by Iris Balfour
I should have resisted then. An engaged man could be nothing but trouble. But the heat of his arms around my back melted my scruples. He tilted my face up and kissed me.
My lips parted involuntarily.
He did something unexpected and completely erotic. He parted his lips also, and breathed with me. My knees went weak.
Which he took advantage of, pulling me even closer to him. It was delicious being hugged tight. I was completely wrapped in his arms and felt absolutely protected, like he was my armor against the world. At the same time, I was aroused by his nearness, by his strong arms and the hard muscles of his chest. He was aroused also. It felt right to feel the hard length of his cock against my belly. He belonged to me, the thought came unbidden.
But he didn’t.
I broke away. “I’m sorry.” I tried to smile and pretend our kiss was no big deal. I failed miserably.
“Georgette…” He held out his hand.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Bear. Not interested in a nearly married man.”
His gaze forced me to listen. “You’re the one I hope to marry.”
I laughed. It was sudden and just broke out of me. I covered my mouth instantly.
“No,” he said stubbornly. “It’s not a joke.”
“Thank you for the compliment. In any case, I don’t want to mix business with pleasure.”
What was I saying? How could I reject this gorgeous man? Well, a cold logical part of my mind spoke, very easily, overriding the spark that leaped inside my heart. I barely knew him. What kind of man talked about marrying someone the first day he met her? A man in love, my heart responded.
But did I love him? I was attracted to him, definitely. But was I ready for more? Roland’s words echoed in my mind. I had thought him a friend, at least.
“I’m sorry, Bear.” I stepped away from him. “It’s too much too soon.”
He smiled at me. My breath caught at the beauty of his smile. “That’s fine,” he said confidently. “I’ll give you all the time you need.”
Bear
It hurt that my mate didn’t recognize me. Her body knew me, but her head ruled.
I couldn’t fault her. She had grown up with unmated parents. She was being careful. I would have to be persistent in my wooing.
When I walked her to her car, I made sure she had my personal cell phone number. I obtained hers as well. I didn’t try to kiss her again, but I couldn’t resist clasping her hand to my heart. Her face softened then. She looked at me, her beautiful eyes full of some emotion I couldn’t decipher.
I drove home then. I had planned to spend the night in town, but I needed to return to my woods. My heart was too full for the bustle of town. I needed to think.
My cell phone woke me before dawn. Instantly awake, I recognized my sister’s ringtone and answered immediately.
“Bear,” she said without preamble, “you’ve got to come up here. There’s a feral shifter in town.”
With that all my plans for my mate crashed. As chief of the Northern California werebears, I had to make sure all the bears were in good health mentally and physically. Feral bears were a danger to the human community and thus the bear community.
“Have you called Rod or anyone else?” Rod lived only an hour or so away from my sister. It would take me at least six hours to get there.
“Rod’s out of state,” she said unhappily.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
I grabbed my travel kit and hit the road.
iv
Georgette
I woke up alone. In my dreams I’d been wrapped in the fur-covered arms of a bear. I snickered to myself. No need to consult a dream analyst about this dream. Couldn’t be more obvious.
I admitted that I had thought about him before falling asleep. More than thought him. Stimulated by our evening, I’d been unable to sleep until I touched myself. And of course, I imagined his mouth kissing me everywhere.
I was humming when I walked into work.
Walt was waiting for me in my office. “How did dinner go?”
“Well, I thought,” I said cautiously.
“Did he give any indication of yes or no?”
I hid my wince. I’d been so wrapped up in the man I hadn’t looked for the signals. “He was pretty noncommittal.” Which was true.
“We really need that money,” Walt said. “I hope you showed him how much we want him on our team.”
My jaw dropped. “Walt, I—”
“Never mind.” He turned abruptly and left.
I was a little shaken by Walt’s comment. Did he really expect me to whore myself out to prospective investors? My mouth had a sour taste. The sourness was still there when Walt came storming in an hour later.
“It’s no go,” he said baldly.
Since he left my office I’d moved on to the plans for our sponsorship of the ballpark. “You don’t like the T-shirt design?”
“Bruin just called me to say he was passing on this opportunity. You couldn’t tell me that?”
“I didn’t know, Walt.”
“Why the hell didn’t you? Isn’t it your job to know stuff? What do we pay you for anyway?”
“I’m sorry the deal fell through. You know, I tried to talk up the business at dinner. It’s too bad you weren’t able to make it.”
“Too bad is right,” he fumed. “The one day when all the people who know how to close a sale are required to be someplace else is the day fucking Bancroft Bruin insists on coming to view the company.”
“Was it a definite—”
“Thanks but no thanks. He was quite clear when he called just now.” He huffed. “What the hell do we pay you for?”
“Good question,” a voice echoed from the doorway.
We both turned as Roland entered the room.
“There’s going to have to be some belt-tightening,” he said. “I suggest we start with cutting back all the sponsorships.”
“We can’t do that,” I said. “We have contracts.”
“Then you tell me where the money is coming from,” he sneered.
“It was budgeted last year,” I said. “How can—”
“The Renco launch. You didn’t do so good with that either.”
“I didn’t design a defective product. If—”
“And you couldn’t get loverboy to invest.” He looked me up and down. “Not so surprising at that.”
“Walt, are you going to—”
“He’s right, you know. We were counting on you to bring home the bacon, so to speak.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Walt was going to let Roland’s insult — his actionable insult, if I were a suing kind of woman — slide? No, not just slide. He piled on with Roland.
“Fine,” I said, white-hot with rage. “If you gentlemen will leave my office, I’ll prepare my resignation.” I managed not to sneer when I said gentlemen. Curs would be more appropriate.
Walt looked a little taken aback. “You don’t need to take it so seriously. We’re disappointed in your performance but—”
“Please leave.” I smiled, teeth bared.
“This is—”
Roland tapped Walt’s shoulder before he could finish. “Let’s just leave her to it. She’ll calm down in a few minutes.”
I gently closed the door behind them. So gently. What I wanted was to slam it with all my strength, over and over and over again until the whole fucking wall collapsed.
Quickly, before my rage evaporated, I typed out a letter of resignation, printed it and signed it, and packed all my personal possessions. I was never coming back to this building again.
My tears held off until I was home in my apartment, the door safely locked behind me.
Never had I been so humiliated. Did they actually expect me to try to seduce Bear? To have sex with him?
I was nothing more than a toy to them. Fuck them. Fuck all men.
My cell phone chimed. I scanned my texts. Walt asking me to reconsider. I blocked his n
umber.
A message came in from a number I didn’t recognize:
— Thanks for a wonderful day and evening. I’m going out of town now and will call you as soon as I get back. Yours, Bear
This, after all his talk about marriage. His very last words when he left me after walking me to my car were “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He’d seemed so sincere. I thought I felt a real connection between us. Wrong again. Clearly he was just interested in a quick fuck.
I blocked his number too.
v
Bear
The problem took longer than I expected. That was a good thing, of course. There were two ways to handle feral shifters. The fast way is to simply put them down. Sounds cruel, but they’re a danger to themselves and others if they can’t control their feral nature.
The long way is rehabilitation. That’s the preferred method.
A selfish part of me wanted the situation to resolve quickly so I could get back to my mate. But that was the human part of me. The bear part of me hated to lose any clan member.
So when my sister called me about a shifter who climbed a tree and wouldn’t come down, it was my job to coax him out of the tree and explain things to him. If he’d been female, my sister could have done it. But we matched new shifters with longtime shifters by sex. It kept them from imprinting on their mentors. Imprinting led to messiness when either the mentor or the new shifter found their mate.
I parked my car when the old logging road ended. Quickly stripping, I put my clothes plus a spare set for the new shifter in a carry bag. I added a couple of large bottles of water. Then I shifted.
It starts with a tingle all over the body. Then it hurts like holy hell while flesh and bone change shape, stretching and reforming and sprouting. Once it’s done, there’s a euphoria that makes you feel like you’ve ascended to heaven. The euphoria’s better than non-mated sex. I was looking forward to finding out whether it beat mated sex.
I stood on my back legs and sniffed. The scent of my sister came from the north. The rank smell of a frightened male shifter rode the same breeze.
I nudged the strap of the carry bag over my head and loped off, following the scent.
My sister, dressed and in human form, met me before I reached him. I shifted back to human form to talk to her. We bears aren’t shy about nudity.
“I don’t think he’s come down since I first saw him.”
“And you first saw him when?”
“Day before yesterday. I heard his yowls at the campground.” She shuddered. “We were so lucky to be born into a shifter family.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture. I’d heard the cries of a new shifter before. “Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
“Not yet, Cara. It’s best if you leave for now.”
With a nod and a quick hug, she left.
Still in human form, I followed the shifter’s scent to the base of a Ponderosa pine. He was several branches up and hidden by needles, only his two rear paws showing.
“Mister,” I called to his human side, “come on down. I want to talk to you.”
He roared at me.
“Come on, mister. I’m like you. We’re shifters. It happens. It’s not the end of the world. Come on down, and I’ll help you.”
I kept talking. He seemed to be listening, but he didn’t move or make any sounds in response, and he stayed in bear form.
My mouth was dry from talking. If I was thirsty, he had to be more so. I took out one of the bottles of water and uncapped it. He should be able to smell the fresh water.
I took a long drink. “There’s another bottle of water here if you want it.”
Still no response.
“Okay, why don’t you stay in the tree and we can talk?”
He made a noise then.
Oh hell, he probably didn’t know how to change. It was natural as breathing to me after so many years. I’d first changed when I was twelve, and I was nearly forty now.
I shifted into my bear shape and climbed halfway up the tree to him. He was scared, nearly to the point of being aggressive. I kept far enough away I could retreat safely if he attacked.
It was hard for me to be so close to him. His smell was strong and male and excited, and my bear was ready to rumble.
And he was unpredictable. That made him dangerous.
Well, I was dangerous too. That had to be affecting his bear.
I took my human form, prepared to change back if he couldn’t keep his bear under control.
The leaves on his branch thrashed about. My gut tightened, but he wasn’t attacking. He was just agitated.
I clung to the branches below as I told him how I made my body shift.
“Think yourself into human shape,” I told him. “Put all the worry out of your head, and imagine yourself as a man.”
I sounded like one of those self-help gurus, but I couldn’t help it. That’s the way shifting worked.
“Come on, you can do it.” Now I was a cheerleader. Well, whatever it took.
It took him a few tries, bones crackling but not quite changing, skin rippling then settling back down to fur, before he managed to achieve human form. He clung to the branch, his face white with tension and fear.
Of course, then we were stuck up a tree with no claws. But I didn’t want him to change back to bear yet.
“Can you make it down like that?” I hoped to hell he wasn’t afraid of heights.
He gave me a scornful look and said his first words. “I can do it.”
Well, that was reassuring. “I’ll go down first. You follow.”
Without waiting for his response I climbed down. I felt clumsy and off-balance without my claws. The human shape just wasn’t built right for tree climbing. But I wasn’t going to risk setting him off by shifting now.
Back down on the ground, I watched his descent. He was right, he could do it. He climbed like he did it all the time.
He dropped onto the ground and turned to face me.
That was good. He wasn’t ashamed of nudity. Some of the late shifters never got over feeling exposed without their clothes.
He was nearly as tall as me but not as broad. Clean-cut features with a short beard. He feigned calm confidence, but his heart was still pounding hard and his eyes were dilated.
I tossed him a shirt and pants from my bag, and I got dressed myself. I handed him the water bottle then.
“Thanks,” he said, immediately uncapping it and taking a swig.
“My name’s Bancroft Bruin,” I told him.
“Rory Marsden.” His face twisted in a smile. “Hi, I’m Rory, and I’m a bear shifter.”
Yup, this one would make it.
* * *
I wanted to call Georgette immediately as soon as I got back into town. Scratch that, I wanted to see her, smell her, taste her that very minute. But she probably wouldn’t appreciate a 2 a.m. call.
I’d checked my phone after I got back into cell range. Coverage was spotty in the mountains where my sister lived, so I hadn’t expected any replies from Georgette there. But when I got back into the city there still wasn’t a response from her.
My bear wasn’t happy to learn that. I wasn’t happy. I wanted to feel my mate in my arms and breathe in her sweet scent. I wanted to run my tongue over her entire body.
It wouldn’t hurt to send a text, right? But even that might wake her. Grumpily I drove to my city apartment, where I pretended to sleep until a reasonable time to call her.
I texted her at 7 a.m. When I hadn’t received a response by 8:30, I called her. My call didn’t go through. I stared at my phone in shock. She’d blocked my number.
I was hurt and bewildered, and I was angry. How could my mate reject me? How dare my mate reject me?
She’d wanted me. I’d felt her desire.
And she was my mate, no question about it.
Whatever was going on with her, we were going to settle it onc
e and for all.
vi
Georgette
One day to mope. A second day to regroup and plan.
My day of mopery was spent in bed. I dug out my favorite romances and read them back to back. The pint carton of Death by Chocolate came to bed with me. The ice cream and books were no substitute for my job or my foolish fantasy about Bancroft Bruin, but they raised my endorphins enough I didn’t feel like slitting my wrists. Maybe I didn’t get my perfect HEA, but I was young, healthy, and talented. I’d survive.
That’s what I thought when I was pumped full of ice cream.
On my day of planning, I grabbed a notepad and pen and laptop. I went to the corner coffee bar to evaluate my status. Being around people made me feel more normal. The world hadn’t left me behind.
Moneywise, I was in good shape. I could survive a couple of months at my current level of expenses. That would give me time to find another job, hopefully one where the people weren’t jerks.
I went home, jazzed and ready to start my job search.
Bear
The receptionist was startled when I appeared at her desk in the lobby of Perkins McBride. “Uh, oh, Mr. Bruin. How can I help you?”
I forced myself to calmness. No need to scare her with angry bear pheromones floating in the air. “I want to see Georgette Stephens.”
“She’s no longer with us.”
“What do you mean, she’s no longer with you? I met with her just days ago.”
“She quit since then. Can someone else assist you?”
“I want to talk to McBride.”
That request she knew how to handle. She phoned upstairs and got an immediate response. “Mr. McBride will be happy to speak with you. His assistant will be right down to escort you, or if you prefer you can go directly to the fifteenth floor.”
I went. I didn’t have the patience to stand around waiting.
I roared into McBride’s office and past his startled assistant to the open door of the inner office. McBride rose to greet me, a foolish grin on his face.
