by Vivian Arend
His hands moved quickly to undo the rest of his buttons, and a moment later he was draping his suit jacket, shirt, and tie over the handrail to the side of the entrance.
Her breath got stuck in her chest, and then, oh my God, it was a good thing she wasn’t breathing because she would have moaned loud enough for him to hear. Right there, with her in front-row seating, he’d undone his belt, button and zipper, getting ready to drop his trousers.
Something of her stupor must’ve carried on the air because as he toed off his shoes, James paused. He met her gaze again, offering a boyish grin. “You don’t mind grabbing my stuff, do you? I’d go tuck it in the clothing stash, but that’s all the way back at the far edge of the airfield.”
He stood there only partially clothed with the typical casual shifter attitude toward nudity, and she was one step away from fainting like some Victorian heroine.
It wasn’t the getting-naked bit making her flush. As shifters, there was nothing innately sexual about stripping off clothes to make a shift to their animal sides. It was ordinary and simple. Natural and normal.
But James getting naked equaled oh my God. Her reaction to him was not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Thus, the blush, the shortness of breath, and the other physical reactions she was having in spades.
Her inner bobcat rolled her eyes.
The feline that was Kaylee’s other self wasn’t very vocal. The cat tended to stay silent, but that didn’t mean she didn't have opinions.
Other shifters seemed far more in touch with their animal sides. Kaylee wasn’t sure if it was because she was a cat and most of her shifter knowledge came from bears and wolves, but unless she was in feline form, her cat remained mostly aloof and let Kaylee run the show.
It was good in some ways—no flying off the handle and having a hissing fit when something went wrong. But bad because there were times it would be nice to utilize her cat’s assets.
The feline wasn’t shy, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Please. Why should I be shy? The world exists for cats’ pleasure. Everyone knows this.
Kaylee snickered, briefly distracted. I wish you’d loan me some of your kitty mojo.
Her cat sniffed daintily then went silent, obviously bored with the conversation.
No help there. Shifters might be two in one simultaneously—human and animal—but many of them found one half better at certain things.
Watching James Borealis get naked was not a thing human Kaylee did well.
Worse, there was no hiding the fact she reacted. The Borealis brothers had caught her blushing up a storm years ago and Alex had assumed her bashfulness was fair game to tease about. It was kind of sweet, in a twisted way, because Kaylee didn’t have any siblings and getting teased was a form of family connection she’d craved.
Cooper had teased the least, turning his back when they shifted in larger groups, but James had jumped right in and followed Alex’s lead.
Lately James’s teasing seemed to hold erotic overtones—but that had to be Kaylee’s feverish imagination playing tricks.
Wishing that he really was interested in her was wrong, considering she knew the two of them were an impossibility. Nope. He teased like any friend would, but they were never going to be anything more than that for so many reasons.
Which is why, while she didn’t wish ill-health on him, she really hoped he was feeling out of it with his head cold or was far enough away to not notice how hard her heart was pounding.
“Earth to Kaylee. Did you hear me? Can you grab my stuff?”
Oops. Good grief, how long had she stood there daydreaming? “No problem.”
She’d answered as if she wasn’t panting from admiring all the nakedness appearing before her.
“Thanks, Kaylee Kat.”
Watch? Or look away?
It wasn’t really a question. Kaylee stepped a foot to the right to get a better view. She could blush while enjoying the show.
He went on speaking as he stripped. “Can you tell Amber I’m back but that I’ve gone home for the day?”
“No problem.”
She knew those words were functioning. She wasn’t going to try anything fancier.
Far too quickly, James was down to skin. Glorious bronze skin, tanned and touchable. Big biceps flexed as he moved, his beautiful pectorals shifting as well as her gaze dropped to the trail of dark hair that led down the center of his belly to his groin where the thick length of his cock stood erect and—
Oh my God.
Kaylee tore her gaze away, because nudity might be okay, but staring at the man’s junk was not kosher.
Also, she was getting a little lightheaded.
He grabbed his pants off the ground and tossed them over the rest of his things with little care for the expensive fabric. Then he glanced up one last time and flashed her—
Oh boy, did he ever.
Bad brain. Bad, bad Kaylee brain!
—flashed her a sheepish grin. “Give me a shout later. Once I kick this bug, we’ll have that movie marathon we talked about.”
His naked butt flexed as he turned away from her gaze—Lordy, his ass is a thing of beauty—and strode toward the edge of the manicured lawn where it bumped up against the wilderness outside the factory.
A second later it was like trying to watch an optical illusion. A hue of multicoloured lights shimmered then a massive polar bear stretched lazily before ambling off into the trees.
Kaylee would never get enough of seeing him shift. Up close was even better. She sighed again.
“No problem,” she whispered, although that was far from the truth.
There was a problem. A great big enormous one, one hundred percent on her side of the equation.
She was hopelessly, helplessly in lust with one of her best friends. He not only had no idea, but she was the last person on earth he needed in his life as anything other than a friend.
No problem? In her dreams.
2
C ranky. Itchy. Pissed off at the world.
All of those sensations were running on high as James left the proximity of Borealis Gems.
He should be happy as a pig in mud right now. He’d had a successful trip to New York, sat through a half dozen interviews and talk shows, and successfully created more positive publicity for the family company.
Now he was home and back in the wilderness. The warmth of spring air wrapped around him, and scents filled his nostrils with green, growing things and the promise of a lazy day. This was paradise and should have cured whatever ailed him.
The itching ache at the back of his neck had increased, though, so he let his bear side take control, ambling in the direction his animal wanted to go. The human side of him had enough on his plate to deal with.
He shrugged his big shoulders, trying to escape the tingling sensation. It was strange—he didn’t think the meetings he’d attended were that stressful. In fact, he usually gloried in getting to be in the public eye, which is why he did it rather than Alex or Cooper.
Maybe he was coming down with some kind of shifter flu, which would really suck considering their type rarely got ill.
Constitution of…well, a polar bear and all that.
But the back of his throat itched, and even though he expected his scent ability to be off the charts, one smell out there was just not right. The sweet, sharp fragrance had bothered him the entire flight home. He’d wasted time post-flight trying to track it down.
He’d wondered at first if one of their top-tier clients, the ones he’d just flown back to their home outside New York, had left something on the plane. But after searching under all the seats, he’d come up blank.
Still, that scent would not go away—and not only did it make everything about him hot, he found himself getting aroused at the most inopportune times. Thank goodness Kaylee had been thirty feet above him as they talked. It had made it easier for both of them to ignore his damn hard-on.
Wasn’t the first time he’d ha
d one around her by any means, but usually he could explain it away with a joke and write it off as a guy thing.
This one? Instant and outrageous, and while he’d liked to have blamed it on her, he wasn’t usually that hair-triggered. They’d been standing outside his workplace, for fuck’s sake, talking about innocent subjects, and he’d been so turned on that if she’d been within arm’s reach he would’ve been tempted to grab her and follow through on the lust-filled thoughts he’d been fighting for years.
The thoughts he’d reconsidered and refocused on in recent months.
Slow. Take it slow, he reminded himself.
You no like slow, his bear grumbled. You like Kaylee.
Shut up, he told his bear.
Nope, wandering through the bush was the only way to get rid of this kind of frustration.
When James found his feet had unwittingly taken him back to the parking lot of Borealis Gems, he sat down at the edge of the asphalt and glared angrily at the vehicle in front of him.
Stupid bear brain. There was absolutely no reason to be sitting here next to Kaylee’s dump of a truck. The one that made James angry because every time he side-eyed it, she insisted the vehicle could go another hundred kilometers or more.
Too stubborn to give it up, he assumed. The damn thing represented the first time she’d purchased something major without her parents’ approval as a sixteen-year-old.
He got it, he really did. Her parents weren’t the greatest, and everyone needed a fuck-you memento or two in their lives. But one of these days the POS was going to break down and he wouldn’t be there to haul her ass out of trouble.
He snarled at the vehicle, got himself up and headed home to his recently finished apartment complex that overlooked the massive lake Yellowknife was built along.
It took deliberate thought to keep his bear self from looping back, so it wasn’t until he was in his penthouse suite on the tenth floor, the door locked behind him, that he finally took a deep breath.
The tension at the back of his neck was huge and painful—this had to be some kind of polar bear flu.
He paced to the answering machine, the red blinking light taunting him. He had a cell phone, but as a shifter, it wasn’t always on him, and people had to have a way to get a hold of him. He was stuck supplementing with old-school technology.
He clicked the playback button, rubbing a hand against his chest and over his arms in the hopes the ache would fade.
It was a message from his grandpa, time stamped from only a few minutes earlier. Must have come in while he was bear-ing it home.
“James, my boy. You’ve been busy the last couple of days. Good job. I just heard from our potential new investors. They were very impressed with your sales pitch.” Giles Borealis chuckled, somewhere between conspiracy and amusement. “I almost feel as if I should’ve warned them ahead of time how convincing you are. It’s good to know you’ve got what it takes to keep this company moving into the future. Well done.”
Of course, well done, James thought. Every time I go into a meeting, I pretend I’m you. No one stands a chance.
He was planning on getting What Would Grandpa Do bracelets for himself and his brothers, and giving an extra one to the old man for a Christmas present. Grandpa would get a kick out it.
The message continued to play.
“Now, I don’t intend to tell you how to do your job, but I did want to remind you, as good as you are at wining and dining our new investors and clients, you need to have someone shiny next to you at the Canada Day Gala. This is important, James. We’ve got potential sales that need to be finalized during the party. But of course, you know all this already. Just indulge an old man as he meddles. Not many special things going on in my life anymore. Not as if I’ve got grandbabies to enjoy, and there’s a decided lack of female company at our family table. Your grandmother is feeling very overwhelmed. Do get on with finding a mate, my boy.”
“Can’t leave well enough alone,” James muttered at the machine as his gave a quick, but cordial farewell, and the message came to an end.
Get on with finding a mate. As if the old man sending that letter earlier in the year hadn’t changed everything. The ultimatum had been hanging over his and his brothers’ heads since March.
James headed straight for the shower in the hopes that some screaming hot water might wash away the bugs currently rampaging through his system.
His secondary goal was to cool down his temper because while he loved Grandpa Giles, the old man knew exactly which buttons to push.
It was true—James did need a date for the gala event. He also knew exactly who he wanted beside him.
Again, partly Grandpa Giles’s fault.
When James had first read the blackmail letter, he’d panicked. It was only after a week or so of mentally bitching about the pact he’d made with Alex and Cooper that he’d realized it wasn’t the end of the world.
He’d been friends with Kaylee since second grade. He’d had rising sexual interest in her since they were teens, but their friendship had been too valuable to mess with becoming temporary boyfriend/girlfriend.
But if he had to spend his life with one woman? He’d pick her, every time. Smart, beautiful, willing to call him on his bullshit. She was everything he needed. Also, they were already good, good friends—which meant once they mated, they’d get to keep being friends forever.
She was perfect.
Grudgingly, he had to admit Grandpa’s letter had helped him realize that.
Only, ever since deciding he was going to take charge of fate and pick his mate, he’d been shut down every damn time. Over the past three months he’d been making advances, in a casual “why don’t we take this to the next stage?” kind of way.
He’d tried flirting. She’d laughed and rolled her eyes.
He’d tried stroking her arm casually while they watched a movie. Kaylee had picked up a cushion and started a pillow fight.
It seemed no matter what he attempted to move their relationship to a new stage—without getting creepy about it—she still refused to see him as anything other than a buddy.
He wasn’t about to give up, but damn…this lack of forward momentum was hard on a guy’s ego.
James sighed heavily. Truth was if she truly didn’t want him as more than a friend, he wasn’t going to bash her over the head and force her.
Bashing gently is okay, his bear offered.
No. No bashing at all, he snapped back.
Stupid bear.
It wasn’t until the hot water was streaming over him and he was lathering up that he realized his cock was upright again, as if waving to get his attention.
Only sick fucker would get flu that makes massive hard-ons, his bear told him dryly. Snarkier than usual—probably pissed at being told no bashing.
Shut up, he told his bear.
The beast was insulted enough to stay quiet, but what he wasn’t saying screamed as loud as a banshee.
What was happening to his body was not normal. James’s head was stuffed with cotton, though, and he just couldn’t seem to remember why it wasn’t normal.
He wrapped a hand around his cock, intending to ease off the pressure, but the first image that popped into his brain as he began to work himself was the last time he’d caught a glimpse of Kaylee stripping to shift…
He turned the temperature down on the shower and forced his hands away. Even with the temperature as low as it would go, the heat levels in his body continued to rise.
James gave up in frustration, dripping wet as he stomped through his bedroom. He pulled on jeans, grumbling loudly as he shoved his still-erect cock behind a zipper that threatened to tattoo itself along the rock-hard length.
He stomped to the living room and clicked on the TV for a distraction.
Bad idea.
“What the—?”
The oversized screen displayed two bodies writhing on a bed. Before James could blink, the woman had rolled on top, her ample upper body undulating,
hips grinding over the man’s groin as her long brown hair fell down her back, the splitting image of what Kaylee would look like if—
“Enough,” he roared.
He stomped into the kitchen, ignoring the sound of his mother’s voice in his head scolding that she was raising bears, not elephants.
Even though it was too early in the day to start drinking, he reached for a beer. He popped the top off and stood there with the door of the fridge open, cool air pouring over him as he tilted his head back and went to chug the contents.
A second later he whirled toward the sink and spewed, liquid sloshing against the sides and dribbling down his chin.
“What the fuck?”
He eyed the beer then took a suspicious sniff.
Gagrhh.
Since when did alcohol go bad? But the liquid smelled horrible, and it tasted worse.
He upended the bottle into the sink and went for another one. This time he cracked the top more cautiously, taking a tiny sniff.
Bile rose in his throat. He flashed back to being about five years old, forced to eat a plate full of liver and lima beans.
Another bottle down the drain.
James rinsed the sink, then while the water was still running, he grabbed the moveable faucet head and pointed the cold water straight into his mouth, drinking thirstily. That at least, thank goodness, tasted fine.
Only, no matter how much he drank, it seemed his thirst wasn’t quenched.
Kind of like last year, dumbass, his bear nudged him hard.
Shut—
James froze.
The water that had been aimed at his mouth misdirected, spraying all over his face and upper body, drenching the T-shirt he’d pulled on.
It’d taken a while, but it finally sank through his thick skull that this was no ordinary flu bug.
It was the mating fever.
He turned off the tap. Headed to the front door and checked the lock and security system. Each task done methodically and with great concentration before crossing the room to settle on the couch.