ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by C. J. Ayers

  Why was she even putting make-up on? Elie hesitated again, this time with her hand on her bedroom door. Was this supposed to be a date? She looked down at her clothes. Jeans and a blouse and tennis shoes.

  Should she dress up? With what? She hadn’t exactly brought an array of outfits to choose from.

  No, she decided. Firmly, she opened the bedroom door and shut it behind herself. This wasn’t a date. This was an apology. Meeting a chiseled, smiling, bone-meltingly sweet lumberjack in the middle of the night on a lakeside, so near a full moon, no less, might look like a date, but it wasn’t.

  Alison and Brent Barner were in the living room on the couch, watching a movie; it looked like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but then, all Roger’s and Hammerstein’s pictures looked pretty much the same to Elie.

  “Going out?” Alison asked sleepily. She was reclining on one end of the sofa, against her husband’s shoulder. Brent was already snoozing against the back of the couch.

  Elie opened the fridge and pulled out the six-pack of Narwhal she’d driven down the mountain to retrieve. “I’ll be back later,” she answered. She swallowed back the desire, the need, to avoid the question. Why did that happen? She waved to her mother and ducked out the door before any further inquiries could be made.

  Out on the front lawn, the silver darkness of a clear night wrapped her for just a moment before the motion light over the garage caught her and flooded the driveway. She hurried to the Outback; the darkness seemed thicker when the light was blinding her, and beyond its safe halo Elie couldn’t help but see bear-shaped shadows. Maybe she was just used to the city lights.

  Had Jake ever gotten used to them? She thought about Jake in the city, and couldn’t quite picture it. He seemed like such a country creature, and he himself had admitted that living among the hustle hadn’t really worked out for him. No, she couldn’t see him in anything but boots and jeans. Or out of them…

  Elie started the Outback and reversed out of the driveway, hopeful that of all the people to have a real adult friendship—or anything—with, Jake Framer would be the one to try.

  It was a long walk, but a short drive to Hidden Lake, and Elie found herself there too soon; she parked the car, shut off the ignition, and waited, blinking in the glow of her gas and RPM gage while the battery idled in accessory. She looked at the pack of Narwhal stout and wondered if he’d tried it before.

  Jake wasn’t here yet; the gravel parking lot was empty. Elie hoped he’d found her note.

  Sudden doubt gripped her by the throat, and she pushed her hair, black in the darkness, off of her face nervously. She’d left the note right on his front door, wedged into the door knob. He couldn’t possibly have missed it.

  The two minutes of accessory ran out, and the Outback flipped into dark silence. Elie didn’t turn it back on. She could wait a little longer in peace and quiet.

  It dawned on her that Jake could have walked; the house his parent’s had left him was even closer to this lake than the Barner’s. He didn’t seem as concerned about the bear as Elie was. The more she thought about it, the more certain it seemed. A big strong man like him wouldn’t worry about a mile’s walk.

  Elie got out of the car, now worried that he, also, had been waiting and had decided to leave. She still hadn’t exchanged numbers with him, and it seemed stupid to have forgotten now that she was wandering around in the night hoping he’d be here. The forest was blacker than oil and full of soft sounds as she went; at a half-jog she reached the picnic area, where the park lights had shut off an hour ago. Moonlight filled the space instead, the world was white and black, and the lake lapped with the wind against the rocks of the shore.

  Jake wasn’t here, either, and Elie didn’t really like to wait alone. She set the Narwhal on the ancient table and paced.

  What was taking so long?

  She should’ve gotten his number. She should have driven by his house first, before running out here. Rubbing her temples, Elie looked out at the water, listened to it. With a sigh, she ruefully wished she was a better planner.

  “Ten more minutes,” she promised herself. It was already gaining on ten thirty.

  To keep herself occupied, Elie walked down towards the water. The picnic table was about twenty feet from the shore, and she was soon standing with the toes of her tennis shoes just at the lake’s edge, so Elie turned and began to circle a little ways around.

  Would it be so bad, here? Slow, yes, but bad? Elie twisted her lips and tried to answer, but her thoughts were sliced off mid-kilter as a shuffling, huffing murmur came into earshot.

  Elie muttered something highly unladylike. It was too late to even back away; the bear was coming right this way! It hadn’t seen her—she hoped—but it was already sloughing along through the brush faster than she could back away from easily.

  There was no time! Through the dense, black trees, Elie could make out its shape, fur ruffling and undulating as it hurtled towards her. She was backing up, backing up… should she try to swim away? Would the water cover her scent? Elie took deep, slow, quiet breaths, watching the bear approach.

  What do you do when a bear is rushing your way?

  It was coming for the lake. Coming for a drink, or whatever bears did. It still hadn’t seen her, and Elie was still retreating as slowly as possible.

  The bear was slowing, now, as if it had been running to get here and was drained upon arrival. Its last few steps toward the water dwindled into a crawl. Elie’s ears were hyper-aware of the sounds her shoes made as her weight filled each step, displaced rocks, shoved dirt aside…

  Out in the open moonlight, the bear was enormous. Elie’d never seen one so big—was this Old Ironhide, or some monster grizzly out of folklore? He was the size of a Goddamn pickup truck. The narrow strip of soil between tree and lake couldn’t even contain him; he stood with his front paws dipped in water.

  She hadn’t made very much progress; Elie was trying to step lightly and make as little noise as possible, but the bear was still, as if it were listening…

  And then he started twitching.

  How else to describe it? Fur and bone started a mad dance under the moon, and Elie watched in horror and fascination. The bear’s skin seemed to be berserking, trying to leap off its bones in defiant rebellion. A terrible, guttural roar of unmistakable pain bellowed out of the bear’s jaws. It rippled through Elie’s flesh, and she knew the panic of a deer before the hunter.

  And then the bear started shrinking. It was like origami folding, smaller, smaller. Fur shed out like wisps of smoke, and white skin caught the moonlight.

  The ground came up to meet her; Elie’s legs folded as if they had no bones. It wouldn’t be fair to suggest Elie Barner was the fainting type, but her head did spin in a whooshing whirl of moon and lake. Her skin felt cold, and the night wind seemed to rush through her clothes as if they weren’t there.

  There was no longer a bear, or any trace of one. Elie blinked several times, trying to persuade her eyes to see right. Time seemed to be skipping like a scratched CD. The bare human form that lay where the bear had stood was moving in slow jumps—first sitting up, waist deep in the lake. Then struggling to his feet, water streaming down thick muscular legs. He was standing in the shallows, now, looking this way, and Elie was beginning to accept that this was in fact a hallucination.

  “Elie?”

  She shook her head. If the hallucination talked to her, she might be convinced it was real, and that was a dangerous road to tread on.

  But it was walking closer, and worst of all, Elie thought she recognized the voice. “Elie?! Jesus! What—? How long have you been here?!”

  Her mouth moved—Elie wasn’t really sure what she planned to say, since even one comprehensible scrap of a response was not forthcoming. She held up a hand in a vague gesture toward the lake, where the bear had withered into… Jake.

  Naked as the day he was born, Jake splashed towards her to the shore. This was one shock after another. Under normal circumstances El
ie might have avoided looking blatantly at the prominent areas of Jake’s body that were normally hugged into old denim, but staring at his dangling junk seemed like the least abnormal part of the evening.

  “Elie! God almighty—get up, you’re scaring the hell outta me!”

  Scaring the hell out of him? Elie giggled as Jake helped her to her feet.

  Jake seemed to realize suddenly that he was naked, and turned Elie back towards the picnic table. He helped her with an arm around her waist at first; her feet stumbled over the first patch of loose dirt and she almost toppled forward. Impatiently he picked her up without ceremony and carried her.

  “Stay here,” he muttered, and propped her on the picnic table. “Just breathe for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  Elie turned to watch him storm away, the moon casting white speckles across his shoulders, buttocks, and legs through the branches.

  Alone again, she swayed a bit and waited for the feeling to come back to her hands and feet. They were tingling. She wondered idly if she was having an MI. Twenty-seven was too young for cardiac distress, wasn’t it?

  Crunching gravel sounded in hurried steps behind her, and she looked back to see Jake returning, dressed now in jeans with his other clothes and his boots in one hand. His face was difficult to read in the shadows, but he didn’t look happy. Muscles in his chest and arms were tense and veins stood out all the way up his neck.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a hiss.

  “Meeting… you.” Elie nudged the six-pack that was sitting beside her on the table; this seemed to be the first Jake had even seen of it. His shoulders slumped at once, and he dug his fingers through his hair.

  “Oh, man… Look, Elie, what did you see? What all did you see?”

  Elie was coming back to her senses, and looked up at him warily. “Nothing. I didn’t see nothing. Nothing at all.”

  He leveled a glare at her. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see nothing. What, did you faint because an owl spooked you?”

  “I’m terribly afraid of them, you know.”

  “Elie!” Jake threw down his boots and clothes and spun away in frustration. He made an inarticulate sound, something between anger and despair. He spun back towards her; she’d never seen him so upset, not since a day eons ago when a dumb high school girl had shot down a hopeful more-than-friend. “This isn’t a joke!”

  “That’s disappointing. I’ve been thinking I might be on hidden camera.”

  “That isn’t funny,” Jake snapped. “God knows, if anyone caught this on camera… I’d be… I’d be in some… government lab, or somewhere like that.”

  Elie swallowed past her dry throat and looked at him, really looked at him, the curve of his great shoulders heaving and fear plain on his face.

  Invisible walls seemed to tilt inward like a funhouse, mirrored realities bouncing each other back. This was impossible. Elie sprung to her feet; adrenaline pumped through her veins. The world jolted but didn’t spin, not quite—she still had to reach out and catch a hand on Jake’s arm. His skin was clammy, like the aftermath of a fever. The hairs on his arms were coarse over the hardness of the corded muscles beneath.

  “Elie, don’t—”

  “Just leave me be!” Elie shouted, snatching her arm away.

  He raised both hands in a peaceful gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you, Elie!”

  Elie stalked away. She took long strides, devouring the distance to her car. This was impossible. This was impossible.

  Afraid to find Jake following, Elie didn’t look back until she was unlocking the driver-side door. The moon was higher now and she could see him still standing shirtless next to the picnic table. She stood there staring. It wasn’t too late. She could still close the car door, go back to him, try to figure out whether she or just the entire situation was completely crazy.

  They could still sit together in the moonlight and drink and remember what it was to be blameless. Hopeful. Free.

  But the next second she door was open and she dived into the safety of that which was real and solid and safe.

  Chapter Seven

  Two days later, Elie was still hiding under a quilt in her old bedroom, snug and safe as a princess in a tower and nervous as a hen in a fox den. Clouds had rolled in without rain, just hanging overhead like a shroud over the Rockies, holding in heat and bringing up the humidity. With it came a persistent chill. Alison and Brent Barner had chalked up Elie’s behavior to a bit of a cold and she didn’t correct them.

  She’d lived in a hazy state of half-waking, half-sleeping since the night before last. It played over and over again, the events between hearing the bear through the forest on the dark lakeshore and getting back into her car. Fur and teeth vanishing into human form. Jake stumbling out of the lake towards her. Him naked in the moonlight; there was no reason to pretend she wasn’t partial to that one, but it couldn’t blot out the insanity of the entire affair.

  People didn’t turn into bears. Bears didn’t turn into people.

  There was a knock on the front door downstairs; Elie’s heart flopped in her chest and she held very still, waiting.

  Murmured voices. One of them, certainly her mother’s. The other… Elie already knew, but wanted to hope it wasn’t…

  Should she have warned her parents? Elie hadn’t told them a thing, but what if…

  There were steps tracking through the house, and Alison politely commenting on Elie’s feeling under the weather and how she hadn’t left her room all day, or all yesterday. They were at the stairs!

  It would be stupid to hide under the bed, right? Elie briefly considered the closet, but the stairs were too short for that and before she could have dashed across the room, Elie’s door creaked opened and Alison poked her head in.

  “Hey… how are you feeling? Better?”

  Elie peered over the quilt and shook her head.

  Alison nodded. “Well, you have a visitor here, so I’ll send him up with some soup.”

  “No! Mom—!” But Alison knew, and she had already pulled in the door coyly. Elie grumbled and sat up. At least she was already clothed. Now she had to wait for the hum of the microwave to end in a piercing beep, knowing that when the sound wafted upstairs, someone else would soon be coming with it.

  Dismally, Elie waited, head under the quilt. Maybe if he came up and she ignored him, he’d just go away.

  She heard the door creak open.

  Her room was carpeted, and she could barely hear his footsteps as he crossed the floor, but she knew he was there. In her mind’s eye, Elie could see him, standing over her bed, looking down at the quilt with those soft brown eyes. He’d be wearing jeans again, like he always did, and a button-down shirt, or maybe a t-shirt that squeezed his big arms and oak-tree chest.

  He sneezed and something sniffing and cold poked rudely under her quilt.

  “Goddammit, Jasper!” Elie pushed his nose away, giggling. The shepherd grew more interested as she began to move, and his whole face came to see her in her blanket sanctuary. “Your nose is freezing! Get out of here!” Elie sat up and threw the quilt back.

  Jake was standing in the open doorway, a bowl of soup in one hand and the doorknob in the other. Elie froze, even as Jasper clambered into bed with her and settled absurdly across her lap. At thirteen years old, he still thought he was puppy-sized.

  “Glad to see you’re doing ok,” Jake offered, not moving from the door.

  Elie nodded stiffly. “Yeah, I’m ok. Just a little cough and cold. Not a big deal.”

  He was staring an awfully long time, and the intensity of his eyes on her was making Elie woozy. Maybe she really was sick.

  “Did—did you need something?” she asked innocently.

  Jake shut the door.

  “You know why I’m here,” he said quietly. He set the soup down on her bedside table and stood by her, just as Elie had imagined him doing minutes ago. The trace of stubble on his jaw was darker than his hair, black rather than dark brown. “I need to
know what you saw.”

  Elie swallowed dryly. “Here,” she patted the bed beside her. “Sit…”

  He didn’t seem to want to at first; the discomfort at Elie’s suggestion was practically visible in the air. But sit, he did.

  “I saw…” Elie paused, reflecting. Her voice was so quiet a lurker under the bed wouldn’t have been able to hear it; Elie didn’t want to speak too loudly, in case Alison got it into her head to ‘accidentally’ overhear their conversation. Scalding hot men visiting their daughter in bed was too much for any mother to resist listening in on, if the opportunity came. She looked him in the eye. “Jake… I saw a bear. It changed into a human. That human was… you.”

  Jake let out a long, slow breath, as if he’d been holding it.

  “Have you told anyone else?” he asked in a calm so forced, his jaw twitched.

  Elie shook her head. “No, and I’m not going to. You’re right. If anyone knew, you’d end up in a—a FBI quarantine cell or a laboratory or something. I won’t tell anyone, ever. I swear.”

  And Elie meant it, with all her heart. She of all people knew what it was to want to keep your business to yourself.

  Jake didn’t seem to have an answer. Maybe he hadn’t expected such easy compliance. He turned out to be wearing the t-shirt today, and Elie watched as his shoulders lowered, bit by bit, and his face relaxed.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he murmured finally.

  Elie was feeling more and more acutely how little clothing she had on. She pulled the quilt around her waist a little tighter, but it didn’t help the lack of a bra, which was obvious through her old, ragged Five Finger Death Punch tee. Elie winced; maybe she should buy a couple blouses, or at least shirts that didn’t have holes worn in them.

  “So why did you show up as a bear if you didn’t want me to see?” Elie asked, adjusting her arms and trying to keep the shirt from clinging to the round swell of her breasts too tightly.

  “What?”

  “Well, you knew I was going to be there. Why the hell did you come as a bear if you didn’t want me to know?”