by Thorne, Elle
We’ll see when that time comes. We’ll see.
Behind Joe, Kane said, “I can get Ivan some food.”
Before Sara could stop Ivan, he’d scampered from the bed in that t-shirt that was too long for him and looked more like a dress than not, and was heading for the door.
“I’m going with Uncle Kane,” Ivan announced with a backward wave and barely a backward glance.
Tears burned at Sara’s eyes.
Her baby. The child she’d never had to share with anyone, the child who’d never been anything but a baby bear, was now walking and calling someone with two legs by the name Uncle.
Uncle.
Her little Ivan, who should hate and fear all two-legged creatures, all humans, was now behaving like a little human boy.
She felt a gaze on her and turned her head. Joe was studying her a little too closely. His expression was one of empathy and… what was that?
“Why are you ruining my life?” She couldn’t prevent the vehemence that came out. “Why are you doing this?”
Joe reached for her hand took it in his. Electricity passed through her, and she could see that he felt it too. She jerked her hand away from his. Patiently, Joe reached out and took hers again.
“Don’t do that. Don’t pull away from me until you know.”
“Until I know what?” Her voice cracked.
“Until you know what you’re walking away from.”
I’m walking away from ruining your life and all your shifter friends’ lives and maybe even getting you killed. The people who want me would love to have your shifter friends at Crossroads. More fodder for their laboratory.
She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him what she knew, and couldn’t lie because…
She simply couldn’t lie to him. Just couldn’t. Not to Joe.
He pulled on her hand. “Let’s sit and talk. My friends will take care of Ivan.”
The problem was, she knew that they’d take care of him. But could they protect him when they were found? She’d already stayed too long. She’d risked too much. She silently cursed at her bear for insisting they stay. She realized now it was all because of Joe. Her bear couldn’t handle leaving, even though Sara had never really talked to him.
Reluctantly she sat. What Joe didn’t know—or maybe he did, and that was why he’d barged into the room—was that she had planned on leaving. She’d opened the window, anticipating that she’d want to slip out, then she’d lain back down. She knew that the shifters would have heard the window. They’d have investigated. So she’d lain back down and let things settle, let their suspicions evaporate.
The problem was, she hadn’t taken into account that she needed the recuperating rest. She’d sunk into sleep and not woken up until Joe had knocked.
Damn the luck.
And damn that he knew her too well and had anticipated what she planned to do.
She waited for him to talk, her hand still enveloped in the warmth of his large hand. She inhaled his scent, the masculine scent of him imprinting on her senses. She took in the musky scent, and the cinnamon and hickory scent from the ham she was sure he’d smoked and had probably brought to the forest today. She closed her eyes, memorizing the scents so that when she wasn’t around him he would be forever in her.
“Who shot you?” His voice was low, intimate.
She opened her eyes, locked her gaze with his, let him have access to her soul and her bear’s soul. Her gaze took in his lips, the stubble that was there, that she could hear whenever he touched his face, like he seemed to do when he was thinking or stressed. His high cheekbones, which she’d seen he’d gotten from his grandfather, as well as the long ebony hair that touched large shoulders above a wide chest.
Her breathing synchronized with his. “I don’t know. One minute I was walking through the woods, and the next I heard a whistling sound, then another. At about the same moment, I felt the piercing, ice-cold burn of the arrowheads.”
His hand squeezed hers, pulling her close. Sara yielded to the tug, her mind and body both surrendering as she leaned into it, and found his body nestled against hers. The wide shoulders were hard with muscles and warm, the worn shirt soft as her cheek rested on his chest. One of his hands was in her hair, holding her firmly in place while the other was around her waist, resting on her hip, his fingertips too close to her ass for comfort.
Desire stirred within her, a desire so fierce, and so neglected that it spun through her body like a tornado.
“It had to be hunters,” she said. “Because if it had been anyone else, they wouldn’t have just shot and left. They’d have taken me with them.”
His thumb was tracing tiny circles on her temple, lulling her into a place of refuge. “Who else could it have been? What is Crossroads?”
She gasped. “How do you know about Crossroads?”
“You said that word while you were unconscious.”
She chewed on her lip, bit down on it relentlessly until his thumb landed on it, pressing down and pulling her lip away from her teeth. He left his thumb there, as if it were a kiss from his own lips, as if it were his own tongue. He ran the pad of his thumb over the sensitive flesh of her bottom lip, from one end to the other, then back, slowly, then again.
The sheer sensuality of his thumb taking the intimate journey across her lip made pulses shoot through her body. She felt her core clench, and wished that he didn’t elicit so much desire from her. How did he do this?
“Crossroads…” He prompted, moving his thumb away, dropping it to her jawline, where it rested and branded her at the same time.
Chapter Eleven
Sara exhaled. “It’s a place. A bad, bad place.”
“Is it a town?” Joe fought to keep his voice level, sure that she could sense what her proximity was doing to him. His nostrils flared as his cock strained against his pants. His body yearned to make her his. Surely she knew what she did to him. Surely her bear knew. It was all he could do to not kiss her, to not claim her as his mate.
His mate? What the hell? When had he started thinking this way? He didn’t do what his shifter friends did. Or did he?
How her bear felt was no secret. Was she fighting her bear? Or was something else going on?
“It’s a hospital. I guess that’s what everyone thinks it is.”
“So if that’s what people think what it is, but it’s not a hospital, what is it?”
“It’s hell.” Her uttered words were followed by a growl. Her eyes glowed an amber fire, her bear rising up, fury evident. “You have to let me go. Ivan and I can’t be found here. It’s too risky for you.”
“So the solution is to run? Who will protect Ivan if something happens to you?”
Her eyes widened and turned to a molten golden hue, the color of rage. “Nothing can happen to me.” A growl underlined her words. “I can’t let anything happen to me. He has no one else.”
“Something did happen to you and Ivan was unprotected.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Let me and the rest of the Bear Canyon Valley shifters be your family. Then he’ll have someone else, and so will you. You’ll have backup.”
“You don’t understand—”
He interrupted her with his lips on hers. “No. You don’t understand,” he said against her lips. The fury in her eyes turned to a different kind of flame, a very different type of fire. The amber glow within yielded its spirit to his, giving him what he wanted, but not the flesh he craved.
He lowered his head with the fierceness of a predator, claiming her lips. His kiss was volatile, spurred on by the passions of their mutual attraction, fueled by the danger that threatened her and heightened by their senses, their emotions and the adrenaline of what they’d been through.
His mouth overtook hers. He savored the taste of her while devouring her. Her lips were soft, crushed beneath his, while her tongue succumbed, yielding permission he didn’t ask for.
He knew her son and his friends were only a f
ew rooms away. He knew she had something going on that was pulling at her, and pulling her away from him.
They both knew it, but it stopped mattering.
Time tarried.
Emergencies halted.
Danger waited.
The entire universe felt like it had paused and was spinning around them in a holding pattern while he took control of her. His hand twisted in her hair, crushing her lips tighter against his. His other hand swooped under her generous, curvy ass and pulled her closer to him, maneuvering her onto his lap. Her hip was pressed against his throbbing erection.
She wiggled. He groaned, and she drank his groan away with a kiss. Suddenly her aggressiveness became his aggressor’s competitor, both wanting control, both needing each other.
Both demanding.
Both yielding.
Neither giving.
He pulled away from her lips, the sensation as destructive and painful as pulling a scab off a large wound.
“You’re mine. Say what you want, do what you want, but make no mistake…”
He leaned close, his lips against her parted ones, and he spoke the words into her mouth.
“You. Are. Mine.”
She moaned a whispered word.
He could have sworn that whispered word was “yes.” But he wasn’t willing to take any chances. Not with this independent firebrand.
“Now tell me about Crossroads.” He slipped a hand under the blanket, letting it rest just above her knee, but on the inside, where sensitive flesh made his fingertips yearn for more.
“What do you want me to tell you?” Her voice was breathless. Her pulse beat in her neck, visible.
Sexy.
He touched his lips to that telltale pulse, enjoying the rapid beat, the witness it bore to the way she was reacting to him.
What do I want you to tell me? That you want me. That you need me. That you’ve got to have me in you, with you, around you.
He swallowed that answer back while his fingers traveled upward along her inside thigh, a slow, tortuous inching that made him mad with desire.
She drew a breath in, making a slight whistling sound as it passed over her teeth. Her eyes closed, and the blanket over her breasts swelled with her captive breath.
He could. He knew he could. He could make her his right here, right now. Joe fought back the desire to give in to something that was far more powerful than he.
“Tell me about his place called Crossroads.” He placed his lips against her neck, letting the pulse there beat primal against his lips.
She breathed in deeply, against his chest, her body expanding, as if she was preparing herself for battle. He felt the muscles in her legs tighten under his fingertips as she flexed. More preparation for battle?
* * *
Instead of continuing their single-goaled pursuit, Joe’s fingers stopped and waited patiently on her thigh. Sara fought back a sigh. She wanted him as badly as her bear did, but one of them had to be the voice of reason.
Her bear grumbled. I know, it sucks.
Sara listened for Ivan’s voice. It had a content tone to it. Even happy. He was enjoying his time with the other shifters—and humans. Damn Joe for doing this, a part of her thought. The other part of her rejoiced that Ivan had something he’d never had before.
She looked at the man whose lap she sat in. She knew there was a question on the table, and she knew he was waiting patiently for an answer to that question. She studied his features. He wasn’t thickly built like his shifter friends, but he lacked no muscle, lacked no definition. Half the time, his hair had been pulled into a ponytail, the other half it flowed loose, reminding her of his Native American heritage.
His full bottom lip under the more spare upper one, his high cheekbones, the intensity of his dark gaze. She swallowed her desire back, though her body pulsed for him. Her channel was flexing and clenching, needing him as she’d never needed a man before.
“Sara.” That one word, her name, as it passed over his lips was a blessing, a curse, an order, a demand, and a plea. “I’m waiting,” he hissed.
He adjusted slightly, a reminder of the length of hardness that was pressing against her hip—making no demands, but taking her prisoner nonetheless.
“Crossroads is the place I’ve spent the last few years.”
“It was your home?” He raised his head, his lips leaving the pulse on her neck. His eyes pierced hers, seeking understanding.
“No.” She let the word out with all the vile vehemence of the emotions that she felt. “I was taken from my family home after all of them were slaughtered in a territorial dispute. Every single one, killed. I wasn’t there when it happened. When I came home, I found total devastation.”
Her bear sensed his reaction, smelled his anger and dismay at the helplessness of her plight. Yet he didn’t say a word; instead, he waited for her to finish.
“Except that the marauders weren’t gone. They took me captive.”
Sara paused and listened for Ivan. She heard his sweet giggle, heard the baritones of the other shifters in the room with him and knew she could continue her recounting safely.
Ivan was in good hands, better than hers, her bear reminded her.
“I was sold to a hospital.” She shook her head as the memory of that first day came back to her. She’d shifted into her bear, and fought, but they’d drugged her. They’d shot some kind of drug into her with a dart. She’d fallen and her bear had gone deep inside her. From that day on, they’d kept Sara on some kind of drug that kept her from shifting.
Sara realized she’d drifted into her own memories and stopped talking when Joe began to stroke her hair.
“After the hospital…” he prompted her.
She needed to sum it up and not dwell on it, for her own wellbeing.
“There was no ‘after the hospital,’ not for a long time. The hospital had a laboratory. I was kept on some sort of drug that paralyzed my body. It kept me from shifting, but I was fully awake.”
Awake when they took my virginity. Awake when I became pregnant with Ivan. She bit back the bitter tears that threatened.
Ivan was the only good thing that had come from that place.
“And Ivan?” Joe wasn’t slow putting things together, it seemed.
Sara nodded. “I was drugged. Every day.”
Joe clenched his jaw, his muscles working, the tendons in his neck drawing tight, the pulse in his temple throbbing. She didn’t have to tell him more. He understood.
“How did you get away?”
“Something happened when I became pregnant with Ivan. The drugs became less potent as each day passed. Or maybe my immunity changed while I was pregnant. All I knew was that my bear was finally able to come out. She’d been locked away for so long.” She bit back a sob.
Joe wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, murmuring sounds of comfort, sounds that reached into her so deeply that her bear was embraced.
“Joe, it was like she was under many, many inches of ice. I could see her, but I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t talk to her. For all my life as far back as I can remember, my bear had been a part of me. She was my best friend and my sister. Then they did that to me, and I couldn’t bring her out. I couldn’t talk to her. Not even in my mind.”
Joe squeezed her, keeping her and her bear ensconced in his muscular arms, his long dark hair making a curtain that cocooned them from the world.
“That’s one of the reasons I don’t mind being in my bear so much more than my human skin. It’s her turn.”
Joe nodded, the side of his face pressing against her head. She inhaled his scent, let her bear relish the scent of him, the man of him, and the mate of him.
Her bear breathed a sigh of relief deep inside Sara. Tears formed in Sara’s eyes. Tears of joy, though she couldn’t figure out why she was happy.
“And Ivan?” Joe’s breath was warm on her cheek. “The escape?”
“My bear. She came to help us. I was pregnant with him, heavily so,
but by then the drugs couldn’t contain her. So when the time was right, she came to our rescue.” Sara rubbed her face with the blanket, brushing the tears away with the soft fabric. “She killed—we killed—three men. I must not be found. I’m wanted for murder, I’m sure.”
“So you stay in your bear form. And you gave birth to Ivan? Alone?”
“No, not alone. My bear was there. She helped me make it through. And Ivan was born like that. A bear cub. And there was no reason to teach him to shift. There was every reason not to.”
“He’s about four. You’ve been on the run since then?”
Sara straightened her posture while still in his arms. “We’ve managed.” She was proud of how far they’d come.
“But you’re being hunted? Why else would you keep going from place to place?”
“We were found once, two years ago. We stay on the move.”
“Where is Crossroads?”
“Canada.”
“Where in Canada?”
“How would I know exactly? I was incapacitated. I couldn’t move. I didn’t have access to a map. To anything. I know I went south and east. So I guess it’s north and west from here. More north. And I did travel along the coast.” She’d blocked so much of this. She didn’t want to remember this stuff at all. She wished Joe wouldn’t pry. It wasn’t like she’d ever planned on returning.
And now for the bad news.
“Joe, I need to go. I’m healed. I need to get on the road. I have to do a lot of training with Ivan, now that he knows how to shift. I have to prepare him for new things, new instances or dangers that might arise.”
His hand, formerly resting against the inside of her thigh, curved around her leg now, gripping her. Not tight, but not casually. The hand under her ass tightened as well. The tendons in his muscles became rigid as his body flexed.
“I can’t let you do that, Sara.” His whispered words elicited fear and joy. Fear that by not being on the move she and Ivan were in grave danger. Fear that Joe would be risking his life. Joy that she mattered to him.
