by T. S. Joyce
By the time Riker pulled into the hotel parking lot, Brody was probably closer to changing than Joanna was. He felt claustrophobic in that truck, surrounded by the smell of her blood. Battle readiness still pumped through his system, warring with his exhaustion and leaving an uncomfortable, restless feeling in his bones. And he was so worried about Joanna he wanted to hurt everything, but he’d never admit that out loud.
The sun had set and the parking lot was empty, just as it had been earlier. Even the hotel manager had fastened the closed sign to the door and turned off the office lights. It shouldn’t have mattered that Joanna didn’t have a shirt on, because no one was there to see her but bear shifters who were utterly desensitized to nudity, but the rumble still rattled against his throat as he pushed past the others. Cameron, Riker and Hannah followed him into his room as the other shifters of Bear Valley wondered to their own rooms.
A knock on the door sounded before he’d even laid the towels down on the bed and set her across them. Cameron let Daria in and the woman hesitated only a moment at the sight of Joanna’s stomach before she went to work, digging through a giant plastic bin of medical supplies she’d toted in.
Brody pulled a pair of jeans and a stretchy black T-shirt on and paced behind Daria. The woman’s gray hair was pulled back and the light fixture highlighted the white streaks running from her temples. He bit at the edge of his thumbnail as Riker sat Hannah down on the other bed and pressed an antiseptic wipe onto a trio of gashes near her mouth. She’d fought whoever injured her face. Brave Hannah.
“Brody,” Daria said without turning. “She’ll need to eat when she wakes up. Track down something with meat in it.”
“I don’t want to leave her.”
Daria turned just enough for him to see the sliver of inhuman gray color in her eyes. “I need you to get her some food. I can’t have you growling at my back while I work on her. I’ll be done by the time you get back and you won’t have to leave her again. Please.”
Roughly, Brody scratched the back of his head and tapered the growl he hadn’t realized he was making. He snatched his keys from the bedside table, strode to the door, and threw it open. Gritting his teeth, he turned back. Whatever Hannah and Jo had been through, they’d bonded over it. “I’m sorry for earlier. Will you stay with her in case she wakes up before I get back?”
“Of course,” Hannah said, like she’d already planned on it.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly and shut the door behind him.
Stretching his neck to let the breeze cool his skin, he sighed. Away from Joanna, it was easy to see his mistake. Simple to remember just how badly he’d messed up both of their lives. But when he was near her, all he could think about was making her as comfortable as possible. He wanted to make her happy, to touch her.
It scared him so deeply, he wanted to run away and never look back.
****
Time and time again, Joanna was lulled back to sleep by the soft patter of rainfall outside the window. She didn’t remember where she was, but she wasn’t awake enough to care quite yet either. All she knew was she was warm, and numb, and safe, and it had been so long since she’d felt like this, she gave into sleep as much as her body would allow.
When at last she felt unable to laze around anymore, she inhaled deeply and stretched. A familiar scent lingered on the air conditioner current breezing against her face. A masculine smell—woods, animal and the sharp tang of man’s skin. Her stomach ached as she pressed her hands flat against the cold headboard and pointed her toes. The ache transformed into a burn, and then to searing pain. Gasping, she sat up and gripped her middle. It was covered in bandages and she searched the dark room for any indication of where she was. It was small, a hotel room or maybe a bed and breakfast. Outside, it was dark but the clouds had parted enough to let moonlight through the open window. Burgundy curtains fluttered on either side. When she turned to squint into the dark, she yelped as she saw Brody sitting on the edge of another bed, his knee drawn up and his eyes glowing like a roadside animal who’d been caught in the high beams.
“Where am I?”
“A hotel room in Hyattville.”
“Where are Hannah and the others?”
“Hannah hasn’t seen her mate in a couple of days. They needed time alone. The others have rooms in this hotel. I brought you clothes and food. It’s cold now but Daria said you need to eat.”
The mention of food did bring and instantaneous response from her grumbling stomach. “Did you already eat?”
He shook his head slowly.
She tried to hide the hope in her voice. “Did you get enough for both of us?”
A nod and he moved toward a wobbly table held up with cardboard drink coasters under the wonky leg. He held out a chair and waited, his head canted. Shadows from the street light outside stretched across the chiseled angles of his face, and he seemed happy to remain in the dark and didn’t flip on the light switch behind him. He smelled like bear and his movements were smoother, more predatory.
As gingerly as she could, she stood and sank against the cold plastic seat. He pushed her closer to the table and took his own seat across from her. He’d bought enough hamburgers to feed a small army of carnivores, along with two plastic containers that held loaded baked potatoes.
“I had to drive two towns over and all that was open was a diner.”
He said it like an apology, but a smile was already cracking her face. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a hamburger?”
His dark eyebrow twitched and he tilted his head, studying her. “No. I don’t know anything about you.”
“Oh.” Having a conversation with a shifter more bear than man was pointless and would likely result in her getting her feelings hurt, so she unwrapped a plastic fork and stabbed at her potato until all the cheese was mixed in. Then she removed the crinkling paper of a burger and sank her teeth into what tasted like a homemade bun. Juicy tomato, crispy lettuce and the man had sprung for cheese on the burgers. She didn’t even care if he was basically a bear in human skin right now. He was an angel in her book. An angry, growly angel.
Minutes later, as she contemplated eating a second burger or not, Brody asked, “How long?”
“Hmm?”
“How long since you’ve had a hamburger?”
“Since the Long Claws took over Blood Den. Two years.”
He took his last bite and chewed slowly. Her eyes dipped to his sensual mouth. How could the man make chewing look so sexy. Brody’s nostrils flared and a slow smile crooked his lips. He swallowed and lifted his chin once. “Tell me what you need, Joanna. I don’t take hints well.”
“I need…” What did she need? For Brody to touch her. For him to kiss her stupid again, like he’d done by the pond. She needed for him to want her, but his earlier words echoed through her mind. He didn’t want her as a mate. He’d paid a debt by bonding to her. Nothing more, nothing less.
She sighed and stood, then cleared the empty wrappers and containers while he watched her with a strange glow in his eyes. “What I need is to wash the mud from my skin.”
He leaned back, draped an arm over the back of his chair and narrowed his eyes. The smile had gone from his lips, replaced by a grim line, one that seemed at odds with his face. “Do you need help?”
She didn’t miss the somber tone of a man who made an offer he didn’t really want to. “Thank you for dinner,” she said as she grabbed the brown paper back of clothes from the bedside table.
She padded into the bathroom and shut the door gently behind her and pressed her back against it. The way he looked at her tonight, so empty, promising her an empty bedding wasn’t what she had thought she was signing up for. She wanted more than Nathan had to offer, and now Brody was so hot and cold, he frightened her. Not because she thought he would hurt her, but because she wanted him to want her.
Without meaning to, she’d given a man the power to break her.
She turned to her reflection in the bathroom
mirror and ran her fingers along the smooth edges of the healing knife wounds. No, she hadn’t given just anyone that power. She’d offered it to her unwilling mate. Tears burned her eyes and she blinked them back, determined not to cry for the stranger in the next room.
What did she need? It had always been the same answer, the thing she’d risked her life for.
She wanted to be touched.
She needed to be loved.
Chapter Nine
By the time Joanna had scrubbed her skin with a washrag and washed her hair in the sink to avoid wetting her bandages, Brody had left the room. She stared at the door, waiting, until almost three in the morning, but it seemed he’d begged a bed from one of his friends.
He was completely unreadable. She clung to the memory of him kissing her near the pond, of him claiming her for both alphas to see, of the concern in his eyes when he’d told her to run and protect Hannah. That man clashed with the cold and distant man who had dined with her tonight. The one who let his bear rule completely. Why would he allow that? She was just a person, not someone to get defensive around, but he’d been more ready to fight in the safety of the hotel room than earlier with Nathan. Why? What was it about her that made him shut down?
Imagined shortcomings rattled around in her head until she fell into a fitful sleep in the early hours of the morning. A knock on the door early the next morning woke her. She held her hand up against the dim sunrise and tumbled from bed, careful of her new injuries. If she was lucky, they’d be well on their way to healing by tomorrow. But for today, she felt like road kill.
She’d washed out her jean shorts last night, but the rusty colored blood stains were now a permanent fixture. No help for it, she pulled them on. Her sleeping shirt mostly covered the unsettling pattern anyway.
When she opened the door, Hannah stood outside with a bag of some sort of fragrant rolls that smelled like sausage. “I brought Kolaches and orange juice. Were you still sleeping? It’s nearly eight.”
“I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Oh, I get it, winky winky. Brody is dominant so he’ll need a lot…of…” Scanning the room, she asked, “Where is Brody?”
Joanna shrugged miserably and sank into the chair she’d sat in when she had dinner with a freaking grizzly bear instead of a man. “He left while I was washing up last night and never came back. I think he’s mad at me.”
Hannah sat across the table and the paper bag crackled as she pulled two sausage rolls free. “Well, he’ll get over it. Pairings are hard and you two didn’t know each other beforehand. You’ll just have to work out the kinks as you go.”
“It feels like more than that. He was half changed from the moment I woke up until he left.”
A single clucking sound came from behind Hannah’s teeth as she pushed a napkin with breakfast toward her. “Ridiculous man.” Her face looked better this morning. Less swollen, though it had taken on a purple tinge around her left eye.
“Why did Dunn hit you?”
“Was Dunn my guard?”
She nodded and bit into the juicy roll. Around the bite, she said, “Yeah, he’s a dick for sure, but I’ve never seen him beat on a woman.”
“I kneed him in the groin. Twice.”
Joanna choked on her meal, washed it down with orange juice and laughed. It felt good to smile. She finished off the rest of her food and leaned back, then pulled the oversized shirt she’d slept in above her bandages to check that they weren’t oozing. Still white and pristine. Whoever the Daria woman was who took care of her injuries, she was a miracle worker. “Where’s Benson?”
“It sounds so strange when you call him that.”
“Should I call him alpha? Nathan likes for people to address him as alpha.”
Hannah pulled a face and swallowed her last bite. “Nathan sounds like a douche wagon. No, I call him Riker. In fact, most of his close friends call him by his last name.”
Joanna didn’t point out that she didn’t exactly fall into that category, and from the waves of anger that had rolled off his skin in the truck yesterday, she probably never would.
“I have to tell you something,” Hannah said, ripping up the corner of her napkin, “and it might upset you.”
“Tell me.”
Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, Hannah glanced up. Trouble swam in the green pools of her eyes. “Some of your people died yesterday.”
“They weren’t my people.” Her voice sounded strained, even to her. They might not have been her people, but she’d known them. “How many?”
“Riker said Dunn had to die for what he did to me. He thinks fifteen, maybe twenty depending on the severity of their injuries. Nathan called his warriors to him, but Brody and Riker were in a rage after what happened, and the Long Claws reached the pond at the same time as Bear Valley’s fighters.”
“Nathan?” She held her breath hoping he was dead, hoping he wasn’t, confused at the mix of emotions that surged inside of her.
“He was hurt, but he could survive if your healer is good.”
“Not my healer.”
“Sorry. I keep forgetting you are one of us now. It’ll be easier for the others to remember. It’s just…I saw you when I was in that cabin and hurt, and even though you were helping me, you were still there.”
“I understand. The Long Claws were never my people though, Hannah. I was like you. Taken. I’m Blood Den.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try not to associate you with them anymore. It’s all just a lot and I’m still frazzled.” Her eyes filled and she dropped her gaze to the tattered napkin in her hands. “Thank you for what you did. I owe you my life. No matter what happens at Bear Valley, I’m your girl. Come to me if you ever need anything. Promise it.”
Joanna’s bottom lip trembled and she bit it hard to punish the emotion that sat so shallowly just under her strong facade. “You saved me, too. You hit Nathan with that branch when I thought he’d kill me. You came back. We’re even.”
“No. You’re hurt because you fought a black bear to the death to protect me.”
“Will you just be my friend? I don’t want you to owe me anything. I only want to feel like I fit in somewhere.”
Hannah reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “That’s already happened, Jo. We’ve been through too much to be less. Promise.”
“I promise I’ll come to you if I need anything.”
The door opened and Brody blocked the gray morning with his wide shoulders. He looked taken aback when he saw Hannah but recovered enough to say, “Good morning.”
“Morning,” she said in a cheery voice, though when she smiled, it looked painful. The swelling in her face might have gone down, but her lip was still split pretty badly. “I brought breakfast but you weren’t here, so Jo and I bonded over black eyes.”
Brody cleared his throat once, as if he were unsure of how to respond. “The others are leaving.”
“I’ll go pack up. It’ll only take me a minute.” Joanna stood, eager to please him and hold onto his human side, but her bandages pulled and she gasped.
Hannah and Brody both lunged for her, as if to help, but Brody snarled when Hannah’s hand landed on her first.
“Brody!” Hannah admonished. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m okay,” Joanna said, prying her arms from both of them.
The two glared at each other while she rushed to shove her small amount of things into the paper bag Brody had brought in last night.
“Here,” Hannah murmured, casting one last foul look at Brody. In her hand was the picture of Joanna’s family and her knife.
“Thanks,” she breathed, taking them gently from her.
Brody’s eyes followed her things but she hurried to tuck them into her pocket. They seemed to bother him. Everything seemed to have that effect on him.
Hannah left, and Brody watched her rip into the toothbrush package he’d picked up for her. Her hands shook as she squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles, then she s
tared at the cracked corner of the cheap vanity as she brushed. Brody’s glowing eyes studied her reflection in the mirror.
He approached slowly, until the light from the bathroom cast shadows across his tight shirt, clinging to his defined and utterly delicious looking torso. His waist tapered down into dark jeans that hung perfectly from his hips. Lucky fabric.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning on the door frame behind her.
One glance at his reflection in the mirror said he was mostly bear again. He wanted to know what was wrong? Besides the fact that her hormones were raging so hard her body was actually uncomfortable? Or how about the fact that something was seriously messed up with her when she wanted to kiss a man who was doing his damndest to keep her at a safe distance. Apparently, she had no pride at all. Or how about that he made her nervous. She liked that edge of danger but still, he made her want to flee his unrelenting gaze. “You scare me.”
He froze. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing and his eyes, so oddly colored under the artificial lights, studied her. She rinsed her mouth and washed her face, but still he stared and waited for something she couldn’t understand.
He took a step forward and she turned, pressed her back against the cold edge of the sink. He drew a breath, long and slow and exhaled, then took another step toward her. “Did Nathan touch you?”
Her face throbbed at the mention of it and she closed her eyes against the assault of memories of his utter loss of control. She brushed her fingers against her tender cheek. “Of course he touched me.”
He shook his head once, but his gaze never left hers. “Not there, Jo.” He reached out and cupped her sex. Warmth radiated through the fabric of her jeans. “Did he touch you here?”
Oh. His warm hand against her made it hard to think straight and her legs would buckle at any moment. “I haven’t been with anyone since Blood Den.” It’s more than he asked, but for some reason it felt important that he know. “It’s why he was so angry, why he wanted me so badly. I told him no.”
