Bloodrunner Bear

by T. S. Joyce

  She didn’t seem like a woman to play games, but Alana sure knew how to make him want to chase her.

  Chapter Seven

  Why was she so nervous? Alana had never had the shakes like this in all her life. Talking to people had never scared her, but just the thought of refilling Aaron’s coffee sent a tremble of anticipation up her spine and made her hands shake even harder. Her heart felt like it was going to gallop right out of her chest cavity. And he was a shifter! He would hear her pounding pulse.

  She waved goodbye to the last table of customers and poured herself a mug of coffee, then dumped cream and sugar into it until she could stand the taste. It was ironic that she ran a coffee shop but didn’t like the flavor of coffee.

  Aaron had finished his breakfast and sat with his elbows resting on the table, hands cupped around his mug, staring out the open blinds to the parking lot with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” she said as she sat across from him.

  He huffed a laugh and eased back. “They aren’t worth that much, I’m afraid. What happened with Doucheface?”

  Alana sipped her steaming cup. “Nothing to tell, really. He wasn’t my type.”

  “Didn’t meet the list requirements?”

  “Ha! He didn’t meet a single one.”

  It was then she noticed the exhaustion in Aaron’s eyes. Oh sure, he was putting on a good show, complete with smiles and nods, but he looked thrashed. Well, he had been up most the night with that wreck.

  “Why were you crying last night?” he asked, gaze on the half-full mug cupped in his hands.

  “Because I’m a wimp. I let him get to me—”

  “Why?”

  She sighed out a pathetically human-sounding growl and said, “Because he mentioned my scar. He was rude about it. I’m not a fan of rude people. There is a difference in being honest and saying what’s on your mind, and saying something just to hurt a person.”

  Aaron nodded slowly, and seconds of silence stretched between them. “What happened to your lip?”

  Ah, there it was, and she didn’t want him feeling sorry for her, so she sipped her coffee and formed a perfect answer before she spoke again. “I was born with a cleft lip and a cleft palate. I had four reconstructive surgeries when I was a kid to fix it, and now I don’t even notice.”

  Aaron stretched his legs under the table, brushing her calf with his. Then blandly, he said, “Lie.”

  Crap. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want that to be the only thing you see when you look at me.”

  “What do you see when you look at me?” Aaron asked, his blond brows high and daring her to fib again.

  “Your eyes first, then your lips, hair, tattoos, muscles, height. In that order.”

  Aaron flicked his fingers at her. “Eyes, lips, tits, soft skin, hair, vanilla scent, ass, tits again, then your scar. You telling me about it won’t change the order. Your eyes have me first regardless.”

  Alana studied him carefully, but he didn’t seem to be the type to bullshit. “Lissa is my twin sister, and she was born perfect. Perfect skin tone, perfect lips, thinner, shorter. The cleft lip is genetic, from my mom, and they knew before I was even born that I had it. I looked…wrong…in the ultrasounds. So Lissa was the beautiful one, and I was the one who needed all the surgeries to look like this.” She gestured to her face. “I got bullied in school, and I didn’t want to be in photos when I was a kid. In high school, I figured out I had to use my personality to gain friends, where Lissa just naturally made them. I love her, and I know she sometimes hates being the ‘okay’ twin. She found her husband Todd and married him right out of college, and they have three beautiful girls, but I’m still here, stuck in a rut, spinning my wheels and thinking if I’d have loved myself earlier, maybe I could’ve let someone else love me, too. I get scared that I missed my window. It’s part of the reason I’m moving. Lissa lives in Asheville, and I’ve never been away from her. I never had space to see if I could be okay on my own. She’s busy with her life, but she still wants me here. It’s like that for most twins, wanting to stay close. I’m her safety blanket, but sometimes I don’t want to be. I just want to be Alana.” Heat rushed into her cheeks. Appalled at all she’d just exposed, she took a long gulp of her coffee and looked everywhere but Aaron.

  Aaron leaned forward and ran a hand through his hair, loosening it to flop over to the side and into his face. “I was a firefighter in Breckenridge with my dad’s crew. Firefighting is a family thing. Sooo…I didn’t know my dad until I was five, and he didn’t know about me. Him and my mom had this one-night stand, and then I came along as a result. My bear was out of control when I was a cub, clawing my mom, and I was on the fast track to biting her and Changing her on accident. So she brought me to my dad, and the Breck Crew, for guidance. And she and my dad fell head over heels for each other so we stayed. But for some stupid reason, because I’d missed out on my first five years with my family and my cousins, I had this urge to prove that I was good enough to be in the Breck Crew. That I was good enough to be Cody Keller’s son. I have two younger sisters, and they just accepted their place in the crew right away. From day one, they were Breck Crew. I worked my way through Fire Academy and through all the paramedic classes and certifications because I thought if I was good enough at the family business, it would prove I’m good enough to be my father’s son. But the longer I do this, the more I see the differences in my bear and my family’s animals. My dad and uncles are so in control all the time. And with me…I’m fighting to look normal on the outside every minute of the job. So, you see, I know about not feeling like you belong, Alana.” He lifted his earnest, sky blue eyes to hers. “But from the outside looking in? You look like you have everything together. I understand the need to move away and start over and escape shadows, but…” He spun the mug slowly on the table and frowned.

  “But what?” He’d been about to ask her to stay, right?

  “I’d still like to be your friend until you leave.” He winced his lips up into a pained smile and leaned back, pulled his leg away from hers.

  And there it was. The shutdown Aaron was probably famous for. Had anyone really broken through his hard exterior? He seemed like a man who kept everything close to the chest, protected. He’d given her a glimpse of his real self, a peek into the window of his soul, and then yanked the blinds closed. The shift felt like jumping into a cold swimming pool after an hour in the hot tub.

  She wanted to call him out and beg him to say what he really meant, but his jaw clenched with stubbornness, and she knew she’d lost the moment. So she told him instead, “I’d like that.” Because being friends with Aaron was better than nothing at all.

  Chapter Eight

  “You’re a complete slob,” Aaron muttered as he picked up a pile of Alana’s clothes and set them on the chair in the corner of her room.

  Alana giggled and pulled another box out of her closet. “Your insults don’t sting me, Keller. My kitchen is clean. I just like to try on clothes in the morning.”

  “And you don’t put them back on the hanger as you go?”

  Alana ripped the tape off the box labeled old shit. Maybe it was in here. Yes! With a grin, she rifled through the rolled posters until she found the one she wanted. “Swear not to make fun of me,” she demanded as she waved the thin roll in the air teasingly.

  “Oh God, is that the poster of me?”

  “It totally is! And now you’re standing in my room.” She puffed air out of her cheeks and murmured low, “Aaron Keller is in my bedroom.”

  He chuckled low in his throat and snatched the rolled glossy paper out of her hand. He pulled the rubber band off and tucked it in his pocket, the neat-freak, and then unrolled it. He let off a bellowing, single laugh and gave her the strangest look. “Are these lipstick marks?” He turned it around and pointed to his fourteen-year-old smiling lips, and sure enough, it was stained in her favorite and only lipstick color she had experimented with in middle scho
ol.

  “Abort mission!” she yelped and ripped the poster out of his hands. Yep, she’d totally forgotten she used to make out with his poster.

  Mortified, she started wadding up the poster, but he pulled it from her destructive grasp and shook his head. “Hell no, you don’t. We’re hanging this up.” He sauntered out the door, shoulders shaking with his laughter as he smoothed the wrinkles from the edges. “Where’s your tape.”

  “I’m not hanging that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m really embarrassed now! Can we please just throw it away and pretend this never happened?” She lunged for the damning poster, but Aaron blurred it out of the way and held it too high for her to reach. Son of a mother-fluffin’ biscuit-eater.

  She bounced around like an irate bunny, but she only successfully jiggled her boobs around and got a mere three inches off the carpet. Finally giving up, she crossed her arms and tried to look severe. “We’re not okay, Aaron.”

  He smirked, spun on his heel, and started digging through her kitchen drawers. And damn it all, he found the tape in the second one. He probably smelled it with his super-sensitive bear schnoz, and now she couldn’t meet his eyes because he really was plastering the poster of himself onto the living room wall. Alana wanted to crawl under a rock and hide forever and ever.

  Aaron stood back and admired his handy work. He was still laughing, the brute. “It wouldn’t have worked out with us, you know? I was a little shit when I was fourteen. Plus, I would’ve been prejudiced against your slobby ways.”

  “Well, I’m prejudiced against all of your tattoos, Aaron Keller. I mean, did you have to cover up all your damned skin with…what are those? Skulls?” She strode off murmuring under her breath, “If my daddy knew I was hanging out with a tatted-up bad boy, he would have steam blowing out of his ears.”

  “Oh, I’m a bad boy now?”

  “Yes! And I’m a good girl.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  She went to furiously scrubbing an already clean dish in the sink just to have something to do other than shoot mind lasers at Aaron. “Yes, I am. I read books, pay all my bills on time, and pick up my nieces from school on Fridays so Lissa can get a date night with Todd. I eat well, have a consistent and early bed time, say please and thank you—”

  “Who says I don’t do that stuff?”

  “You ride a bike that everyone hears when you coast down the street.” She jammed her finger at the faint holes in his ears. “Piercings for everyone to see, tattoos everywhere, a haircut that makes you look like a hellion, and eyes that glow like the freaking sun and let everyone know you have a monster grizzly bear just waiting to rip out of you. You’re a bad boy if I’ve ever seen one. Dangerous. Probably slept with a hundred groupies.”

  “You’re so fuckin’ cute when you’re mad.”

  Alana dropped the ceramic plate in the sink and spun around. “And you cuss.”

  Aaron snorted. “You like when I cuss, and you like everything else. I can smell your arousal. Every time I touch you, you smell like pheromones. And if you’re such a good girl, if you’re so perfect, why does your room look like a tornado hit it?”

  “Because I was trying on clothes for you!” With a gasp, she clapped her hands over her mouth and wished with everything she had she could gulp those words back down.

  It was too late, though. They were out there, dangling between her and Aaron, and now his lips thinned into a straight line. He cast his attention to the open door of her bedroom, and when he looked back at her, his eyes were a muddy gold. “Explain.”

  She swallowed hard and let her hands fall away from her face. This was where he would run, and there was no escaping his question.

  “Alana,” Aaron said, angling his head in warning. “Just say it.”

  “You ruined everything.”

  Aaron locked his arms against the small kitchen table that stood between them, his triceps bulging as he trapped her in that inhuman gaze of his. He froze there, like a predator about to pounce on an unsuspecting prey, and chills blasted up her arms.

  Be brave. Don’t let him see you weak.

  “I had a plan, and I was excited about letting the lease to my coffee shop and apartment go. I promised Lissa I would try a few more dates with guys in the area, just so she would feel like I tried my hardest, and then she was willing to let me move wherever I wanted, no complaints, just support. And that’s a really big deal to me. Trey was my last date, and then I could’ve moved on guilt-free. But the whole damned time, I was comparing him to you and staring at the firehouse, hoping I would see a glimpse of you. I was more excited about you stopping by for coffee this morning than I have been about anything in a really long time. I mean, I couldn’t sleep last night. I think you almost kissed me, and I kept replaying that moment over and over. My chest wouldn’t stop fluttering, and I couldn’t get comfortable. So I woke up early, before my alarm, and wanted to pick out something cute to wear today. For you.” Alana wrapped her arms around her middle to ward off some of the vulnerability she felt under his disconcerting gaze. “I know it’s stupid because we just met, but you have to remember…” Alana gestured to the poster on the wall. “I kind of watched you grow up. And then I got to meet you, and you’re better than I imagined. And I don’t hate your tattoos and piercings. I actually really, really like them. Not on anyone else, but on you, they’re so…perfect.”

  “Alana,” he drawled out, warning in his voice.

  “I know. It’s okay. I get it. Let’s just forget this conversation and hang out until I go. Best buds and all. I swear I won’t fangirl out on you anymore.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Act like this doesn’t change things. It’s not like I don’t find you attractive—”

  “Do you?”

  “Fuck yes, Alana.” He gestured to his crotch, where indeed he had a giant erection. “It’s bonerville central every time I’m around you, but I’m not meant to pair up. Especially not now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of my job. Because I don’t have control of my animal like I should. Because I have the King of the Asheville Coven trying to kill me. Because I’m trying to find my place in a new crew. Because I won’t be any good at being a mate. Because my life is fucking complicated, and I don’t want you to get hurt by it!”

  “Sounds like a lot of excuses that will keep you good and lonely for the rest of your life. I understand, though. Really. You aren’t ready, and for me, I’m in a different place.” She offered him a sad smile. “Our timing is off.” The story of my life.

  Aaron let off a low growl that filled the room and lifted the fine hairs on her arms. Right before he stole his gaze from her, his eyes turned frosty. He strode into her bedroom, and when she padded in behind him to see what he was doing, Aaron was putting her shirts onto the hangers that were scattered all over her bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning up because this is my fault.”

  Baffled, she asked, “The clothes?”

  “Yeah, the clothes, the feelings, the almost-kiss, all of it. I fucked up.”

  Alana sucked in air at the pain of those last three words. “That’s mean, Aaron.”

  “I can’t do this! You smell sad, and my bear…I want to… Dammit, Alana, I told you we had to be friends. Just friends.”

  “Caw!” Outside the window, a big black raven sat in the small tree in her landscaping.

  Alana startled hard, but Aaron snarled and yanked the curtain over the window pane. “Fuck off, Wes!”

  “Who’s Wes?”

  “No one.”

  “Is that a shifter out there?” she asked, jamming her finger at the swishing curtain. He looked like the one in the tree last night. “Why is he looking through my window?”

  No answer.

  “Is he in your crew?”

  Aaron went back to hanging shirts like she didn’t exist, so she shoved him hard in the arm. “
I’m not just some groupie you can ignore, Aaron. That shit doesn’t fly with me. Lock up when you leave.” She left her bedroom and grabbed her purse off the table by the door. Asshole could have all the silence he wanted in here. She was out on this.

  The doorknob was cold in her hand as she yanked on it, but in an instant, the door slammed closed and Aaron’s giant hand was splayed against the wood. “You think this is easy for me, and it’s not.” Alana tried to face him but Aaron held her in place and murmured, “No, just let me say this.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, rocked by the rawness in his voice.

  “I feel good around you. My animal settles when you touch me, and I haven’t been able to think about anything else since I met you. And that scares the shit out of me, Alana. There is a hundred percent chance of my life hurting you. Hurting you, do you understand?”

  No. “Yes.”

  Aaron wrapped his arm around her middle and rested his forehead against her neck. He inhaled deeply and let off a long breath. “I don’t like you mad. Don’t like you upset, but I can’t help this awful feeling in my gut that I’m going to be the one to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t. Just…don’t, Aaron. I’ll go easy on you. I’ll keep my expectations low, and we can just see how this goes.”

  He huffed a humorless laugh. “Woman, you don’t understand. That’s not how it works for shifters. There’s no seeing how this goes. There’s choosing a mate, or not choosing. You. Feel. Dangerous.”

  She rolled her eyes closed because, damn, it felt so good to hear him say something real. She didn’t know about shifter instincts, or the ins and outs of his culture or nature, but she understood what he’d just said. His animal was either in or out on a mate, and she felt big to him.

  She understood that feeling. Even with her dull human instincts, Aaron Keller had taken up most of the space in her heart in a matter of days.