by Holley Trent
Bemused and more than a little surprised, he scraped the viscous liquid off his palm and ignored his inner bear’s perturbed monologue about the spill being “such a waste.”
He wadded up the shirt, set it on the floor beside the sofa, and not knowing what else to do, grabbed one of the afghans from the arm to wrap around them.
“Mmm,” she said, snuggling beneath the blanket in such a way that her head nearly disappeared.
He patted her rear and stared up at the stained ceiling. “Uh. Let me know if you get hungry, I guess. There isn’t much else to do here.”
“Except wait for Bryan to find me and beat down the door.” She giggled.
Peter ground his teeth. He didn’t think her joke was funny because the probability of Bryan behaving that way was too high. As an alpha, Bryan would have done anything he could have to care for the weaker members of his clan, and Andrea wasn’t just that. She was his only sibling. If he and Tamara didn’t conceive—and there was a strong possibility that would be the case given Tamara’s mutant Shrew status—then the chore of continuing the Ridge line would fall to Andrea.
That may have been a petty consideration for some people, but lineage was important to Peter because he was a Bear and he knew Bear history. The clan wasn’t just called the Ridge Bears because of their location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but because of the bloodline that had started their group. The Ridges had once been one of the largest peacekeeping families in the States. Many peacekeepers remained, but few were dominant. Only Bryan had the right balance of strength and magic needed to revitalize the clan.
Peter and Soren may not have been very upfront about their hopes, but though they were outsiders, they wanted to see the clan succeed.
More strong Bear clans meant a more diverse gene pool, and that was certainly something the Bears in Europe were suffering a lack of at the moment.
He was pleased the goddess had sent Tamara to Bryan, and that her brothers had gone to check out this new “threat” to their little sister’s life. For the first time since childhood, Peter had found a place he’d wanted to stay in for a while, and the fact the alpha’s sister was wide open and in need of rescue was simply greater incentive to stick around.
Shaking his head slightly, he chuckled to himself.
“What?” came Andrea’s voice from beneath the blanket.
“Thinking silly things.”
“What things?”
“You don’t want to know. Just sleep.”
“It’s warm in here.”
“You should pull the cover back.”
“I’m not complaining. I’m always so cold.”
“You could—”
“Don’t even tell me what you’re thinking,” she interjected. “You’re going to tell me I wouldn’t be so cold if I put on a few pounds. You think I don’t know that? I’m trying.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Tamara keeps pushing milkshakes under my nose whenever she’s at the office, and they always taste weird.”
“Probably that weight-gain powder crap lifters use.”
“I figured she’d slipped in something like that. Sarah’s tactic is leftovers. Whenever her mother is visiting to help with the baby, she cooks a lot. All that really good Puerto Rican stuff. Sarah brings food to the office saying her mother made too much, but the plates will still be hot when she gets there.”
“Not leftovers.”
“Nope. First dibs. Astrid’s a little more discreet, but I know her tricks. I keep finding granola bars and beef jerky in my desk drawer. The only reason I know they’re there is because someone keeps taking the pens off my desk, and I have to go rooting around for them.”
“How do you know Astrid’s the one who leaves them?”
“Because that’s the way her mind works. She thinks in reverse order sometimes and decides what she wants an outcome to be, and then she imagines the steps that need to happen first. I’ve never called her out on what she does, because then that would lead to her asking if I ate the stuff.”
“She would know from checking the drawer.”
“Yeah, and I keep my desk unlocked so she can check.”
“What does Maria do, offer you pot?”
Andrea shook against him, her body shuddering from a low and restrained laugh. “I don’t think she actually smokes. She’s not that kind of hippie. She’s more likely to bring me coffee that’s half cream and sugar.”
He smoothed down a cowlick at the top of Andrea’s head and watched the untamed hair spring up again and again. “What about Dana?”
“Well, Dana has an arrangement with the staff at Paddy’s, seeing as how her husband owns the pub. I’m supposed to call for lunch whenever I’m working and whoever’s in the kitchen will send over a delivery.”
“Do you call?”
“Most days I forget to.”
“You need to do better. Set a reminder on your phone that’ll beep every day at eleven-thirty.”
“I’ll do that whenever you give me my phone back.”
He closed his eyes again and let out a ragged breath.
“I…don’t mean now,” she said. “I don’t need it now.”
“But you do. You should let people know you’re fine.”
“But if I do that, they’ll figure out where I am. They have the resources to track that stuff back.”
“You should want them to track you.”
“Why?”
“Do we really need to hash this out again?”
She sat up a little so she was more on top of his chest. Brow furrowed, she stared down at him.
He grunted and looped his arm around her back.
“You brought me here, and you’re trying to push me away.”
“Because I need to be near you right now. That doesn’t mean I have to sully you.”
“Sully me? Okay. Interesting word choice, but isn’t my chastity or lack thereof mine to do with as I see fit?”
He grimaced. In the end, their mating was up to her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t continue being vigilant. As badly as he wanted her, he knew better than anyone that he needed to leave her alone.
She lie back down and idly rubbed his bicep. “I’m sure you and Soren have ways to send emails that aren’t easily traced back to their originator.”
“From my phone, yes, that would be possible.”
“Then give me your phone. I’ll call off the dogs, or whatever. This is between you and me. We’ll work this thing out between us without interference.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I’m a grown woman, Peter,” she said with exasperation. “Don’t you dare discount my ability to make a sound decision on occasion.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.” He carefully unwound his body from hers and then carried the dirty tank top to the kitchen. He tossed it into his open duffel bag, washed his hands, and picked up his discarded jeans from the floor.
He pondered putting them back on—putting a layer of interference between him and Andrea.
“If you’re dressing, so am I,” she said, looking over the back of the sofa.
He grabbed the phone from the pocket and dropped the jeans.
Powering on the cell as he stalked across the room, he dreaded the imminent surge of text messages and voicemail notifications, knowing full well that every Carolina Bear who knew him and every Shrew was probably trying to get in touch.
He sank onto the sofa cushion, quickly cleared the notification screen, and brought up a browser window for Andrea. “You’ll need to use webmail,” he said.
She took the phone from him and navigated to her provider. “I hope I have some of these addresses saved in my webmail contacts. I usually use a desktop app for email.”
“You don’t check mail on your phone?”
“Not generally, unless I’m working away from the office for some reason and don’t have my laptop handy.” She scooted beside him and pulled her legs up under her body. “Um…Bryan first, I guess. And maybe
cc Tamara. They’re probably together.”
“Probably.”
While she tapped out the message, he tried his damnedest not to read the screen—not to invade her privacy in spite of the seriousness of the situation. She could have been sending them a coded message for all he knew, telling them exactly which city they were in and everything she could observe through the windows of the apartment.
And that’d be her choice. If she wanted so badly to go, he wouldn’t try to keep her. He’d pay the piper and take his lumps.
She held the phone screen up to his eyes. “Does that message seem believable enough?”
“Hmm?” His eyes focused slowly on the screen.
“Is what I wrote forward enough to make them believe me?”
I’m okay. I’m with Peter. Be home soon with leads on Gene.
He rolled his gaze up to her.
“Is it?” she asked.
Forward, and not what he’d been expecting her to write at all.
“Nice diversion technique there at the end,” he said.
She shrugged. “Well, I didn’t lie, did I?”
“I hope not.”
She sent the email and handed him the phone.
She should have been trying to get away from him. He’d given her an opening, and she hadn’t wanted to run from him. Any other woman would have.
He didn’t understand her one bit.
CHAPTER FIVE
Peter didn’t seem so eager to take his phone back, so Drea grabbed it, settled down into the sofa, curled against him, and caught up on her YouTube video subscriptions.
He seemed tolerant of her surfing, even if he did keeping furrowing his brow at the lead music to one particular pop culture news recap show.
“You’ve got a good internet connection,” she said. “Mine always breaks up.”
He cleared his throat and skimmed his fingers down the side of her arm. “Could be the phone.”
“Maybe. I’ll get around to replacing my personal one sooner or later. I tend to hold onto my phones until they’re so old that I can’t update the operating systems anymore.”
“Why? Not interested in the slick new thing?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I guess the idea of all that electronics waste going into landfills when the components aren’t properly recycled makes me twitchy. I try to be a thoughtful consumer. That’s hard sometimes. So many things that shouldn’t be disposable are now.”
“Mmm. Is Maria’s crunchy Earth-mama vibe rubbing off on you?”
Drea laughed and worked her leg between the two of his. She needed more of her body touching more of his.
He pulled the covers up over her a bit more.
“No. I had that concern before I got to meet the Earth mama. I guess I’m like this because of my grandparents. I always thought they were just frugal, but really, disposing of things was just harder for them. Where they lived in the mountains was pretty rural. No trash pickup, you know, and if they wanted to dispose of things, they had to drive them to the dumpster. Obviously, they wanted to limit how much they had to make that errand, but also, money was so tight, reusing what they could just made good sense.”
“Wise.”
“I’d like to think some of that wisdom has rubbed off on me. My mom got some for sure. She’s committed to buying as few things in plastic packaging as she can. That can be restrictive, obviously, but she finds workarounds. Ends up buying in bulk a lot. You should see how many Mason jars of chocolate chips she has in her pantry.”
He chuckled and set a hand to the small of her back. He pressed his palm up and down her spine in what seemed to be an idle gesture—not touching anything interesting, but it was still a touch, and she certainly wasn’t going to refuse. She would have never thought he’d be so tentative. If he’d asked for sex, she would have quickly and unambiguously told him yes.
Why hasn’t he asked?
“How is your mother?” he asked. “Haven’t met her yet. She and your father do a good job of staying out Gene’s splash zone.”
“I guess she’s as okay as could be expected. Any woman who has an alpha Bear as a son is going to have more than her fair share of angst, but she knows that she wouldn’t be any good in a conflict. When Gene started throwing his weight around, most of the older folks in the clan began to withdraw. Gene let them go, I guess, because they’re so docile and weren’t a threat for him. Our Bears tend to mellow a lot with age. They don’t even have to shift at full moons half the time.”
“And you’re pretty mellow to start with.”
She shrugged. “Not sure if anything can be done about that. We never needed to be aggressive and confrontational before Gene. Used to be that Ridge Bears were able to diffuse situations just by showing up. We’re mediators at heart.”
“You became mediators, Andrea, but you’re Bears. The creature in you was no mistake. Perhaps your job changed over time, but the capacity for strength is still there.”
She let out a quiet breath. “That ship has sailed for me.”
He dropped a hand atop her hip and growled.
“Simple truth, Peter. You know and I do. The Shrews can try to toughen me up and teach me to use weapons, but being better equipped isn’t going to spark a personality change. At this point, the best the clan can do is identify which born-Bears are more like Bryan and less like me. They should be the ones trying extra hard to have cubs.”
Peter gave her hip a squeeze, but said nothing.
In her mind, that meant he agreed. He would have been silly not to agree.
At least we’re in an accord on that, her inner bear said.
Drea gave her head a little shake and tried to dislodge the furry pessimist, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She was a part of Drea in the same way Drea had lungs and a heart and a spleen. Even in sleep, she couldn’t silence that beast. At times, the bear part of her overtook her dreams and choked out any possibility for restful sleep.
Sighing, Drea set the phone down on the cushion ledge beside Peter and closed her eyes.
“Done already?”
“Thinking about too many things at once. With the bear in me chiming in to everything, I’m getting a headache.”
“What’s she saying?”
Andrea shook her head again. “Not worth repeating.”
“You and your bear aren’t simpatico?”
“We’re rarely in accord.”
“That’s unusual.”
“So I hear.”
“Hmm.” He slid his hand down to her belly and swirled his fingertips around her navel.
She sucked in a breath at the pleasurable tickle and her body arched reflexively into him.
She wanted to guide his hand into her panties so he could see again that his touch was welcome and wanted, but she’d never been forward enough to do such things. She’d always waited and hoped the guy would get the hint—with the few guys there’d been, anyway. She generally had to take what she was given, and she didn’t like having to ask.
Of course she knew she wouldn’t get what she wanted if she didn’t ask, but asking was so contrary to her personality. The thought of having to do so made her anxious, and she tamped the idea away so Peter didn’t scent her vacillating hormones and think again that she was afraid of him.
Hormones…
She gnawed on her inner cheek contemplatively and danced her fingertips over his collarbone.
His nose was much better than hers. He would be able to discern the tiny hormonal shifts, and there was one cocktail in particular she actually had some control over.
She closed her eyes and kept dancing her fingertips over that little stretch of his broad chest, perfectly chastely. But in her mind, she pictured her hands being secured around something much lower. She pictured herself kneeling between his legs and waiting to be told to go on. To lick or to suck. To do anything to give him pleasure.
And she would enjoy indulging him, because he’d be sated and content, and a content alpha was a good alpha.
She wanted to taste him—to pull him wholly into her mouth and caress his thick length with her lips and tongue. She wanted to feel his release pulsing down her throat, to hear his hiss of pleasure, to feel his body stiffen.
To hear him saying her name in that way he did.
She pulled in some air, and felt her way down to his nipple. Hard as a pebble in the chilly room and demanding the attention of her tongue. In her mind, she licked him brazenly and lashed the tip of her tongue all around the nub before he decided that turnabout was fair play. And she imagined she was on her back with her hands tied tightly behind her, enjoying every flick, pinch, and nip. Every lick. Every suckle—each one receiving an answering pull from her pussy. Maybe if she were a good girl, he’d go there next.
Please…
“Andrea,” Peter said in a growl.
She opened her eyes. “Yes?”
“Were you asleep?”
“No,” she said slowly.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Why do you ask?” She dragged her tongue across her dry lips and tried to keep her pulse from speeding. He’d be able to feel her heart pounding and how her breathing had become shallow and rapid.
“Because you smell like you need to be fucked. Your panties are wet against my leg.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help my body’s response. We’re so close, and… Is that a problem?”
“That depends on how you define a problem.” He rolled over a bit and nudged down the covers. His heated gaze raked down her belly and settled at the apex of her thighs.
Reflexively, she rubbed them together trying to slake some of the ache.
“You’re aroused just from lying there?” he asked incredulously.
“Well, no.” She swallowed. “I need a little more than that.”
“You’re turned on by my pheromones, then.”
“I can’t smell them.”
He grunted and slipped his fingers over her breast. The tips rasped over one engorged nipple and he rolled his gaze to her as if in question.
She lay very still and held his gaze. Take what you want.
He gathered up the bud between his fingers. “Sit up,” he said.
