by Kathy Lyons
“You’re exhausted. When was the last time you ate?”
Why did she want to cry? What was happening to her that she was this emotional because he was indeed standing right behind her. Because he was gentle as he asked her a caring question? Because he’d noticed she was drooping with fatigue.
Get a grip!
But she couldn’t. Her mind and her emotions were shattered beyond retrieving. And suddenly, it was too much. She gasped, humiliated because she was crying. Crying! Why? Because he hadn’t kissed her? She didn’t even know him!
“You’ve been hit with a lot today. You discovered shifters, and that’s never easy. And then the attacks. It’s almost four in the morning, and I’ll wager you haven’t slept much since coming to Detroit.”
She hadn’t.
“Let me take you to bed.”
Her body tightened at his words. Her breath caught on a sob and she wanted to beat herself for it. Sobbing? WTF? Because she knew he hadn’t meant the words the way he said them? Because he meant taking her to bed to sleep. Could she be more humiliated? She’d told him she wanted him. And all he’d done was not touch her and be kind.
Kind!
When she wanted him to rip of her clothes off, to force her to submit to him, to penetrate her like they were both animals in the jungle. Raw, passionate, unfettered by rationality.
She pressed a fist to her mouth as the desire pumped through her veins, roared through her head, and squeezed her insides like a vise. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t exactly unpleasant either. It was raw and intense. The kind of passion that ripped her mind away until she felt like an exposed nerve.
“Cecilia?” His voice was thick with worry, then suddenly with the sharp bite of fear. “Dr. Lu!”
She didn’t know what was happening. The world was moving in a way it wasn’t supposed to. Then he touched her. She wanted to cry out, Not like that! He was supporting her. Her knees had gone out, and he was picking her up like he would a child when she wanted something entirely different.
She wanted passion to match her lust.
He gave her gentleness as he lifted her into his arms.
She smelled his masculine scent. She felt the strength in his arms as he threw her slightly up in the air so he could readjust his grip. She felt the hard ripple of his abdomen as he braced her against him. And she felt the power in his legs as he turned and began walking up the stairs.
No strain that she could tell. Simply a tight grip as he held her against his chest.
He was as strong as a bear, she realized. And whereas the thought was meant to make her smile, instead it made her whimper.
Mate with me.
She didn’t want to think those words. It wasn’t real. It was biochemistry gone amok. And yet they were there, a silent desperate plea.
And he was ignoring her as he gently set her down in a bedroom one door down from Mother. There were two twin beds here, and he set her on the nearest one. The sheets were scratchy, thin, and smelled of fresh dryer sheets.
“I’ll bring you some soup.”
“I can get it,” she said. God, she didn’t want him waiting on her.
“I’ll get it,” he said, and she heard the ring of command in his voice.
He wasn’t going to bed her, but he was going to take care of her. Did that make the situation better or worse?
“I am not this weak.”
“This isn’t weak. This is post-adrenaline drop.”
Maybe. Probably not, but it was a good enough excuse to allow her to save face. Then his expression shifted as if he were remembering something, and he patted his back pocket before pulling out a crumpled protein bar.
“It’s crushed but still good. Start with this.”
She reached for it, but he was already opening the packaging. Then he deftly broke a piece off and pressed it to her lips.
He was feeding her?
She opened her mouth to say that wasn’t necessary, but he slipped the food inside before she could get the words out. And then she didn’t speak because the chocolate and peanut butter paste tasted really good. As in really, really good.
He pressed another morsel to her lips the moment she swallowed the first. And again and again until it was gone.
“Thank you,” she said. She really had needed to eat.
“Any medications, conditions, or allergies that I need to know about?”
She snorted. “I’m allergic to cats.”
“Mother doesn’t have one anymore. The wolves kept trying to eat it.”
Her snort turned into a choke. She was lying on her back looking right up into his face. The hard, jagged scar on his jaw was right there and she stroked it with her fingers. She felt his body go rigid with shock, but he didn’t move away. His nostrils flared, and his pupils dilated, but he didn’t draw away.
“Why doesn’t this disappear when you shift back to human? Sammy’s skin looked pristine.”
It seemed like his entire body was held rigid with control, but when he spoke, his words were calm. Excruciatingly even.
“I got the scar when I was ten. Long before my first shift. It became part of my identity, and so it remains, always part of me.”
“How did you get it?”
“I saved my brother’s life.”
“Then it’s a badge of honor.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “That’s what I told him. He said I’d gotten it when I tripped on my Legos.”
She rolled her eyes. “Brothers are assholes.”
“He was half right. I was able to save him because I tripped on my Legos. I was sprawled on the ground when he fell on top of me from the roof. We rolled together on impact. I’m not even sure it was a Lego that split open my jaw, but something did.”
“Why was he falling from the roof?”
Hank’s eyes grew soft. “It was his first shift. Sometimes they’re violent things and that’s where he was when it happened.” He snorted. “He liked to go to calm down.”
She smiled because he was smiling. Because he’d just shared a memory of his brother at an important moment in both their lives. And because that made her feel like he wasn’t a stranger to her anymore. Not an abductor, not a black bear, but a man with a brother and a heroic scar.
Her fingers trailed across his scar, then up to his lips. They were full and very mobile. She’d been watching them as he spoke. And now she watched them open slightly as she trailed her finger across the lush softness there. Probably the only soft part of his entire body.
“I know so little about you,” she murmured, and yet she felt so close to him. “I have brothers,” she abruptly volunteered. “One in chemistry, one in biochemistry.” She shrugged. “Whole family of science nerds; my dad’s a biology professor. Except for my mother who cooked, cleaned, and meddled.” She grinned. “It’s the Chinese mother way.”
He took hold of her hand, enveloping it completely in his as he spoke. “I’m the youngest. Older sister and a brother who’s gone now.”
She jolted. “Gone?”
He nodded. “Died as a teenager.” His eyes were impossibly dark. “He went looking for trouble and found it. It’s the grizzly in us, pushes us to be reckless.”
She frowned. “But you’re so controlled.” Even in the middle of the fights, his every action had a purpose, his every motion seemed thought out.
“I had to learn that. My brother’s death destroyed my parents, and I wasn’t going to do that to them by being stupid. The military helped, as did the training to become a medic.”
She shook her head. “I know people in the military. This quietness didn’t come from them. It’s all you.” She wasn’t sure if she’d used the right word. Hank was “quiet” in the way of a still, deep pool of water. She felt like she could spend her lifetime exploring his depths and not come to the center of him. So instead, she rested beside him. She drank in his spirit and let herself relax in his peace.
“I had to hit rock bottom,” he said, his voice rough. “To that pl
ace where I either chose control or self-destruction.”
A chill swept through her body. “Suicide?”
His lips curled into a wry smile. “Nothing so dramatic. A lot of booze and bar fights.”
“And now?”
He shrugged and his eyes seemed to take on an intensity that belied the warm chocolate brown. It was as though he spoke from the very center of him. “Now I’m looking for my next place in life. I’m done with the military and not sure I’ll take to the new alpha. I’ve got friends and responsibilities, but is that enough to build a full life?”
She understood the question. In her quieter moments between crises, she’d been asking herself the same thing. “I’ve got my job, medical mysteries to solve and all that. But living out of a suitcase gets old.” As did staring death in the face over and over with no one to talk to about it.
Except now she knew Hank, and she knew he would listen if she wanted to share. It was that stillness inside him. It invited her to whisper all her secrets.
“You were never in any danger from me,” he said, his voice gruff. “You know that, right? I was never going to hurt you. I protect people.”
She got that now. She’d seen it in the way he cared for Sammy and Mother. And she’d seen it when he’d leapt across the room to stand between her and the crazy hybrid. He’d saved her life tonight, at the risk of his own. Hard not to melt when a guy did that.
“I know it’s just biology,” she said as she stroked a languid caress along his jaw. “Pheromones or something. I know that, but I want it anyway.”
He didn’t answer. She didn’t know if he even breathed.
She trailed her fingers up his cheek and into the short nubs of his hair. His body was rigid. Was he fighting himself? She’d given up fighting sometime in the last few moments. So she stretched herself up to him. Or maybe she pulled him down to her. Either way, their bodies came close. Almost touching.
He held himself back by a scant quarter inch. She felt the heat of his breath on her lips. She saw the torment in his eyes.
“Biochemistry,” she whispered.
“No,” he said, and she didn’t know if he was denying the source of these feelings or just her.
“I love biochemistry,” she said. Then she surged upward until their mouths slammed together. It was fast and hard, too abrupt and nothing at all like she wanted because he kept his mouth closed.
His lips were sealed against hers, but she moved across them anyway. She stroked her tongue along the seam. She tugged with her arms and angled her head. Anything to get him to respond.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Until he completely changed.
Chapter 9
Hank teetered on cracking ice. The balance point was an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of possibilities. He was a man in his body, but at this moment his mind was more bear than human. The urge to care for Cecilia had come from both sides of himself, so that choice had been easy. He’d carried her upstairs, fed her with his own hand, and now came the inevitable result.
A kiss.
She pressed her lips to his and he gripped the edges of his sanity like a man trying to hold Jell-O together. Thoughts melted away. Morals, decisions, the things a man chooses to think and do—all lost their form beneath the press of her lips.
He tried to hold himself back. She didn’t understand what he was. What the animal would do to her wasn’t human. It was simple, raw, and would go on for hours. Her wishes wouldn’t be considered except in that they got her to spread her legs. And then he would plant himself inside her and stay until he was done.
The only thing stopped him was a disappearing Jell-O mold of human beliefs. And she wiped them away with every stroke of her tongue against the seam of his lips.
His body locked tight, every muscle, every bone frozen. He couldn’t draw back, and he would not soften forward. So he trembled on the last pinpoint of balance of neither bear nor man but a denial of both.
But she would not be denied. She teased across his lips with a wet heat that melted the balance point.
His lungs were shut down, but he had to inhale. His body demanded breath and with it came the scent of her arousal. Spiced persimmon. An exotic enough scent that his mind grew distracted by it. He followed it in his head, savoring the wildness of it. Where did it come from? Where would it take him? He didn’t even realize it had pulled him off his balance until he was lost in pursuit of her scent.
He didn’t find it in her mouth, though he plundered inside it. His tongue touched every part of her there. Teeth, tongue, roof of her mouth. He tasted heat mixed with chocolate and peanut butter and knew that the persimmon was not there.
He pressed her back onto the bed, setting his nose to her cheek and then into her hair. Most of his senses weren’t as precise in human form. Though his vision improved, his sense of smell and taste were dulled, so he had to take his time as he followed her scent. He had to taste her cheek and ear; he had to press his nose to the curve of her neck. And he had to breathe there while he learned the details of her scent in minute detail.
And what he learned was that she tasted sweet, but the spice scent that drew him so firmly was not along her neck even though he used his teeth to scrape across her jaw just to be sure.
So he went lower.
Her clothing blocked his path. White cotton with scents that did not appeal to him. His hands knew how to unbutton the garment, and so he did. But the action required his human mind to be stronger and as it surged forward, it began to ask questions.
What was he doing?
Why was he doing it?
And most dangerous of all, are we in control? The answer was a clear no and the human mind pushed into more awareness.
But Cecilia hadn’t been idle. As his hands had manipulated a plastic button through its hole, she had helped him, shrugging out of the white lab coat.
Suddenly, his vision was assaulted by the bright primary colors of her top. The pattern was random, the colors extreme, and the human struggled to understand it, but the bear gloried in the brilliance of it. It always liked females it could see easily.
The human was distracted, so the bear surged forward. He chased her scent, and that required the blinding colors removed as well. But this the bear managed easily, slipping his hands under her shirt as she lifted it off for him.
Now he could taste her skin. The heat of her body mixed with the sound of her breath. Sweet tight pants as her scent thickened in the air. He drew his tongue over her collarbone and down. Purple lace interfered with his progress, but she shrugged the bra away.
He found her breasts. His actions here were no different than anywhere else. He inhaled her scent, he stroked with the broad flat part of his tongue, and then he scraped his teeth across her flesh to deepen the taste. When it was not the source of her spiced persimmon scent, he moved on. When he nipped at her nipples, her breath changed, and her hands gripped his shoulders, but they were not what he pursued, so he continued on.
“Hank. Hank, take off your clothes.”
She was speaking to him, and some part of him processed her words. He knew that she was willing, and that was enough for him to keep foraging around her body for her purest scent. So he tasted the flesh along her belly. The scent was clearer here, and he moved more quickly. The swipe of his tongue covered more of her skin, and he nipped with his teeth more aggressively. Not deeper, just over wider stretches of her body.
She jolted when he did that. Then there was a long shiver, but she did not draw away. He murmured against the top of her pants. A purr that came from his gut. He bared his teeth, ready to bite through the fabric, but he didn’t need to. She pushed them down before touching his shoulders, his head, his face. She was trying to adjust him. Perhaps get him to lift his head, but he would not be stopped. Not by something so gentle as a tug.
Then he found the source of her spice, the taste of her persimmon. On the fur between her legs, on the sweet, flushed center of her.
He licked it as he consumed every drop. If she said something to him, he didn’t hear it. If she wanted something from him, he didn’t notice. He wanted her spice and her willingness. She gave him both. With every lick, her body stretched open. With every taste, her sweetness flowed stronger.
He felt her orgasm while he was delving between her legs. The undulating movement, the tightening of her thighs, everything that told him she was ready for him came while he burrowed into her sweetness.
And while she cried in delight, a part of him opened up. A connection of sorts. A slender thread that bound him to her and he was so delighted he redoubled his efforts while she gasped and cried in her completion.
Until she tugged at him. Until her body fought so wildly, even he could not contain her.
So he drew back to look at her. Her body was flushed, breasts peaked, and eyes dazed. But most important was that her thighs were spread. She was still flushed with spice and open to him.
He stood up because he needed to shuck his clothing before he mounted her. His hands went to his pants, but his fingers were clumsy. And with the surge of the human in his mind, words spilled from his lips.
“Stop me, Cecilia.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her words breathless. “I liked it.”
She didn’t understand the bear. Worse, she didn’t understand that taking a woman without care was wrong. The human needed balance in all things, most especially with a woman. To simply take according to his desire was wrong. To act without thought was the height of imbalance.
“Stop me,” he rasped again.
“Hank, what’s wrong?”
He was out of control and that always led to disaster. She pushed up on her elbows to look at him. He needed to draw back. He needed to find that lost center of Zen awareness, but the bear scented her spice and tried to pull his attention back to it.
Something was important about it. Something that the bear wanted him to know so he would comply. So he would release control back to the animal.
He inhaled deeply. He tasted the persimmon on his lips. And the bear pushed him to know the truth.
It had to act now. It had to penetrate her now, because of her scent. Because of her taste, the bear knew it had to be now.