucky to have this place. Which made him wonder where the hell else she’d had to live in her life, and how bad it had been for her.
She led him to the next door. “But this is the piece de resistance,” she said. “A real bathroom with running water, and look!” She stepped inside and pushed down the handle on the cracked, discolored toilet to flush it. “Trust me, Hulk Man, any place with a toilet that flushes is the Taj Mahal of squats. There was even half a case of leftover toilet paper in the storeroom.”
Toilet paper. She was grateful for toilet paper. It was all Tank could do not to sweep her up and carry her back to his own den right now, bring her food and tuck her into bed.
“How come you live here?” he asked. “Don’t you have family? Or a crew?”
She dropped her eyes. “Not anymore,” she said.
Then she perked up. “But I have a case of snacks that was left in the storeroom, with the toilet paper. Want some Cheetos? Or a sixpack of Oreos?”
He shook his head. Oreos. That’s what she had to eat. No wonder she’d looked so desperate in the diner. His bear was pushing at him, beginning to get angry. Tank gritted his teeth. He couldn’t let his bear get agitated.
“It’s November,” he said. “Won’t it get cold here, in the winter?”
She shrugged. “I’ll get a kerosene heater. Or maybe I’ll move on. Go somewhere warm, like Florida.”
Tank felt a stab of fear in his stomach when she talked about going so far away. Anything could happen to her, and he wouldn’t be there to help. His bear didn’t like that idea.
She’s human, he told is bear. And we’re not responsible for her.
He shifted his weight uncomfortably. He was right. He should never have come here—he was no good to someone like her. She needed so much, and he had nothing to give. Not anymore.
“Well, I guess you’re okay, then?” he said. “I was afraid you were sick or something. It looked like you almost fainted in the diner.”
“I’m okay.”
He nodded. He didn’t think she was, but there was nothing he could do.
“Okay.” He hesitated. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said. “My name’s Tank.”
She nodded. “Lissa.” She held out her hand, and he shook it gent
ly. Suddenly, she stood up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for lunch,” she said. “I’m sorry I bit you and cut you and I didn’t have sex with you. You’re sweet. And I like your abs. Maybe some other time.”
His bear almost busted out of his skin. To quiet it, he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her, growling as her sweet lips parted for his. She made a little sexy growl of her own and slid her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him.
Tank lifted her up, one arm under her hips, and she wrapped her legs around him, deepening the kiss. Their tongues tangled together and his cock throbbed with desire, even as his protective instincts rose up.
He gave her bottom lip a little nip, twin to the one she’d given him in the diner. There was a trace of blood on her lip, which made his bear even more excited. She moaned softly, and he continued his bitey kisses down the side of her neck.
The second his teeth grazed the spot where her neck sloped down to her shoulder, she screamed. “No!” Suddenly, she turned into a wild spitfire, scratching and clawing at him.
Startled, Tank dropped her on her feet. Lissa backed into the bathroom, growling. “Get away from me,” she ground out. “Get away! I’ll kill you too!”
What the hell? The door slammed in his face. His bear went frantic. “Lissa?” he called, pounding on the door. “Lissa, let me in!”
“Get away!” she screamed again. “I don’t need you! I’ll kill you!”
Tank could feel his skin rippling. God, no. He couldn’t Change. He’d end up killing her, not the other way around.
With all the strength of will he possessed, he turned away from the door and bolted for the boarded-up entrance.
Chapter 4
She doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need me.
Tank repeated it over and over to himself as he drove his truck back to the compound, panting and struggling to contain his bear. His human half wanted to run away, and his bear wanted to take over and drive him right back to Lissa. The crazy woman who’d threatened to kill him. Fuck.
Bad Blood Bear (Bad Blood Shifters Book 1) Page 2