Bear Outlaw (She-Shifters of Hell's Corner Book 4)

by Candace Ayers

  “Guns for the crazies, huh? Something tells me the world won’t exactly embrace your methods, Doc.”

  He took her to the range, though. She rode on the back of his bike. He went slower than was necessary and took a longer route, relishing the feel of her arms around his waist. The innocent contact, the trust it took to get on a motorcycle with someone, was a balm to his wounded spirit.

  Everly didn’t pressure him to talk about anything that he didn’t want to. They simply enjoyed each other’s company. Connor found that when he wasn’t using the attraction between them as both shield and weapon that Everly was a woman that he admired, with a quick wit and a strong spirit. She was most definitely someone who deserved much better than he had to give.

  With an unusual burst of sentiment, he decided that he would accept her easy affection today, cherish it as the gift it was. Tomorrow, though? Tomorrow he would give her a gift of his own—he would walk away. He would save her from being entangled with a monster, save her from giving a piece of herself to a man who would never measure up to deserving it.

  When they came together that night, it was not a rushed and frantic encounter like the ones they’d had before. Connor laid her on his bed, tried to show her with every touch, every kiss, what he would never admit to her in words.

  When he entered her warm, wet heat and plunged into her again and again it filled him with a sense of completion like nothing ever before. It was more than sex, he realized with surprise, though he wouldn’t allow himself to examine exactly what that meant.

  10

  Everly stretched, delighting in muscles that were slightly sore for all the right reasons. Last night had been an amazing experience. Connor had finally let his shields down, and what she found beneath them was spectacular. He had cherished her with his eyes, his words, his body. He had made love to her—no way could last night be described in any other words, though she’d never been one to romanticize sex. Last night had been a satisfaction so complete that a small part of her wondered if she would ever be satisfied with anything less again.

  Even if that was true, it might just have been worth it. She hadn’t forgotten that she had been intent on getting inside Connor’s defenses to help him—well, maybe for just a few hours there, but who could blame her? The man was enough to make any woman forget for a while what she was about. He’d opened up to her yesterday. Not enough to begin to confide in her about the last fateful mission he’d been on, but enough for her to hope that he would in the future. And if she had to warm his bed for a while longer before he did? Well, that was definitely fine with her.

  She ran one hand down Connor’s back. He shivered in response to her touch, but didn’t wake. With a smile, she decided to make herself some coffee. She would wait for a bit, let him wake up and kiss him goodbye before she left him, maybe even try to make plans to see him again.

  She padded softly through the apartment, and found everything she needed to make a pot of coffee. When she went to the trash can to dump out the old grounds, she saw a box upended into the trash can. She figured she would replace the bag with a fresh one, but when she pulled out the box to take the bag from the can, there were several photos in an otherwise almost empty bag. She reached down and began to sift through the items. The photos were of Connor and Jonathan, and there were home-burned DVD’s as well. Some of the pictures showed two boys that she assumed to be them as children. Their arms were around each other in most of them, and they had the too-bright smiles and haunted eyes of children who had already been to hell and back, who were leaning on each other to survive.

  She rose when she heard Connor come into the room, one of the DVD’s still in her hand.

  “Well, good morn—” The words dried on his tongue, and stoic weariness replaced the sleepy warmth that had been in his eyes.

  “What is this, Connor?” She couldn’t understand what had led him to throw these things away. She watched his face as the mask of sarcasm and humor that he’d used to hide his pain from her began to appear. No, that wasn’t happening again. Not this time.

  “Don’t, Connor. Just…don’t. If you think you’re going to convince me that something isn’t seriously wrong after this,” she swept one arm to motion toward the garbage can behind her, “then you must think I’m a damn idiot. I’ve skated around pushing you because I can recognize a man who won’t be forced when I see one, but I’m going to have some answers before I leave here today one way or another.”

  She saw the flash of pure grief in his eyes before he banked his emotions, then saw the anger born of defensiveness well up inside him. She watched as he finally broke, sighed the old, weary sigh of a man much older than he was, a man who shouldered a lifetime of disillusionment and regret.

  “Okay. Okay, Everly. You’ll get your answer, but don’t be surprised when you don’t like what you hear.”

  He crossed the distance and turned her face toward his own with a gentle finger beneath her chin. His kiss was filled with yearning, with regret. Then he took her hand and gently led her back into the living room motioning for her to sit on the couch. Connor let go of her hand and sat a bit farther from her before his gaze focused on an empty corner. His voice, when he spoke, was lifeless and flat.

  “Me and Jon were… He was the closest thing I had to family. We were from a pretty small town, and neither of us was all that well behaved.” He smiled, presumably at some memory of the two of them, and the reflexive expression seemed totally at odds with the anguish in his eyes.

  “No one wanted to keep either of us for long, so we were in a lot of the same temporary homes together, the halfway houses for boys that were a bit too much to handle in a more… traditional atmosphere. At first it was because we were broken, hurt and lashing out. Eventually though, half our antics were just attempts to be placed in the same home again. We both felt less alone in the world when we were together. We joined the service together too, both made it through selection and training to become SEALS. Then he met Marsha and got married.”

  Everly said nothing, afraid that if she spoke he would retreat from her once again. Somehow she knew that if he retreated this time, nothing she could do would be enough to reach him.

  “I was so damn happy for him, so damn proud. I thought one of us had actually managed to make it through our childhood and still have a full, happy life, and it was good, for a while. It was. Then things started to change. It seemed like after every one of our missions, he left a piece of himself behind when we returned home, until…”

  Connor met her eyes then, and his anguish seemed to be its own entity, a heavy presence robbing the room of light and air. “Eventually there wasn’t anything left of Jon, the Jon I knew, at all. He started going missing when we were overseas, even though it’s forbidden to go anywhere alone in a combat zone. When he’d come back, he’d seem…kind of… strung out. I thought maybe he was using. Not surprising, considering how we grew up. I still think he might have been.”

  Connor let his eyes go to the floor then, and Everly could tell that he could barely force himself to speak the next words.

  “When we were ambushed, Jonathan’s face contorted into an eerie smile, like he was having the time of his life, then he… He… He started killing our team, Everly. He was like a man possessed. I… I… aw, fuck, I had to take him out. I knew I had to do it. I knew it. I froze, though. I’ve never frozen before, no matter what I’ve faced. But seeing him killing our own teammates, it was like my mind just couldn’t believe my eyes, you know? If I’d shot him sooner, I could have saved every last one of them. Hell, if I’d just mentioned to someone when I noticed something wasn’t right…”

  Everly could hardly breathe through the lump in her throat, and she couldn’t stop the tears that were trailing down her cheeks any more than she could stop the sun from rising, not any more than Connor could go back and change that which had already come to pass.

  He continued speaking after a moment. “I didn’t help him when he needed me the most. I fail
ed him. But, the least I can do is let him die a hero, keep his wife and children from knowing that he died a traitor, a cold-blooded killer.”

  She laid a shaking hand on his arm.

  “I’m so sorry, Connor. I never guessed…I won’t tell a soul. I want you to know that. I swear it.” She moved her hands for emphasis, and his gaze fastened on the DVD that she’d forgotten she still held in her hand. She flinched as he tore it from her fingers.

  Gone was the teasing lover from the night before, the broken man of just a few moments ago. All she could see in his eyes now was a grief-fed anger that she feared might consume him. He threw the DVD across the room, and the sound of it hitting the wall was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of the morning.

  “Get the hell out, Doc.”

  11

  The following days became weeks in which Connor sank into an alcohol and grief laden haze. He no longer waited for evening to use liquor to dull his pain. He’d taken almost all of his saved leave after his confession to Everly.

  His commander had rushed the packet through for him, gotten the time off approved in hours, rather than days or even weeks. Connor wasn’t sure why he’d done so, but he was thankful. He didn’t know how he was going to face anyone again.

  Somehow, speaking of Jon’s death had made it more real, like a slap in the face. Before, he’d been able to push it down, distance himself until he almost felt like it was a bad dream. Words had the power, though, to bring darker emotions to life. He’d given the memory of Jonathan’s death that power, and now it threatened to choke him with every waking breath.

  Day after day, he tumbled deeper into the bottle. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he was doing it to escape reality or if he was trying to punish himself for what he’d done, wreck the body that had caused so much grief and pain. A little of both, or neither maybe. It really didn’t matter in the end, as long as he didn’t have to sober up and face himself in the mirror.

  Things continued on that way for a month and a half. His heavily muscled frame lost mass, and when he did bother to look in the mirror he didn’t recognize the tortured soul who stared back at him. That was good, he thought to himself. He hated the strong, confident, arrogant man who’d murdered the only family he’d known. Anyone he became had to be better than that.

  Eventually, though, there came a day that he woke without any liquor in the house. At some point over the last few days, he’d misplaced the keys to both his truck and his bike in a drunken stupor, so it looked like he would be going to fetch a bit more liquor on foot. He could have called a cab, of course, but after so many days in solitude, the thought of making conversation with another person seemed an almost insurmountable task.

  He would rather walk the two miles to the liquor store than try to speak around the grief in his throat and his heart. Even if he was inclined to, he felt that the words would be large and awkward in his mouth. No, he would walk to the liquor store this time. Then, after he’d had a few drinks to calm the shake in his hands and the pounding in his head, he’d find the fucking keys so that this didn’t happen again.

  The sunlight and heat left him shaking and queasy. His head was swimming and sawdust filled his mouth. Every breath felt too heavy for his lungs. The sunlight offended eyes that hadn’t seen nearly enough daylight in recent weeks. Even so, something about the walk cleansed him, sobered him at least fully enough to take a real look in the mirror when he got home. What he saw left him sick and ashamed. He showered off the sweat and the liquor scent that was oozing out his pores.

  Then he sat on his couch, unsure of what to do next. He stared at the room before him. It was cluttered with takeout containers and empty booze bottles. Some of the bottles had been left on their sides to leak their last few drops on the carpet, adding the scent of old alcohol to the smell of stale grease. He shook his head in disgust.

  That was as good a place to start as any, he supposed. He grabbed a garbage bag and was almost done picking up the worst of the clutter when he saw the DVD that had been laying on the floor since the morning he’d kicked Everly out.

  He found his laptop and placed it on the coffee table. With shaking hands he inserted the disc. It was a series of video clips from his childhood, all of them short, homemade by Jon and himself. Even through the pain he couldn’t help but smile at their childish antics. More clips followed of them in the service together, at Jon’s wedding, and at barbecues with Jon’s family. He watched it all with dry-eyed longing. What had happened? What had he missed? How had his friend slipped so completely off track without him noticing?

  The screen went black for a moment, and then Marsha’s face filled the screen.

  “Hi Connor. I’m recording this because I’m not sure I will have the strength to say what needs to be said to your face without getting mad. I’m sure that however Jon really ended, it was…bad. I can’t even imagine, and I don’t want to know. I wanted to show you how I remember him though, and how you should too. That’s what he’d want. I get if you can’t look at me for a while, or ever, without hurting. Just don’t throw out the good memories with the bad, okay? Jonathan wouldn’t want that.”

  He saw the tears start to fall slowly down her face as she reached forward to stop the recording. He was shocked to realize that there were tears in his own eyes as well. Only a few, too little to actually fall, but still, he thought he’d cried every last one in his youth. A couple solitary tears that represented cleansing, starting over, and he knew what he had to do.

  12

  Everly could hardly believe her ears when the secretary had called her to say that Connor Mitchell was there to see her.

  “Thank God,” she whispered after she’d asked the secretary to send him in.

  She stood uncertainly as he entered. He was thinner, to be sure, and paler. But there was a softness in his eyes that had been missing the entire time she’d known him. She waited, uncertain of how to proceed.

  He made his way to her, ignoring the professional boundary of her desk as he always had. Her heart hitched at having him so near after not seeing him for a month.

  “So I stayed drunk for a little over a month,” Connor began with a rueful smile. “Then, once I finally stayed awake and sober for a few hours at the same time, I thought about Jon, thought about the things you’ve said.”

  He took a deep breath, and Everly waited for him to continue.

  “I do need help. I don’t want to tell anyone else what really went down with Jon. It won’t bring anyone back and it will only hurt everyone involved, the way I see it. The families of everyone who died thinks that those men died at the hands of terrorists. I don’t want to rob them of that any more than I want to see Jon’s memory trampled through the dirt, but I need some help to deal with this, so I’d like to make an appointment to come back and see you.”

  “You don’t have to come here. I could help you any time you need it, Connor. Day or night.”

  “Still, we’ll do it here. You might as well get paid for all the trouble I’ve caused you. Before I start with those appointments though, there’s something else I could use your help with…”

  13

  The next weekend Connor and Everly walked hand in hand. Marsha walked beside them through the park, while her two older children scampered ahead of them toward the playground. They’d just gone out for ice cream, and now they were going to give the children a chance to play themselves out before Marsha brought the kids home, and before Connor brought the beautiful woman beside him back to his place.

  He reveled in the feel of Everly’s hand in his own. It seemed amazing that a week ago, he’d been drowning himself in liquor, half hoping he’d follow Jon to an early grave, but now he felt…peace. He and Marsha had spent the entire time in the ice cream parlor telling Everly stories about some of his and Jon’s escapades, and he found that he could laugh and remember the past fondly. Not without a twinge of pain of course, but this pain was bittersweet. After the soul-rending anguish he’d felt before, he could handl
e bittersweet, especially with a strong woman by his side to help him through.

  He couldn’t resist leaning in for a quick kiss, and loved how her lips curved into a smile at the simple gesture.

  “Uncle Connor and Everly sitting in a tree—“

  “Jenny, that’s enough,” Marsha told her oldest daughter in a scolding tone.

  Everly just laughed, and Connor couldn’t help but join her.

  “I guess we do seem a little whipped,” he admitted with a smile.

  “A little?” Marsha scoffed, “Everly, this man has never brought a single girl home for me to meet, and you have him eating out of the palm of your hand. He’s most certainly whipped.”

  Connor stopped and turned Everly so that she faced him, so that he could look into her beautiful eyes.

  “Well, Marsha,” he spoke to her, but his eyes never left Everly’s, “For the first time in my life, I’m thinking that being whipped is just fine with me.”

  And it was.

  THE END

  Loving the Alpha

  STORY DESCRIPTION

  Curvy Kira Bentley is smart, beautiful, frightened and alone. She is a freshly cursed werewolf, and clearly ignorant on the subject of what's happening to her. As if that weren’t bad enough, she can’t seem to avoid her sexy English professor, either inside or outside of the classroom, and not only does Professor Sawyer Donovan have looks to die for, he also invokes feelings in her unlike any Kira has ever experienced before.

  The last thing Sawyer Donovan expected was to find a pretty she-wolf in his English class. A ruggedly handsome young English professor at a prestigious university, the solitary werewolf has enough trouble dodging the unwanted attention of his female students without deliberately seeking one out. Yet, Professor Donovan’s sense of honor demands he shelter and guide his student in the transformation that she’s experiencing.