Handcuffed to the Bear: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (Shifter Agents Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "I heal better at home." Jack reached for the paper bag on the bedside table, which smelled heavenly. "You know that. Unless I'm at death's door, which I'm not, there's nothing being in a hospital can do for me, and I can rest better when I'm not surrounded by strangers and getting woke up every hour to make sure I'm still breathing."

  "What you mean is, you like to crawl off into your den and lick your wounds," Avery remarked. "I have the urge, too. Just as long as you don't keel over from internal bleeding halfway out the door."

  "Not planning on it."

  "I don't think most people plan on it, Jack."

  Jack opened the bag to find it full of burgers. "Ah, God," he groaned in ecstasy. "Are these from that place—"

  "The one out in Ballard you like dragging me to? Yeah, that place. If you're going to keep trying to get killed in the field, I may as well give you coronary heart disease to slow you down."

  Through a mouthful of bacon double cheeseburger, Jack asked, "Was Casey here?"

  "I should've placed bets on how long it'd take you to ask about her this time. Yeah, she was, for just a little while. She's resting now."

  "How is she?"

  Avery sighed and folded his hands over his knee. "You know what? Go find out yourself. By talking to her. She won't bite."

  "You've never turned into Susie Q. Matchmaker with any of the other girls I've dated."

  "I've never seen you get this tangled up about one before, either." Avery toyed with the head of his cane. "Look, Jack, neither you nor I believe in that old superstition about shifters and mating at first sight. But any fool can see there's something there this time."

  "Bonding under fire," Jack mumbled indistinctly, unwrapping another burger.

  "Doesn't mean it can't last," Avery said, somewhat pointedly.

  "She's not a werewolf, man."

  "No, but she's clearly hung up on you. If you walk away because it's not working out between you, okay, that's one thing. I wouldn't get involved. But if you head for the hills like you always do at the first hint of commitment—"

  "Then it's your God-given right as my best friend to turn me around and march me back into the line of fire?" Jack demanded, exasperated.

  "Well, if you think of the girls you date as the enemy, Jack, then no wonder your love life is such a dismal wasteland."

  Jack was saved from answering by a tap at the door. "Up for company?" Steirs asked, leaning in.

  "Can I put on pants first, Chief?"

  "I don't know, I think I prefer you this way," the division chief said, folding her arms and lounging against the wall. "It means you can't run away."

  "Which means you want a report."

  "Yeah, that's part of my job, Ross." She smiled then, her face relaxing into a warmth that most people rarely saw. "It's good to have you back in one piece. More or less."

  Half an hour later, Jack felt slightly wrung out from the questions, but he'd also given a reasonably thorough account of his time on the island—at least the important details. He'd tried to talk up Casey's heroism as much as possible.

  "Did they apprehend the rest of the Fallons?" he asked, as Stiers shut off the recorder.

  "They did," Stiers said, "and that's all I can say at this point, until I get a chance to debrief Eva and Mila properly. Now you can put your pants on."

  She went off to locate Willa, and Jack got dressed. Avery, having had some experience with this sort of thing, had picked up the loosest sweats in the condo; still, it took some time to work the clothing over his sore, bandaged limbs. He had to stop in the middle of the process to sit on the side of the bed and catch his breath.

  "Yeah," Avery said, "you're doing great."

  "Make yourself useful and bring the car around, Jeeves."

  After Avery flipped him off and left, Jack clenched his teeth and leaned over to put his socks and shoes on. Everything between his hips and shoulders protested agonizingly at the bending and twisting.

  It's nothing a few days in bed won't fix.

  "I hear you've decided not to accept our hospitality," Willa Lafitte said, breezing into his room. Stiers was nowhere to be seen, but Dr. Lafitte looked slightly mussed.

  "You know I'll recuperate better at home."

  "I know you think you will. Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm of the opinion that mental health is just as important to recovery as a person's physical health, which in your case apparently means privacy. And I hope you didn't just put those britches on, because I'm gonna need you to drop 'em."

  After looking him over, she pronounced him good to go ("by Jack Ross standards, anyway"), with a laundry list of antibiotics and painkillers to take with him, and an even longer list of worrying symptoms to watch out for.

  "I'll stop by every once in a while to make sure he's still breathing," Avery said from the doorway. "Ready to roll?"

  "I leave him in your capable hands, then." Dr. Lafitte patted Jack's shoulder, and left.

  "I like this hospital," Jack said, tottering to his feet. "No wheelchairs."

  He refused Avery's offer of a shoulder to lean on, and slightly more facetious offer of the loan of his cane. Out in the hallway, Avery raised the cane and pointed to one of the doors. "That's Casey's room, by the way," he said.

  "You're a pain in the ass."

  "Yeah, you aren't being obvious about peeking into every open door we pass at all."

  Jack hesitated. Invisible strings pulled him toward Casey's door. But, just as strongly, he didn't want to see her for the first time with an audience.

  "Look, I'll run and pick up your stuff from the pharmacy, okay? Meet you downstairs."

  And Avery was off before Jack could say anything.

  One thing about werewolves: they were acutely attuned to social nuance.

  With Avery gone, Jack realized he could just go downstairs. He didn't have to do this, unless he wanted to.

  But he did want to.

  Or—more than that. He needed to.

  Casey's door was partly open. Jack cautiously peeked in.

  She was sleeping, her hair a dark corona around her small face. He limped over to the bed. This was his first opportunity to see her—really see her, without the slightly blurring around the edges that marred his uncorrected vision, even at close range.

  She was everything he'd known she would be, and more. Her face was a perfect heart, the chin small and pointed, her skin a dark tan with olive undertones. Healing bruises, and a deep red stippling of wasp stings along the side of her face, could not mar that smooth perfection. Her thick, dark lashes grazed her cheek; her full lips were parted, as if to breathe a secret.

  Jack brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. It was soft as velvet.

  She turned into his touch, and her lips moved slightly. He thought they framed his name, but perhaps it was only wishful thinking.

  And he knew then, with sudden brutal clarity, that he'd been a fool to come here. He had nothing to offer her, nothing except a scarred body and a dark past stained with blood and death. Better to sever their connection here, before either of them had an opportunity to get in deep enough to regret.

  It would be a transitory pain for her, one that would be quickly forgotten. She'd move on with her life, embrace the new opportunities opening up in front of her.

  Better a fast goodbye than a lifetime of sorrow.

  He leaned down to brush her hair back from her forehead, and kissed it gently. "Goodbye, Casey," he whispered.

  Then he straightened quickly and limped out of the room before he could yield to the temptation drawing him back—the overwhelming urge to crawl into that bed with her and wrap his arms around her and never let go.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Casey napped on and off throughout the afternoon. She'd thought she would never need to eat again after stuffing herself on meatloaf, but it was only a couple of hours later when she woke up enough to push the nurse call button and ask for a sandwich. "Or a hamburger. Rare." She'd never craved meat this badly, even
in lynx form.

  On the bright side, this place was used to dealing with injured shifters. No one blinked twice at feeding her a full meal's worth of food every few hours.

  Her dreams were full of Jack. Sometimes he was reaching for her, sinking beneath the waves of an endless black ocean, and then she'd wake gasping and shaking, only to discover the unsteady, rocking boat had been replaced with the solid stability of the hospital bed. Sometimes she couldn't find him at all, and wandered through an endless forest, the empty handcuffs dangling bloody from her wrist.

  But some of her dreams were not unpleasant at all. These dreams were full of gentle touches and heated kisses. There were no words, only the small noises that lovers make, the wet slide of skin on sweat-slick skin and the little gasping cries she gave when she came. Her injuries were gone and so were his, because this was dream country, where the perils of the real world could be left behind at the door.

  From those dreams she came awake with her left hand reaching out, groping for the hand that should have been there, the fingers that had always slid into hers to hold her steady on the island. And for an instant, in the soft haze between dreaming and waking, she could almost believe he was there in the bed with her, his arms wrapping around her, his body warming hers.

  And then she surfaced enough to know that he wasn't there, and slipped back down into dream country, in the hopes of finding him again.

  ***

  She woke in early evening, a little more clear-headed, to find that Cho was back—bringing food this time, a large bag of Greek takeout. They both ate and then Cho recorded the rest of her statement.

  It was weirdly easy to talk about it. She kept thinking the full impact was going to hit her eventually, and maybe it would. But for now, she found herself explaining the events on the island dispassionately, as if they'd happened to someone else.

  By the time she got to their rescue, she was yawning again.

  "You should sleep all you can," Cho said. "It helps a lot. I'll be back in the morning. In the meantime, do you have anyone who can swing by your place and pick up some clothes for you? Anyone I should call?"

  Casey tried to think. There was a neighbor she was kind of friendly with. Hadn't she given Mrs. Hung a key that one time, when she needed to have the plumber let in and couldn't stay home? Maybe Mrs. Hung could send one of her sons over ...

  And this made her think of something even worse. "Oh, my God. My keys and my wallet and all of that. I have no idea what happened to any of it."

  "Yeah, we ran into that with Jack, too," Cho said. "Most likely, the Fallons dumped your things. Probably destroyed them. I'm sorry. You're going to be in for a hassle, getting your driver's license and all of that again. I'll see if the SCB can help expedite the process."

  "Thanks." Casey rubbed a hand through her hair, noticing in passing that it was clumpy and stiff. God, she needed a shower. "My neighbor has a key, I think. I don't know her number, though."

  "Do you have any family nearby?"

  "No," Casey said. "No family."

  She wasn't sure how it happened, but somehow this turned into Cho promising to go talk to Mrs. Hung and pick up some clothes for her to wear the next day. "If it's any trouble, you don't have to," Casey said for what felt like the tenth time.

  "It's no trouble, really." Cho grinned impishly. "Otherwise I'd have to go back to HQ and fill out forms. This way I can claim I'm on an errand related to a case—it's kinda related to a case, right?"

  When Cho got up to go, Casey chewed her bottom lip for a moment before bursting out, "How is Jack doing? I mean, Agent Ross."

  She was never going to be able to think of him as Agent Ross, but they were back in the regular world now, and she didn't know what he would want her to call him. Especially around his co-workers.

  "The idiot actually talked them into letting him go home this evening," Cho said. "Mostly by making a pain of himself until they did, I expect. They're used to dealing with him."

  "Oh." That hurt, an unexpected sharp pain. She would have thought he'd at least stop by to say ... hello? Goodbye?

  What happens on the island stays on the island, I guess.

  She was not at all in the mood for company after that. Seeming to recognize her mood, Cho quietly withdrew.

  ***

  In the morning Casey was finally allowed to take a shower. Even with her leg wrapped in plastic and nothing to change into afterward but a clean hospital gown, since Cho hadn't come back with her clothes yet, it was pure bliss. Then, at Dr. Lafitte's urging, she did some walking practice in the hall to get used to the crutches.

  In the process of wandering around, she learned that the clinic wasn't quite what she'd thought. When she'd heard "private clinic", Casey had immediately thought of a sort of spa, a rich person's getaway so they didn't have to mingle with the riffraff of a regular hospital. Nothing could be further from the truth, she found. The clinic did have some wealthy clients, but it was also a source of first care for the local shifter community, with payment on a sliding income scale. Some of the SCB agents, as well as various former patients, volunteered here when they had the time.

  Cho and Avery showed up around midday. Avery carried a brown paper bag with a couple of sausage McMuffins in it. Casey fell on them like a starving wolf; breakfast had been hours ago. And Cho had a bundle of clothing for her, as well as her phone.

  "Oh, hey!" She'd forgotten that Roger Fallon had instructed his employees not to bring their phones on the cruise. Let's not mix work and play, the email memo had said. Quite a few people violated the guideline and brought them anyway, but Casey had obediently left hers at home. At least it was one thing she didn't have to replace.

  "Do you have a car?" Cho asked. "I asked your neighbor, but she didn't know."

  "No. I take public transportation."

  Actually, she hadn't realized how little of a footprint she'd left on the world until stepping out of it and coming back. There were no new messages on her phone, no new personal emails.

  She'd gone missing and almost died, and no one had noticed.

  And Jack, who she'd fought with side by side, who had kissed her and held her hand, wouldn't even say hello to her before leaving the clinic, and probably her life, forever.

  Maybe it was all of a piece with her lack of reaction to her near-death experience. The devastation she'd expected, that everyone else seemed to expect for her, still hadn't set in. She'd accepted some referrals from Dr. Lafitte for therapists who dealt with the clinic's patients, but wasn't sure if she was actually going to call them.

  She escaped into the bathroom under the pretext of changing into the loose sweatpants and sweater that Cho had brought for her. But mostly, she just wanted to be alone.

  What's wrong with me?

  All was quiet outside the bathroom door. Probably they'd left.

  Maybe there was something broken in her, something that no amount of therapy could ever fix. Other people couldn't connect to her because she wouldn't, couldn't, reach out to them.

  She stared at herself in the mirror. Other people's faces had smile lines. Hers didn't. Her heavy brows made it look like she was frowning even when her face was neutral, like now.

  When she a teenager, people used to say to her, Cheer up, Casey! and What's wrong? Are you okay?

  I'm fine, she'd say in response, baffled. She'd never been able to understand why other people went around smiling for no reason. She liked to smile, but only when she had something to smile about.

  Maybe other people have things to smile about all the time. She thought of Dr. Lafitte's warm and ready smile, of Cho's friendly and inviting grin.

  But Jack wasn't like that. Jack didn't smile all the time, either. His smile meant something. When he'd smiled at her on the island, it had felt like she'd won a prize.

  And then he'd just left, without saying goodbye ...

  Stop it, she told her reflection firmly. The eyes looking back into her own had begun to glitter with the beginnings of tears. T
hat would never do.

  Stop pining like a lovelorn teenager. Jack's gone back to his life, and you're going back to yours ...

  What life, though? She hesitated in dismay. She hadn't even thought about that. What would happen to the company, with all its founders and major stockholders in prison? Probably it would be broken up and sold to its creditors. She was almost certainly unemployed.

  The blows just kept coming.

  You are a McClaren, Casey, she thought firmly. And, even more importantly, a Balam—the last name of her mother, that brave jaguar shifter who had crossed the Mexican border alone as a teenager, coming up from somewhere in central America. That side of Casey's heritage was hidden, now, beneath her white father's surname and a first name that her mother must have believed would help her fit in. She'd learned no more than a few words of either Spanish or her mother's native Mayan tongue, at least very little that she remembered now, after being raised by her father's mother in Portland.

  But thinking of her undauntable mother and grandmother gave her the courage to tilt her chin up and march—well, okay, limp very carefully, hanging onto her crutches—back out into her empty hospital room.

  .... which turned out not to be empty at all. Avery was in the chair by the bed, reading a newspaper, the cane leaning against his leg.

  He was so impossibly quiet. It went beyond mere physical quiet and into a sort of psychic stillness, like he barely made ripples in the world around him. Jack had that kind of still quality about him too, she couldn't help thinking. There was something about it that she found very peaceful to be around.

  Stop thinking about Jack Ross, Casey. Right now.

  Avery folded the paper with a snap, looked up and smiled at her.

  He's another one, she thought suddenly, a bit startled. She could tell, she wasn't quite sure how, that Avery was not a person who smiled a lot, normally. But he seemed to smile at her quite a bit.

  What does that mean?

  "Ready to get out of here?" he asked her, and she realized she'd been too busy puzzling over it to remember to smile back at him. And now she was puzzled all over again.