Bears in Blue Shifter Romance Box Set

by Mia Taylor

  “Not yet, but she will.”

  Dan’s jaw twitched but before he could say anything else, Rhett held up a hand to stop him.

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” Rhett said quietly. “But I’ve been betrayed by anyone I’ve let close to me. I won’t give them a chance to manipulate me again. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” Dan agreed. “I won’t push the issue.”

  Rhett shot him a grateful look but inside, his chest was heavy. He hadn’t seen nor spoken to Charlotte since he’d seen her in the hall of the apartment, the night he had debated whether to return.

  I shouldn’t have gone there. I should have listened to Dan and gone home.

  But if he hadn’t, who knew what Mia, his cheating, lecherous ex-wife, would have done to Charlotte? No matter how he spun it, he would never be able to live with himself knowing that Charlotte had been harmed if he could have stopped it.

  Even if she has been lying to me about Mia.

  He tried to be reasonable about it, to put himself in her position, but the fact that Charlotte hadn’t told him the truth about Mia made Rhett feel like Charlotte was just as deceitful as Mia had been.

  “Ranger Joe’s?” Dan asked, gesturing at the upcoming diner, and Rhett shook off his reverie and nodded quickly.

  “Sure.”

  He wasn’t even hungry. He just knew he needed to put as much space as he could between himself and Charlotte when she learned about the transfer.

  A part of him wondered if he had put in the request simply as a way to hurt her as much as she’d hurt him.

  No, he thought, I can’t trust her. The one person I’d always thought would be there for me. I can’t believe anything that she says to me anymore. At least Mia didn’t lie. She just disappeared and let me think the worst.

  He stifled a groan at his own logic.

  “You okay, Lewis?”

  “Yeah,” Rhett sighed. “I just need some coffee.”

  As if that’s going to help at all. I’m going to need something stronger. Much stronger.

  ~ ~ ~

  The day seemed to drag on forever as Rhett realized that Charlotte hadn’t called or texted him once.

  This is the problem, he thought grimly. We have a co-dependent relationship. It’s not healthy. Even if she hadn’t withheld the truth about Mia, we couldn’t go on like this.

  He parked his car in the lot of his condo and made his way into his unit, feeling much more tired than he should have, given he and LaCroix had spent most of the day driving around, doing nothing but avoid the office.

  Letting himself in, he paused at the door, looking around with narrowed eyes.

  “It’s clean. That’s what’s different,” Charlotte said and he jumped at the sound of her voice. She appeared in the hallway leading out of the bedroom.

  “Although how you can live like this, I’ll never understand.”

  “What are you doing here, Charlotte?” he growled. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why not? I have a key.”

  “Leave it and go.”

  “No.”

  They glared at one another across the room and Rhett’s pulse quickened.

  “What are you doing requesting a transfer?” Charlotte challenged him.

  “I think it’s best for both of us if we got a little space from one another,” he muttered, turning toward the kitchen. He suddenly needed a beer.

  “Best for whom?” she retorted, stalking after him. “Best for you?”

  “I just said, best for us both. We’ve had a co-dependent relationship—”

  “Spare me,” Charlotte snapped. “You’re pissed about me taking that op with Mia.”

  He whirled back around and glared at her.

  “So what if I am?” he snapped. “I have every right to be. You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t lie to you. Not once. I’ve never lied to you in our entire lives, you jackass.”

  He grimaced and shook his head. “She knew about us! How long have you known that? She married someone else!”

  “I only just learned both those tidbits while I was undercover,” Charlotte replied evenly. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you.”

  “YOU DID!” Rhett yelled. “You did when I saw you with him!”

  Her eyes widened but confusion was plastered on her face.

  “Rand?” she asked dubiously. “He was sent there to watch me, the same way I was sent to check up on Mia.”

  “Why did you take the gig, Char? After everything she put me through…”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” she asked sadly, closing the space between them. “I did it for you.”

  “For me?”

  Charlotte paused and stared at him, gnawing on her lower lip.

  “I would have done anything to keep her away from you,” Charlotte muttered. “To my own detriment.”

  Rhett cocked his head to the side and studied her face, a familiar sense of warmth washing through him.

  No! No, you can’t fall for this. Mia would do the same thing.

  But Charlotte wasn’t Mia. He knew that and how many more ways could Charlotte prove it to him?

  “If you want to be angry with me for trying to protect you, Rhett, I can’t do much about that, but don’t think for a second that I did it to be deceitful or vindictive. I have always known that Mia was out for herself. She got a taste of a life that she wanted and she took it. It was easier for her to ghost you than come and talk to you face-to-face. Hell, she would have killed me for it, I assure you.”

  When their eyes met again, Rhett saw nothing but honesty and pain in her face.

  “Maybe I should have dropped everything and let you know the second I found out,” she muttered. “But I was still working and Rand…”

  She exhaled.

  “What about Rand?” he asked, his jaw locking.

  She looked at him pensively. “He is a bigger pain in my ass than you are.”

  “Sounds like you like him,” Rhett muttered and Charlotte snorted.

  “I don’t understand you,” she growled. “We’ve been together for years and you’ve never shown me interest, not for a second. I followed you here, to this job, and you married someone else—a mortal!”

  Shock tremored through Rhett’s body as her words pinged through him.

  “And suddenly, you’re acting like I’ve been your girlfriend all along.”

  “Not my girlfriend,” he replied shortly, reaching forward to pull her toward him. “You’re my mate. You’ve always been my mate and I took you for granted. It wasn’t until I thought I’d lost you that I realized what I’d been overlooking.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Do you really believe that or are you trying to shut me up?” she whispered.

  His mouth crushed to hers and eagerly, she returned his kiss, arms encircling his neck.

  Barely pulling back, he looked into her eyes again.

  “What do you think?” he muttered. She answered him with a kiss and fell back against the counter, her body relaxing instantly. Her skin was as soft and sweet as he’d always envisioned when dreaming about her.

  Gods, what has taken us so long to get here? he wondered, shaking his head in disbelief.

  As her breaths expelled more rapidly and he lifted her shirt above her head to expose her full, ripe breasts, Charlotte sighed, relishing the feel of his tongue against her prickled skin. He lifted her fully onto the counter, balancing her round buttocks over the lip to draw her forward against his crotch.

  “What took us so long?” Charlotte murmured and Rhett chuckled.

  We’ve always been in each other’s heads. Now we’ll be one with each other like we should have been long ago.

  Charlotte’s naked legs wrapped around his waist, their bodies meshing together in a blend of heat and sweat.

  Rhett latched onto her throat with a kiss before entering her fully. He relished the vibration of her gasp along the lines of his lips.

  I’ve been such a fool
, he thought, his thrusts growing harder and deeper as Charlotte’s cries escalated through the kitchen to echo through the apartment.

  “I love you,” she whispered and her body trembled, her nails digging into the smooth skin of his shoulders as he brought her to climax again and again.

  “I love you, Char.”

  In a sweeping motion, he pulled her from the counter, her legs still wrapped firmly about his waist, their forms still joined, and carried her to the couch to lay her down.

  He wanted nothing more than to memorize those moments, the lines of her face as she twisted in ecstasy.

  Their eyes locked and the passion between them swelled until Rhett could also take no more.

  In a haze of intoxicated desire, they joined as only two mates could, entwined and alive in the other’s skin, their breaths matching evenly until neither could tell whose breath was whose.

  He lay on top of her, nuzzling the velvet curves of her neck.

  “Does this mean you’re withdrawing your request for a transfer?” Charlotte murmured.

  “Should I?” he asked teasingly, running a fingertip along the lines of her belly.

  “That’s up to you. LaCroix is kind of cute. He might make a good partner.”

  Rhett scowled at her and she laughed.

  “There’s no way I’m losing you again, not for a minute. When I saw Mia pointing that gun at you…”

  “It wouldn’t have done much damage,” Charlotte reminded him. “A scratch at worst.”

  “I know that but at the moment, all I could see was red. I wanted to kill her for attacking you. It was you I saw, Char, not Mia.”

  She cocked her head and smiled at him tentatively.

  “Honestly, I’m glad you were there—even if you almost blemished my perfect service record.”

  “I’d rather blemish you,” he replied, dropping kisses on her body so that she squealed.

  “Hey,” Charlotte said quietly and he raised his head curiously.

  “Why so serious?”

  “What do you think is going to happen with Mia now?”

  Rhett frowned. “Can I tell you something?” he murmured, rubbing his nose to hers.

  “What’s that?”

  “At this moment, that woman is the furthest thing from my mind. Tonight is about us. Tomorrow we can take on the rest of the world, okay?”

  She offered him a smile. “We’re a good team, Lewis.”

  “I know we are, Pinky.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Split

  Charlotte looked across the courtroom where Rhett sat, his face classically stoic. He hadn’t glanced at her once but she didn’t blame him.

  He was there to testify about Mia and be on his way. Charlotte knew she shouldn’t even be there but she couldn’t help it. She’d already testified, after all. There was no reason to be there but at the same time, she felt guilty, staring at Mia.

  You have nothing to feel guilty about, she reminded herself firmly. Mia is the one who left Rhett. It’s not like you stole him… as if a being can ever be stolen from another.

  Charlotte liked to think that her reasons were more altruistic than she gave herself credit for.

  If Mia was convicted of entrapment, treason and the myriad other charges that had been filed as a result of her misconduct, she might actually be sent to gen-pop and that would certainly mean an instant death for her.

  And that wasn’t ever what Charlotte had wanted, even when she’d considered killing the woman herself.

  A part of her felt very sorry for how things had turned out, and sometimes, she could still hear the echo of Mia telling her that Charlotte could never understand how it was, working undercover and leaving your real life behind.

  She made a series of awful choices, ones that affected everyone around us. She has no one to blame but herself.

  But more than anything, Charlotte wondered if Mia was going to make good on her threat about exposing the bears.

  So far, she had not breathed a word of what she knew to anyone—at least as far as Charlotte knew, but Mia was not exactly a pillar of stability. Who knew when she might flip?

  Suddenly, Rhett looked toward her, their eyes meeting across the room, and he grinned boyishly at her from the witness stand as he waited for his questions.

  All of Charlotte’s doubts suddenly slipped away and she exhaled slowly.

  As long as we have one another, we can handle anything that comes our way, she thought bravely.

  She wondered, then, why she was filled with such a terrible sense of foreboding.

  ~ ~ ~

  “That was stressful,” Rhett laughed, raising his beer glass toward his companions. “I never thought I’d be testifying against one of ours.”

  “She’s not really one of ours if she turned, is she?” Dan offered, also taking a sip of his drink.

  “At least they granted her protective custody,” Charlotte offered, snatching a French fry off her lover’s plate.

  Rhett slapped at her hand playfully and at once, three cell phones dinged at the same time.

  “It is the office?” Charlotte asked, wiping her greasy fingers on a napkin before unlocking her phone.

  “Yeah…” Dan’s brow furrowed. “I’m supposed to report to duty at the 12th.”

  “The 12th?” Rhett echoed. “Did you ask for a transfer?”

  He shook his head and waved at the server for their bill. “What do your texts say?”

  Rhett and Charlotte raised their eyes to look at one another, unspeaking.

  “Uh, we need to get back to the precinct,” Charlotte answered quickly, reaching for her purse, but Dan stopped her.

  “I’ve got this,” he said.

  “You sure?” Charlotte asked in surprise.

  “Seeing you two not at each other’s throats is cause for celebration,” he chuckled and Rhett snorted.

  “We were never at each other’s throats,” he protested but Dan shook his head.

  “That’s not the way I saw it. Anyway, it’s clear the sexual tension has dispersed.”

  Charlotte blushed, her jaw slacking slightly, and Rhett punched his friend in the arm.

  “Don’t be jealous,” he chided. “Not everyone can have a woman like Charlotte.”

  Dan grinned at Rhett as the check arrived and shook his head.

  “I hope one day, I’ll meet someone that I want to break the law to see.”

  Charlotte’s brow knit in confusion.

  “What?” she demanded. “What happened?”

  “NOTHING!” Rhett roared, glowering at the younger man, and Dan shrugged.

  “Sorry, I thought she knew,” he mumbled, throwing a few bills onto the plastic tray. “I better boogie if I have to get across town. Text you later, Rhett.”

  “You got it, Dan.”

  The couple watched as he disappeared out the doors before turning to one another urgently.

  “What do you think this means?” Rhett asked in a low voice.

  “I have no idea,” Charlotte replied, reopening the message she’d received.

  All Bears to the 22nd ASAP

  The text had come from the usual server but it was brazen, outlandish even. Was it a joke? A mistake?

  “Dan got a text at exactly the same moment. Could they be calling an emergency meeting?”

  “I’ll call Kramer and see what’s happening,” Charlotte said. “What if this has something to do with Mia? What if she folded on us after all?”

  “I’ll call Hernandez and Bishop. See if they got similar messages.”

  They put their phones to their faces to find the contacts and dialed out but neither was successful at reaching anyone.

  Again, they found themselves staring at one another with worry.

  “What do we do?” Charlotte murmured. “If it’s a trap—”

  Her phone rang and she exhaled with relief. “It’s Kramer.” She answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s Kramer. Are you coming to the station?”

  �
��Y-yeah… I mean, are we? What is going on?” Charlotte demanded, shooting Rhett a wary look.

  “You’ll see when you get here.”

  “Wait!” Charlotte cried, realizing he was about to hang up. “Who called this meeting?”

  “You’ll understand everything when you get here,” Kramer promised. “Just hurry up.”

  That time, the call did drop, leaving Charlotte even more confused than before.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that you have no idea what’s going on… like, ever?” she muttered.

  “Welcome to my life,” Rhett replied. “What did he say?”

  “He said what he always says—for us to move our asses.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They arrived at the 22nd and Charlotte’s eyes almost bugged out of their sockets when she saw the overflow.

  “The fire department would blow a gasket if they saw this,” Rhett mumbled. “Who are all these bears?”

  “They’re all cops,” Charlotte replied, recognizing a few faces from other districts.

  “Attention!” Kramer yelled, standing on top of the counter at the front desk. “Shut your mouths because we don’t have much time and I’m saying this once!”

  A hush overtook the din and almost a hundred sets of eyes turned to look at the sergeant curiously.

  “There are going to be some changes around here,” he announced, his eyes trained on the door. “Simpson, lock that and don’t let anyone in or out until I’m finished.”

  Simpson did as he was told.

  “What kind of changes?” someone yelled out.

  Kramer turned and scowled. “I was getting there, Manetti.”

  “Sorry, Sarge.”

  “Starting today, we are enforcing the split,” he continued.

  A low murmur formed as everyone began to exchange worried looks.

  “Why?” someone else asked meekly.

  “It’s only applicable for the police department. The 22 will be headquarters for all the bears. Mortals will work anywhere else but here. If you were assigned a mortal partner before, you will be reassigned one on your next shift.”

  “Why?” the same timid voice asked again. “We haven’t enforced a split in fifty years.”

  A mutter of agreement coursed through the room.

  “It’s for your own protection,” Kramer growled. “The bears are taking on too much responsibility covering for their less competent partners.”