Protected by the Claws: A Motorcycle Club Bear Shifter Romance

by Laura Wylde

  Chapter 11

  Kayla

  He had just come in me and I was freaking out. After what Dad made me do when he found out that I was pregnant the last time, years ago, I couldn’t let it happen again. He’d made me have an abortion, something that I would never forgive him for, and I don’t know why, but all of those emotions were taking over. I didn’t have time to glow after how good it felt because I was too worried about getting it out of me. I wouldn’t let lightning strike the same place twice. I couldn’t let this happen again.

  I was trying to think, and Baron was knocking on the door asking if I was okay. I was okay, I told him so, but I wasn’t when you considered how badly I was shaking inside. It was hard for me to feel this way and know that everything was going to be okay.

  It wasn’t going to be okay. It just wasn’t. What was I thinking?

  I looked at the woman in the reflection. Her eyes were wide, and they had changed to an almost golden color. My cheeks were flushed, and my hair was wild. I looked like I had just been fucked in all the right ways and I had, but there was fear in my gaze as well, wondering to myself what it was that I’d just done. I knew that I was going to have to figure something out, but it was hard to think about it. How could something that felt so right be so wrong in the end? It didn’t make sense and it was hard for me to feel that way about it. I wanted to feel bad for this, but I didn’t. I was just worried that it might stick, and I would be in a challenging situation again. I didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t.

  “Come on, Kayla, you’ve been in there for a while now. What are you doing? Are you okay?”

  He was worried and confused, and I could see how this would be hard for him to understand. He never knew I was pregnant, didn’t know about the abortion and I wasn’t of the heart to tell him about it. I didn’t have the heart to say anything out loud. It was still hard for me to think about it, let alone talk about it with Baron. He would have his own emotions and that would most likely be more anger that would lead to a confrontation I desperately didn’t want to happen.

  “I will be out in a minute. I’m just rinsing off.”

  “You ran in there like you were on fire. I don’t remember that from before.”

  “Yeah, well…” I stopped. I shouldn’t say what I wanted to say. Maybe I should have rinsed off before and saved myself a lot of pain and suffering. It was the worst mistake of my life, and the idea of reliving it was more than I could bear. I didn’t want to think about such things. I just didn’t. I didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to forget, so he really needed to stop asking questions.

  “Can you just give me a minute, please?”

  I tried to keep my tone level, but it was hard to. I was filled with too many emotions, and I was just embarrassed to all get out about it. I can’t believe that I had reacted that way. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I got out. He would want to know and wouldn’t leave it until he knew the truth. Baron always seemed to figure out the truth anyways, but this wasn’t something that he was going to be able to get the truth on. It was something that I bore, and I didn’t want anyone else to know about it, especially not him. There was nothing that could be done now and finding out would only make it worse. Nothing was going to make it better. Of that I was sure.

  When I got out of the bathroom, my face was still wet from splashing cold water on it and trying to calm myself down. My body was still shaking a little from the orgasms and pleasure he gave me. Baron had always been very good at that, and while I hadn’t had another boyfriend since him for all these years, I heard and saw enough to know that it wasn’t always like that. There was something special about him and what happened between us was unusual.

  His face was worried, and I didn’t want to meet his gaze. He looked at me like I was going to break or maybe that I already had. I can only imagine how I looked running in there like that. I wasn’t thinking when we started, but I sobered up and realized it when I felt the intense heat of his seed blasting inside of me. Then I knew that I had to get it out of me before it stuck again.

  “Yeah, I said I’m fine.”

  It was then that I really looked at Baron. I had been so caught up in what was going on and the pleasure that I didn’t notice the scratches that covered his chest and shoulders. I didn’t do that, did I? I had to think back, and I knew that he may have a couple of nail marks, but nothing like this. This was something else altogether.

  “What about you, Baron? What the hell happened to you?”

  He looked down at his chest and recognition crossed his face. He knew they were there, and he had been undoubtedly trying to keep them from me. What made those scratches on him? They looked rather strange and I moved closer so that I could get a better look. Not only were there many deep ones, they were fresh. Like really fresh. Less than twenty-four hours fresh. The detective in me was coming out, and I wanted to know what was going on with him. Baron was the one with all kinds of questions, but now I had a few of my own.

  “Oh, these.” He motioned to his chest. “Well, honestly, I don’t know.”

  I looked at him like he’d lost it. “How do you not know about this?”

  My hand moved out, and I touched one gash with my tips and he made a growling sound in the back of his throat. I was worried about many things, but it was more because they were not as clean as they should be. It looked like he’d just put his shirt on over them, and there was lint and fabric stuck in the scabs.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been having some crazy dreams, and I wake up in bed like this or in other places. I don’t know what happened last night, but something did.”

  “You’ve just been walking around like this?”

  I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t cleaned them. My curiosity was trumped by my need to help him. He needed these things clean, or they were going to get infected and become worse than they already were.

  “Yeah, what else am I supposed to do?”

  He tried to kiss me, but I wasn’t in the mood right now. I needed to get my mind off of everything and tending to his wounds seemed like a safe way to do it.

  “Let me take care of this. Do you have a first aid kit or anything?”

  He looked at me incredulously. “You want to do this now?”

  I nodded that I did, and he went into the bathroom. “I saw this under the sink. Will this do?”

  I opened up the small case, and it was bare essentials at best. “Yeah, I guess it will have to, but you need to clean it good. Get in the shower and I will help you with the ones on your back.”

  He agreed because he had to. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer and even though he was hard as a rock again still, I wasn’t going to let that sidetrack me. That was what had started my downward spiral to begin with.

  “You don’t have to do this, Kayla. They are fine. This isn’t the first time that this has happened.”

  I looked at the scars that were present as well, and I had to think that he was right about that. This wasn’t the first time that he’d been attacked or attacked someone else. I couldn’t tell if they were all defensive wounds.

  “Well, I don’t want to see it like this.”

  “I’ll put my shirt back on. Come on, Kayla. I need you, but not like this.”

  I ignored him and pulled him into the bathroom. I didn’t want his shirt back on. It would do no good because I knew that they were there.

  “We can’t do that when you’re like this. You’re just going to have to let me help you first before we do anything else.”

  He at some point realized that I wasn’t messing around. I made it clear that he was going to have to indulge me because I wasn’t going to do anything until I knew that he was going to be okay. The scratches were deep in some areas, and if he wasn’t going to let me take him to the hospital, the least he could do was let me help him here.

  We got into the bathroom and I watched him get into the shower. He turned the hot water on and then motioned for me to get in with him. I knew that
I said I would help him, but I had a feeling that he wanted more than to take a shower with me. The help that I was going to give him didn’t include anything extras. I just wanted to help him with the scratches, that’s it. Sex was not on my mind at the minute, even if it was on his.

  “You really do have a lot of scars, Baron. Why do you have all of these scratch marks on you everywhere? Looks like you’ve been fighting with a pack of wolves.”

  He chuckled and told me that it was nothing as exciting as that. He didn’t add anything else on the subject, though. I wanted to know what was going on with him, but it was hard to think when he was looking at me like that. I told him to turn around so that I could wash his back. It was broad and covered in scars and other cuts that were in all stages of healing. What the hell was this guy doing? He used to be a fighter, but this was ridiculous.

  “Nothing like that, Kayla. You know how it is sometimes. Some guys want to feel like bad asses and for some reason they see me, and I become a target. I’m not sure what that is about, but I know that it’s because I’m bigger. Things happen, some have knives.”

  “I was hoping that you had grown out of all of that.”

  He shrugged, and I heard a slight wince as I cleaned a particularly deep cut that ran from his neck to mid-back. I didn’t believe his story about the fights;

  this was something else. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that this was some kind of ritual markings that were done over and over again.

  I dried him off and managed to get out of the shower without any more advances from him. I knew that it was going to be hard to figure out what was going on with him. Baron was always pretty quiet and mysterious, but now he had my curiosity piqued, and I was going to have to figure out what was going on. There had to be more to the story than he was telling me.

  But I was exhausted and when he pulled me into his arms, I fell asleep almost immediately. I didn’t know how badly I’d needed him until he was right here in front of me. God, I had missed Baron.

  Chapter 12

  Kayla

  I woke up a little while later and it was the middle of the night. I hadn’t thought that I would stay the night, but there was nothing that I could do about it. I had passed out after getting out of the shower with him, but I was worried about what I saw. Those scratches didn’t make sense to me. None of this made sense to me, and it was much like the case I had going on lately. There were all of these clues and no answers.

  Having to know what the answer was about Baron was different. He was mine, always had been and I needed more clues. I needed to know what he was doing here. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I found myself checking out his things in the small room. It had quite a bit of stuff in here for a rented hotel room and that made me wonder what he was traveling around with. None of it made any sense, and when I started to go through some of his things, papers, boxes full of them, the mystery just got even bigger. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I was starting to wonder if I ever would.

  A lot of the paperwork, books and even newspaper clippings had to do with bears. I mean, it looked like he had an obsession with them, and I didn’t get why he would have so much lore on bear shifters and shifters in general. I took a couple of the books, as well as newspapers into the bathroom so that I could turn the light on and really see what it was that I’d found.

  The newspapers were on murders, the article that he was reading was circled and several of those articles were on bear mauling in places like this. Somehow bears got into the big city close to here. I hadn’t heard about that before, and now I wondered what the connection was. More than that, why did Baron have these things? It just made no sense, and when I went and laid back down with him, I was more confused than ever before.

  He moved when I laid down next to him, and his arms pulled me in like it was second nature. This is the way that we’d always laid, so long before, and it wasn’t long before I was falling asleep in his arms. It was one of the downsides to being with Baron. I felt so safe with him that I lost my head. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be working on my case, not lying around with my ex-lover. My ex-lover that was covered in scratches and had an unusual obsession with bears and shifters. But at the moment, in his arms, I somehow just didn’t care. It was crazy but true. Baron always made me lose myself when I was with him.

  “Late again, Kayla. What is going on with you lately? That man is back in town for a couple of weeks and now you’re right back to the gutter with him, huh?”

  I had just walked into Dad’s office because he said that he wanted me. Freddy had given me the news and warned me that Dad was on the rampage. This wasn’t anything new. Not really. Dad had always had a temper, and I’d always been able to deal with it, but today and this subject were going to be challenging for me. I didn’t want to argue with him today. I had a headache, and he wasn’t going to ruin the high that I got when I was with Baron. He didn’t have to like it. Baron was right. What was I doing here?

  “Sorry, Sir. I didn’t set my alarm or something like that. I don’t really actually know what happened, just that it didn’t go off. I’ve been late twice in a year.”

  “And both times are since Baron came back into town.”

  I hadn’t told Dad when Baron got here, but he seemed to know. He had acted surprised yesterday when he found out that he was here, so why did he fake it if he already knew? Dad was perplexing, and I wasn’t sure what to say. I certainly wasn’t going to question him on it. My dad had always been above reproach. Something that he’d reminded me of when he was making short work of my life before. No one would believe me or anyone else that came forward about him. He was the sheriff after all.

  “It has nothing to do with Baron. You’re the one that is obsessed with him. You always have been.”

  “You don’t know what that man is capable of.”

  “Funny Dad, because he says the same thing about you.”

  “Did he tell you about that night?”

  I wondered then if he was talking about the night that he’d tried to kill my boyfriend. I wanted to tell him that he hadn’t won, and I knew now that Baron had beat him, but I didn’t say a word. I still wasn’t sure what happened that night. All I know was that Dad was getting red-faced and I should have gone with it, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to have this conversation, and I didn’t want to make it worse for Baron.

  “What night, Dad? Did you do something that I should know about?”

  He cocked his head and looked at me like he was trying to figure out what I knew. It wasn’t the first time that he’d looked at me like that, but this time there was a lot at stake, and I hoped that I could train my face to not show my emotions. Did he know that I hated him in this moment? Could he feel it? I really hoped that he could.

  “Nothing: never mind. I’ve warned you before about Baron, Kayla. I don’t know why you won’t listen. I only…”

  “Want what’s best for me. Yeah, I know. That is something you’ve said before, many times.”

  “And it’s true.”

  I didn’t know if it was. I think he loved me, but he loved his image and himself far more.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. If you really cared, you wouldn’t have made me make choices like you did. You don’t love me, Dad; you couldn’t. You took away the one man that ever loved me.”

  “If you knew what I know about him, you would be thankful that I’d done it.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but Dad acted like he was so sure of that. What did he know that I didn’t know? It didn’t make any sense, and when I asked him about it, he just shrugged. He wasn’t going to tell me what was going on. I knew that there was something about that night that he caught us. Something had happened, but both men were determined to keep me in the dark. The detective in me wanted to know what that something was.

  “Then tell me so that I’ll be informed.”

  “There are some things that you need to just
trust me on.”

  I didn’t know if that was possible. I hadn’t trusted my father in a long time. Not since he had chased Baron off, which he will never admit to, but after talking to Baron, I knew that it was the case. Baron wouldn’t have just left, so whatever happened between them was pretty bad. I just wish I knew what it was. I had Baron’s side, but I’d learned long ago that every story had two sides, and Baron hadn’t been exactly upfront about it all. There was a lot that was left out; I was sure of it. It would have made my life a whole lot easier if Dad would have just come out with it. That’s for sure. But neither man was going to tell me what was going on between the two of them, so I was going to have to poke around and ask questions until I figured it out.

  “Well in that case, since I don’t know what you want me to know, or that I should know about Baron, I have no way to change my opinion. If you want me to stay away from him, Dad, tell me why.”

  He just shook his head. “He’s a suspect in your case. How’s that for starters? You don’t know what he can do, and I know that you want to see the best in people, you’re like your mother that way, but some people don’t deserve your trust and faith, Kayla. I wish you could see that. He’s always been bad news from when he was a teenager, and I guarantee you that it hasn’t gotten any better. Just do me a favor and stay away from him, Kayla. The safest thing for you to do is to stay as far away from him as you possibly can. He is trying to drag you down to his level.”

  I wanted to tell him that he already had, and that I had a damn good time descending.

  Dad was just talking in circles, and I wanted more information before I did that. I knew Baron. I’d known Baron a very long time, and I knew that he would never hurt me. I knew that he would never hurt anyone, not like the mauling. I wondered how Dad knew that it was a person. The eyewitness had told me she’d saw a man leaving the scene of the crime about the time of death, which was in and of itself hard to imagine. But I hadn’t put that in report yet and I hadn’t told Dad about it, so how did he know that?