Bear Me Away (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Romance) (A Jamesburg Shifter Romance)

by Lynn Red

  One more row down, he thought. Only about sixty to go.

  Looking back at what he’d managed that day, since the sun came up about eleven hours before, it was a pretty embarrassing effort. Sure, he’d tilled a half acre, gotten so sweaty he had to use his shirt as a head scarf, and still managed to plant two rows of tomatoes and a few eggplants, but this was about half the work he’d normally manage.

  If it weren’t for that girl, West squeezed his fist. Why can’t I get her outta my head?

  It wasn’t loneliness, right? It couldn’t be. He’d spent the last five years of his life alone with his garden and his chickens and his single horse. Forget the fact that the tilling and the raking and the egg cleaning were all for little reason other than meditation, or had at least started that way. Forget that a decade ago, he had been as full of meat and rage and fury as any other strapping young bear.

  Forget all that. It wasn’t loneliness. It wasn’t that she had curves he loved, and eyes that caught his imagination in the worst way. There was something else to her, something he’d never seen before in anyone. It was the way she looked, the way she moved and... honestly? Her biting, sarcastic snark. It made him laugh, and laughing? That wasn’t something he’d done very often.

  The way she and her partner sparred constantly with verbal jabs got him laughing, even now, thinking back about the two of them.

  While he had found out about the Saints on Yelp, that wasn’t exactly why he called them – not entirely anyway. And aside from that, he did a little faking when he “met” the pair. He couldn’t help it. West liked to be secure; he liked to feel confident in the people he associated with. Sometimes, sure, the snooping around could be seen as paranoid, but where he came from? Paranoia was a good thing.

  And anyway, that dumpster behind the office they used was the perfect place for a bear to hang out and appear completely natural. Who sees a bear by a dumpster and thinks anything except “yeah, well, what are you gonna do?”

  She’d seen him twice before, though it was in the shadows and only glancing.

  He’d seen her three times, and probably, if he was being honest with himself, started falling for her from the beginning.

  West shook his head, mopped his forehead again, and sighed. “What the hell did I get myself into?” he asked the vine in his hand. “So someone tore up the garden, who cares? Hiring a private investigator – one that I stalked, no less? Maybe I am crazy.”

  Standing up after stuffing another tomato plant into a hole, he brushed the dirt off his jeans, and took the t-shirt head wrap off, wringing out the sweat. Why can’t I just get a mate the normal way? Do I even know what normal is?

  Back inside, he cracked two mason jars full of homemade tomato bisque and also a Silver Bullet. He clicked the stove to light it, and gently stirred at the creamy soup as he absently drank the beer. By the time the soup started bubbling, he had downed one, and opened a second.

  He grabbed a handful of basil from his windowsill, rubbed it between his palms until the fragrance filled the room, and dropped it in the pot. The mix of herbs, tomatoes, and cream struck West and let him relax slightly. He leaned down close, stirring, and filled his nose with the scent that reminded him of the only home he’d ever had.

  Maybe, he thought, as he took the first sip of the steaming, red liquid. Maybe it is loneliness.

  He sat, staring out his back window, watching the sun set. The mountains ringing Jamesburg in the distance seemed to explode in flames as the ball of light passed behind them, bathing the world in a brief orange glow.

  His spoon hit the bottom of the bowl with a clink, and he dropped it in. He wasn’t hungry anymore, but he wasn’t satisfied. What he really wanted? About sixty burgers to go with the beer he kept sipping.

  No, he thought. Never again. Nothing is worth the anger coming back. Nothing is worth the bulging muscles, pumping blood, and strength I can’t control. I don’t want to be a carnivore Popeye. All I want is to breathe, to farm, to work the land. To be left alone.

  “Just me and Elena,” he said, then scoffed a laugh at himself. “A girl I hardly know and I’ve decided we’re mates for life. Ain’t that a damn thing I’ve done?”

  He looked at the phone sitting beside his table, and considered picking it up. After all, nothing strange about a client looking after the status of their request, right?

  He was halfway through dialing when he stopped. Why? Why was he going after this so hard? Why, after everything he’d been through, everything he’d seen and done, was this the one he decided on?

  West shook his head, stuck his knuckles into his temples, and closed his eyes. Leaning back, visions of red and white hair, and curves, and kisses filled his head.

  He’d never admit it, but there it was, swimming through his mind. Why he couldn’t stop himself, he’d never be able to guess, even though deep down? He knew exactly what it was. He’d known the first time he laid eyes on that fiery-haired girl with the slightly snaggled bottom left canine, and the grin that made his heart feel like it was in a teenaged girl’s chest.

  Loopy, ridiculous, flighty. But then, every time he thought about her, his thoughts were of protection, taking her, claiming her, and making sure she knew she was his. But then again, was he imagining all that because she needed someone? Or because he did?

  Sighing again, West took another long drink.

  That thought was for another time. Another place. Right then? He had something else to worry about.

  Back outside, with a full stomach, West watched the sun sink the rest of the way behind Mount Jamesburg. The rest of the world called it something different, but around here the rest of the world hardly mattered. He fired up a lantern, hung it from a tripod, and went back to making little holes in the ground, and sticking pepper plant seedlings down in them.

  He knew he’d get his work done, whether it was today or tomorrow or a week away, he’d get it done. But right then? If he was focused on sticking sweet peppers in the ground, he couldn’t think too much about the girl he had to have.

  And thinking about things he knew he needed, but couldn’t get right then? For a bear with anger issues, that’s usually not the best idea.

  -5-

  “Yeah, I’m really gonna need to can this insomnia act.”

  Elena St. Claire

  Whit Whitman on the morning news described an incredibly strange, and undeniably familiar scene. A garden, utterly destroyed, except for the tomatoes, with a carrot jammed into the ground.

  “You can’t be serious,” Elena said. She rubbed her eyes and listened to her five year old Mr. Coffee suffer through dripping another pot.

  “This field,” Whit Whitman announced in his regular gravitas, “is the very picture of terror. Never have I seen a deer – or perhaps even a pair of them – wreak such havoc on unsuspecting crops. Such beautiful corn, peas, potatoes and lettuce, all destroyed. Such fine carrots, torn... asunder. Bernhardt Crumming, if you, or your teenage girls are the deer behind this, please, listen to the cries. Please, stop eating all of the vegetables. This is Whit Whitman, signing off.”

  His hair didn’t move when he touched it, and when the program switched from morning news to morning farm report, Elena flicked it off and reached for the phone. There was someone who’d like to hear about this.

  She already had the phone to start dialing when it rang.

  “Ms. St. Claire?” A slow, hauntingly beautiful drawl came through the receiver. “This is Thomas James—”

  “West,” she cut him off, her voice ragged and tired. “I’m sorry. I was just about to call. I know it’s been a week, but we’re still working on the single lead we’ve got. Two bite marks isn’t very much. Though there was a report just now on the—”

  West laughed at her enthusiasm. “I saw the news. Do you still have that carrot? Freeze dried or something?”

  Elena had been awake for too long to get jokes. “I took a plaster cast, a rubber molding and an imprint of the teeth. On top of that, I rolled it
in ink and made a makeshift fingerprint, and—”

  “And people are telling me you guys haven’t done many real cases. But here you are, regular Pinkertons. Did you used to be police?”

  “I used to be a line cook,” Elena bent backwards until her back popped and then bent forward, touching her toes. Looking up at her semi-removed popcorn ceiling – a project she started and then gave up on partway through, that may as well be a metaphor for her life – and then flopped back down on the bed, staring upward. The red digital lights from her bedside clock radio projected up there, right in the center of her field of vision.

  “Why did you call me at six in the morning?”

  “You were awake,” West said. “You said you were about to call me. It’s hard for me to believe that a week on, you were just calling out of nowhere before the sun was fully up, to report on having nothing to report.”

  Elena took a long, deep breath. He still hadn’t answered her, but really, there was no need. He was right, after all.

  She was going to do it. Paul had been badgering her for the entire week to ask this bear out for coffee so she could get her mind off of him, so she could stop being so fidgety and nervous and... he’d also made some wildly inappropriate sexual joke that would have gotten anyone else scratched across the forehead.

  There was one problem though. She couldn’t even start to pretend Paul was wrong.

  I can’t stop thinking about you, you’re a movie playing on the back of my eyelids from the moment I wake up every morning, she thought. And then she swallowed. She told herself she wasn’t going to fall for a client. She’d fight it tooth and claw until she pushed him away and life went back to the same way it always was. When life was numb and dull there weren’t any peaks or valleys. Elena could use some peaks – especially West’s – but valleys?

  “I wanted to ask you to have coffee with me this morning,” West said. His voice was crushed velvet colored like plaid and laid over denim. Tightly stretched, muscle-filled denim.

  “You... what?” Elena swallowed hard.

  “Coffee?” he repeated. “You know how two people go to a place and talk about things?”

  “You mean you want to go talk about your case?”

  “I mean I want to go and talk about you.” His voice lowered to a growl that made Elena’s stomach rumble just like it had the first time she saw him. Something approximating electric tingles crept down her stomach, disappearing underneath her panties. Warm, then cool, hot and then cold, the waves going through her thrilled, excited... and terrified.

  “No,” she said, reflexively. “I can’t get involved with clients.”

  Paul is gonna be pissed when I’m still running around with sex on the fox-brain, Elena thought. But I can’t get mixed up with him. I can’t let my edge get blunted. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? Edge get blunted and all that? What am I, some kind of ninja?

  Moments later, West grunted. “Well you’ll meet me to talk about the case then, being as I’m a paying customer and all?”

  Elena paused again, her mouth open to respond, but her heart going a thousand beats per second. “I guess I have to,” she said. I want to more than anything in the world. I want to see you and touch you and kiss you and let you hold me and take me and do whatever you want. “But you have to promise you won’t try to distract me from the case,” is what came out of her mouth, and weakly at that.

  “If I’m gonna promise that, then you have to make me a promise,” West said in his ear-caressing drawl. “You’re gonna have to stop distracting me. Rebuilding an entire farm is hard enough. And add into it me constantly dwelling on a woman I’ve met once in my life? I spend so much time thinking about your hair, the way you smell, the way your skin felt when I let my hand brush against you, that I’ve managed to replant one entire row of lettuce.”

  “A row of lettuce, huh?” Elena asked, biting her lip. She dug the point of her canines in, forcing herself not to admit her own desires. “That’s not much. I’m usually a lot faster than this, too. I,” she bit her tongue that time, because there wasn’t any other way she was going to shut up. Apparently. “Never mind.”

  He let out a gentle laugh that shook Elena to the core. “Then why don’t we stop playing the games? Why not just let it all out? Then, I’ll be able to plant, you’ll be able to Sherlock, and the world will go back to the way it should. Or it won’t. Depends, I guess.”

  West trailed off, leaving his words to linger in Elena’s mind.

  From anyone else that would have sounded a little pitiful. It would have sounded like begging, or at least a little bit of a whine. But from West? Listening to his voice took her back to that carnage-strewn field, and to how he’d transported her to another place, another world, just by catching her gaze. She remembered how he devoured her with his eyes, unashamedly exploring her body, her curves, right out there in front of Paul and God, and everyone else.

  Just the thought made her skin prickle. Elena’s nipples hardened in her bra, scratching sweetly against the bargain-bin, taupe fabric. She lifted her hand to her mouth, took a finger between her teeth and bit down, her snaggletooth sticking deep, until she let out a gasp.

  “So that’s a yes?” He ended the sentence with a vocal up-turn. It wasn’t a question though. It was a command, designed to sound like a request.

  That, too, hung in the air for a moment. Elena took the dented finger out of her mouth and ran it nervously through her hair. I’m really going to do this, aren’t I? Why can’t I control just one stupid impulse? Why do I have to give in to him? To this? Why can I just—

  “Yes,” she heard herself whisper. “I,” she paused to swallow. “But business only.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m serious, West,” she said. “I can’t do this, not right now. Business only. Okay?”

  It was his turn to pause. “Listen,” he said. “I know what I want. I know what I need. But if it ain’t right for you? Then I’ll just have to convince you that it is.”

  She opened her mouth to thank him for his understanding, but as soon as the first syllable escaped Elena’s lips, she realized what he’d actually said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Oh, did you want me to act like I was just going to sit around and wait forever? That’s not my style. That’s not your style either.”

  “You don’t know my style,” Elena said.

  “I don’t?” West shot back. “Why do you think I hired you? Why do you think I called a private eye with approximately zero experience in anything except shitty mate chasing?”

  That shut Elena down, but not in a hurtful way. Something about how he said the words was comforting, positive.

  “I did it because I do know your style.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “Yelp reviews, mostly,” West replied, with the most seriousness he could possibly muster.

  Finally – finally – she couldn’t help but let the wall fall down. Elena cracked a laugh, and West did, too.

  “I knew I could get you laughing,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “So now that you relaxed some, where do you like to get coffee?”

  “Shit,” Elena chuffed. “I just make it at the office. I can’t remember the last time I bothered to go out for—”

  “Great,” West said. She could hear the mischief in his deep, round voice. “I’ll see you there. It’ll take me thirty minutes or so.”

  That wasn’t a question either. He said goodbye, and the line went dead. Elena was still holding onto the phone, listening to the beeps. She finally placed the handset on her nightstand, nestled among the notebook paper, drawing, and models of teeth she’d brought home to stare at for some reason. What the hell was going through her head? She shook from toes to hair. Her fingers trembled, but even with all that, she couldn’t help smile.

  I should call Paul. I shouldn’t be there by myself, not with a guy I can’t trust myself to keep from making a superbly bad decision about. But... is it? Is it really bad? What’s wr
ong with giving in every now and then? She stood up, almost unconsciously, and finished dressing. What’s wrong with a little release from the tension? What’s wrong with just being an animal sometimes?

  Elena grabbed her phone, and for a second, started pressing through the menus for Paul’s number. Like she should have done, if she wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to do something crazy.

  Pulling up his contact info, her thumb hovered over the call button for a moment, and then she let her hand drop to her side. She looked at the phone again, then stuck it in her pocket.

  “To hell with it,” she said, locking her front door. “No risks, no rewards, right?”

  *

  Her hand reached for the industrial door handle. Elena grabbed the steel and turned the key, and gasped out loud as heavy warmth landed on her shoulder. “Hey there,” a familiar voice caressed her consciousness.

  “Soy milk, sugar-free latte,” West said. “And a black coffee that’s too big for one sitting.”

  Elena turned a critical eye toward him as he handed her the bigger cup. Wrapping her fingers around the cardboard sleeve, she inhaled deeply and let the scent of roasted beans course through her veins. “God that smells good,” she said, shuddering slightly. “Wait, you are having the weird, sugary, milky thing?”

  He smiled that crooked grin that made Elena lose her self-control. “I said sugarfree soy milk latte.”

  “You are ridiculous,” Elena said, allowing herself a smile. “You’re... I mean, a vegetarian bear with a soy milk latte. How is this real?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. Those dark blue eyes swallowed her in, invited Elena to release her defenses, invited her to let someone care. “I don’t know,” West admitted. “I don’t know how this happened or what it is, but I know how it makes me feel.”