Fire & Flesh

by Kerri Carr

  “They are not for catching people, well maybe just poachers,” he said and couldn’t help but smile a little.

  She glared at him. He wasn’t used to smiling at people. Mostly, the people that he met were poachers or shifter hunters or just idiots. He didn’t like people much, on the whole. The woman sitting in his bathroom was an exception and his smile was so unpracticed that it seemed to be angering her. He wasn’t about to try it again; she’d just have to put up with his regular glower.

  He ran the bath for her adding a scented bath oil that had appeared in his bathroom sometime over Christmas, probably something to do with his sister who couldn’t handle her bear’s natural musky scent. When he tried to help Karen out of her clothes she raised her hands out in front of her and it was a clear sign that he was not about to see her naked ass. As a shifter, he regularly forgot about humans and their obsession with covering their bodies. He stepped back and shut the door.

  “Damn it, Lewis, I need help,” she called out after a few minutes, along with some decent expletives.

  “Let me help you,” he said and this time he didn’t even try to wipe the smile off his face.

  “Just help with my jeans, but be careful of my ankle,” she moaned.

  He was careful to avoid hurting her but he couldn’t help but let his fingers linger on her skin. First her hip, then her thigh, and finally her calf. She had the finest legs he’d ever seen. They were smooth, soft, and sexy as hell. He tried to avoid checking out the little white panties she wore but he failed and that was a mistake. He was a large man, in every way, and suddenly had a very noticeable erection pressing firmly against his jeans. When he stood up that area was eye level with little Miss Smart Mouth.

  “I think I can do the rest,” she said but her eyes were on him; all over him.

  “Okay,” he replied but his voice had gone husky and she didn’t miss a thing.

  He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. When he heard a little splash followed by a sigh of pleasure, he knew she was okay and had to drag himself away from the unlocked door. The vision of her legs and little white panties was going to give him restless nights for who knew how long.

  He made some coffee for them both and then paced the length of the house until his sharp hearing heard her struggling to get out of the bath.

  “Do you need some help?”

  “No thank you!”

  *****

  When Lewis’s hands had caressed her skin in the guise of taking off her jeans she’d felt fireworks all over. She caught him lingering his touches, and he was definitely copping an eyeful. Not that she blamed him; she had great legs, they were undeniably her best feature. She hobbled into the bath and sank down into the warm water. The sticky mud at the bottom of the pit of doom had sunk right through her clothes and touched her most delicate parts. The smell alone was awful but the greenish tinge had been worrying.

  She scrubbed her skin until it was sore and then eased herself out of the tub and into the fluffy towel that was hanging on the rail. Too late she realized that it smelled like him; pine fresh and sexy male. She had wrapped her naked body in his scent and it felt divine. She had to stop herself from burying her nose in the fabric and taking deep lungfuls.

  “I’ve made some coffee and a sandwich, if you like beef,” his voice startled her.

  “Thank you,” she said opening the door.

  He eyed her in the towel which covered her well but she felt very naked underneath. Her ankle felt much better and she followed him through to the bedroom where he’d laid out a t-shirt and shorts. She waited for him to leave and as soon as the door clicked shut she looked around.

  Standing in his bedroom told her a lot more about Lewis than he had. His duvet was tousled, his clothes were draped messily over chairs, handles, and the floor. He even had a mini fridge filled with snacks and drinks. He was definitely a bachelor and had been for a while.

  Karen dressed and then made his bed but she couldn’t figure out why she’d done it. She left the rest of the mess because it was comforting in some way. She didn’t want to think that it was because it pointed out that he was single. That was a road she wasn’t going down, not even if he gave her that super-sweet smile and not the creepy half smiles he’d given her at first.

  “My ankle feels better,” she said sliding into the seat opposite him at the table.

  “Good. Here,” he said handing her a plate with a well-loaded sandwich.

  When she took a bite she knew instantly that the man was a foodie. The sandwich was filled to the max and stacked full of complimentary flavors. The sandwich could stop wars, let alone famine. He was staring as she ate but she had barely eaten since starting her journey to the cabin and she was too hungry to care.

  “It’s nice to see a woman who enjoys her food,” he said taking a man-sized bite of his own.

  “I’m very hungry,” she replied.

  Karen noticed the way his eyes sharpened and directed that wolfish gaze at her mouth. She instinctively licked her lips and the resulting sharp intake of breath that she witnessed made her melt inside. Lewis was dangerous but she appeared to be pretty dangerous herself. While she reveled in her power, he dragged his gaze back to his food.

  “Finish your coffee; I’ll take you home,” he grunted.

  Her mouth hung open. He had just reverted back to that unapproachable asshole that she’d met the night before. His lips were tight and his brows were low; he might have been attracted to her but he sure as hell didn’t like her. She finished the sandwich in silence, downed the coffee which was just as yummy, and got up to stand by the door.

  He barged past her, which wasn’t strictly true; his bulky form had to barge to get through the narrow hallway. She climbed into his truck with not even an offer of help while he started the engine and put the car in gear. Lewis was weird; she didn’t need weird but even while he was sour-faced and gruff he looked good enough to devour. Her sex life had been mundane with Brad and she’d never felt the fizzing in her pants that she had now, even when Lewis was grumpy.

  His cabin must have been really close because it took no time at all before she was outside her uncle’s cabin. She barely waited for the truck to stop before opening the door and falling to the ground unsteadily, jarring her ankle.

  “Take it easy on that foot,” he said. “And stay out of the woods, I can’t keep saving you.”

  She glowered at him. That snarky smile was back and it was just as irritating. The man had more layers than the Earth’s crust and she didn’t know if she wanted to get dirty and dig through them or avoid him like the plague.

  “Thank you for the sandwich, Lewis,” she replied and walked very carefully to her front door.

  There was no way she was going to walk in the forest again. It was full of dangerous creatures and he was one of them. She would write him a list of jobs to do around the cabin and she would be civil but she would sit on the porch and leave him to it; she most certainly would not watch his muscles ripple through his shirt as he worked. Not at all.

  With her foot still throbbing she grabbed the books she had brought with her and curled up on the sofa. She propped her foot up on a cushion and picked up the first book. She put it back down; she was not ready to read a romance. She settled on the detective novel but somehow the cute detective with the disturbing past looked an awful lot like her new neighbor in her head.

  *****

  Karen was really starting to get under his skin. One minute she was eying him like she wanted to lick him all over and the next she was ignoring him or sending him dirty looks and not the kind of dirty his mind defaulted to when she was around. He needed to shift and put his human body out of action before it did something stupid like tell her how badly he wanted her.

  He parked the truck and stripped on the porch, leaving his clothes in a messy heap on the floor. He’d marked his scent so heavily around his own cabin that only a dumb-ass human poacher would bother to go anywhere near his property. All the shifte
rs in the area knew him by reputation and most of the bear shifters were relatives. He’d had some trouble with actual bears; they got a little confused during the mating season but they soon got the message when they came closer.

  What bothered him were the new pack of wolves that kept straying into his territory and that close call with Karen the night before had really worried him. He could fight off a lone wolf but if they decided to pack-up and jump him, then he wouldn’t stand a chance, especially if Karen was in the vicinity.

  He didn’t know what her uncle was thinking letting a city girl who couldn’t even make a fire live in the wilderness for several months. He’d tried to persuade him to send her elsewhere, but he’d insisted that it was an emergency, that she needed to be there. He couldn’t argue; her uncle had saved his father’s life a few years back which was why he took care of the cabin.

  He’d been standing on his porch thinking about his neighbor for a full ten minutes, naked. His animal self was restless but his human self was just as bad. He stretched and let the bear take over. After a painful but quick transformation, his bear was standing on four legs scenting the area and his human brain settled into the back seat. He was still the same temperament, but with a little more passion, aggression, and hunger; his bear was always after food.

  He relaxed and the bear took him for a walk through the forest, sniffing at trees, scratching about. As expected, the bear had brought him to Karen’s back yard. Lewis thought his bear might want to check that the wolves hadn’t been back but when a soft sound came out of his snout, he sighed inwardly. The bear liked her; he wanted to see her. That wasn’t about to happen because that was a sure way to send a girl running from him.

  It was his fault, of course. He didn’t go for werebear women. He hadn’t met many, other than the ones that were related to him, but he hadn’t felt a spark of interest. He’d tried to have a relationship with a human female but, as it turned out, human women were not keen on bear shifters. It creeped them out. He didn’t think wolf shifters had this problem; they oozed charm, and that was another reason why he didn’t like wolves. Nobody made movies about sexy bear shifters because bears weren’t sexy.

  He watched her from the shadow of the trees getting ready for the night. She’d obviously found a way to cook some food on the stove because there was steam rising from it. He sniffed the air with his sensitive nose. Nope, that was smoke. He watched as whatever she had placed on the stove erupted into flames. Dashing out from the bushes he remembered just in time that he needed to shift.

  He opened the back door with more force than was needed and grabbed a tea towel. He managed to throw the pot out of the kitchen and into the yard before it set fire to anything else, including him.

  As the smoke cleared Karen appeared in the doorway dripping wet and half covered with a towel. His mouth gaped open; she had breasts that Helen of Troy would have envied.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped and then began to cough.

  He took a step closer, wanting to help with her coughing fit but her being over-exposed had removed all the words from his vocabulary. When she batted him away and stepped into the living area, he followed. She caught where his gaze had rested and she turned and wrapped the towel around said parts.

  “Why are you naked and standing to attention in my cabin?” she yelled.

  He looked down and realized that she was right on both counts. He hadn’t stopped to consider his nudity and then she’d flashed him a pair of bosoms that were made to drown in and he really, really wanted to drown in them. His manhood was in total agreement and he could feel his bear cheering him on.

  “Why did you try to burn the cabin down?” he argued.

  “I didn’t, I was trying to cook and then I had a quick shower,” she said.

  “You had a bath just a few hours ago, why would you need a shower with no hot water?”

  “To get the smell off me,” she said. “You’re still naked and indecent.”

  “Naked and indecent? You were half naked just a few minutes ago so I think we’re even,” he said, wondering what smell she meant.

  “I didn’t have an erection,” she said and waved her hands in that direction.

  “It’s going away,” he muttered. “Do you need help making dinner?” he asked, not wanting to leave her while she looked so frazzled and he definitely didn’t want her to burn down the cabin.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” she replied.

  “Fine, don’t go out in the woods, don’t go out at night, and don’t burn the cabin down,” he yelled and slammed the back door on his way out.

  He checked that the pot had cooled so it wouldn’t start a freak winter bush fire and then stormed off into the trees. Once he was out of sight he shifted back into his bear form but he didn’t leave the area. He still had concerns over the wolves and decided that he would wait around for a while and rub his scent on every tree in a half-mile radius.

  *****

  Karen flinched when he slammed the door. She was in shock and she would never, ever be able to get the vision of him naked and happy to see her out of her head. Of course, she was slightly mortified that she’d flashed him. It felt like the universe was throwing them together and they were springing back apart as fast as they could.

  She’d lied when she had told him she wasn’t hungry but now her hunger wasn't just for beans on toast, which was what she’d been trying to make. She wanted him so badly and now that she’d seen the entire package, well, what woman wouldn’t go weak at the knees with a man built like him. She wanted to drape her naked body over his; she wanted to lick every plane, mound, and dip on his sculptured body. She needed another cold shower.

  “Girl, will you never learn?” she muttered.

  As the darkness enveloped her cabin her unease grew. She had that tickling sensation at the back of her neck that told her she was being watched and she believed it. She’d closed all the curtains and locked all the doors. She had peered out into the vast expanse of darkness and was barely able to make out the tops of the trees let alone anything nearer like the shed or her car.

  She had settled for another sandwich but with no electricity she was worried that some of her food would spoil. It wasn’t like she could cook it and she wasn’t about to go and ask her naked neighbor for help, even if she was desperate to see him again, clothed or unclothed. She opened a bottle of wine instead; wine solved everything, even if it was just an overnight fix.

  The first glass was gone before she realized and when she poured a second she began wondering why Lewis had been naked. She hadn’t screamed so why was he there at all? There wasn’t a single reason, other than he was a nudist, that she could think of. She didn’t know why he’d been naked as the day he was born but she was so glad he had the body of a Greek god. If he’d been a middle-aged portly fellow she might have run off screaming but he was so pretty in every way.

  As the third glass disappeared with a bag of pretzels, she was feeling in a much better mood. She swapped the damp towel for her comfy pajamas and hooked her iPod up to her little blue-tooth speaker. She danced and sang along to some 1980’s classics before switching to female power ballads.

  She had a voice that could flow loud, clear, and honeyed. She sang along to Etta James, Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitzgerald. A loud bang on the door startled her and she didn’t know whether to run and hide or be brave and look out of the window.

  “Who is it?” she called turning the volume down on the speaker.

  “Lewis,” her caretaker said.

  She sighed. She didn’t want to let him in while she was in her pj’s, and under the influence of over half a bottle of wine. And, what if he was naked again? Holy hell, she might devour him. She could feel that naughty throb between her legs just remembering him standing in the living room arguing with her while Mr. Happy was out and enjoying the air.

  She answered the door but only because he had saved her three times over. He was fully dressed, including boots. He also held out a large
platter of steaming food and the smell almost made her fall on him. He stepped in, easing her aside and set the platter on the coffee table, then he sat down on the sofa as if she’d asked him to stay.

  “I thought you might be hungry and I was scared you might try to cook again,” he said unwrapping the platter and releasing a cacophony of delicious smells.

  She shut the door and sat next to him, diving right in. He smiled and watched as she devoured chicken wings, breaded pork strips with some kind of flavor that didn’t register because she ate them too quickly, and some rustic garlic bread loaded with butter. She was in heaven; the only thing that could have made the food better was if it was served on his naked body. She blushed; she didn’t need that imagery in her head.

  “Hungry, eh?” he asked watching her eat while nibbling on a seasoned chicken leg.

  “I was,” she said licking her fingers, knowing that he was watching her every movement.

  “It might have had something to do with the wine or maybe it was the singing that made you so hungry,” he said, laughing, and she saw just how pretty he really was when he wasn’t being annoying.

  “Shut up and let me like you,” she said softly.

  His eyes tracked her lips as she spoke and he leaned over and kissed them. He didn’t do it gently or tentatively like a new lover; he did it like she was food and he was starving. She melted against him a moan escaping from her and it spurred him on. Within seconds her pajama top was over her head and floating away. His head dropped to her chest, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, sliding on top of his jeans, still wishing that he was naked.

  As the kissing and nibbling continued, she removed his shirt and found that his chest was every bit as hard as what she was sitting on. She needed to find a way to remove his jeans and her pajama bottoms, and quickly. Lewis lifted her off him and dropped his jeans, giving her the show of a lifetime at eye-level.