by Kyrii Rayne
She was a curiosity still, even after a month of living there. Conversations halted when she walked by. Some Lodge members would not assume their bear forms around her. She did her very best to be polite and friendly toward those she met, but after a month she had not made a single friend among them. Graypaw, who had tried to kill her personally, seemed more relatable than many of those old rich men who turned into bears. He was treated the same way, and yet the ones shunning him were not the ones he had frightened or hurt.
It made no sense to Anna. So that afternoon, when she saw him twitch and whimper in sleep, she went over to him immediately, and crouched down next to his head as he lay on the enormous sectional. “Gray? Gray, wake up, you're having a nightmare.”
His face twisted with anguish and he rolled over, balling up, his knees knocking aside a heavy coffee table. She reached out and touched his strange, almost brutally handsome face, and patted him gently. His skin felt like smooth leather.
His eyes flew open and focused on nothing for a moment as he bellowed in fear. For a split second his body started to swell into his terrifying bear form, claws and fangs lengthening and eyes wild. She stared into the lightless black of his irises and felt his grip close on her shoulders.
She went stiff and shivered as she stared up at his swelling, shifting form. “Gray....”
Recognition entered his eyes, and he collapsed back into his human shape, eyes still wild, but emotions she could recognize in them now: shock, worry, shame. “An-na?”
She heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Yeah, it's me. You were having a nightmare.” She petted the side of his face, soothing him like she might have a kid brother. His eyes hooded, and he relaxed slowly.
“Just a dream. No... no longer real.”
A tear ran down his cheek that was probably relief.
“No. You're okay. You're at the Lodge, you're free and nobody's going to make you kill. You're here with us.” He was still shivering, but it eased away slowly as she soothed him.
He looked down, licking his chapped lips, his black eyes wet and tired-looking. Then suddenly, he engulfed her in a rough and somewhat clumsy embrace.
He was even more gigantic up close, his whole body ridged with muscle and radiating more heat than a human's. She felt herself pulled against his chest with all the resistance of a ragdoll, still too shocked to figure out how to respond as he pressed her against his pounding heart.
It didn't quite hurt, and she could breathe, but there was the sense that she couldn't have gone anywhere if she had tried to.
Hands that could have snapped her neck touched her hair delicately, and she felt a lump form in her throat. “Anna,” he sighed. “You're so soft... I don't understand. You smell so good... It makes me want to touch you more. What is this...?”
Oh crap. Okay, this is too much... what is he doing...?
She became aware of many little things at once: the hitch in his breath, the glaze coming over his eyes, the way his heartbeat didn't slow as he held her against him. The sudden push of his swollen groin against her belly. His hand, wandering over to softly brush over her breast, then cradle it.
She froze — and then yelped. “Hey! Don't do that!”
He stopped immediately, letting her go — but reluctantly, his fingers sliding over her arms before releasing her entirely. “Why?”
She took a steadying breath, looking around. That part of the lobby was deserted, thank God. “Because I'm Jake's mate. You can't treat me like your mate.”
“But you feel so good....”
She shuddered. I can't handle this.
But she had to. The whole situation might be incredibly bizarre but the bottom line was that he had to understand what was going on so it didn't happen again. “Look, I get it, you're not used to these feelings.” That's a huge understatement if ever there was one. I feel like he just hit puberty all at once and I was at ground zero.
And the worst part was that she had felt herself starting to respond. It was an amplified version of some of the things she felt with Jake: someone gigantic and powerful, who could have been brutal, touching her with such gentleness that it made her melt. She had never imagined that Graypaw would end up picking up that same very appealing habit to go with his terrifying size and power, but her breath shivered as she forced herself to go on.
“But you don't touch someone like that when they're with someone else. It gets them very angry at you.”
At least he had already figured out to let go when a woman told him no. There were a lot of fully socialized human men who hadn't sorted that out yet.
He looked embarrassed suddenly, and a little contrite.
“Jake will be angry?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Jake will be angry if you do things like that.”
Funny, though, how she herself was not angry. Unsettled, yes. A little embarrassed. Very, very flustered. But not angry or violated. No. If she was pissed off at anyone right now, it was herself — and it was because she couldn't stop thinking about the bizarre, toe-curling moment that had just passed.
“Are you angry?”
“I'll forgive you this time.” She gave him a warning look, and he lowered his head, nodding. But then she felt so guilty that she reached out and touched his shaggy, silver-tipped hair. He smiled back at her shyly, and she wondered at herself.
“So,” Darrin said as he sat back from their dining table in the canteen. The remnants of a bacon cheeseburger sat on his plate, but he ignored them for the moment. “Has anyone here not been asked awkward sex questions by Graypaw, including at least once in public?”
Anna started coughing to cover nervous laughter, and Jake sighed. “Guess it's my own damn fault. Bring up boobs with your kid brother once....”
Anna burst into giggles. Inside she felt relieved. At least Jake was acknowledging Gray as his brother partially now. If Gray was to ever socialize enough that he left his monstrous life behind for good and found a place with the others, he was going to need the kind of connection that his brother could offer. “So wait, you've gone from teaching him to read to Sex Ed in two weeks, Darrin?”
“Oh no, he's still learning to read, he's just learning to read while asking me eighty bazillion questions about how his dick works. No big.” He paused, looking up thoughtfully. “I'll take this over his trying to kill us, though.”
Jake rubbed his face.
“He suddenly has sex on the brain. It's embarrassing as hell. But I guess it's better than his being in a state of arrested development his whole damn life.”
“I wonder why it's happening now?” Anna poked at her plate of pasta and looked around a little nervously. This was the room she had been kidnapped from a month ago, and she still got the willies in here if someone passed too close behind her. Jake and Darrin always made sure she got to sit with her back against a wall to make sure she didn't end up too nervous.
“He's grown up physically on a bear's timeline, but emotionally, well, you've seen,” Jake sighed as he destroyed half of one of his tacos in a single bite. He chewed mightily and swallowed. “I guess he never felt safe enough to think about things like sex before now.”
“Poor bastard. Helga keeps comparing him to a child soldier. I'd agree, but it's actually worse than that. He didn't just kill on command.” Darrin grabbed up his burger and bit down mechanically. “Sometimes I wonder what in the hell is with people — not just humans or Bears, but people in general — that they come up with things like what was done to him.”
Anna winced and looked over at Jake, who stared sadly off into space, his tacos forgotten for the moment. “I couldn't tell you. I think that when you're in enough pain you just stop thinking straight. There are... a lot of people in pain in this world.” She slid her hand up and down Jake's burly arm, and he looked over at her with a tight smile.
“My father... just straight up lost his mind. I mean, we can try to make sense of it, but let's face it. If he's not thinking rationally, there's no sense to be made.”
He looked at Anna, and petted her back softly with one hand. “This is the guy who honestly thought he would be doing me a favor by murdering my mate. There's just no way. I loved my dad... but that was back when he was sane. The guy I loved, well, he seems to have died a while before his body stopped moving around. And in the meantime, he just... did these things.”
Anna leaned her head against his arm, and he sighed and relaxed a little under her touch. “I don't think anyone could go through what we went through with the whole Anthony situation and not feel kind of messed up by it all, Jake.”
“Yeah, it's true.” Darrin swallowed down half his beer and wiped foam off his lips fastidiously. “I'll take questions about sex to the kind of stuff Gray talks about when he's freaked out enough.”
“Does he actually have flashbacks?” Jake asked.
“Not except in nightmare form, from what I've seen. But now that he has a new context for what he went through, it's like he's reliving everything and finally realizing how bad it actually was. Before now he had rationalizations to fall back on. Not anymore.”
Anna managed a few bites from her plate, then looked around at them. “What do we do?”
“Keep workin', and hope the questions don't get too embarrassing,” Jake demolished the other half of his first taco, sounding resigned. “At least he's never once gotten violent with any of us.”
“Yeah. Do you think that's Helga's magic at work?” Darrin sounded a little worried. Magic wasn't always reliable, by Helga's own admission. “Like maybe she's keeping him tranquilized?”
“I think she had to, at first,” Anna speculated as she stabbed a chunk of Alfredo chicken with her fork. “You saw what happened when they rescued us at the fire tower. She practically had him eating out of her hand. But... I've been alone with him, with Helga nowhere around, and he's been fine. We all have.”
Was Jake watching her steadily now that she had mentioned being alone with Graypaw?
Yes, yes, he was, and she felt her heartbeat pick up in spite of herself. I have nothing to be ashamed of, it was all confused horny Grayness, we sorted it out, no one got hurt. But she still felt her cheeks heating up.
“Well, that's true,” Jake said finally, and she let her air out in a whoosh. “I really don't know about your being alone with him, though, Anna. He's still pretty unstable.”
“He mostly seems to be a hazard to serving ware these days,” she pointed out in a small voice, and he smirked. Graypaw had taken to venting his frustration with tiny, tiny, human-hand-sized silverware by tying it in knots.
“Yeah, I know. I just don't want us ending up in a situation where we have to rescue you from him.” His voice was soft and concerned, and she remembered being trapped firmly against Gray's massive body, and wondered what would happen if he knew.
It went on like that for over a month, while they all recovered from the trauma that had brought them together. Darrin taught Gray to read (and promptly introduced him to superhero comics). Jake taught Gray football (and nearly got flattened). Anna spent time with him teaching him things that would help him socialize with humans: how to act and talk and eat and interact without terrifying humans and alerting them to his being nonhuman.
Her work was the slowest going of everyone's. Whereas Jake could bond with his brother on many levels, and Darrin's job was mostly academic, Anna had to go over things that had long since become habit for her after a relatively normal upbringing.
Explaining tooth brushing, or why shirttails should be tucked in, frustrated her, but she struggled along with it all, and so did he.
She also had to perform a balancing act between being close enough for Gray to trust and listen to, while not so close that he might... get excited again.
She didn't know if Gray would have a human mate out there somewhere like Jake and all other weres whose non-shifter parent was human. Male bears tended to mate indiscriminately. Gray had behaved with her as if his libido was unfettered by shifter instincts, neither muted by their lack of a mated status nor amplified by their being destined for each other.
...unless, of course, the way he had acted with his hands on her was how he was when his libido was muted.
The realization hit her as she was grabbing lunch alone, while Jake handled some Lodge related paperwork. “...yikes,” she mumbled around a mouthful of burger, and swallowed with difficulty. The whole thought of it made her toes curl again, and she decided right then and there to invite Jake to the indoor Jacuzzis that evening.
However, things didn't entirely go as planned. After dinner she found herself soaking alone in one of the huge, mineral-smelling hot water tubs while the bubblers hummed away. The Jacuzzis were part of the third-floor spa lounge, which was staffed by massage therapists and a full-time chiropractor — but which she only ever came to for the lovely, lovely soaks. Each Jacuzzi was fenced in with cedar but open at the ceiling to the larger room, letting the steam escape and be whisked away by the dehumidifier system.
Anna lolled naked in the tub, arms propped on its sides, half sitting and half floating while she waited for Jake to get there.
He was finishing some video game tournament thing with Darrin, annoying her a little — but really, if he was smart, he would beg off eventually. After all, she had made it very clear what she was headed for the spa for. She doubted that Skyrim beat out hushed, semipublic sex in a nice, steamy....
A soft thump above her drew her attention, and she saw a flicker of movement along the top of the privacy fence. She blinked in confusion. “Hello?”
Hopefully it was nothing. Her towel was out of reach, and she couldn't imagine who would be clambering around up—
A heavier thump sounded as a massive shape jumped the fence and landed on the tiles nearby. She stifled a scream as she saw Graypaw straighten from his crouch and look at her over his shoulder.
She stared back, swallowing, suddenly glad that the water was frothy. Her towel was out of reach on the hook by the door. “Gray! What are you doing here?”
“I had to talk to you.” His voice held a strange mixture of uncertainty and desperation as he crouched at the edge of the Jacuzzi. “There is a scent in the forest... I want so much to follow it....”
“A scent? Gray, what are you talking about?” She started to straighten, and his eyes went straight to her chest. She immediately froze and ducked back down, staying immersed to her shoulder blades. “I came here to have private time with Jake, Gray.”
“He gets private time with you all the time,” the huge shifter growled sulkily. “He gets your time, and he gets to mate with you. A lot. He can wait this time.”
She stared at him. If this was how he handled having a crush, she was in big trouble. “Gray... what is this about?”
“You must show me how to mate with a woman without harming her.”
Her eyes widened. “Wait... whoah. What... who put this idea into your head? And why now?”
Her heart was banging away in her chest like it was going to escape, and she couldn't seem to get her breath. The light in his eyes was wild and full of both fear and lust, and also a deep pleading. He seemed terrified by how out of his depth he was, but the needs he was experiencing were stronger than his fear. “Jake and Darrin will not tell me this thing. They say all women have their own things that they wish done to them to bring them into season. I don't understand. But I must know. I must know now.” His chest heaved, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as he stared down at her.
“Gray... why do you have to know all of this now?”
He looked down, his hair straggling down over his eyes so that when he looked up through it she was reminded of an animal staring from the underbrush. He did not blink enough. “I saw you. With him. In the window.”
She went cold all over, and then her body heat seemed to flow back into her from the cheeks outward.
Oh boy.
For a moment she imagined him, standing in the underbrush on the far wall of the gorge, staring in rapt fascination a
t her naked body entwined with Jake's. Twisting, shaking, heaving against each other, lost in pleasure and lust and love until their cries of joy trickled through the glass and reached his innocent ears. Of course, he was intrigued. Of course, he had no idea what to do. But that didn't make it any easier to deal with the covetous way his eyes fixed on her.
“I saw. I heard. It made me... feel things.” He swallowed, eyes tracing the blurred curves of her body under the water. “And ever since I have wanted to know what it is like. And now there's... something else....”
She drew a deep breath. Calm. Keep calm. “It's natural to be curious, Gray, you're just learning about sex. It's awkward that you saw us. But things like that... things like that happen. We can get past it.” Really. Though she was blushing so hard that it felt like the skin of her cheeks would start flaking off.
He stared down at her. “There is a scent in the woods....” he repeated. "It is strongest during the day. I want to follow it, very badly.”
That seemed completely unconnected with the rest of the conversation, and she struggled to keep up. “What direction does it come from?”
He pointed. She looked through the ceiling-height glass in that direction, and noticed an airplane taking off over there. “Jackson Airport and the city are over there, Gray. What are you smelling?”
He went quiet, squirming awkwardly.
She wanted to reach out to him comfortingly but was too aware of being naked under the water. “It's... so beautiful,” he mumbled. Then he looked up at her. “You must tell me these things that my brother and his friend will not. I can't not know. If I don't know and there is a woman, then I will hurt her, or scare her, and then she'll... go away.” His head drooped sadly.
