Bear Mountain Daddy (Bear Mountain Shifters)

by Sky Winters

  The deafening roar she heard next was so loud that it seemed to rattle the poles holding up their tent. It was followed by a howl of pain, but not from Matt. One of the tigers was making the sound. Had one of them turned on the others? She hadn’t heard anything else from Matt. Was he dead? Were they fighting over his carcass? Oh God, oh God, oh God, her mind babbled in terror like she had never experienced before. What had possessed her to come here?

  It seemed like the encounter went on forever, with howls and growls that made her skin crawl. She looked around the tent for a weapon, fishing around in his bag for his knife before realizing he kept it hanging on his belt. She had noticed it there earlier. He had gone out naked, so his pants were here somewhere and so was the knife. Feeling around, she finally found his belt and worked her fingers toward the leather sheath that hung from it.

  Suddenly, there was silence and then Matt stepped back into the tent with a huge smile on his face. He appeared completely unscathed and she stared at him in disbelief. What had gone on out there? Had he really been able to talk to them, reason with them?

  “Come out here. I want you to see these guys,” he said.

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  “It’s okay now. I’ve reasoned with them and they’re all calm. I want you to be able to see them up close.”

  “You’re shitting me,” she replied, just knowing he was yanking her chain again.

  “No, not at all. Just wrap the blanket around you and come out,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”

  Tabitha stared at him in disbelief as she slowly got to her feet and ducked out of the tent, following him as he walked toward the front of the jeep. He was still completely naked and didn’t seem concerned about being vulnerable to a pack of tigers at all.

  “Guys, this is Tabitha. She’s not edible and she won’t hurt you. I just wanted her to be able to meet you,” he laughed

  Tabitha shot him a look that reflected how surreal this entire situation felt to her. One of the tigers approached her and she flinched, preparing for the worst. These were wild animals and Matt was obviously bat shit crazy. She couldn’t pick a sane man to get intimate with to save her life apparently. Her head shot back toward the tiger as it sniffed her fingers and then lightly nuzzled her hand, allowing her to pet it.

  “Go ahead. She wants you to stroke her fur. Big cats like this love that as much as the regular household kind, but they rarely have enough trust in someone to allow it. They are accepting you as someone important to me and they won’t hurt you. Plus, you have a cat at home so they know you like felines.”

  “How do you know I have a cat at home?” she asked, trying to remember if she had forgotten mentioning it at some point.

  “I know a lot of things and so do they. They can’t stay long, so enjoy your time with them while you can.”

  It all seemed too weird to believe, but she found herself petting a tiger as several more approached, letting both her and Matt scratch their ears and stroke their fur. It was the most amazing thing she had ever experienced, excluding the way Matt had made her melt earlier in the night. Suddenly, one of the tigers’ heads snapped around, seeming to hear something in the distance. Mewing toward the others, it turned and trotted away, disappearing into the darkness. The others quickly followed.

  “That was insane,” Tabitha said, finally letting go of the breath she felt like she had been holding since waking up with a hand over her mouth.

  “They’re just big kittens at the end of the day,” Matt said with a shrug.

  “Were you talking to them out here?”

  “Sure. Why not?” He shrugged, pulling her toward him into a hug.

  “And they listened to you?” she asked.

  “Of course they listened to me. I have a way with these animals. They can be reasoned with as long as you know how to approach them,” he said.

  “And exactly how is that? Naked and unafraid?” she joked.

  “Something like that. Mutual respect. That’s all it is, really.”

  “Riiiiight,” she mocked.

  “No, really. That’s all there is to it. You saw for yourself how well it worked. They were perfectly docile when you came out here. I just needed to get them settled down is all. Now, they’re off to find food elsewhere and they won’t bother us again, at least not that bunch.”

  “Let’s hope another bunch doesn’t turn up,” she moaned.

  “The sun will be fully up soon. We need to get dressed and head out so we can get the jeep repaired and head downstream. We’ll make up some time on the trip so that we make our rendezvous point with the rangers as scheduled.”

  “Sounds good to me. I hope that tomorrow night we’ll be sleeping in a shelter and not out in the middle of the plains,” she said. She still had questions about what had happened, but she chose to just keep moving forward for now.

  “Doesn’t matter where you sleep as long as you are with me. I’ll never let anything harm you,” he told her.

  Tabitha couldn’t help but note how permanent that sounded. There was no addition of “while you’re here” or “before the trip is done” at the end. It sounded more long term to her. She immediately chastised herself for allowing such nonsense to enter her head. This was a fling, plain and simple. Nothing more, nothing less. To get attached to someone like Matt Helford would surely do her far more damage than she was willing to suffer so soon after the previous catastrophe.

  “I hope not, but I would still prefer some solid walls between the wild animals and my person, even if you can talk to them.”

  “Well, only the tigers. I used different tactics with other animals,” he said with a smile.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” she said.

  “You should be. Maybe someday I will tell you, but for now, we’ll just keep it a secret. Now, let’s get dressed and get going,” he told her, leaning down to kiss her softly on the lips before ducking into the tent to retrieve his clothes.

  As he stepped inside, Tabitha couldn’t help but note the smooth appearance of his well-muscled back. She knew she had scratched him last night during the heat of the moment, long scratches that should have been in several places down his back. Looking at it now, they weren’t there. Had she perhaps just imagined that she’d scratched him that hard? She could have sworn she had drawn blood, but there were no signs of damage on his skin.

  Looking down, she examined her fingernails. There it was, the telltale sign that she wasn’t just confused about it. Blood lay beneath her nails, his blood. So, where were the scratches? Standing there considering this, she was jarred from her thoughts by his voice from inside the tent.

  “You getting dressed, princess? Or are you waiting on a squire to appear with your glass slippers,” he teased.

  “Very funny,” she told him, dismissing her thoughts for the moment.

  Tabitha followed behind him, getting dressed and helping to pack things back into the jeep before they headed out to the shed they’d gotten it from. It took almost an hour in the terrain they were navigating, but they finally arrived. Matt busied himself looking for what they would need while she stood outside and snapped some photos of the beautiful world that surrounded them.

  “By the way, how did you know I have a cat? I don’t remember mentioning it to you,” she said, still wondering how he could know such a thing.

  “You had cat hair on some of your things,” he said. “Usually, only people who have cats don’t notice the way cat hair gets on things.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling embarrassed about how often people must notice that when she no longer did.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. People are way too uptight about such things. If you look closely, you’ll find a bit of cat hair on me too.”

  “You have a cat too?”

  “Not like you do, but I spent plenty of time surrounded in cat hair, trust me,” he said as they began their hike back to the jeep with a bag of supplies in tow.

  Chapter S
ix

  “Alright, looks like we’re in business,” Matt told her as the engine fired up. It had taken a walk to the shed and back, plus another hour of tinkering, but he had gotten the vehicle going so they could continue their journey.

  Besides the encounter with the tigers, he’d been all business this morning, without a word regarding the events the previous night. Tabitha didn’t bring it up and neither did he, but whether it was on purpose to avoid the subject or just a matter of being overcome by events, she couldn’t be certain. For her part, perhaps it was a mix of both. Was there really even anything to discuss? It was just a tryst, nothing more and no matter what sort of way her body reacted to his touch, that didn’t make it anything more than just physical between them.

  “I guess we should get going then,” she said in reply, realizing she had been lost in thought and had said nothing.

  “You guess correctly,” he replied. “We’ve a bit of lost time to make up for.”

  Tabitha gave up taking snapshots of the surrounding area as she had been doing while he worked on the jeep and climbed into the vehicle beside him. He immediately headed off along the edge of the forest, following the flow of the river toward their next destination. Neither of them spoke for a while. She engrossed herself in snapping photos of passing wildlife and exotic looking flowers while he focused on the path ahead of them.

  “We should be at the sanctuary in another hour. I’m taking more of a shortcut toward it now that we don’t need to bed down in the shelter for the night,” he told her, reaching for her hand.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she replied with a smile, squeezing his hand.

  “We’ll spend some time there and then journey down to meet the rangers on the boat. They’ll take us a bit further down river,” he told her.

  “That doesn’t seem to give us very much time,” she observed, having hoped they would be able to spend most of the day there.

  “We’re shortening it a bit so we can make up for the lost time, but the sanctuary is quite massive. It’s only a matter of not spending as much time on this end of it. The rangers will take us through the narrow part of the river that separates the two halves and then we’ll have the rest of the day to explore the lower region. I think you’ll find what you’re after before the day is out,” he told her.

  “I’ll just have to trust you on that.”

  “Yes, you will have to do just that.”

  “Tell me about the tigers earlier this morning,” she said suddenly, unable to keep her questions to herself any longer.

  He glanced over at her before returning his gaze to their path. “Tell you what about them?”

  “I heard you talking to them as if they could understand you and they seem to have responded. How did you learn to do that?”

  “It isn’t something I learned really. It just seems to be natural. It was as much a surprise to me as anyone when I realized I had such a power over regular tigers.”

  “Regular tigers? Are there other kinds?”

  “Of course. There are many kinds and all of them respond to me the same way.”

  “What about other animals? Dogs? Hyenas? Lemurs?”

  “No. I have an instinct about animals. I guess I am a bit of one myself, but I don’t possess the bond with them that I do with tigers.”

  “It seems very unusual.”

  “You’ve no idea,” he laughed. “It’s most of the reason I chose to do this line of work.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Working as a guide? Or talking to tigers?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  He paused for a moment, as if deciding how much to tell her or if he should be sharing this at all. “I learned about the tiger thing when I was still a teen, but I joined the military at a very young age and spent a bit of time on various overseas assignments. After I left the forces, I decided to spend some time here, exploring. I honed my skills and eventually began taking folks on tours.”

  “And the sanctuary? How are you affiliated with that?”

  “I’m just an overseer, like many of the other volunteers that do what they can to protect the tigers there. You’d be shocked how many of these beautiful animals are killed each year for their fur or because some whacko wants to drink tiger’s blood as part of some hunting or war ritual. People eat their meat and use parts of them to make folk medicine. Tibetans like to wear their fur as dresses as a status symbol.”

  “Can’t those people be arrested?”

  He shook his head. “Not unless they’re the ones actually doing the poaching and get caught in the act by the right people. Unfortunately, some of the people entrusted with protecting the tigers are in on it and work with the poachers to acquire them and get them out of the sanctuary undetected. They’re very good at what they do, very covert, and they have a lot of contacts. Ruthless men with ruthless friends.”

  “How can they possibly get by with that?” she asked, frowning.

  “There are always corrupt people who only speak the language of cash. They don’t really care about the tigers at all, only what they can get out of the situation.”

  “But not you. You do what you can to legitimately protect the tigers.”

  “Always,” he said with a smile that seemed to be hiding something he wasn’t saying, but she wasn’t about to pry further.

  “I admire that about you.”

  “I can live with that. I have many less admirable qualities, so perhaps it makes up for a few of them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh no.” He laughed, shaking his head. “If you don’t know what my faults are, I’m not going to lay them out for you. That’s just insanity.”

  “I’ve never thought about it that way. It’s like saying that you don’t like your nose and then that is suddenly all another person notices about you.”

  “Are you saying I have an unattractive nose?” he asked with a coy smile.

  She smiled at him, lightly hitting his arm. “I’m not saying you have an unattractive anything. I’m just making a relevant point, I think.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, of some sort,” he said with a laugh.

  “It was a compliment…of some sort.”

  “I don’t think you have an unattractive anything either,” he told her with a wink.

  “I’m certainly glad that we got that settled,” she said with a laugh.

  “Same here. Just in time too, we’re here, princess.”

  Tabitha looked around. They appeared to be in the middle of nowhere still, but she could see the same style shed built into a grove of trees so as not to be invasive. Matt parked inside and they began to gather their gear for the trek down to the water where the rangers would pick them up to carry them through the narrow passages to the lower half of the sanctuary. It was insanely hot out as they traveled the hour it took to get from the shed to the water.

  “You look damn sexy when you perspire,” he whispered against her ear as they stood atop an incline watching for the rangers to arrive.

  “I doubt that I smell very sexy,” she replied.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to mention that part,” he laughed.

  “Jackass,” she joked playfully, mock hitting him on the shoulder with her fist.

  “Ah, now you are getting to know the real me. If it makes you feel better, there’s a shower you can use when we get to the lower end. We’ll spend some time getting to know the tigers that roam, as well as the other animals once we get there and then I’ll take you over to it before we bed down for the night. If you’re nice to me, I might even share it with you and let you wash my back.”

  “How generous of you,” she said sarcastically, all while smiling broadly.

  “I do try to do what I can to extend a bit of kindness,” he told her, leaning in to kiss her. They quickly became lost in one another, breaking apart only when they heard the approach of the boat along the water.

  “I think our chariot is arriving,” she said.r />
  “Good thing. A few more minutes and they would have had to pull you off of me. I must tell them how you ravaged me last night instead of letting me get any sleep.” He winked at her.

  “I’m sure they’ll be all broken up about it on your behalf.”

  “I’ve no doubt. We men have to stick together when it comes to you wild women.”

  Tabitha laughed as the boat made an appearance from beyond the branches that overhung the water and the rangers called out to them. Matt walked down to the water to greet them, helping them pull the boat up onto the bank while looking all around. She could only assume there was still very much a danger of crocodiles and other animals that one wouldn’t want to encounter on their own turf. A moment later, he returned, helping her with their packs.

  “Watch your step. It’s further down once you step into the boat than you’d think,” he warned her as he stepped inside and took her pack before offering her a helping hand inside.

  The ride from where they joined the rangers to the lower end of the sanctuary was a bit rough. Though the water was shallow and fairly quiet, the trees that hung over from either side brushed against the boat and its passengers in some of the narrower sections. Everyone was forced to take on a defensive posture to ensure that they weren’t struck by any of them with any force. Of course, she was more concerned with contracting some deadly virus from the insects that seemed to swarm constantly.

  “Here’s some more repellent,” Matt told her, handing her the same small container as yesterday.

  “You’re a mind reader,” she laughed, accepting it and beginning to rub it on with one hand while combatting flying branches with the other.

  “More like body language reader. You were practically having a spasm trying to keep them off you in between fighting branches. It won’t be much longer and we’ll be out in the open a bit more. We’ll have a bite to eat once we clear these trees and won’t be risking having our food snatched from our hands by tree dwellers.”