by T. S. Joyce
So close. “I’m gonna…”
“Come for me,” he whispered against her neck. He pushed deeper into her, held her tighter, reared back and slammed into her again, faster. Their bodies made a slick sound together. She loved this.
“Logan!” she cried out as the first explosive pulse of orgasm rocked through her core.
He grunted in response as his dick throbbed inside of her, pouring warmth into her middle in jet after streaming jet. He ripped her shirt to the side, stretching the neck, and clamped his teeth over her claiming mark in a delicious tease. He groaned against her skin as he emptied himself.
Numb. Other than blinding pleasure, Winter felt nothing. She relaxed backward, allowed him to hold her as she let her hands go limp at her waist. With a drunken grin, she whispered, “That was amazing.”
But Logan didn’t respond, and his breath was coming faster, labored. The scent of fur was too thick, saturating every molecule of air. Winter opened her eyes, and what she saw dumped dread into her body.
Logan’s eyes were blazing white, and his face looked feral. His muscles were twisting into something other, and the first echoing snap of bone sounded like a shotgun blast in the small space.
“Shit,” she whispered.
“Run,” he said in an inhuman growl.
But there was no running from the monster that was about to tear out of Logan. She hadn’t even seen his animal, but she knew there was no surviving him. Frantically, she unbuckled Logan and shoved open his door.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You said. You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she chanted over and over as she struggled to shove his heavy body out the door and onto the forest floor. He was trying to stay human, but he was losing to the animal. The building growl in his throat and snapping bones were proof of that.
“Go!” he roared, his face transforming into something ferocious.
With a scream, she pulled the door closed, and threw the truck into reverse. In the middle of the quiet woods, a roar wrecked the silence, and a monstrous bear ripped out of Logan’s skin. He was bigger than any furred shifter she’d ever laid eyes on. A true titan brown bear with teeth the size of a saber-tooth, a back that was taller than the truck.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered in horror as he stood to his full height in front of her and opened his mouth for another roar.
Winter jammed her foot on the gas and looked behind her to make sure she wouldn’t crash into a tree. If she wrecked now, he would devour her just as surely as any man-eater dragon.
When she glanced in front of her again, Logan was right there, charging her, his eyes empty, his long, six-inch black claws sinking into the dirt with each sprinting step he took.
Terrified, Winter slammed on the brakes and threw it into drive, spinning the truck sideways. Logan hit her hard on the passenger’s side, swinging her several yards and shattering the window. His long claw reached in and raked across her arm. She screamed at the pain as she stomped on the gas. The truck fishtailed, struggling under the bear’s massive weight, but pulled free. Logan was right there on the edge of her blind spot, keeping up no matter how fast she sped up. He knocked his shoulder against the bed of the truck and sent her skidding sideways. No time to straighten out, she kept on the accelerator and sped through the woods, then pulled a wide circle until she could angle back to the road, all the while hearing the panting breath of the bear close through the broken window.
Winter was crying, nearly hysterical by the time she blasted onto the main road. Logan skidded to a stop in the middle of the paved street and roared loud enough to rattle her ear drums.
And as she watched him in the rear view disappear, she had an awful, gut-wrenching thought.
Rowan had been wrong.
Logan the man was perhaps salvageable.
His bear, however, was not.
Chapter Seven
The pain made it hard to think. Winter stumbled to the motel office. It was a ratty, run-down joint with maybe two dozen rooms all connected on one long L-shaped floor, but it would have to do until she could get the bleeding to stop.
“I need a room,” she panted desperately to the man at the front desk.
“Good God, girl,” the balding gentleman said, his eyes trained on the oozing slash marks on her arm. “Have you called an ambulance?”
“No, no ambulance. I’m a shifter. I just need an hour or two of rest. Please sir, I need a room.” She was going to pass out soon if she didn’t find a dark place to sit down.
He gave a worried look to the destroyed truck she’d parked sideways in front of the office. The window had jagged pieces of glass sticking out, and the bed was crushed inward over the back wheel that had been making a scraping sound the entire drive here.
“Car accident,” she lied. “Off in the woods, no one else involved, but I need somewhere to rest. Do you take a credit card?” That way he wouldn’t think she was on the run and turn her away.
“Yes, of course. Forty-five even. You can take the room on the end, ten-ten.”
Winter frowned. That was the number she’d seen on Kane’s cabin, too. Funny. Or it would’ve been if her arm didn’t feel severed from her body right now. She struggled out her wallet and paid. And right before she walked out of the office, he tossed her a first-aid kit and wished her luck. “Thanks,” she said, and meant it. Sometimes people freaked out when they found out she was a shifter, but he’d been nice. Helpful even.
One-handed, Winter drove the truck to the front of 1010 and stumbled inside.
The room smelled of mildew, but it was dark and quiet, and it would do. Desperately, she ripped open the first-aid kit and downed the four pain pills that came stock, then made her way to the bathroom, stripped out of her clothes, and hit the warm tap.
She smelled like a crime scene, and the scent of copper was so thick it was riling up her already frightened animal. She couldn’t add the pain of a Change, so right now she was in keep-the-skin mode.
She sobbed the second the water hit the claw marks that ran from her chest across her arm. She didn’t want to look, but she needed to. Her healing was working, but the injuries were bone deep and would take a few hours to stop bleeding.
The bathroom filled with steam, and still she sat in the tub, heart feeling like it was just as shredded as her arm. All she’d wanted was to forget about Brody for a while, but now she would have these scars for always. Every time she looked in the mirror, she would remember today. Remember this time in her life.
She was missing the group interviews for this, but she couldn’t go back to Kane’s. Not right now. Not until she was strong again and wouldn’t set off those other predator shifters. They would sense her injury, sense her weakness, and attack. It was instinct.
But that wasn’t the biggest reason she was hiding in a hotel instead of participating in another interview. There was one much bigger reason that took up most of her headspace right now. She was protecting Logan. If Kane and Rowan saw how far gone he was, how easy it was for his bear to attack, they would put him down on the spot. She shouldn’t care, but there was something about Logan. Some mighty strength that battled with a deep break in the make-up of his being that called to her protective instincts.
Even if he couldn’t be saved, she didn’t feel done with getting to know the human half of him.
The front door clicked and opened in the other room. Winter froze, terrified like a little field mouse with no cover. She could smell him—Logan.
With trembling fingers, she moved the shower curtain aside, and there he stood, looking as wrecked as she felt.
His hair was mussed, his skin pale as a phantom, and the clothes he wore didn’t fit well, as if he’d stolen them off some line of laundry somewhere. It was his eyes that held her, though. They looked a hundred years old, and exhausted.
He dipped his gaze to her arm and grimaced. Hooking his hands on his hips, he stared at the floor, swallowed over and over. “I can’t have intimacy. The bear… I don’t know what to
do with it anymore. But you smell so fucking good, you’re so soft, and you make me forget things. I lost my head, and it got you hurt. I can’t…” Logan ran his hands down the dark scruff on his face and heaved a sigh. “You smell scared again, and I hate it. Hate this. Hate the way I am. If I could go back and change everything, I would. I would be settled in a crew. An alpha maybe. Someone good. Someone people could look up to. I wouldn’t be here begging an honorable death from people who don’t know me and don’t owe me anything. I wouldn’t be here hurting your chances at a new beginning, and you…you wouldn’t be crying because of me. Do you need me to leave?”
Winter couldn’t even sense his bear anymore, as though he’d tucked the monster so deep inside of him, he barely existed. Just like when she’d first walked into the circle of shifters today, and he’d been invisible. She shouldn’t, but she felt safe again. She slowly shook her head, inviting him to stay.
And then he did something that shocked her to her bones. He peeled off his shirt. She’d expected scars all over his body from the problem shifters he’d fought, but his skin was smooth and void of any damage. That was telling enough. Logan was very good at battle. Something about that made her so sad. She’d heard his admission. His alpha had forced him into that first mercenary job at the tender age of seventeen. Dominant brawlers like him wielded a huge instinct to protect. It’s why the dominants made such good alphas. But instead of protecting, his alpha had hired him out to kill.
Logan’s bear had never stood a chance.
He kicked out of his pants and stood up straight, locking eyes with her, daring her to look. His shoulders were more defined than she’d imagined. He had a tattoo of a cross on his ribs, and another abstract tattoo covered one pec and flowed up to his shoulder and down his arm in a full sleeve. He was cupping his dick, covering it as her eyes dragged down his chiseled chest and the hard mounds of his abs, but when she reached his hips, he pulled his hand away and strode toward her.
Logan stepped into the tub, slid in behind her, hugged her tightly against his chest, and buried his face in her neck. Winter sat there frozen in disbelief that this giant, complicated man had just exposed himself physically and emotionally to her.
For a while, he didn’t say a word, but this was his apology. She knew without a shadow of a doubt he didn’t give affection freely, or perhaps ever.
“Why?” she asked thickly. “Why did he hurt me?”
“Because he’s broken. I broke him. He was good, and I made him kill, and now I’m the one who needs the mercenary.”
“Rowan is your mercenary?”
He nodded against her neck. “I want to go fighting, with honor, but you’ve seen me. Who can beat him?”
“Only dragons.” No other shifter on earth was as big or dominant or bloodthirsty as Logan’s bear.
Winter turned sideways in his arms to face the wall, curled her knees up and rested her head on his bare chest, stared at the lines of grout between the bathroom tiles. “I’m angry at you.”
“You have every right to be.”
“Not because you hurt me, Logan.”
“Then why?”
“I’m angry because you didn’t save him.”
Logan dragged in a deep breath and stroked her wet hair. “I’m angry for the same reason.”
****
Should he tell her why he’d marked her? Winter was soft and hurt. That asshole mate of hers had busted up her insides and made her hunch into herself, just a ball of cement against the world with hairline cracks that let her sweet demeanor leak through. She probably thought that was weakness, but it wasn’t.
He couldn’t tell her his bear wouldn’t have killed her. That he was just trying to make sure she was scarred forever. The fucked-up monster in his middle had claimed his mate in only the way Logan’s broken bear could. Without permission and too roughly. Too much pain, too much blood—that was Logan’s punishment.
She’d checked her phone on the side of that road, gone pale from a message Logan just knew was from her ex-mate, and something awful had happened inside of him. The possessiveness had nearly blinded him, and that first touch of her hand on his dick had sealed her fate. It was clear as water what she was doing. She was using him to forget Brody. But Logan’s bear would be good-goddamned if he was a balm for that prick.
He’d grown desperate to make her belong to only Logan. And when Logan had refused to give into the temptation to bite her right over Brody’s claiming mark, his bear had revolted and forced the issue. He’d created chaos and trauma that Winter didn’t deserve. Even now, his bear was constricted in his middle watching her, adoring her, stalking her like the fucking psychopath he was.
What was it? Was this some messed up way for his bear to try to save himself? By attaching to something beautiful. To something whole and perfect. Was this bond Logan felt in his chest some desperate attempt to chain himself to this world?
It wasn’t fair to Winter. They were strangers, and it wasn’t her fault her kindness had earned the devotion of a beast.
Look what he’d done to her in one day. She was naked in his arms, broken down sobbing, arm still running pink under the steaming shower water. This was his effect on people he tried to care for.
Logan hated himself for what he’d done. For what he’d allowed. He hadn’t been able to stop the bear from marking her, but then, he hadn’t tried that hard, had he? He could’ve put up a bigger effort to stop the Change. He could’ve held on until she sped away. But he didn’t. He lost himself in the stupid momentary idea that he could keep something beautiful like Winter, but he couldn’t.
He was a hurricane, and she was a butterfly. A butterfly with an inner strength that showed in how she was handling the aftermath of his attack, but a fragile-winged butterfly nonetheless. What chance did she have against the storm that raged within him?
Winter was his mate, a desperation-claim after just a few hours of knowing her, but he could never, ever tell her that. Nothing had changed from this morning until now. Logan was still on a straight path to Hell, and she deserved better than another mate who would leave her alone in the world.
Chapter Eight
Logan was toweling off his dark hair in front of the mirror, but Winter didn’t miss his anxiety. He tossed a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder as her phone vibrated in her purse again. She’d been doing a damn fine job of ignoring it, but Logan’s attention had her instincts riled up. With a sigh, she quickly pulled on the T-shirt Logan had brought her. Apparently, he was staying a few doors down and had his luggage already sitting in his room, which would explain how he had tracked her down so easily. There weren’t many motels around here.
Mentally preparing herself, Winter sat on the edge of the bed and plucked her phone from her purse. One glance at the screen, though, and she frowned at all the missed calls—nine of them. None from Brody, all from Ben.
“It’s the alpha from Red Havoc,” she murmured in quick explanation as she connected a call to him.
“Where the fuck are you?” Ben asked on the first ring without a greeting.
“A motel. Why?”
“Kane called, asking if you quit the interview process already. He’s almost done with group interviews. Please tell me you didn’t already walk away.”
“Brody texted me.”
“Shhhit. Winter, don’t come back here for him.”
“I’m not! I’m just telling you what’s happening with your crew. He’s one day married and reaching out to me, Ben. The entire point of this was for me to move on, right?”
“I’ll order him to leave you alone if you just stay and try for the Blackwing Crew.”
Winter lifted the gray cotton sleeve of the T-shirt and studied the angry-looking claw marks across her arm. They were bright red and indented, but the bleeding had stopped, so there was that. “I’m headed to Kane’s territory now.”
“Great!” Ben said, sounding pissed. “Don’t fuck this up.”
The line went dead, and she tossed the
cell into her purse and flipped it off. “We have to go. Group interviews are almost over.” She tossed Logan the keys to his smashed-up truck and smiled. “You can drive.”
Logan snorted and shook his head as he made his way across the room to the door. “I was mad about you throwing an ice tea on it.” He threw it open and squinted into the sunlight. “Now look at her.”
“Your truck is a her?” she asked, following him outside.
“Whoa, you sounded really judgmental right there.”
“You keep it pristine. Women aren’t like that. We’re messy and complicated. Organized chaos.” She yanked the truck door open, spilling glass from the shattered window as she did. “What did you name her?”
“Victoria.”
Winter plucked glass pieces off the seat. “You have a big, badass, jacked-up truck and you named it Victoria.”
“It’s a sexy name.” His voice was deep and low, but there was a tinge of amusement laced in it.
“Well, sexy Victoria now looks haggard.”
He winced as he looked down the side of his truck, the one he’d kept so polished and perfect. “I deserve that.”
She made to climb up into the cab, but stopped herself, turned on a whim, and hugged his waist. Logan froze under her embrace, one hand gripping the top of the open door, the other thrust out in the air, palm up, as if he didn’t know how to hug her back. She thought he would soften over time, but he didn’t. He remained rigid until she slipped her hands off his waist and took a step back.
Eyes downcast, he murmured, “You shouldn’t do that anymore.”
“But you just held me in the shower,” she said, confused.
“That was the last time we’ll be sharing anything like that. It would be best if we just forget today happened. I’m not yours.”
“And I’m not yours,” she huffed.
Logan’s dark eyes narrowed, but he nodded once. “So we don’t need to go all affectionate, Winter. We aren’t a crew, we aren’t friends, we aren’t anything.” He strode around the front of the truck and got in behind the wheel, flashed her a fiery glare, and started the engine as if he would leave whether she got in or not.
