We knew they were out here, of course, but this time of year wasn’t as bad as in the fall, where they seemed to be on the sudden hunt to fill their bellies before the unreliable winter came. During the summer they were leisurely, the deer plentiful. There it was again, that low pitched scowling growl, followed by a hiss.
I froze. I’d already done irreparable damage by letting it see me run. There was nothing left for me to do but be as still as I could be and prepare for the attack.
I heard him say my name again, but I didn’t want to upset the delicate balance I had created by responding.
The cat heard him, too, and though I couldn’t see it well, I heard a rustling that suggested it was changing positions, preparing itself for an attack.
That was when Matthews came bursting onto the scene.
“No, Chad!” I yelled, but it was too late. The mountain lion flew through the air, its claws extended. I was screaming.
I heard the sound of one body hitting another, an unmistakable squeal of a cat, the grunts of a man.
And what sounded like another animal altogether.
I hoped Chad wouldn’t fight back. I hoped he’d play dead until the animal thought its prey was under control.
I hoped this was something we were both going to walk away from, but I’d seen maulings out in these parts, and I didn’t have a lot of hope.
I heard the cat cry out and scamper away. Maybe, just maybe, Matthews had somehow managed to get the better of it.
I scrambled over toward him. I was entirely unprepared when my hand came in contact with long, thick fur, instead of mauled flesh.
“What, the…” muttered, unable to process what I was touching. “What is…?”
I never finished the thought, because suddenly the thick fur was slipping out of my hands, and that hulking body was…
Well, it was becoming Chad Matthews.
Which was right about the time I thought I might have officially lost my mind.
Chad
I was on a freaking roll.
First the tree, now the goddamned cat.
My shoulder burned where he’d caught me across the back and his claws tore through my clothing and into my flesh.
I was sure there were long gouge marks there. Just like I was sure we weren’t going to have anything to clean it with and the wound was going to close up before I could get the damn thing taken care of.
Another round of antibiotics for me. Fortunately, I had a person I could call the script in to. We all did. We wouldn’t be able to exist out in society the way we do if we weren’t in every possible pocket, making things happen for the rest of us.
I suppose that was sort of how I’d ended up in the military in the first place. I was a beacon for every other shifter out there looking for someone to guide them into a successful career.
I’d already been shifting when the cat had launched itself at me, every one of its claws out stretched.
That had probably saved me from the brunt of the attack. After all, bear hide is a sight thicker than human skin.
What I hadn’t counted on was how quickly Brenna would get to me afterward. I wasn’t able to change back in time.
I felt her hand tangle in my fur, I heard the sound of her gasp, imagined the whirring of her thoughts as she began to put it all together.
That it wasn’t a human she was touching. It wasn’t me she was touching.
It was a goddamned bear.
I was a goddamned bear.
Her touch pulled me back quickly, setting me to shift right back.
If she was surprised by the skin beneath her fingertips, she didn’t let on. “We should get back,” she said, but I noticed there was something strange in the way she spoke the words.
“You go ahead. I’ll be right there.”
I had to get my damn clothing situation figured out, first.
At least — when I heard the cat making that threatening sound — I had the foresight to strip as much as I could as quickly as I could, so I wasn’t completely without clothing.
Well, I was at the exact moment, but once I sent Brenna on her way and had a few minutes to search the grounds around us, that problem should be solved.
At least it would be one thing cleared up for me.
She didn’t argue, and I felt her step away from me and back toward the little cave.
The fog was heavy now, with the first morning glimmer beginning to peek through.
I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy to see morning come.
It took me just a few moments to track down my clothes and pull them on, and when I made it back to the cave, Brenna was back in her original position.
“Well?” she asked expectantly.
“Well what?” I asked, not wanting to walk into something if I could avoid it.
“Well, how are your injuries?”
“Injuries?”
I realized I sounded like I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, but I was having a hard time focusing, because she had reached for me and her hands were moving back over my limbs, pressing against my dislocated shoulder, her fingers tapping over my collarbone.
I heard the intake of breath.
“This can’t be right,” she said, giving my arm a vigorous shake.
“Dammit,” I said, wrenching away from her and grabbing it with my other hand. “Christ, Doctor, it still hurts.”
It did hurt. I mean, it might be a hell of a lot better than it had been just a few hours earlier, but I wasn’t at a hundred percent. Not yet. And I wouldn’t be for a while.
“Good,” she muttered. “It’s supposed to hurt. Your collarbone…”
“I know.” I didn’t want her to talk about it any longer. I didn’t want her puzzling through it, or sorting it out.
“Take off your shirt,” she said. A thrill spread through me, and I was instantly thinking about the very first time I had seen her.
Well, the second time. Maybe, technically, the third time.
But it was definitely the first time I’d seen her, sitting on that barstool, her back to me, her body the perfect shape for a pair of hands to settle on her waist, to press her up against something —
I shouldn’t be having those thoughts. I definitely should not be having those thoughts, but the way she told me to take off my clothes had me thinking of all the scenarios where those very things might happen.
I gingerly peeled the undershirt over my head. I could feel where it was sticking to me across my back.
Where I was still bleeding, no doubt.
She inspected me unceremoniously. “Come toward the light, so I can see you,” she said, though there still wasn’t much light to speak of. I moved toward the front of the cave anyway, the lightening sky offering a little bit of visibility.
I was still thinking about bending her over a damn bar, and she was touching my body like I was just another cadaver on a gurney ready for study.
“This is…,” she said before clearing her throat and trying again. “This just isn’t possible.” Her fingers slid back and forth over the part of my collarbone that had snapped like a twig when I’d plowed into the tree. It had knitted. Cleanly.
What I wasn’t ready for is when she ran her fingers down my chest, making a point to pull her fingertips through the smattering of chest hair there.
“Turn around,” she said.
I wasn’t going to argue with her just then.
She found the gouge right away. I could feel her fingers on either side of the wound, like she was trying to see exactly how far the extent of the injury was.
Then, she was letting one of those hands move over my injury-free shoulder, over the smooth skin of my back, down toward the tops of my pants.
“There’s no hair,” she said abruptly.
And that was right about the time it clicked for me, that those caresses of hers weren’t really caresses at all.
Brenna had just been looking for a hunk of body hair that she might have been able to confuse wi
th animal fur.
She was just going to have to keep on looking. I’d happily shed my pants for her continued search.
“These claw marks, the edges are already healing. You’ve already stopped bleeding. It looks like it’s hours old. A day old.”
She circled around me, so we were face to face, and in the early light I could make out her dark eyes alight with something like anger and accusation.
“What are you?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, even though it really wasn’t complicated at all. It was just a fact.
“Try me,” she said, “Because this,” she gave a dramatic wave in my direction. “Is literally impossible.”
I stepped in close to her, thinking maybe I could distract her, my hands reaching out the capture her arms.
It was a goddamned mistake.
Once I was touching her, there would be no stopping.
My hands skimmed up her arms, my fingers caught in her hair, tipping her head back until I had easy access to her mouth.
And then I kissed her.
But, more importantly, she kissed me.
We were migrating toward the back of the cave, her arms wrapped around my neck, running along the top of my shorn hair.
“But, really,” she said when I pulled away from her long enough to unbutton the front of her BDU and push it over her shoulders.
“I have got to see this tattoo,” I growled instead.
“This…what?” she asked, dazed, and I couldn’t help the smirk I felt coming on.
Apparently I’d kissed her well enough that she could no longer function in the conversation we were having.
And I took that as a win.
CHAPTER 7
Brenna
I hoped he wouldn’t notice how much his kisses had rattled me.
But I was pretty sure that it was more than obvious. I could barely string two thoughts together.
His kiss had taken me by surprise, but it was more than welcome. Right now, out here, I didn’t care about protocol and decorum.
It had been one disaster after the next, and who knew what was just around the corner. I hadn’t thought we’d be able to top the landslide, but then the next thing I know, we’re attacked by a mountain lion.
Moral of the story: move on things while you can.
Because who knows when one of you will become a bear.
Okay, I maybe the bear part wasn’t part of the moral, but the fact remained that I was going to go on kissing Major Matthews, and if he wanted to check out my tattoo, I was damn sure going to let him.
He spun me around so I was facing the wall, what light there was falling across my back, and with a quick tug, my tank top was pulled over my head and discarded.
I could feel his fingers tracing along the ink, stopping at my bra to casually flick its clasp undone.
As though he already knew I would say yes.
And I wasn’t denying it. It was definitely a yes.
His fingers came to a rest at the flare of my hips, and he pressed kisses along the same trek his fingers had just taken.
“Chad,” I heard myself breathing, even though I remembered clearly refusing to call him by his name earlier.
Again, it didn’t seem the time for decorum.
He made it down to the last rose on the vine — I’d picked up the tattoo in celebration of my acceptance into the Air Force medical program. I was going to owe them time, but when I graduated I was going to have my M.D. and zero debt.
And that was a hell of a thing to celebrate.
I’d always thought I would end up overseas, either in the field with the soldiers or in the little pockets of oversea towns where real medical care was lacking. But I was just the beginning, and I needed time under my belt.
I had never expected to be so thoroughly derailed by a man I was working with. A military man. A Major, no less, who wasn’t even in the medical field.
But none of that mattered just then, when he spun me back around, so my back was pressed into the stone behind me, and his mouth was on mine, hungry, demanding.
I was melting into a puddle of desire.
I’d already taken off his shirt, so it only seemed logical that my hands would drop to his pants. I began to fiddle with his buckle and buttons.
He was evidently in agreement, because his hands reached for my pants, too. We quickly and fully divested ourselves of any fabric separating us.
“Your tattoo is beautiful,” he said, as he pressed hot kisses along the column of my throat, across my collarbone, his hand came up to capture my breast and run his thumb over my taut nipple. “It suits you.”
I arched against him. “I’m glad you like it,” I whispered, already having a hard time catching my breath, grounding myself.
His touch was confident and warm, and gentle, with the rasp of roughness that comes when a man works with his hands. Just as I had imagined it would be. Better, even. Perfect.
But I didn’t see why he should be having all the fun, so I let my hands do the same kind of exploring, moving over his chest and down his abdomen, the flat of his stomach quivering as I drew my fingers across the skin there.
And he had thought I was just a powerless Doctor masquerading as a soldier.
I moaned against his mouth as he dropped his hand between my thighs and slid a finger through my slick folds, until I was trembling and desperate to have him.
I wasn’t the only one with power, it seemed.
He reached around behind me, lifting me until the stone of the wall was biting into the flesh of my back and my legs were wrapped around his hips.
But, then he was sliding into me, hard and eager, filling me completely.
I said his name again for good measure, because I knew he would like it and because I didn’t think I was actually capable of saying anything else at that exact moment.
I rocked against him as he set an easy pace, the rhythm he created driving me wild.
It had been a long time since I’d been with someone, and when I had, it certainly hadn’t been like this.
“Christ, Brenna,” he was muttering, his face pressing into the curve of my shoulder, a spasm tearing through him. “You feel good.”
“Hmm,” I said, bringing my hands back to his head, the short hairs there little more than a peach fuzz, but soft and silky. So much softer than that tuft of fur I knew I hadn’t imagined.
My first orgasm caught me by surprise as I shuddered against him, cried out his name again.
But he wasn’t finished with me, and I wasn’t going to complain. Gone were the gentle ministrations from earlier, he was moving roughly against me, looking for his own release.
Then he was groaning my name, nipping the skin of my shoulder, and I could feel him pulsating inside of me.
Sending me right over the edge behind him.
Afterward, he wasn’t in a hurry to set me back down on the ground, and I wasn’t sure I was in a hurry to be placed there.
“You’re a goddamned bear,” I said suddenly, like I was picking right back up in the conversation we had been having when I had been entirely, epically, distracted by his touch. “And don’t think you’re going to avoid that conversation by having sex with me. What kind of girl do you think I am?”
If I’d wanted to go on being held like that by him, saying that was probably not in my best interest, because he was disentangling himself from me and setting me back on the ground.
Now the morning was well on its way, and I had a good view of his body.
Which meant he also had a good view of mine.
But I wasn’t going to let that prevent me from enjoying what I saw.
“I wish you’d stop asking about it,” he all but growled, running his hand over the back of his head and then reaching for his pants.
I guess the timing had been pretty bad on my part. But it was sort of important.
I mean, bear.
“Get dressed. We should be able to see well enough to find the others now. And it will be
easier to tell where the problem areas are.”
Then he turned away from me, and left me to collect my own clothing and hurriedly pulling it on.
Officially dismissed.
We walked in silence, which was probably for the best, because every time I opened my mouth I seemed to put a foot in it.
Only, not talking about it wasn’t doing anything to answer my questions, and I really did want to know.
Need to know was more accurate.
As he had said, the sun was up, more or less, though the heavy rain still had us trapped in the fog of post storm. Even so, we were able to easily navigate the mountain side.
I never would have been able to find it on my own, but Chad seemed to have no problems at all, winding this way and that, turning here or there, moving further and further upward.
Which, I guess, was exactly why he did what he did and I did what I did.
We’d been walking about an hour and a half when we came to a little lodge on a level piece of land.
“How did you —” I began, forgetting that I’d already told myself I wasn’t going to ask him any more questions until he answered the one incredibly pressing question I’d already asked.
He turned toward me, one eyebrow raised.
And I was right back there, thinking about the damn bear again.
“They’re here,” he said, moving toward the door, knocking briskly on it. “Cadets!”
The door was pulled open immediately, by cadets who looked to be in much better shape than we were. The blonde at the door — the same boy who had reached for that tree in the first ill-fated experience of the night — looked utterly relieved at our appearance.
Bedraggled as I’m sure it was.
“Sorry, we’re late,” Chad said, stepping into the little cabin, nothing but a single room on the inside. “We got caught in the rain. And a slide. And by a mountain lion.”
They responded only with silence, but I was guessing based on how we looked, all of those things seemed plausible.
Maybe even highly likely.
No one even ventured a laugh.
“Anyone have a phone? Anyone find one on the premises? A radio?”
He was stepping through the room, opening cupboards, waiting for an answer.
Bears of Burden: THORN Page 89