by A. B Lee
Chance frowned at the sight of the big man looking so out of place it was laughable, but he wasn’t laughing. Chance couldn’t ever remember Reece with a book in his hand, let alone reading one, and yet here he was waiting for the damn doors to open as if his life depended on getting inside. Something was very off.
When Reece stopped in his tracks and sniffed the air; Chance thought that he’d been rumbled, but it wasn’t the scent of another bear that had Reece’s eye searching the area, it was a human female that was hurrying along the street towards the man. Chance watched as Reece’s whole stance changed. He didn’t seem irritable anymore. The man had snapped to attention and was concentrating on her and her alone.
“So Reece has got a girlfriend…” He chuckled to himself and then felt a flash of jealousy go through him. He quickly pushed it aside as he watched that first exchange between them.
“Morning…” Reece gave the woman a sheepish look from under his dark brows.
“Back again?” Suzanna smiled at the man. She knew what he was and he was the last person that she’d expected to see at the library, given that shifters didn’t seem to be too bookish, and yet the man had started coming on a regular basis until he was practically part of the furniture.
“Is that ok?” Reece wondered if he’d done something wrong. He tried to keep out of the way most times and he definitely had his bear in check with the growling when he was inside the place…
“Of course.” The little mousy blonde blushed as she tried to balance her takeaway coffee cup with the search for the illusive keys to the property inside of the large shoulder bag that was slung over one shoulder.
“Can I help with that?” Reece held out one large hand towards her and her eyes locked onto it as if he was offering her a loaded grenade.
“I…err…” Her blue eyes flicked up to his for only one moment, but in that moment Reece felt every inch of his body tense with longing.
He wanted her. He wanted her with a fire that he had tried desperately to dampen and hadn’t yet managed it. Now he was skulking around the damn library like some idiot geek as often as he could; just so that he could see her, take her scent in.
Being around her calmed him and his bear. Soothed his soul. The longer he was away from her the more agitated his bear got.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Reece frowned at the very thought of harming one hair on her head. He’d kill himself before he let that happen.
CHAPTER TWO
“I didn’t think that…” Suzanna rushed out with an apology in her tone that seemed to sooth his wounded pride in a heartbeat. “I’ve just never seen a hand that size, you’re very…” She was rambling and she bit down on her words.
“Big.” Reece offered with a small grin that made her feel better.
“I guess you get that a lot.” She was apologetic again and he didn’t like it. She had nothing to feel guilty about. Hell, he scared the shit out of grown men. It was natural that she’d be weary of him.
“Yeah.” He offered her another smile to put her at ease and liked it when she smiled back at him. She held out the cup of coffee for him to take.
“Thanks. I know the darn keys are here somewhere, unless they are still on the table in the hallway at home, and that would be bad.” She was rambling again as she fished around in her bag. When her fingers touched the metal of the large fob she almost jumped for joy. “Yea!” She said in triumph as she fished them out of her bag and unlocked the front door.
Reece stood watching her. He liked nothing more. He watched her most of the day while she worked. It felt good just to be still, and he found his beast never pushed to leave until she’d finished her shift. Then he’d follow her home to make sure that she got there safely, and he might spend a few hours pacing around outside as she fixed her dinner and settled down for the night, usually with a book.
This was his life now and he was happy. Not as happy as he would have been if he’d been sharing it with her, but he knew that he wasn’t her type. She didn’t have one. She was a homebody and he was grateful for that because it meant he didn’t have the urge to rip a boyfriend apart.
The only downside to that was he might have worked up to something more if she’d been a little wilder, but the fact that she’d said darn keys and not even damn was a good sign that this woman wasn’t for him.
Suzanna forced the old door open and wedged it so it would stay. Going inside; she started to flick on the lights before she turned back towards Reece and found him holding out her coffee cup to take.
“Don’t forget this.” He offered and revelled in her smile.
“You coming in?” Suzanna asked and Reece looked confused.
“It’s not opening time yet.” He didn’t know why he’d said that. He wanted to kick himself for his stupidity and the fact that he must have sounded like a grade A moron.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Suzanna whispered as if it were a conspiracy that they were hatching up between them. Then she dropped her eyes downwards as if looking at him pained her in some way.
“Ok, thanks.” Reece looked around him for any signs of trouble up and down the street before he followed her inside.
Chance had caught the whole exchange between them and was grinning like a damn Cheshire Cat from across the road. His friend was sweet on a female and the oaf was acting like a moron. Chance reasoned that if this was where Reece was slopping off to most days then this woman wasn’t just stress relief for the man and his bear, she must have meant something to him, perhaps she was even his mate…
Chance frowned at the thought. If Reece had found his mate then why the hell wasn’t he all over wooing her? What he’d witnessed was less wooing and more acting like a damned fool and that was no way to get your mate.
~^~
Suzanna had seen him from a distance waiting outside the library and everything about her day had brightened in that one instant. There was the girlie rush of excitement that went through her, and in that one moment she had perfect happiness and plausible deniability that he was there for her. Then the truth of it hit her square between the eyes…
He was way out of her league.
Tall, tall enough that to kiss him she’d have to go up on tip toes and still he’d have to lean down. Dark, with a broody feel to him that caught a woman’s interests and held it. And handsome, sexy as hell and with a body that screamed… touch me. Yeah, this shifter was definitely a league or three above hers.
She’d toyed with the idea of changing her wardrobe. She’d even gone as far as to look online for some sexy outfits that might catch his attention, but she’d talked herself out of it as she looked at the models on the page and imaged him with them and not her. She was a mousy non-entity and he was a shifter and they were worlds apart.
Suzanna knew the type of women that threw themselves at these men every day of the week and she knew that she didn’t stand a chance. At five foot nothing with more curves than flat places, the sexy shifter that visited her place of work wasn’t about to give her the time of day; except for in her work setting. Still, she could dream, and most nights she did.
She’d spent the last few weeks researching shifters and reading everything that she could lay her hands on. It had got to the point where it felt like a damn obsession to her, as if she was stalking the man, and she’d tried to stop, wean herself off with a good book, and only ended up fuelling her desire for him by reading a selection of shifter romance novels that had taken the market by storm.
Every woman on the planet seemed to have a shifter fantasy, and she couldn’t blame them. She certainly had one. The only trouble with hers was he was a real life shifter and she couldn’t even get him to look at her.
She was an apple pie in the world of her peers and he was pigging out on Crème Brulee, and just because Crème Brulee made her feel sick to her stomach, didn’t mean that he’d choose the plain option. He might have been a species apart, but he was still a man.
Still, his visits to her li
brary meant she got to ogle him as much as she wanted, and she was more than grateful for that. Right now she could feel him at her back; as she tried not to trip over her own feet on route to the inner sanctum of the library, and she liked it. She took a moment to imagine that he was hers, just for now, and it felt damn good.
“And what are you here to read up on today?” She tossed back over her shoulder when the silence that she loved so much became deafening.
“Just the same old stuff…” Reece winced at his lack of clarity.
He’d gone through a multitude of practical how to books, and sometimes he’d even read a chapter or two when he’d felt her eyes on him and had to pretend that he was actually here to read something, but for the life of him- he couldn’t think of a single one of them now.
Her scent enthralled him. It wrapped around his body like a spicy, tempting entity that made his length as hard as steel and his muscles beg for relief, and yet there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to ease his suffering… apart from jerk off, but that was a given- he was male, but it was not something he could do in a damn library.
“Are you building a house from scratch or just renovating?”
She’d paid close attention to what he’d been reading. There were some odd choices in there, but on the whole she thought he’d been doing a lot of DIY. When he didn’t answer right away she turned her head to look back at him and tripped over her own feet…
Reece reached out for her in a heartbeat and his large hands palmed one hip and one breast as he caught her. His beast roared within him at the intimate touch, hopeful there would be more, and he almost swallowed his tongue as he tried to keep that growl of desire from rolling through his body. Every damn inch of him came alive with the need to have her…
“Thanks…” She sounded breathless. The feel of his hand against her breast was more than she ever could have hoped for and it shamed her to admit it even to herself. It felt good, bad good, and she liked it.
Reece had to literally force his hands from her body. Especially the one holding her ripe, full breast, and he dropped his eyes to the floor so that she couldn’t witness how dark they had become. He knew in that moment in time that this stalking would have to end here and now and he hated himself for it.
If he was any other bear, maybe not one of his friends because they were as equally fucked up as he was, then he could have wooed her, taken her to his bed and made her his… But he wasn’t a normal bear shifter, and she was human. He couldn’t risk hurting her.
“I have to go.” Reece heard her take a breath to speak and turned on fast feet to make his escape before he did something that he would regret for the rest of his life. Leaving her standing there behind him was pure agony to him and his beast, and yet it was the kindest thing that he could do for her.
She was sweet and innocent and she didn’t deserve him fucking up her life.
Suzanna watched him go. She’d made a real mess of that one, she told herself as she dropped her shoulder bag to the counter top and sighed inwardly at her lack of coordination. She’d fallen over her own feet and managed to embarrass him in the process to the point where he’d ran away. That just about summed up her life so far.
“Why didn’t you just throw yourself into his arms and beg for sex…?” She mumbled under her breath. “Then he could have had a good laugh to go with it.”
She felt like screaming at the frustration that devoured her. Felt like crying for the man that she didn’t even really know. How stupid was that?
She closed her eyes and dropped her forehead to the cool counter top as she groaned out in her embarrassment. Life was never easy for woman like her, and it just felt as if it got a lot harder. Just once she’d kind of like to get something that she wished for. Him.
~^~
Reece wanted to hit something or someone. His bear was fit to burst from within him and he needed to get out of town before it did. He’d had her in his hands, literally, and he couldn’t get over the feel of her there.
Life sucked.
By the time he’d made it to the tree line his bear was right there under his skin. The beast burst into life and pushed the human into the background. He knew one thing; he needed to make it back to Bear Lake before he hurt anyone.
~^~
Suzanna had spent the day doing what she did best, trying to ignore the fact that her life sucked. She’d accepted that she was never going to be Prom Queen in her youth. She’d accepted that men didn’t turn their heads when she walked into a room. But she’d kind of had a glimmer of hope within her that the big shifter might have been her Mr Right, as stupid as that was.
She got a certain amount of satisfaction out of slamming the last handful of reference books down onto the counter top and hearing that loud thud echo through the library. It kind of fuelled that rebel within her that she’d long since put to rest. Now she snatched up her large shoulder bag from the side and grabbed the keys from beside it, before she said turned on her heels and flicked off the last of the overhead lighting as she closed the doors for another day.
Just once she wanted to win the day, have something for herself that went the way she wanted it too. Just once she wanted to come out a winner in the game of life. Just once she wanted to feel out of control and heady like those woman in romance novels…
Pulling the key from the lock she felt something behind her on the cold deserted street and started to turn in place. A streak of fear shot through her as she caught a sideways glance at the huge shadowy figure, but it was the briefest of glances as a large hand came down over her mouth to silence her and the tight grip of an arm encircled her waist, lifting her from her feet before she even had a chance to struggle.
CHAPTER THREE
Suzanna kicked backwards with the small heel of her shoe and felt it hit something hard. The growled curse that was ground out against her ear was enough to make her freeze for a long moment. In that time; she was already being carried away from the library…
Then she realised the enormity of her situation. The man was a shifter, and not her shifter; his hair had been too light and he didn’t feel right. She knew that this was a way different scenario from her usual encounter with the bear, but still, her body didn’t hum with his presence.
All she felt was fear.
“I won’t hurt you if you stop struggling…” He ground out against her ear and in that second she knew for sure that this was a complete stranger. His voice was all wrong. Everything was all wrong.
Be careful what you wish for. That went through her mind like a taunting chant from some book or another that she’d read. She’d wished for a shifter and here he was, carrying her away for God knows what reason, but it wasn’t the shifter that she wanted.
Suzanna struggled against him. She’d heard his warning but she didn’t care. She wasn’t about to just go quietly.
Her fingernails found purchase against his hand and she clawed into the flesh getting another curse for her trouble. A moment later and he’d hauled her up and over his shoulder and was racing down an alleyway towards the outskirts of town. By the time she’d let out a piercing scream they were already inside the woods…
She felt her world spin one more time as he hauled her down from his shoulder and her back hit the hard wood of a tree trunk. She went to take another breath to scream once more, but his hand came down over her mouth to silence her. Every inch of his body pressed against hers and caged her in and she wished for one more thing… to be home…
“I swear if you scream like that again I’m going to knock you out.” Chance growled as his eyes flashed black and his bear tried to push forward inside of him. The beast sensed the danger that taking this woman posed him and it wasn’t happy.
“Don’t make another fucking sound.” Chance growled long and hard as he fought to control his bear, keep it caged within him.
She nodded in agreement. He could scent her fear and he didn’t like it, but there was no choice. He needed to deal with this situation befo
re something bad happened.
Suzanna didn’t feel giddy with excitement; she felt sick with fear. She’d attracted the attention of the bears somehow, and Mr Right had turned out to be the advanced party. She didn’t know what she’d done to warrant this or what was going to happen to her, but for right now she knew that she couldn’t fight this man. She just needed to play this out until she had the opportunity to escape him.
~^~
Reece had needed to go the long way around to get back to clan land. Damned humans littered the countryside like vermin and his bear was ready to rip someone’s head off. He thought it best to stay out of the way and head off temptation.
It was better that he got back to his own kind before he did something that would bring a government death squad down on all of their heads. Bear attacks were being monitored closely since the bear nation had risen up and announced to the world that they existed. Humans were, in general kind of skittish around them, all except for the groupie women that had heard how good shifters were in bed.
He only wished that his human was like that. Then he wouldn’t think twice about having her, making her his. But she was as skittish as the rest of them and he couldn’t risk her turning him away or hurting her. His bear might never forgive him and then it would take control for good.
Right now he would probably welcome the relief that end would bring. Just one touch had sent the kind of shockwave through his body that he was probably never going to get over. She was his, of that he was sure, and he’d have to inform his alpha of it as soon as he got back so that the clan could watch him for signs of his bear taking control.
One thing was certain; he could never see her again. He mourned that loss already.