by Mandy Rosko
What it would feel like all over her. Inside her.
They were married. She believed it; she felt it.
Boy, did she ever feel it.
And wherever the hell she’d been, it was long enough to make her get a craving. Namely, she wanted to see what his body looked like beneath his clothes. He knew what hers looked like, so it seemed only fair.
He opened the door and stepped aside. “After you.”
Beverly didn’t hesitate. If he wanted her to have a first look, then so be it.
She stepped inside, her eyes quickly adjusting to the different light. Without thinking, she reached to the side and flipped a switch. She looked at her hand, her fingers tracing over the switch.
She’d known it would be there. Without seeing it first.
Because this was her house. She knew this place.
A quick glance around showed her what else was around her.
The home was mostly open concept. She wasn’t standing in a tiny hallway. She could see the sitting room and the kitchen together. A bar separated the two, with stools on one side for eating.
The sofa was small, big enough for maybe three people, or two who wanted to do some cuddling while watching Netflix on the flat screen above the fireplace. A fireplace that was real, not something plugged into an outlet.
And the scent of the place...was of them. She smelled herself here, and him, but she also saw his clothes.
Everywhere.
Albert seemed to remember they were there as well. He rushed past her, grabbing T-shirts, jeans, and even some sweater vests off the back of the couch and over the bar stools, and he ran to a little closet, throwing them in.
But he wasn’t fast enough to hide the sink full of dishes, the take-out containers on the coffee table, or the papers upon papers that sat in a messy order on the bar.
She made her way over to the papers and made out maps of the area, a red pen highlighting routes and question marks ticked off.
“I forgot I left it like this. It’s not usually so messy.”
“No,” Beverly agreed. “I like things cleaned up, don’t I?”
Even standing so close to all this clutter made her skin itch, but the realization of what she was looking at overpowered her need to tidy.
She identified the stream where Albert had found her.
It was numbered, and on another paper, there were more locations and numbers listed.
Places he was planning on searching.
He’d spent the days she was gone searching for her. Of course he wouldn’t have much time to think about picking up after himself so his neat-freak wife wouldn’t come home to such a mess. He was terrified that she was dead in one of these streams.
Beverly turned her attention back to him. “You were really worried, weren’t you?”
“Christ, I still am. You can barely remember me.”
Fair enough.
For the first time, she really started to think about how her disappearance had impacted him. She’d woken up in the middle of the woods, trapped in her beaver form, partially shaved, and that had been scary enough, sure, but while she had been working on her den, he had been losing his mind, desperately trying to find her.
“Who’s Mastermind?”
“What?” He looked to where Beverly pointed at his notes.
“You say here that there might be a copycat of Mastermind. Who is Mastermind?”
He growled a little. “Some bitch who had size issues. She kidnapped and experimented on shifters. Sometimes for decades. She’s not a problem anymore, but it was something I was playing with.”
Beverly nodded. “I guess you would have had to look at every angle.”
“Yeah.”
God, this was all so weird. Why couldn’t she remember anything? This was clearly where she belonged. Her instincts were still telling her that this was her home, that she was safe here, but she wanted to remember everything. She didn’t just want to work off instinct alone.
She wanted to know how she and Albert had met. She wanted to know what their first kiss had been like. What it was like the first time they had sex. She wanted the memory of their wedding, screaming at the priest and all.
And she wanted the memory of her kidnapping. She wanted to know what had happened to her there, who had done it…
And she wanted revenge for what had happened to her.
Beverly had to step away from the papers. No matter how important it was, she couldn’t do it all at once. It was overwhelming, and stressing about it wasn’t helping to bring anything back.
She knew what she needed. What would help her right then and there.
Touching her husband and feeling him touch her.
Then she could begin with the revenge planning.
“Is there more?” she asked, hoping he would get the hint that she wanted to get to the bedroom.
“Yeah, absolutely.” He walked over to her, taking her hand.
Not for the first time, she was reminded of his strength. In fact, as he led her to the stairs, she noted the broad range of his shoulders, the outline of muscle that was easily seen through his clothes.
“Can I ask what you officially do for the FUC Academy? Alyce said something about you no longer being in the field.”
He smiled back at her. “To be honest, I’m kind of a library geek.”
She jerked back.
He laughed. “Don’t make that face.”
“You don’t look like you spend all your time with your nose in a book.”
“Well, that’s only lately. A recent change of pace, if you will. Before that, when I was still in the field, I was into physical fitness and training.”
“I knew it. Somehow that turns me on so much more.” A shadow fell over his expression, something between shocked and appalled.
“Is that...a problem? Honestly, maybe we should skip the talking and get right down to the sexy times.”
“Okay, first of all, no, we’re not doing that. You’re in no condition to get down and dirty.”
“You being all considerate like that just makes me want you more, just so you know.” Beverly reached out for him and started unbuttoning his flannel shirt.
“Well, okay, if you...wait, stop.”
He pulled her hands away from his shirt, leaving it only halfway open. The way he stepped back, put his hands on his hips, and looked away from her, gazing out the hall window into the woods before taking a deep breath...
Yeah, Beverly needed to brace herself for a letdown.
“I don’t know why you’re doing that,” Beverly said. “You clearly want to have sex with me, and I’m consenting, so why act as if we shouldn’t do this?”
“Because we still haven’t gotten you to a doctor, a proper doctor, not just Nolan.” Nolan was very much a doctor, but because of his lack of equipment, he hadn’t been able to give her a full check-up.
“I’ve been in the woods for days, and if there was something wrong with me, I would have felt it somewhere. I’m fine.”
He finally looked back to her, but his mouth was set in a hard line. She knew she couldn’t win this one.
“All right. I will concede that you might be right about this. Getting a physical is probably a good idea to start things off, but I’m telling you I feel fine. If you’re worried about hurting me, then don’t be.”
“It’s not just that.”
She didn’t want an explanation anymore. “Look, whatever, it’s fine. I don’t want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with me, but is it really because you want me to have a physical first, or are you trying to say something about what happened to me?”
His nostrils flared. “It’s not just that, and it’s not about what happened to you. They could have done any number of things to you and I would still want you. I do want you. I want to throw you over my shoulder right now and march you into our bedroom and make you scream my name like you did the night before you were taken from me.”
“But?”
>
He looked just as unhappy as before.
“Are you going to show me the room we shared just so you can go and sleep on the couch or something?”
“Honestly, that was kind of the plan.”
Fantastic.
She tried not to think about what an asshole he was because he wasn’t an asshole. Not really. He was trying to be considerate, and if anything, she was being the asshole here.
No meant no and all that.
At the same time, she couldn’t help but wish he would wrap her up in his arms and ravish her. He was worried about her, and with the FUCN’A clinic out of service, he might be worried that there could be something internally wrong with her.
Which meant her desperate need to jump his bones likely wasn’t going to happen tonight, and she couldn’t blame him for it.
“How about I get a full physical exam right now. Forget showing me our bedroom or waiting on anything else.”
He raised a brow at her. “Right now? You want to get this done now?”
She shrugged. “If anything, it will let you do a little cleaning up in there. I’m sure you tore apart your bedroom when I was gone.”
“I did.”
“Right. Okay, let’s go.”
She turned to go back downstairs, ready to head out to wherever the nearest shifter clinic was.
Until Albert grabbed her wrist, stopping her.
She looked back at him, startled. “What’s the matter?”
He didn’t meet her eyes, which was her first clue that something was wrong.
“We can get you looked over, but first, I need to tell you something.”
Five
He couldn’t let her get a full-body exam without telling her.
Albert knew her too well. If she wanted something, she was going to surpass as many hurdles as she could to get it.
Which was ironic considering what he knew would happen the instant he told her this.
Partly, he was stunned she hadn’t figured it out on her own yet.
She looked at him, wide-eyed and trusting. “You need to tell me something?” She smiled at him. “Could you have made that sound any more ominous?”
He couldn’t laugh at himself, couldn’t even smile. Not for this.
And when he wouldn’t smile, she stopped smiling.
“What? What’s wrong?”
He pulled her back up the stairs, leading her to a room. Not to their room, but to the room.
She followed, and he could sense the puzzlement about her as he opened the door.
She stepped inside, looked around, then glanced at him. “There’s, uh, nothing in here.”
Which was exactly how she’d left it.
“I know you don’t remember anything, but you seem to know some factual information. Especially when I say something that you knew to be true or, at least, true about us. Does this space remind you of anything? Anything at all?”
She glanced around again. Albert observed her carefully, as closely as he would watch prey from high up in the sky, a scurrying mouse or a beaver building a dam.
But he couldn’t detect a flicker of recognition here as she shook her head.
“No. There’s nothing.”
He didn’t know what was worse, that she had no memory of this, not even an inkling, or that he was the one who had to break this to her.
And he couldn’t be soft and gentle about it.
“This started out as our home office. It had two desks, bookshelves, file cabinets...”
“But we moved everything out?” She looked around again. He could see the wheels turning. Her mind searching for an explanation.
“We were turning it into a nursery.”
She snapped her attention back at him, her eyes so wide he could see the whites all the way around them.
“What?”
He hoped ripping the Band-Aid off like this was the best choice. It wasn’t as though there was a good option in general that he could aim for. “You were pregnant when you were taken. Only two months, too early to start telling people, but we were so excited. We couldn’t wait. We wanted to get the room ready.”
“Oh.” For the first time, Beverly’s face softened. Gone was the tough jokester that she’d been so far since they reunited. Here was his wife that only he knew.
“We knew when you stopped being able to shift.”
She went visibly paler. Albert had to wonder if she was aware of the way she touched her stomach with both hands. “I’m...I was...pregnant.”
Not a question. She said it as a statement of fact. She’d said that whenever he told her a truth. She could feel the rightness of it, even if she didn’t have memories of it.
Was she feeling that right now? Was she hearing his words, and was the knowledge of her pregnancy coming back to her? Even if she didn’t remember it, to know that she had been pregnant at all, to feel it deep within herself, and know it was gone...He could only imagine how she felt.
And when she did look at him, her eyes shining while her mouth opened, lips quaking…
“I...” She didn’t say anything else for a moment. Even that one word came out as a deep croak. She looked like she had back when they took their road trip and she saw a dead beaver on the side of the road.
Absolutely horrified.
“I was...pregnant?” This time it was a question. He wished he could make it better. He wished he could lie to her and make it go away, but that just wasn’t how they worked together.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Her fingers clenched over her stomach. Beverly looked down then around the room before she rushed out, pushing past Albert and making for the stairs.
Fuck. He didn’t know if there was a right way to handle something like this, but he certainly seemed to have chosen the wrong way.
“Beverly.” He chased after her, terrified she would run out the front door and he would never see her again.
He couldn’t let that happen. He had to keep her safe this time. “Bev, wait!”
She burst out of the front door, but she didn’t make for the car.
She stopped short, a hand over her mouth, the other on her waist as she crouched down and wrapped her arms around her legs while pressing her face into her knees.
“Beverly.” Albert knelt down with her and placed his hand on one of hers. Any other time he would have wrapped his arms around her. He would have pulled her into his arms and cradled her, even when she lied and pretended she didn’t like it when he did that.
But this was different. She barely knew him now.
“We’re going to find whoever did this to you, and I swear to God, we’re going to make them pay. They’re not going to get away with it.”
Beverly lifted her face, turning away from him quickly and wiping her cheeks onto her shoulder and the sleeve of her shirt. “They took me because I was pregnant?”
“Near as I can figure.” He saw now that Alyce was right. FUC needed to take over. They were both too affected to handle any investigation that involved their lost baby.
“Were you thinking about investigating this without telling me?” She looked accusingly at him but didn’t pull her hand away. He didn’t let her go. He wouldn’t unless she physically pushed him off.
“I wanted to.” His voice was hoarse, but he spoke the truth, knowing she would see right through any lie. “I wanted to get out there and do as much of this on my own as I could get away with. I wanted to take as much of the burden as I could because you’ve already been through so much.”
Despite their pact with each other, their promise to never give each other grief and to only be honest, he could see she was holding back. She wanted to lash out, to have someone to direct all her rage to, and God help him, he would take it because he loved her. “Just say it, Bev. Whatever you’re thinking.”
“What if I wanted to blame this on you? What if it was your fault I got taken, your fault I can’t remember who I am, and your fault my baby’s gon
e?”
That really fucking stung. He hadn’t done anything to make him the target of her emotions, but he knew she had to lash out at someone, anyone, and he just happened to be the only one around.
But he didn’t care.
“I hope it’s not how you really feel, but if you need to release your rage on me, then you absolutely can.”
The crease between her brows deepened, as though she couldn’t understand why he would say that.He wasn’t trying to get a medal for being a hero. This wasn’t about him. He was just trying to be strong for the both of them.
“Maybe we should have gone right to a proper medical facility, emergency room, or whatever. I thought it would be better for you to come home and get some rest, but this was stupid. Let’s get you there now.”
Beverly looked away from him. Her eyes swam. She bit her lips.
He’d never seen her like this. Never seen the woman he loved so broken before.
Which made him only want to protect her all the more. It made him want to destroy anything and anyone who would dare put a look like that on her face.
But he couldn’t. Not yet.
“Is there a chance at all I could still be pregnant? They devolved me from a saber-toothed beaver into a normal one. Maybe they did something else that lets me shift with a baby inside.”
Hearing her attempt to find hope felt like a punch to the gut. He didn’t think it was possible, even though, in his heart, he wished it could be true. But in all the years of experimentation and scientific achievements, it was still impossible for females to shift when they were pregnant.
Despite his oath to tell her only the truth, he couldn’t destroy her hopes. “Maybe. Considering what happened...I suppose anything’s possible.” A fox shifter had once been experimented on to the point that she hadn’t been able to shift anymore. Albert also knew the stories of the shifters who had been turned into blobs, the ones who had been a mishmash of animals put together.
If shit like that was possible, then who was to say that his wife couldn’t still be pregnant?
But if she were, what effect would the experiments have had on the baby? Everything had happened too fast. It wasn’t as though she had been away for months at a time. It had been only weeks.
