Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  “I know what I’m doing,” he promised her. “Please, don’t worry for me. You have enough stress in your life without mine too.”

  Jane wished, more than anything, that what he’d said wasn’t so horribly true.

  * * *

  She hadn’t meant to get involved again. Jane Walsh was a smart woman, who made smart decisions every day of her life. Frequently, she found herself surrounded by idiots, and she was usually the only one who knew what had to be done. But now, she was the idiot. She was taped to a chair with powerful, sticky duct tape, her chest heaving dangerously sharp breaths. Panic rose in her body like a wild animal, making her flinch and struggle against her bonds. She really hadn’t meant to get mixed up with the Boys in the Wood.

  It had started on the same day that Hart was planning to make his raid and find the pot farm, but it was a little earlier in the afternoon. After lunch with Elise and Layla, Jane had gone out for a walk to make a few more calls, and once again found herself a little disoriented on the path. She could hear the sound of voices nearby, and she had managed to locate the swimming lake by following the sound of children’s laughter. Here, she was about ready to relax with an ice cream and for once, turn her phone off for a while.

  But that’s when she’d seen Carter, the man with the scar. He was just as Linzy had described him, unmistakable for the huge lump on the bridge of his triangular nose, and the thick, pink line of repaired flesh that ran from beneath his left eye to just above the right-hand corner of his mouth. Jane had spotted him on the very verge of the proceedings, talking to some young teenagers. Carter had been wearing a thick black coat despite the sunny weather, and he showed the teens something inside the flaps with great enthusiasm.

  Some kind of transaction was made. Jane watched with horror as the gleeful teens left with a mixture of guilt and excitement on their faces. Then, when she looked back to Carter, she found him watching her across the crowd. His eyes were dark and narrow, and they bored into her even across the distance between them. He knew what she had seen, and he didn’t like it. Jane had felt the first prickles of terror turning her skin to goosebumps then.

  In hindsight, it might have been more sensible to stay in the populated lakeside area, where the crowd would protect her. But Jane’s mind had been overcome by fear, and she found herself racing down the path that she hoped would lead her back to the Rangers’ Lodge. She was quite a long way from the area, and she realized the error of her ways as soon as she was alone on the deserted path. Behind her, there were footsteps, and she’d started to run.

  Only to run into two more unpleasant looking men at the top of the next ridge.

  Now, she was right in the cool heart of the farm, with plants under glowing lights all around her. The smell was fresh and spicy here, but mixed with the foul musk of the men who’d been hiding out since they began their operation. Carter was about the cleanest of the bunch, but that didn’t speak for much. When he grabbed Jane by her cheeks, she could feel the grime and dirt on his hands. She winced at the pain of his grip, and Carter’s scarred face broke into a horrible grin.

  “Too suspicious for your own good, miss,” Carter drawled in that typical, post stoned lazy way. “I’m sick of having to hurt nosey little pricks like you.”

  “Then don’t,” Jane struggled to say. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  That was a lie, and a well told one, Jane thought. But Carter didn’t seem convinced.

  “You don’t think I’ve got eyes everywhere in this park?” he said slowly. “Johnny Boy tells me he’s seen you hanging around with a ranger. So I can’t have you running back to your boyfriend to inform on us, right? Seems to me that you’re going to have to stay here as insurance, to make sure the rangers don’t decide to rat us out.”

  Jane cursed inwardly. It was just her luck to have been spotted with Hart, when she’d hardly even begun their relationship. There was something about Carter’s confidence that stumped her though.

  “You…” she breathed amid her stunted sobs. “You don’t think those rangers are much of a threat, do you?”

  Carter gave a deep, guttural laugh at that notion.

  “Those pretty boy posers?” he asked, almost to himself. “You can tell they’ve never seen a real fight just by looking at them. They’re all workout regimes and protein shakes, but no genuine muscle.”

  There were three other men in the small, dark space at that moment, and they all chuckled in reply to Carter’s bold assurance. He had no idea that the Best boys were shifters, and that element of surprise was all the hope that Jane had. A buzzing sound alerted her, and her eyes moved to the sight of her phone, which was ringing on a nearby shelf of plant pots. Carter moved towards it, eyeing it malevolently. Then, to Jane’s astonishment, he swiped the screen and answered the call.

  “Yeah?” he said gruffly.

  There was a faint voice on the other end of the line, but Jane couldn’t make it out. She was certain it would be one of her useless interns, wondering what the hell had happened to her these last couple of hours. She was supposed to be getting back to them on approved headshots for the newest people on the books. A grim irony settled on her as she eyed Carter’s gun, which he toyed with in the holster as he listened to her phone.

  “Yeah, Jane ain’t coming to the phone right now,” he teased viciously. “I’m her new boyfriend, and we’re a little busy, if you know what I mean.”

  His voice rose to a wicked crescendo at the end of the sentence, and he and his cronies laughed as he hung up the line. Then, without a second thought, Carter dropped Jane’s phone to the ground and stomped on it with the heel of one of his boots. She watched her business, her lifeline, her whole livelihood smashed to pieces. And all she could think of was Hart, and how she desperately wished that she’d gone to see him after lunch instead of burying herself in stupid work once more.

  * * *

  More than an hour had passed, and Jane was amazed to find that she’d been out cold for a while. She didn’t remember passing out on the chair, but hunger, thirst and exhaustion had gotten the better of her somehow. Her whole body ached from the tightness of her bonds, and once again her chest was heavily constricted. She feared the numbness in her lower body, wondering if the tape had cut off some of her circulation, and the atmosphere had turned much colder since she was last awake.

  There was little to see by except for the buzzing lamps which were trained on the nearest plants, but Jane had enough brightness to make out that she was alone. There was no noise outside, no sign that Hart and the Best clan had arrived to aid her rescue, yet something had woken her from her reverie. She strained in the dark, listening to the sound of something shuffling nearby. Jane tensed, knowing that the sound was behind her, and that there was nothing she could do to turn and see who was approaching. For all she knew, there was someone raising a gun to her head right now behind her.

  No shot came, but she did jump when she felt warm fingers against her own numb digits.

  “Shhh,” soothed a low voice. “Don’t you dare scream. I spent half an hour digging underground to get here.”

  “Hart?” Jane whispered in amazement. “It can’t be you.”

  She felt the painful tug of the tape as Hart worked to free her from the bonds. They had to be slow and methodical about getting it off, both fearful that the ripping sound might alert any gunmen nearby to what was going on. When Hart had unwound the first length that constricted her chest, Jane found herself looking down at his dirty body.

  “So… you didn’t bring the clothes bag this time?” she observed.

  She was trying, really trying, not to look at the shaft, half-erect between Hart’s legs, but it was totally impossible. Even in the shadowy light of the farm, he was magnificent to view. He looked up at her sheepishly, then went back to his work with the tape.

  “I lost it whilst I was digging the tunnel into this place,” he admitted quietly.

  “I’m not complaining,” Jane replied.

 
Her breath was returning, and the numbness faded from her extremities as she began to be able to move again. When she tried to get up, however, she collapsed into Hart’s arms, and he led her to the doorway which would take them out into the open. He set her down there, rubbing her arms and legs back to life with vigorous strokes. She reached for him, touching his face.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

  Hart paused, looking deep into her eyes. It was only now that she noticed his usually jolly presence had faded away. He was serious, the most serious a man could ever get, and he bit back a lump in his throat before he could reply.

  “It was me that called you when Carter answered your phone,” he revealed. “I put two and two together pretty easily.”

  “Clever,” Jane said, “but how do we get out now?”

  “You stay here and rest, ‘til everything’s clear,” Hart told her. “The boys are all in position. You want to know why it is that I can always be so relaxed?”

  Jane nodded, tracing Hart’s lips with her fingers as he spoke.

  “Because,” the golden-eyed ranger replied, “when I transform, I’m the wildest beast of them all. I’m going up there to get this rage out of my system. Stay safe.”

  He leaned in and kissed her, a deep kiss that lingered on her lips even after he had gone. That was when the noise started overhead, and Jane heard the roars of bears intermixed with the sudden, panicked cries of humans. Clan Best had definitely taken the Boys in the Wood by surprise, and when Jane managed to crawl up the entryway to see what was going on outside, many of Carter’s boys were already heaped together, surrounded by fur and claws.

  It was Carter himself that was the problem. Jane clocked him at once because he was only a few feet from where she lay on the ground, crouching and pulling his gun from its holster. Before him was a bear that Jane recognized, his back turned as he dealt with another assailant. Carter was readying his weapon, lifting the shaft to line it up right at the grizzly bear’s back.

  Jane amazed herself with her own strength, a rush of wild energy propelling her forward. She grabbed Carter by the feet and took him totally by surprise, his gunshot firing uselessly into the air above as he fell over. The shot alerted Hart, who spun as fast as a creature of his size could manage, and was soon pawing down on Carter to keep him pinned in place. Jane got to her feet, leaning on Hart’s strong body for support. Carter looked up at her, then the bear, then back to her with amazement.

  “How’d you like my boyfriend now?” she asked with breathless mirth.

  * * *

  “It’s kind of like a ritual,” Hart explained. “Once you do it, there’s no turning back. If you’re with the right person, then it bonds you for life to them. You want to protect them, and love them always.”

  “And am I the right person?” Jane asked.

  Hart’s grin was broad and beaming. He leaned down and kissed Jane, their lips grazing hungrily for one another’s taste.

  “Of course you are,” he said. “I knew it the moment I fell and hit you with that door.”

  “You did not,” Jane protested.

  “Did so,” Hart argued.

  She tried to return the argument, but he buried her in kisses until she gave up. They were lying in the clearing where the pot farm had been, though it’d been almost a week since it’d been cleared away. Now, there was only a quiet little space, obscured by bushes, where no-one at all could see what they were up to. Jane was lying on her back, hardly worrying about the grass stains on her clothes, and Hart was on top of her, leaning on his elbows. His hips weighed comfortably heavy over her own, his erection throbbing against the thin material of his uniform. Jane wriggled against the bulge, and he gave a groan of delight.

  “So you’re saying once we make love, that’s it?” she asked him. “You’ll never let me go?”

  “Not ever,” Hart promised.

  He leaned down, kissing her neck and nuzzling against the soft skin there.

  “Not even if I go back to LA to work?” she challenged.

  “I will follow you anywhere you choose to go,” he said, his breath warm against her throat. “Although if you get that phone of yours replaced, we’re going to have a problem. It’s distracting you from what’s really important in life, you know.”

  Hart pulled up, and their eyes locked. Jane agreed with him completely, but she wouldn’t let it show just yet.

  “I suppose,” she mused wickedly, “you’ll just have to find something even more distracting to occupy me, won’t you?”

  She raised her hips, grinding them against Hart’s throbbing body again.

  “Here?” he asked. “Now?”

  “Here and now,” Jane replied, feeling strangely free.

  The clearing was shaded, and Hart stripped first. He laid his shirt and pants out to make a kind of bed for Jane to lay down on. She could hardly keep her hands off his naked form as he proceeded to undress her, hands roaming all over his toned, muscular body. When she reached his cock, she teased him with feather-light touches, and Hart lost his manners for a moment and ripped her shirt at the shoulder. Jane gasped, but she found that she didn’t care about the tailoring any more. All there seemed to be in the world was love, passion and joy. Hart had brought her that, and she didn’t want anything to spoil it now.

  When she was down to her underwear, Jane lay back on Hart’s clothes, feeling the crisp outdoor air on her body. She had a front-fastening bra on, a wise choice for the occasion, and Hart unclasped it partly with his teeth. He ran his mouth over her breasts hungrily, teasing her nipples with his tongue and brushing them with a stubbly jaw. Jane shuddered at the pleasure she felt, then gasped again when Hart’s hand delved suddenly into her panties.

  Jane shrugged them off entirely, wriggling around as his fingers slipped inside her. First one, then two fingers opened her, pushing teasingly, and then his thumb found her clitoris and began a circular rubbing motion. Hart’s face was rapt with passion, eyes deep and a darker shade of gold than before. When she pulled him in to kiss her, his tongue slipped into her mouth, roving all over in a search for conquest.

  It was relaxing, to let him take control of her body. Jane felt totally safe in Hart’s strong hands, and she lay back with no tension at all in limbs. Everything was pleasure, waves of passion hitting her with every thrust of his fingers, every flick of his thumb. When Hart’s kisses travelled all over her neck and breasts once again, Jane looked up into the leafy canopy overhead with a grin she couldn’t control. This was everything she had wanted, the thing that was worth leaving her stressful world behind for. Not long ago, she’d thought Elise was the lucky one, the one in a million to find real happiness, but now she was it. And it was the greatest feeling in the world.

  “You’d better not be daydreaming,” Hart chided, his lips against her stomach.

  “Oh, I am way beyond that,” she said with a giggle. “Who needs drugs when we’ve got this? This is the original high.”

  Hart’s fingers slipped out of her, leaving her barren and aching for them to resume their thrusting motions. He climbed on top of her body, resuming their original position, but now she felt his hard-on sliding along her thigh with an eager grace. She looked up into Hart’s face, watching a wicked grin overcome him.

  “I’ll bet I can take you higher still,” he promised.

  “Please,” Jane begged delightedly. “I really want to go there with you.”

  She let her legs open a little wider, and Hart shifted his hips to slide inside her. Jane held onto his firm back, hands roving downwards until she found those perfect buttocks she had glimpsed not long ago. She felt the muscles there squeeze tightly as Hart began to thrust into her, and the first push sent a wild wave of heat through her body. She shuddered, hardly able to contain her pleasure, and once again she was totally in Hart’s control. He knew just to what to do with her, fulfilling her with thrusts that changed in speed and depth.