Keira had thought she’d just have to muscle through the break-up the best she could, diving into her lackluster work and drowning her sorrows in the 2-for-1 pizza deals the shop down the street was always running, but now, with her phone in her hand and a very clear come-hither email in her inbox, perhaps a different plan was in order.
Maybe what she ought to do is fuck Greg right out of her system. After all, she seemed to have a willing candidate for the job.
Smiling to herself, Keira clicked “reply” on the email and began typing. Her smile grew with each word, and by the time she clicked send, she was positively beaming. For the first time in months, she felt something approaching happiness.
Her dumpling soup tasted all the better for it.
Chapter 3
Joel’s alarm went off at a truly ungodly hour, and he was forced to snooze not once, but five times before he could face the prospect of getting out of bed.
Bleary-eyed, he took his phone with him into the bathroom, starting the shower and letting the water get good and hot while he thumbed over to his podcast app and put on the politics show he liked to listen to in the mornings.
With the smooth, dulcet tones of the cast of 538 Podcast in his ear telling him what was new in the world of politics and foreign policy, Joel stepped into the spray, letting the water soothe his tired, hungover muscles. He used the peppermint body wash his sister had gifted him for his birthday, the mint oil making his skin tingle with alertness as he soaped up his limbs and torso.
After he’d lathered, rinsed and repeated with his hair and felt somewhat human again, and far more informed about the world than he’d been when he woke up, Joel turned off the shower, grabbed the towel off the hook next to the curtain, and stepped out.
He loved showering, loved the way it rejuvenated him no matter what kind of sleep he’d had the night before. He supposed it was partly the bear in him that relished the feel of the water at his back; his mom had told him that for a while as a child, he’d been better at swimming than walking.
I need to get back to the pool, he thought, running the towel over his wet hair. He hadn’t gone to the lap lanes since the week before, and he could feel the buzzing in his muscles that always came from too long with no exercise.
Joel glanced at his phone as he finished toweling off, noticing the alerts lighting up his screen, no doubt from texts and emails he’d miss while dead to the world last night. He leaned over and swiped them all away, promising himself he’d text Rachel and Grey back on the way to work to confirm that yes, he was alive and no he had not done anything stupid.
But then Joel came to the last notification, which had popped up at 11:00 p.m. the night before.
“New email: Keira Jetson” the notification read. Joel’s heart skipped a beat as he tapped on the notification, opening his email account. He had no idea what she could be writing about, but just the notion of her thinking about him enough to write to him had him nearly shimmying with glee.
And then, when the message loaded, Joel truly did shimmy, losing his cool entirely, because in front of his eyes was not just any email from Keira, but one in which she detailed that she wanted him. The words were right there, at the beginning of the message. “I want you.” Holy shit. His dream girl, Keira Jetson, she of the magnificent brain and matching body, wanted him, Joel McManus.
Joel’s cock hardened just thinking about her, and he had to seriously hold back from just taking himself in hand and celebrating the old-fashioned way, aka by jacking off. But no, he had the rest of the missive to read first.
Taking a deep breath and telling his cock to calm the fuck down, Joel’s eyes kept scanning the page.
“Joel,” Keira had written. “Thank you for your message. To put it bluntly, I want you, too. Therefore, I would like to explore our sexual compatibility at the earliest convenient moment for the two of us. I am free after my office hour ends at 4pm on Thursday. Let me know your availability, and hopefully, we can find a suitable time to meet and... explore.
Yours, Keira.”
Message? What message?
Joel scrolled up the page and noticed for the first time the word “Re:” prefacing the title. Oh fuck. What had his drunk brain done?
Joel found out a moment later when he read the three words he’d sent Keira the night before. Three words he had no recollection of typing.
I want you.
Scrubbing a hand over his face and sitting down on the closet seat of the toilet, Joel went over his options. Since punching himself in the face sounded both difficult and painful, Joel nixed that pretty quickly, even though he knew he deserved a bit of a beating. There was a reason he didn’t date; it was because he was incapable of dealing with his feelings in anything approaching a mature way. It was why he only ever had crushes on women, distance crushes that involved as little interaction between him and his selected paramour as possible, lest he does something really dumb like try to date them.
And dating as a werebear wasn’t easy at the best of times. Joel’s last girlfriend had taught him that, dumping him the moment she found out just what he was. “You’re sick, you know that? Fucking unnatural,” had been her exact words. Even five years later, he could still hear them in his head. Since then, he’d stayed far away from the dating pool, preferring to get his kicks with his right hand and the entertainment available from the Internet.
But what the hell was he supposed to do now? As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t just roll with it, respond to her email and pretend that yes, he had totally meant to lay his feelings out for her to read at what was, to most people, the hour of booty calls.
However, telling Keira it was a mistake would only succeed in hurting her feelings and making him feel like an assclown.
Basically, he had no idea how to navigate something like this, so he turned to the only person he knew who might: Sam Brooks.
Sam Brooks had a beautiful wife and baby daughter and had somehow managed to get both despite the fact that he too was a werebear, and wasn’t necessarily all that shy about it, unlike Joel, who kept his secret identity under tighter wraps than Clark Kent had with his Superman alter ego. Sam’s wife was also not a werebear, and somehow still loved Sam so much that seeing them together was both heartwarming and also a little nauseating.
“Help,” Joel texted Sam, feeling all the warmth of his post-shower joy drain out of his body as he continued sitting on the cold toilet seat, his towel wrapped loosely around his lean hips.
“What did you do now?” was Sam’s response a moment later.
Joel gave Sam the abbreviated version of his actions. He hadn’t mentioned his crush to his friend, worried because it would elicit the conversation he and his clan had every time they found out Joel liked someone. It would go something like this:
Clan: Just tell the girl you like her! It’s time to get over Rosie! It’s been a decade!
Joel: No.
Clan: You’re the only one of us without a mate! Come on, man, werebears aren’t supposed to be alone forever. You can do this. We’ve got your back.
Joel: No.
And that was roughly the conversation that ensued between Sam and Joel, with one vital difference: when Sam asked Joel if he’d ever felt this way about a girl before, Joel said no. He hadn’t. Keira was different. It wasn’t just attraction he felt; it was admiration, respect, and the desire to get to know her whole self. He’d never had that before.
“Well, then maybe she’s worth taking a risk for,” Sam said. Joel hated to admit it, but his friend was right.
Chapter 4
“You’ll never know if you don’t try, buddy,” Sam texted after Joel had gone radio silent for more than ten minutes, sitting in his bathroom pondering whether he could find the courage to get over his fears and finally tell a girl how he felt.
* * *
Joel navigated back to his email and re-read the message Keira sent a second time, and then a third. Damn, she’s even cool on email, Joel muttered to himself. Cool,
calm and collected, even after receiving what most would consider an irreverent booty call email.
* * *
“Fine. I’ll try. But if this all goes to shit, you better be there to pick up the pieces,” Joel texted Sam. He was met with an emoji of a bear, a heart, and a princess, followed by the words, “Don’t worry. Me and the boys have your back. I’m sure Rach and Grey do, too.”
* * *
Joel relaxed slightly, knowing that if shit really and truly did hit the fan, at least he had his friends on his side to buy him the cats he’d need to keep him company in his lonely old age.
* * *
Checking his watch, Joel realized he needed to get moving if he was going to make it to campus on time.
* * *
He scooted out of the bathroom and walked to his dresser, picking out a random t-shirt and trying to ignore the thoughts that erupted in his mind as the cotton slid over his skin—what would Keira’s hands feel like as they grazed the same area? Would her nails scrape down his abs on their path to his cock?
* * *
Next came boxers to cover the offending member, who had not calmed down one bit since Joel had read Keira’s email, and was in fact now standing straight out, reared up and ready to go. Joel had to tuck it up into his waistband so he could slide his jeans up his thighs, and he thought very mundane, banal thoughts. About taxes and grading papers and running out of staples, all unsexy things that should have quelled his erection, but failed to do the trick.
* * *
So, Joel was forced to leave his apartment, back slung over his shoulder and keys jangling in his pocket, a very keyed up man. As he greeted the sunny autumn day, the smoky, crisp air filling his nostrils, he also felt like a man on top of the world. Or, more accurately, a man who would, very soon, be on top of Dr. Keira Jetson, Ph.D.
Chapter 5
Across town, Keira was having serious trouble getting dressed. She had something of a uniform that helped her streamline dressing each morning so she could save her energy for more important tasks like finding decent coffee and trying not to hate her job quite so much.
But despite the fact that her closet was filled almost entirely with cropped t-shirts that just skimmed the high-waisted skinny jeans she favored, Keira had no idea what to wear. Did she wear the green shirt or the light blue? Dark washed jeans or light? Which pair of combat boots went best?
It was driving her mad, and she saw the clock ticking, knowing she needed to make a choice soon or risk being late to work.
And she couldn’t be late to work, because she knew that if she got to the staff room at exactly the right time, Joel would be there, chatting with his friend Rachel and looking achingly gorgeous.
Keira had spent the better part of the previous night stalking Joel on the Internet and chastising herself for not realizing his alluring nature before then. There were countless photos of him on various panels at conferences around the world, and in each one, his chiseled, scruffy face with its kind brown eyes and soft pink lips made her melt with wanting.
He looked deliciously kissable in every photo, and Keira had fallen asleep to images of meeting his lips with her own, the spark she would feel at finally being close to another man besides Greg, a man who, unlike her ex-boyfriend, wanted her and wasn’t shy about telling her.
Maybe this is what she had needed all along: an American man to help get Greg out of her system, so she could finally move on and stop feeling like such a fuck-up.
Thoughts of Joel’s lips on hers had Keira finally settling on the green shirt paired with dark-washed jeans and her sparkly purple combat boots. After gathering her hair into a bun on the top of her head and securing it with one of those spiraled hair bands everyone always seemed to be raving about, she adjusted her glasses on her nose, grabbed her backpack and headed out, feeling, for the first time, like maybe moving to Kansas hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
But that feeling came crashing down when Keira sauntered into the staff room to find neither Joel nor Rachel sitting in their usual spots. Instead, Dr. Gaines was occupying Joel’s usual chair, his brow furrowed as he pressed at something on his phone.
Keira started to back out of the door, hoping the man wouldn’t see her, and in the process, ran right into Joel himself.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” she screeched, turning around and seeing that in her effort to escape Dr. Gaines and his ass-numbingly boring drone of a voice, she had crushed Joel’s takeaway coffee cup. Liquid had spilled all down his t-shirt, soaking him to the skin.
“Don’t sweat it. It’s my fault. I should’ve been looking where I was going,” Joel said, holding up his hand, which was gripping his phone. “Was too busy checking my messages.”
Keira wondered if Joel had perhaps been reading her email, for the first, or even the second or third time that morning. She personally had reread his email at least 376 times since the night before, and that was not counting the minutes she’d spent just staring at it in line for coffee this morning (coffee cart near the art building, far too sweet).
Realizing that she was now fixing her attention similarly on Joel’s shirt, Keira snapped her eyes back up to find smiling at her.
“Do you want to come back to my office with me? I need to change my shirt, anyway, and while we’re in there we can... talk,” he said, infusing the last word with hidden meaning.
“Talk?” she whispered, unable to complete full sentences because, sweet Jesus, had anyone ever looked so good in a wet t-shirt?
Joel’s eyes were alight with mischief as he watched her give him a once-over. “Yeah. Talk. I got your email.”
Keira nodded. She dragged her eyes from Joel’s abs back to his eyes and muttered, “Okay.” She tried to feign nonchalance, but it was impossible because Joel was smiling at her and motioning for her to follow him back down the hallway. Into his office. Where they would be alone.
Be cool, bitch, Keira muttered to herself as Joel turned around and began making his way back down the corridor.
He certainly looks good from the back, she observed as she watched his ass cheeks moving from side to side. Men’s asses weren’t normally her thing, but with Joel McManus, she had a feeling they would be. A butt that good needed attention.
“This is me,” Joel called, pointing to a closed door to directly to his left. He took his keys from his back pocket, opened the door and gestured for Keira to follow him.
Inside, the walls were littered with frames pictures of big lakes and wooded walking paths. The room smelled like spearmint, and Keira was surprised to find it was extremely clean. Even professors unlike Alex Gaines, those who were still grounded thoroughly in the present, weren’t known for their neatness. She liked that Joel was different.
“Take a seat. I’ll just be a minute,” Joel said, drawing Keira’s attention away from his desk and the bookshelves behind it and toward the man himself. Who was, at that very moment, peeling his shirt off his body to reveal the single best stomach Keira had ever seen in all her years on Planet Earth.
Keira thought washboard abs were something only the heroes in romance novels had, but Joel McManus had proved her wrong. Chiseled muscle covered his torso, and a sculpted chest and cut arms rounded out the package and made her mouth water. Was he doing this to taunt her?
Keira looked up and into Joel’s eyes and found that yes, he knew exactly what he was doing to her. He was standing there looking like sex on a stick, and he knew it.
“Like what you see?” he whispered, and she felt the rasp of his voice deep inside her, at the apex of her thighs. Instead of answering, she merely lifted her eyebrows at him, as though saying “I’m waiting for you to make yourself decent.”
As sad as it was, he needed to cover himself up if he was going to think straight. Crikey, Greg had never had this effect on her. No man had, not in the entire history of her sexual self, which spanned a good fifteen years. Joel McManus was a man unto himself.
And now, as Keira looked back, he was a man
with a shirt on, a man who was walking toward her and putting a hand on her lower back, searing heat into her skin as he led her to the chair across from his desk.
“So,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “Let’s talk.”
“You want me,” she said, eschewing pleasantries in favor of getting down to business because that’s really all her mind could think of doing at that very moment.
Joel’s eyes grew a shade darker, a deep amber taking over from their usual coppery gold. It was a strange eye color, Keira thought as she looked into Joel’s eyes. She’d read something about people with gold eyes once. What journal had that been in?
“I do,” Joel said, nodding. Keira stared at him a moment longer, and then it came to her: an article in The Guardian, three years ago. About how were-shifters could always be distinguished by their gold eyes. And just like that, her attraction dropped out from under her, and she was left with nothing but the cold chill of fear. Sitting before her, looking hot as sin, was a were-shifter. She just didn’t know what kind.
Chapter 6
Joel had decided as he led Keira to his office that he was just going to go for it. Lay it all out on the table. Tell Keira he was a werebear and hope she wouldn’t mind, that she’d still want him once she knew what he truly was. The worst that could happen was she ran in the other direction, and they spent the next two semesters strategically avoiding each other. Joel could deal with that. He’d be disappointed, a little bit heartbroken, even, but he would deal with it.
But when he turned around from changing his shirt, he saw straight up fear in Keira’s eyes that hadn’t been there even a moment before. Which didn’t make sense.
The Baby Shift- Kansas Page 2
