Green Bearets: Jarvis (A Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Base Camp Bears Book 3)
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Green Bearets: Jarvis
Base Camp Bears #3
By Amelia Jade
Green Bearets: Jarvis
Copyright @ 2017 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: February 2017
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Green Bearets: Jarvis
Chapter One
Carrie
Her courage failed her at the last second.
Instead of taking a left into the building, she kept walking. Her strides took her around the block, back to where she’d first tried to get her shit together.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” her sister asked as she slid back into the faded leather seat in the booth at the restaurant.
The same seat she’d vacated perhaps ten minutes earlier. Her sister Andrea hadn’t even bothered to leave.
“I see that you had all kinds of faith in me,” she replied, nodding at the fresh glass of wine sitting on her side of the table.
Andrea smiled. “You know I love you, Sis. But you’re a little bit predictable sometimes.”
She pursed her lips unhappily, and then took a sip. Perhaps it would help fortify her a bit more, giving her the spine to do what needed to be done. The dry white liquid slipped smoothly over her tongue, tingling her taste buds before she swallowed it with a soft smack of her lips.
“I just can’t shake the feeling when I get near,” she admitted. “I start to tremble and sweat. My breathing gets short. The entire idea fucking terrifies me.”
Her sister sat back, the leather and wood bench seat creaking, despite the slim stature of the woman occupying it. Andrea was a slip of a woman. The two of them looked so unalike that many people refused to believe they were related.
Until they laughed. They both had the same unabashed, loud belly laugh that attracted attention from the entire room if they let loose. Then everyone believed their story, because it was just too similar to deny.
“It’s been two weeks, Sis. I mean, I’m not a psychologist, and really you should probably see a shrink. But to me, you should have at least called them by now, talked anonymously over the phone, no?”
She grimaced. “Maybe. But there’s a problem with that as well.”
“Come on Car, you can’t even call?”
“No, I can’t,” she fired back. “I tried to, believe it or not.”
“What happened? Did you hang up ridiculously fast like in some cheesy rom-com movie?” Andrea teased.
She laughed. “No. It’s actually even simpler than that.”
“They didn’t pick up?”
“Close enough,” she said. “They don’t have a phone number I could find.”
Andrea snorted. “Figures. Shifters are notoriously anti-technology. I’m surprised they use electricity.”
“They aren’t cavemen!” she protested. “They just prefer to be free from the digital world, as I understand it at least.”
“You know Carrie, for someone who is terrified of them, you seem to have a lot of knowledge about them.”
Carrie rolled her eyes. “I’ve lived in Cloud Lake a lot longer than you have. You learn things that way.”
“Yah yah yah. How long you going to hold that one over my head?” Andrea said with a wave of her hand.
Carrie smiled. The two Suter sisters had been inseparable for the longest time. Until Andrea met a boy and moved in with him, while Carrie moved to Cloud Lake to take up a lucrative job offer. She’d told Andrea that the boy was bad news, but it had taken two years for her to truly realize that herself. Carrie liked to remind her from time to time that she was the smarter sister.
“For as long as you keep making fun of me.”
“I’m older!” Andrea protested. “It’s basically my job to poke fun at you.” She paused, taking a sip of her own wine. “Besides, it’s not like you don’t give it right back.”
Carrie grinned and raised her glass, and the two women clinked them together lightly before taking another long sip. A silence fell between them, comfortable and calming, born of over twenty-five years of friendship and love.
“So, what are you going to do now?” Andrea asked several minutes later, her tone concerned and polite.
Carrie downed her wine, rolling her shoulders as the last of it trickled down her throat. Her eyes hardened and she looked her sister right in the eye.
“I’m going to try again,” she said firmly, and slipped from the seat. “Thanks for picking up the check,” she said on her way out, giving her sister a wink.
Andrea sighed. “Anytime,” she shot back with a laugh, waving Carrie on.
The walk from the restaurant to her destination seemed to fly by. The sun was shining, though the wind was brisk enough to remind her that spring had barely started, and that she would be wearing warm clothing for some time to come yet. Shorts and T-shirt weather was still a ways off, however unfortunate that might be.
Turning right onto the double-wide street, one of the few in Cloud Lake, Carrie saw her destination loom up in front of her, halfway between this intersection and the next, on the far side of the street from her.
The Mineshaft Motel.
The number of figures on the street had increased exponentially. Many were just lounging around, while others unloaded crates from a truck. Yet more stood on nearby rooftops or manned the large line of sandbags and steel-plated walls that were arrayed in front of the building.
It was like approaching a military checkpoint as seen in a movie. Except all the men were huge, hulking brutes well over six feet tall that could turn into raving, colossal beasts that weighed nearly two tons.
Who wouldn’t be terrified of that?
Carrie paused across the street from the motel, their local base in town. She wondered if they missed being back home in Cadia, the shifter territory that bordered the human town of Cloud Lake.
“How may I help you, ma’am?”
She jumped at the deep baritone voice that sounded from next to her.
“Excuse me?” she asked, trying to get her hammering heart back under control.
“I was just asking if there is anything we can assist you with?” The response was polite enough, but Carrie detected an undercurrent of warning.
The point was clear: You’ve walked by here three times this morning, staring at us. But you haven’t come up. Either get
your shit together, or go away.
Fine.
Her temper flared slightly. It was one thing to falter and walk away without interacting with anyone. But now that she’d been confronted, Carrie wasn’t one to back down.
“Yes, you may,” she said firmly, noting the slight eyebrow raise.
Take that, you arrogant dick. Not all of us are going to be cowed by you forever.
“What can I do?”
“I need to speak to someone in charge.”
“I can help you.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Are you in charge of all this?” she asked, waving at the motel across the street.
“No,” he acknowledged with a dip of his head.
“Then take me to someone who is, please. It’s important, and I think he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
The shifter looked at her. Carrie was positive she could hear him grinding his teeth, but she quickly decided she didn’t care. He’d come up to her to try and scare her off. If he couldn’t handle being dismissed because of it, that was his problem.
Andrea had assured her that these shifters were better than the ones they’d driven from town, but her first impression wasn’t exactly helping her in believing that.
At last the man relented and gestured across the street. “If you’ll follow me…?”
He left it open, looking for a name.
“Lead on,” she said, purposefully ignoring him. It was a little rude, but she needed to stay in control of herself. If that meant letting her temper run hotter, then so be it. She could always apologize later.
The shifter gave her a smile devoid of happiness and started across the street. His long strides quickly accelerated him, and Carrie was forced into a half-jog just to keep up.
Fair is fair. I’d probably do the same thing.
But the street wasn’t overly wide and she was shown into a waiting room almost right inside the front doors, meaning she didn’t have to do it for very long.
“If you’ll just wait here, I’ll see about finding you someone to talk with,” he said, and departed before she could say anything.
Maybe I should have been a bit more polite.
Now that she was actually inside their world, she found it wasn’t that bad. They were all smiles and polite greetings, exactly what she might have hoped for.
The wait stretched from five minutes to ten, and then twenty. Carrie began to wonder if they were making a point.
Shortly before the half-hour mark a tall man with close-cropped brown hair emerged from an office down the hall and began making his way to where she was seated.
“Hello,” he said, his intense arctic blue eyes focusing on her.
“Hi.” The word just seemed to slip from her mouth.
“You’re the woman looking to speak to someone in charge?” he asked, ignoring the way she stared at him, slack-jawed.
“Yes.” Her ability to string multiple words together had fled before his blue eyes and chiseled jaw.
The way his white T-shirt clung to his impressive physical form didn’t exactly help either. She could count his abs through the shirt, stretched as it was by his broad chest and shoulders. The sleeves ended just before his biceps, hugging them tightly as well.
But it was the eyes that kept drawing her back, over and over. They were simply entrancing.
“I’m Major Eidelhorn,” he said, introducing himself.
“Carrie Suter,” she replied automatically, taking his hand.
The moment his fingers slipped over hers, Carrie almost fainted. The contact between them sent a shockwave rippling up her skin, starting in her fingers and moving like a blast over her hand, forearm, and through her shoulder, to where it could spread through her entire core.
The huge fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around her hand, as if he didn’t want to let go, but after another moment and what she would later realize was a colossal effort, the major dropped her hand.
“Would you like to come into my office?” he asked, gesturing back down the hall from which he’d come.
“Okay,” she said, still half in a daze.
Get a grip on yourself, woman! Stop swooning over him.
But even as the major turned his back on her, Carrie couldn’t shake the image of his azure orbs from her memory. It was like they had burned themselves into her retinas with their intensity. The power behind her gaze was frighteningly beautiful, and she wasn’t sure how she would fare with the rest of her meeting with him.
On the bright side, Carrie was absolutely positive that she wasn’t scared of this particular shifter…
***
Jarvis
He closed the door to his office behind him, ushering the woman—Carrie, her name was Carrie—into a seat in front of his desk.
With her back to him, he took a quick moment to look down at his hand, the same one that had touched her. Something had been exchanged between them on that first contact, and he had no idea what. It could have just been a shock of static electricity. For all Jarvis knew though, it could have been much more.
Shaking his head and collecting his thoughts, he moved behind his desk and sat down, steepling his fingers in front of him.
“So, Mrs. Suter, what can I do for you?”
She shook her head. “Just Miss, please. Or Carrie.”
Jarvis nodded his head in apologies. “Very well. What brings you to us, Carrie?”
All of a sudden the look of wonder and delight faded from her face. It was such an abrupt and unexpected transition that Jarvis was caught completely off guard. Her eyes began to dart around the room nervously, and she began to tremble slightly.
“I need to report a crime, please. Major Eddel—Edderhore.” She paused, and looked up at him.
Jarvis reacted quickly, recognizing that the situation was almost out of control before it even began. Whatever it was she needed to tell him, it had shaken her up. The soldier who’d brought her in and notified him had said she was a strong woman, and he’d gotten that same impression himself. What the hell had happened to leave her so rattled?
“Call me Jarvis,” he said softly, pulling his fingers apart and leaning in closer. “Can I get you a water or anything?”
Carrie shook her head. “No, no thank you. I need to get this out.”
He nodded. “Take your time.”
She looked around the room, giving him time to study her.
Jarvis’s first impression had been summed up in one word: stunning. The more he looked at her, though, the more he felt the word didn’t do her enough justice. Her hair fell to her shoulders, the chestnut brown practically shimmering in the bright lighting in his makeshift office. The bottoms of her hair curled outward in a pleasantly enjoyable twist.
Round cheeks were dusted with just a bit of red from the dry wind blowing outside, highlighting the thin, almost elfin nose. Both it and her forehead were covered with a light sprinkling of freckles that really added a shade of personality to her.
Again and again, however, he was drawn back to her eyes. They were blue, like his, but a deeper, more noble and majestic blue, like one might imagine on the oldest and most prestigious of aristocrats. They were so big it gave her an almost regal look.
And it sucked him in completely. Jarvis was staring at her, forgetting that she could see him.
I would kill to wake up to that face every morning.
The thought rocked him back in his chair with its intensity. It was so unexpected and over the top in its desire that it served as a mental slap, bringing him back to reality. Which was right when she started speaking, her lovely alto voice having steadied once more.
“I’m sorry, this is hard for me to get out,” she began. “I know that you and your, um, men, are different from the others, but you’re also the same. So it’s hard.”
Jarvis nodded. It was true, although he and his men were from nearby Cadia, a shifter-only stronghold friendly to the residents of Cloud Lake like Carrie here, they were still shifters.
“If you would feel more comfortable, we can go outside, away from all this stuff,” he said, waving his hand around to indicate the shifter base she was currently sitting in the middle of.
Carrie hesitated, but ultimately ended up shaking her head. “No, no I’m here now. I’d just rather get it out.”
“Very well.”
She licked her lips, a nervous move. Jarvis found his bear urging him to reach across the table, to take her hand and squeeze it, to comfort her.
That’s not going to help. She clearly doesn’t feel able to relax around me right now. Crowding her personal space would be the completely wrong way to go about things.
He tried to convey that concept to his bear, but it was hard. He had to send images and emotions only, as it wasn’t intelligent enough to understand words. But after twenty odd years of living with each other, he’d gotten pretty good at it. His bear snorted once, as if to say “trust me, she’d be okay with it” and then settled back down, content to wait for the time being, but he could feel its eyes and attention still focused intently on her.
Who was this woman, and why was she eliciting such a reaction from him?
“It was the night that, um, you guys came back,” she said, speaking again.
Jarvis figured she meant the night he and the Green Bearets under his command had liberated Cloud Lake from Fenris, a rival shifter stronghold that had claimed it as their own.
It had been a night filled with blood and death. Thankfully most of it had been on the Fenris side, but he’d lost more good men that night than he cared to admit. The Green Bearets had been forced on the defensive once more as they both recouped their losses, and brought more forces forward from Cadia itself to fortify the city.
It was a tricky thing to do. Cloud Lake wasn’t under the jurisdiction of shifters; it belonged to the humans, and was governed by them as well. So he couldn’t fortify the city the way he wished, as it still had to run normally. But he needed to prevent Fenris from having a presence there at the same time.