by J. L. Wilder
Not that I’m doing anything with my power. I haven’t spoken to any of them about our situation. I eat meals with the group, but the conversation never goes any deeper than how that day’s hunt was or what I saw on my walks. I take pains not to be by myself with any of them, even though I’m aching to do it. I want to find myself alone in the woods with Jack again. I want to sit down with Luka and talk about what we both know happened. And Ryan remains a huge unsolved mystery. Our bond is the only publicly acknowledged one, so why hasn’t he acted on it?
Three days have gone by since Luka imprinted, and I still don’t have any answers. I make my way out of the cave after the men have left for the hunt, my mind racing. I’ve been preoccupied for days, and the only way I’ve been able to settle to sleep each night is by exhausting my body. I’m planning on a circuitous hike up the mountain. Maybe I really will return with some new fruits to supplement our diet. I know pears grow in the Alaskan wild sometimes, and my mouth waters at the very thought of them. That would be a perfect contrast to our usual fare of berries.
I’ve barely emerged from the cave and stepped into the sunlight, however, before a voice calls out to me. “Cami.”
I’m so on edge that I spin around sharp and so fast that I nearly fall over. My reflexes may be heightened by adrenaline and anxiety, but I’m still the same omega, uselessly tripping all over myself. My cheeks grow hot as I take in Luka leaning effortlessly against a nearby tree. Amusement is written all over his face as he regards me, but he makes an effort to rearrange his features when he sees I’m embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says, coming over. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a person you don’t mean to startle,” I say, wishing heartily that he wasn’t here. I haven’t been alone with Luka in three days. We both know why that is.
“I didn’t sneak up on you,” Luka points out. “I was standing over there in plain sight. You didn’t see me.”
“You weren’t hiding?”
“I was standing right there.” He shakes his head. “We need to work on your threat awareness.” Then he seems to hear what he’s saying, and he backtracks. “Not that I’m a threat! That’s not what I meant. Oh, hell, this is coming out wrong.”
Now who’s awkward? I want to comment on it, but I decide to be the bigger person and let it go. “It’s all right,” I tell him. “I didn’t take it as a threat. I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t,” he agrees.
“Uh-huh.” Seems like we’re on the same page, then. Was he just waiting outside the cave to tell me he wouldn’t hurt me? That seems like a strange choice. I wonder whether I can just turn and walk away, but something in me seems to be gluing me to the spot. He’s looking at me like he has answers, like everything I’ve been wondering and everything that’s been keeping me up at night is going to be resolved in his eyes. I could use some answers. I stay put.
“You’ve been out,” Luka says, “every day.”
“I...I was looking for—”
“No you weren’t,” he cuts me off. “You weren’t looking for anything. We have plenty of everything. We have so much meat that we could probably go into hibernation. Haven’t you noticed that we’re not even bringing anything back from the hunts anymore? We go out to run around and stretch our legs, just like you do. We’re not after fresh meat.”
I hadn’t noticed. I guess I’ve been more preoccupied than I thought. But I don’t say anything. What is there to say? I examine the ground, afraid to meet his eyes.
“Cami,” he says quietly, “why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not avoiding you,” I lie.
“Look at me, then.” He waits. “You can’t even do it, can you?”
“Luka, why are you doing this?” I can’t understand it. He knows perfectly well why I’ve been avoiding him. He must. He isn’t stupid.
“I want you to say it,” he says quietly. He takes a step closer, and suddenly, I’m aware that there is almost no distance at all between our bodies. The electricity between us snaps so hard I can practically hear it. I want to turn and run. I want to give in to the sudden rush of temptation and pull his body to mine. But I’m frozen.
Luka continues to speak. “I want to hear you say it,” he says, his voice very low now. He hardly sounds like Luka at all any more. Luka is my friend. Luka is kind and welcoming. But there’s an edge to his voice now, something hard and demanding. I’m transfixed. He’s closer than ever. Did he move in, or did I?
“Say it,” he says, and it’s an order, and even though he’s not my alpha, he’s just a beta, I find myself wanting to obey.
“You imprinted,” I whisper, my head rising, my eyes finding his.
“And that’s why you’ve been avoiding me.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nod anyway.
“You don’t want me?”
“I don’t know....”
“I’m not going to force you, Cami.”
“I know. I know you wouldn’t.”
“But I think you want me.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. If I’m honest with myself, Luka is right. I’ve been preoccupied with him ever since I felt him imprint three nights ago. I don’t understand how I can feel this way when half of me is still wishing for Jack to drag me into the woods, but I can’t deny it either. And now I can’t tear my gaze away from his face. Something is holding me there, something magnetic, something powerful.
His hand cups my cheek. Then, slowly, agonizingly, his fingers slide down my neck to my collarbone.
My breath hitches. I stare at him, transfixed. Is this happening?
“You want to be with me,” Luka says. “I can feel it. I can smell it. God. Do you know how you smell?” He closes his eyes for a moment and breathes in deeply, and though I’m embarrassed at being told that I smell, I’m also strangely aroused. He’s giving off a scent too, and it’s far from unpleasant. I lean in and inhale the spice and the musk.
Luka takes my hand. “Let’s go back inside. It’s cold here.”
“Inside?” I don’t think I can stand it. Now that he’s set things in motion, I can’t pull away. Is he seriously suggesting we stop what we’re doing and crawl down that tunnel into the cavern before we resume? By that time, I might have come to my senses.
“Trust me,” Luka says, and that’s an order too.
I follow him into the tunnel. The moment we’re inside, he rolls me onto my back and moves on top of me. I can’t see him. I can’t see anything. It’s all sensation and sound in here.
We’re cramped, pressed tightly together by the walls around us. I couldn’t escape from underneath him if I tried. But I’m not trying. I’m intoxicated by the sound of his breath, harsh and panting, as he grinds against my thigh. Our legs entwine. He moves the fabric of our shirts out of the way, so we can be skin on skin, and then he slides downward for a moment to find my nipple with his tongue and I’m so surprised that I let a cry escape me.
Luka stops immediately. He pushes himself up off me as best he can, and though I can’t see him, I can imagine the worried expression on his face. “Is this okay?”
“God, yes,” I gasp, wondering why I waited so long. “Don’t stop, Luka.”
Luka takes his cue. He slides off my pants and buries himself inside me, threading his arms under my shoulders to hold me, his mouth returning to my breasts. He swirls his tongue gently around one, then moves to the other, as he fucks me with long, steady strokes. It couldn’t be more different from Jack’s aggressive style, and yet it’s somehow equally masterful. I feel like putty in his capable hands, surrendering to the pleasure. I forget I’m lying in the dirt under a mountain of rock. All that matters is that Luka keeps doing what he’s doing.
He bites my shoulder hard as he comes, and I clench my thighs around his hips and pull him in as hard as I can, coming at the same moment. His seed dripping deep into my womanhood. Afterward, it takes us a moment to separate. We’re both gasping for breath, both drenched in s
weat, and I feel, for some reason, as if I’m about to cry. This was wonderful. Maybe it was too wonderful. What will I do if it turns out to have been a one-time thing? Jack has shown no indication of wanting a repeat performance, and Ryan has yet to express any sexual interest in me at all. What if this one time—this one spectacular time—with Luka was all I’ll ever get?
It’s not until I’m back in the cavern and sponging myself clean from my roll in the dirt that I find the bite mark on my shoulder. I clean away the blood, but the bruise and the marks of Luka’s teeth remain.
I’m not going to be able to keep my secret for very much longer. I have a sinking feeling that the Hell’s Bears are about to find out the details of my sex life.
Chapter Fourteen
The weather provides me with decent cover most of the time. I can get away with wearing scarves and turtlenecks with popped collars to cover the place on my neck where the bruise from Luka’s bite still shows. I hate this. I feel like I’m lying to my clan. And lying to them about this just makes me think about the first, most fundamental, lie I told, the one that got me through the front door. The wolves. Lying to the Hell’s Bears was one thing when I didn’t know them, and I was fleeing for my life, but now, they’re my friends. They’re my family. They’re my mates, for God’s sake. Lying to them now feels like a betrayal.
Half the time, I’m furious at them for putting me in the position they have. Shouldn’t this be someone else’s responsibility? Jack is the alpha; shouldn’t he be keeping his house in order? But the days go by and no one says anything about it, and bit by bit, I start to wonder if I’m just crazy. Is it normal for things like this to happen? Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe none of the others would care. Maybe they were expecting this to happen.
The tension breaks two days after my encounter with Luka, when he corners me again. Today, I was planning to move more snow into the cave while everyone was away, so we could repack the meat stores. It’s a chore that needs to be done from time to time because we keep the cave pretty warm and the snow melts after a couple of days. But when I emerge, once again, Luka is waiting for me.
“Hey,” he says, his voice husky, and then his lips are covering mine and my back is against the rock. I don’t even have time to marshal any willpower. I wrap my legs around his waist and fist my hands in his hair, kissing him back for all I’m worth.
After a moment, he pulls away from me, a satisfied grin etched across his face. “You’re feisty this morning.”
“You’re the one who got the drop on me,” I protest. “I was just getting snow.”
“Industrious of you.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I ask. “Aren’t you supposed to be out hunting with the others?”
“We usually split up,” he says. “Jack’s looking down by the water and Ryan ran off into the deep woods.”
“And they sent you back here?”
“They didn’t send me,” Luka admits. “I came on my own. I wanted to see you.”
“You can’t be coming back here in the middle of the day to see me,” I tell him, tugging awkwardly at the scarf I’ve tied around my neck today. The bruise is taking a long time to fade, and it’s making me nervous. Luka being here when he shouldn’t be is only going to make things harder. The others are bound to notice something eventually. They’re smart.
“Sure, I can,” Luka says easily. “You’re a part of my clan. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be seeing you.” He raises his eyebrows, as if challenging me to come up with a reason. As if he’s daring me to articulate the reason we both know I’m thinking of.
I can’t do it. As long as this remains unspoken, we can go on pretending. The moment I say it aloud, it becomes a real problem that will spread from here and infect the clan as a whole. I don’t want to discuss this with him. I want to ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening, except during those wild and untamed moments when it is.
So, I change the subject, seizing on the only thing that comes to mind, the only other thing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. “Luka, why did we rob that convenience store?”
He stares, apparently taken aback at the shift. A not insignificant part of me is pleased at having been able to throw him off and reclaim a little of the power in the conversation. “What?”
“You know what. The convenience store we robbed when we were between homes. What was that about?”
“That was ages ago,” Luka says. “Have you been thinking about it all this time?”
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” I point out. “And Jack said he had a gun—”
“He didn’t have a gun. Jack doesn’t own a gun. None of us do.”
“I know that.”
“We’re bears. We don’t fight with guns.”
“I know that. But why did he say it? The poor clerk at that store thought his life was in danger. He’ll probably never get over that. Do you know how terrifying that must have been? Do you even understand how scary the three of you look?”
“We look scary?” Some amusement has returned to Luka’s face.
“I was terrified to even approach you,” I tell him. “When I was on my way up here, after my old clan died, I seriously considered not even trying to find you. You scared me.”
“But you hadn’t even seen us then,” Luka counters.
“Okay, no, I hadn’t. But you’re big guys, all three of you, and you’re muscular and tattooed, and you look...” I wave a hand helplessly at his face, “unkempt. And then you walk into a store and demand all the money in the register, and you tell the kid running the place that you have a gun—”
“We told him that so he wouldn’t be fired,” Luka says heavily. “I don’t like it either. But a lot of managers will fire an employee who gives in to an unarmed robbery. If the clerk can point to a credible fear that his life was in danger, his job should be safe.”
“Well, that’s noble,” I say. “Wouldn’t his job be even safer if you just didn’t steal from him?”
“We needed the money,” Luka says. “We have to get money from somewhere.”
“Money for what? You don’t pay rent. You stole the gas for the bikes. What is the money for?” I can’t believe I’m finally asking the questions that have been plaguing me for so long. I’m so afraid of what I might be about to find out. Are the Bears secretly involved in some kind of drug ring, or some other illegal activity I don’t know about because I’m too new? What if they really do have guns? How deep might this thing go?
But apparently, I’m not going to get answers today. Luka shakes his head. “This is Jack’s business,” he says. “It’s not for me to talk about. You have to ask him, if you want to know.”
“I don’t think he’ll tell me,” I say. “Jack and I don’t really talk.” I don’t go into what it is we do do, but I can’t help but be reminded of how things played out the last time I was on my own with Jack. Maybe I should seek him out and try to talk to him. I don’t believe I’d get any answers, but maybe I’d get something else.
God. I have got to get myself under control. I keep doing the same things, making the same mistakes, landing myself in the same complicated situations. I can’t let the allure of Jack’s body make me forget why I shouldn’t be pursuing him.
“You don’t think the others are going to find it weird that you’re here with me alone in the middle of the day?” I challenge Luka, mostly because I don’t want to get into why things are uncomfortable between me and Jack with him. Every conversation is like this lately—full of mines. I feel like I need to be on the alert at all times. If I don’t watch my step, everything could blow up in my face.
“What’s weird?” Luka asks. “They don’t have any reason to find it weird that I’m spending time with someone in my clan. That’s a perfectly normal thing to do.”
I hear what he’s really saying. They don’t have any reason to suspect us. They’ll never guess that the time we spend together isn’t innocent. And as much as I hate to admit it,
I know Luka’s right, because I can see him here in front of me assuming that he’s the only one I’ve been doing anything with. I’m pretty sure it’s public knowledge that Ryan has still been keeping his hands off me, and why would anyone guess that steady, rational alpha Jack would act on impulse, and without consulting the rest of his clan.
And Luka. Easygoing, friendly Luka. Who would have ever thought that he had it in him to be so masterful and passionate? Who ever would have thought that he could have his way with me so thoroughly, that all it would take would be the sight of him outside my den to make me weak? He’s right. Even if the others realize we’ve spent the day together—even if it becomes a regular occurrence—no one will take it for what it really is.
Not that I have any idea what any of this really is. I’m beginning to think I never will.
That doesn’t stop me, though, from leaning in when he steps closer to me, from arching my body when he rests a hand on my hip. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, and I can see the throbbing of his pulse in his neck. He’s on the verge of shifting, I realize. He’s so close to his animal self right now. The bear is right below the surface, shining out at me from behind human eyes. Luka’s jaw works as he walks the tightrope between bear and human, keeping himself right on the edge.
It’s hotter than it has any right to be. His fingers dig into my ass, holding my hips against his. We’re both gasping for breath even though we’re not doing anything more than pressing against each other. It takes me a few minutes to realize that I’ve been dancing with my own bear self, that the swirling whirlpools in my mind aren’t simple attraction but rather animal lust. I want to bare my teeth. I want to rip off Luka’s shirt with my claws. I want to roar, to give voice to my intense arousal.
