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

by Candace Ayers

  "Hey! Spoiler alert!" one of the male students exclaimed indignantly. Kira blinked. It hadn't occurred to her that she could possibly ruin the ending of a nineteenth century classic, but the fact that students like the jock who interrupted her were invested was a testament to Professor Donovan's skills as a teacher.

  Kira shrugged, and bit her lips as she lapsed into silence. Professor Donovan was definitely studying her now, and she wondered if his response had been the one he was fishing for or expecting.

  "I see you've read this book before," he said finally. "Is that why you thought you could arrive late today?"

  Damn.

  3

  He could get used to having Kira Bentley in his office.

  The girl was currently folded into the chair in the far corner making up the quiz she had missed at the beginning of class; her hood was drawn up. Donovan tried not to look up too often to watch her, but supposed his observation could be excused as him looking for signs of cheating. Not that she needed to: he had been made painfully aware that she knew the material already today in class.

  "You misused a semicolon," the girl said grumpily as her pencil scratched along.

  "No I didn't."

  Aside from the black cloud that hung over her everywhere she went—not to mention the very distinct and very female pheromonal signals he could detect hovering around her at all times—it was a lot less lonely in the office with another body around to occupy space. The roast beef sandwich he had made her bring for him wasn't bad, either. It pleased him more than he could say that it appeared to be homemade today.

  "I wish you would have just given me a zero on this," she mentioned. "I heard you graded other people down who didn't do the reading."

  "But you did do the reading, Bentley," Donovan pointed out.

  "Not this year I didn't. And it's Kira."

  He didn't have a ready response to that, so he sat back in his chair and glanced across the room at the calendar posted over her head. The days of the month were crossed off systematically, dates circled and arrows crisscrossing weekly columns like an indecipherable series of football plays. He should have tried to work the dates out in an electronic document, or at least on his chalkboard, where he could erase his work when he arrived at an answer, but he didn't think she would guess what he was trying to figure out.

  "Last names keep things professional," he said finally.

  "That's easy for you to say," Kira said without glancing up from her test. "No one knows your first name. Everyone just calls you 'the Don'."

  "Do they?" Donovan leaned even further back in his chair and crossed arms. "I hadn't heard that. Well, I suppose it's better than 'the Van'."

  "Do your jokes just get more and more unfunny once you become a teacher?" Bentley asked without missing a beat. "I used to think it came with age, but you're not that much older than me."

  "I'm a lot older than you," he said quickly. He could perceive a dangerous line of thinking when he saw it… especially because he had been starting to think the very same thing himself. "And also, you're an incredibly rude young woman, Miss Bentley."

  "I'm also finished." The girl untangled her long limbs and rose, crossing to his desk with the clipboard and pen extended. He had been awaiting this moment, and rather than accept her completed quiz sitting down, he stood abruptly and snatched it from her with a flick of his wrist. It clattered to his desk unceremoniously in the next instant.

  She was close, now—closer than she had ever allowed herself to be in his presence. She was still wearing her sunglasses, and Donovan raised his hands to either side of her face. Her pale hands flew to stop him, but froze before alighting on his wrists. His touch was gentle as he smoothed her hair back with the pads of his fingers, and extracted the dark frames in one fell swoop.

  Startled brown-gold eyes stared back at him. She wouldn't know what he was seeing until it registered in his face, and for a moment he could tell she was terrified. Her fear abated when she saw him studying her in mute disappointment. He knew what symptom had made her late for his class, and he had held out a hope that he could confront her about it now. It would have been the perfect gateway to a real conversation about the girl's lycanthropy.

  Her frightened eyes held his for a long moment, and Donovan realized that he had been gazing down at her for several seconds more than was strictly necessary. He recalled the fleeting softness of her hair, and wished that he could stroke it back calmingly from her temple again, but he recovered himself before he could act on the inappropriate impulse.

  "Just checking to make sure," he said, angling himself away from her and turning her glasses over in his hands. "You never know. Sometimes students write test answers on the undersides of things. I had one particularly creative gentleman try it with a water bottle once."

  "So not only do you think I'm an awful student," Kira growled, but he heard a distinct quaver in her voice. "You think I'm a cheater as well."

  She snatched her sunglasses back from him, and Donovan felt the brief, angry stroke of her fingers against the backs of his. He wanted to grab her by the hand, to yank her against him and make her listen; it was the brute in him, he knew, the wolf that wanted to demand her attention and force her understanding. Sawyer Donovan was as mild-mannered as young teachers came, but he was starting to feel some frustration at his own inability to breech the subject of their likeness to one another. He needed to tell her, needed to help her—but as his eyes traveled back to the calendar on the wall, he felt that sick feeling of dread return once more. Too much of what he had already determined pointed toward a fatal alignment in their schedules. Kira Bentley had been turned recently, there was no denying that. And Donovan…

  Donovan had allowed himself to black out two full moons ago. It couldn't be coincidence, no matter how much he tried to massage the math.

  There were smaller damages between them he could work to control now. "I don't think you're—" he started to assure her, but he had come back to the conversation too late. Kira's backpack disappeared out the door, and she departed in a scissoring of lean legs and angrily-swishing blond tresses.

  Donovan stared a moment more at the empty doorway, before retiring back behind his desk with an exhausted sigh. He had almost had her. He could have come clean about what he was without using one of her symptoms as a jumping-off point, but to come clean about what he had done…

  He rotated the clipboard idly between his fingers, before picking it up to pore over her answers. She had gotten them all right, of course.

  And he had indeed misused a semicolon.

  4

  It had been Marissa's idea to go to the Fun Fair.

  Marissa's idea, Kira reminded herself, as she fought her way through the crowd of students on the makeshift midway. And where was Marissa now? Sixty feet up in the Ferris wheel and locking lips with a boy she barely knew from their dorm.

  The Campus Fun Fair was an event hosted annually every spring. This was Kira's first, and likely to be her last. There was nothing much to attract her interest as she wove between the stalls. The whole affair had been set up in the main parking lot and adjoining track field: there were bumper cars, roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, a Tunnel of Love…

  There were also food trucks and food vendors almost everywhere she turned, and the smell was starting to make Kira nauseous. She could feel herself salivating every time she passed by a hot dog vendor, but she wouldn't stop long enough to let herself look. It was likely she wouldn't be able to keep any of it down, anyway.

  Her clothes were starting to hang more loosely off her as a result. Tonight was warm, and she had used it as an excuse to don a flannel shirt and a pair of tight cutoffs. She noticed she was getting a lot of looks as she passed down the open alleyway between stalls, enough to make her regret her wardrobe choice. The last thing she wanted was for people to be looking at her in case something unexpected happened. She already had to pull out her phone every five minutes to check her face in the reverse camera display.


  This was bad. She wasn't having any fun, and she shouldn't be out this late. She was just turning back to head to her car when a commotion drew her attention over to the dunk tank.

  There was Professor Donovan, dressed casually for once in fitted jeans and a white V-neck. Kira stopped, momentarily startled by the disparity. He was surrounded by a small cluster of students; all of them were grinning and laughing. She felt a momentary tremor of envy run through her, and was startled by how affected she was by the sight. Under different circumstances, she was sure she would have been a part of that same group, adding another easy smile to the happy legion, sharing their jokes and conversation.

  Seeing her English teacher smile so broadly as the result of what someone else had said to him filled was enough on its own to fill her with instant remorse. She wanted to be liked by Professor Donovan, even if she wouldn't admit it out loud to anybody, even herself. So when the man's eyes eventually fell upon her in the crowd, and he shouted her name…

  "Bentley!"

  … Kira didn't immediately turn from the scene to walk the other way. After a moment's disbelieving pause, she decided to approach them cautiously. Several of the male students' eyes lit up at the sight of her in jean shorts; she had always been a popular student, so the girls looked happy to see her as well. The person whose reaction to her she was most interested in was currently turning himself away and walking around back behind the dunk tank.

  "Dude, Kira's going to love this," one of the boys from her dorm said knowingly.

  "Love what?" she asked curiously, eyes moving to track Professor Donovan as he ascended the stairs of the tank.

  "The Don is the next teacher up to be dunked for charity," one of the female students giggled. "He's promised us all a free throw."

  Kira watched as he adjusted himself on the tank's springboard and reached down to roll up the cuffs of his pants. When did he ever get out of his office to have calves that well-muscled?

  "Do I get a free throw?" Kira asked. Everyone in the group readily agreed that she did. She stood near the back of the queue as she watched the other students in line before her go through various goofy and dramatized warmups before their ultimate pitches. Five students threw, and five missed handily. When Kira finally stepped up to the chalk line, Donovan was grinning at her fairly confidently, his arms crossed across his chest. She plucked one of the softballs off the top of the bucket of ammunition and gave it a measured toss.

  "Late to the party as always, Bentley?" Professor Donovan called to her. He had taken to the part of heckler like a—hopefully English—teacher to water.

  "Is this a party?" she asked, keeping her tone of voice carefully neutral. "I thought it was about to be a massacre."

  The male students exploded into hoots and hollers around her. Sports and competition of any kind brought out the beast in her, almost more so than the full moon did nowadays.

  Almost.

  "Let's see you drop me like your grade point average," Professor Donovan returned. The whoops from the peanut gallery immediately became a chorus of agonized moans: ohhh. Kira's eyes narrowed into slivers as she honed in on the target. It was tempting to just lob the ball at Donovan's stupid, insultingly gorgeous face, but she was determined to win this round for once. "Let's see you dunk me like—"

  Kira reared back and let loose with her ball. It sailed straight and true; she had scarcely heard the metallic 'thunk!' of it hitting home before Donovan was sent dropping in a thunderous explosion of water. She mobbed almost immediately by her fellow students, who leapt all over her in their excitement and banded together to support her in raising her arm high above her head in triumph. She couldn't help it then—a huge smile bloomed across her face, banishing every lurking shadow from the past few weeks, and she laughed aloud with them.

  Once the furor had died down, she managed to extract herself from the group as they formed plans for the next attraction they wanted to hit up. She moved around the side of the tank to locate her victim.

  Professor Donovan was drenched, standing on a mat and shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other as if he didn't know where to begin to tackle the drying process. Kira alighted by the side of the tank and observed him, half in shadow, a hand raised to guard against the smile tugging helplessly at her lips. The man shook himself all over like a dog, before turning abruptly to find her when she gave vent to a little laugh. The look in his eye invited her to approach; she realized too late what a mistake this was. She hadn't even put one shoe down on the mat before she felt him pulling her in hard against him for a hug.

  "You son of a bitch!" Kira exclaimed before she could censor herself. He had her wrapped tightly in his arms, so tightly that she didn't stand a chance of drawing back from the cold, wet press of his chest. She had no choice but to suffer in agony as the water seeped into the front of her own shirt. She might as well have been the one to get dunked for all the good the chalk line was doing her now.

  "You have no idea," he said strangely. She was already rigid against him as she suffered through his payback, but his voice made her go still all the same. They were so close that his words felt like a murmur in her ear, and its proximity sent chills racing down her spine that had nothing to do the transference of water. When he finally extracted himself from her, Kira found herself staring up into a genuinely kind, if a bit roguish, smile.

  The smile appeared to collapse somewhat when he got a good look at her. Kira blinked, uncertain about what could have caused the change, until she glanced down at herself. The front of her chest was completely soaked through—the white tank top that she had worn beneath her open flannel shirt was now rendered completely translucent, clinging to the swell of her cleavage and revealing her black-laced pushup bra.

  "That was a bad move," Donovan said, his eyes raised to the sky as if prayer could bleach the image from his memory. "Very, very bad."

  "It's all right." Kira blushed as she wrapped the flannel across her front and hastily set to buttoning. She wasn't faring much better having to look at him. Her teacher's white V-neck was currently leaving nothing to the imagination: it molded to his pectorals like a second skin and excavated a six-pack that she had no indication had existed before this moment. She felt a flare of momentary desire in her belly, but angrily forced the feeling back down. He was her professor, and she was… hormonal. Possibly more so than any other freshman, considering the silent war currently being waged within her on a cellular level. She was glad when Professor Donovan finally turned away to grab a towel and reclaim his jacket.

  "You did that on purpose," she said eventually.

  "It was for charity. Believe me, I did not want to plunge into freezing cold, bacteria-infested water on purpose," Donovan returned as he pulled his clothes on.

  "You wanted to include me," Kira said. The man turned to look at her, and after a moment, her mouth flexed into a tired smile. "When you saw me walking through the crowd alone."

  "I meant what I said about your GPA," her teacher responded. It didn't escape her notice that he had avoided confirming her suspicion about his intentions. "You need to get a handle on it, now, before it's too late."

  "Yes, professor," she replied. Donovan turned on her then, startling her, and Kira took a step back off the mat. For a moment, she could have sworn his eyes flashed at her, and not just with frustration. She took another step away just to be certain of their distance, but her teacher surprised her by following her. She felt her shoulders connect with the backboard of the dunk tank, and her heart fluttered wildly in her chest as he overshadowed her. It occurred to her that they were hidden from the midway behind the tank. Possibly it occurred to Donovan, too, because he didn't move any nearer to her… but each exhalation of breath seemed to bring his chest closer to pressing once more against her own.

  "Don't just pay me lip service, Miss Bentley." Storming gray eyes dropped to her mouth unconsciously at the word. "Be a good student. It's your future on the line."

  Kira was staring fix
edly at his mouth as well. Was he holding back his anger, or was it something else? She could feel tension radiating from him, could sense something barely leashed inside him, but what was its source?

  "Why do you care so much about my future?" she whispered harshly. "You're a complete asshole to me. You barely even know me."

  "I know you better than you think," he replied. "And I care. Let's leave it at that."

  Professor Donovan thrust his towel into her chest and detached from her, striding around the side of the dunk tank and disappearing into the crowd. Kira turned to watch him go, feeling confused, and as if she really, really, didn't want to leave it at that.

  She had a horrible night. She woke well past one in the morning to the crunching of bones as her body shifted and contorted at disturbing angles beneath her sheets. She had been dreaming about running through beautiful fields of wildland green, dodging between trees, skimming over undisturbed puddles left fresh for her after a long day of rain. The reality of her room, and of the betrayal of her own body, was like a nightmare by contrast.

  She managed to stumble to the adjoining bathroom without knocking over more than a desk lamp. Her roommate was at home for the weekend, thank God. Kira barricaded herself inside the tiled room, moaning and sobbing as she contorted in pain on the floor. She just wanted it to stop.

  In her worst moments, she recalled Professor Donovan's face. She tried to remember what it had looked like when he smiled at her, what it had felt like when he banded her tightly to him, even as a joke. For a brief instant, she hadn't felt so horribly alone. But it was his words to her, his assertion that she was sinking herself and her education, that kept cycling through her thoughts in the darkest hours of the morning.

  And she knew how to put an end to it all tomorrow.