Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  Tamara grinned, and climbed onto the foot of the bed, crawling up so her legs straddled his waist, and her chest pressed against his.

  She lingered there with her hands pressed against the pillow on either side of Bryan’s head and tiptoed back into his dream. This time, she let herself be known, and the dream-Bryan started, flushing with embarrassment as she took control of her proxy.

  She grinned and dragged him back to the surface, pulling him free of his own dream and daring him to confront it.

  “What do you want?” he whispered against her lips.

  “You dream of me, but won’t touch me?”

  He blinked, and after a moment, his hands rested on the small of her back, easing downward and pausing at the dip before her ass. “It’s mostly my bear,” he said.

  She believed him, but there was one small problem. “Would you really try to convince me that you and your bear are so separate that your tastes and desires don’t intersect?”

  She already knew better. The hard protrusion nestling at the apex of her thighs would be hard to explain away.

  “I don’t want this to get complicated,” he said, but his hands dipped beneath the elastic of her panties, and fingers molded over her ass.

  “You afraid of complications, big, bad Bear?”

  “No. Everything in my life is complicated.” He groaned as she pressed her lips into the crook between his neck and shoulder and teased the salty skin with her tongue. “This sort of thing isn’t meant to work for two people like us.”

  “Meaning what?”

  His thumbs, crooked into the sides of her underwear, and he shimmied down each side in alternating tugs.

  “Are you afraid that with a little dick, I’ll be forever ensnared by your charms? That I won’t be able to cope without you? You’re not that cocky.”

  “No.” He gave her waist a little tug so her ass was in the air and worked her panties down to her knees. “I’m more worried I won’t be able to think rationally and make good decisions with you around. You’re distracting my bear, and I’m likely to become attached.”

  Her father had said as much.

  “You make that sound like a death knell.”

  He used his foot to nudge her panties the rest of the way down, and pulled her shirt up by the hem. “Not a death knell. No. But here I am, distracted by you, when I should be back at the bunker making sure those two new Bears aren’t trying to claw their way out.”

  “You have a choice,” she said.

  He tossed her tank top to the floor and worked her bra clasp free in one easy flick. “Yep. Am I making the wrong one? Kinda feels like it.”

  His warm tongue, pressed flat against her beaded nipple, said otherwise.

  She put her head back, moaning at the skillful massaging, very nearly overwhelmed by the sensation of his fingertips in the cleft of her ass.

  It was as if he knew exactly what she liked and wasn’t afraid to give it to her. But, then again, she’d certainly been in his head enough that he may have gotten the gist.

  Rolling her over, he pressed his lips against hers and she grabbed his bottom one between her teeth and yanked. Letting it snap back, she said, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  He sat back and eased his boxer briefs past his hips.

  Her gaze settled on that stretch of elastic at his waist as it lowered until it cleared the cock straining behind the fabric. She reached for it and squeezed.

  He paused, letting a hiss pass through his clenched teeth. “The worst that could happen would be I’d forget you can take care of yourself, and instead of taking care of business—dealing with Gene—I’ll want to guard you.”

  “Oh.” She loosened her grip on his erection and he eased his briefs the rest of the way down. Splaying her hands on his hard chest as he hooked her legs around his waist, she asked, “You or your bear?”

  “Both.” His fingers probed her for size, massaging her entrance as his thumb flicked at her clit. “But since we’ve already made a mess of this…” Drawing his hand back, he wrapped his fingers around his cock and probed her slit with it.

  Her hips bucked off the bed, eager to join with him, but he held himself back until she lie still again. With his lips against hers, he continued, “Since we’ve already made a mess, we might as well go all the way. All right?”

  She let her tongue’s exploration of his lips’ seam be her answer, and finally he gave in to her body’s demands.

  Stretching her, breaching her, unnerving her.

  “Do it,” she whispered.

  “Hmm?” Even as he pulled back his kiss, his thrusts didn’t slow. Now that he was in, his thrusts were steady, and she could hardly register anything beyond pleasure and his weight, and then his deep voice as he whispered, “You all right? Tell me you’re not passing out.”

  He slowed, straightening his arms as if to withdraw from her, but she dug in her knees at his waist and pulled him back.

  “Fuck me.”

  ___

  Should that have been awkward? Tamara couldn’t decide, but she certainly didn’t feel like it. In fact, as she sat on the edge of her bed lacing up her boots a couple of hours later, she actually felt as if they’d gotten some heavy chore out of the way.

  Not that sex with Bryan wasn’t fantastic. It was. He was a big man who knew how to move, and she suspected he’d finally burned off some of that adrenaline he’d been storing up for days.

  For a moment, after screaming her orgasm, she felt an unfamiliar bashfulness, which he quickly flitted away with a few more hard thrusts and an orgasm of his own that had him shredding the sheets beneath his fingers.

  In his head, Tamara could see his bear dancing around, half-satisfied, but he wanted to be let out to play, too. The bear wanted rough. The bear wanted Bryan to sink his teeth in Tamara’s back.

  The bear would have to wait.

  With that anvil hanging over them gone, Bryan’s mood improved about a hundred percent. He was downright sunny as he packed up his duffel bag. He’d said they wouldn’t return to the hotel following the day’s errands, so it was good thing Tamara packed light.

  “Hey, you think we could swing by my house in Durham before we meet my parents?” she asked as they steered toward the rising sun. “I haven’t been home in weeks. Want to check the mail and water my plants, if they’re still alive.”

  “I don’t see why not. Don’t want to hang out too long, though, with those guys locked up in the Bear bunker.”

  “That’s understandable. Normally, I’d have one of the other Shrews check on things for me, but other than Sarah, they’re all here, and Sarah’s supposed to have her feet up. Probably overkill, but we’re all paranoid. Even Doc.”

  “Why did you pick Durham, of all places?” he asked as he parked the truck beside the other two vehicles they’d collected from Bears in the past couple of days.

  “I didn’t.” She jumped down, bumped the truck door closed with her hip, and followed Bryan on his heels.

  He yanked the heavy metal door—hidden by a rock wall face—open and patted the interior wall for the light switch.

  “I met a man when my father was positioned in DC for diplomatic service, and—”

  Bryan jumped back, pulling Tamara with him and enfolding her in his arms as a heavy, fur-covered body fell heavily through the door.

  Fur receded, bones shrank, and moments later, the limp creature was a man once again. Not Tony. Not Dustin. The other one whose name they didn’t know.

  Bryan blew out a ragged breath, and loosened his hold on Tamara. “Fuckin’ idiot.”

  He gave the unconscious lump a nudge with the side of his foot and bent. He hauled the nude man up to his shoulders. “Hold the door for me, will you? Watch out. Just in case another one’s out.”

  He made them sound like puppies out of their pens and not shapeshifting drug dealers.

  She pulled her knife from her boot and nodded as she slipped around him.

  The corridor was dark, and s
he took a fighting stance as she toggled the light switch. Quiet. No moving shadows. No sounds, other than the hum of the television upstairs.

  “Say something, Dustin,” she called out.

  Weakly, the Were-bear called back, “Y’all got some Band-aids? Gauze? Somethin’? If I shift to try to heal this, I don’t have any replacement clothes. I like getting naked, but for the right reasons, you know what I’m sayin’? Light some candles, put on a little mood music. Babyface, circa 1991 or somethin’?”

  She rolled her eyes and led Bryan up the stairs, pausing at the top to scan the tidy office area, and farther toward the cells.

  Dustin leaned against the bars nearest the desk, holding his hands over the left side of his belly and casting Tamara a doleful expression.

  Tony was still in his cell, eyes round at the sight of them, and looking pathetic in sweat-clothes that were a size too small.

  Ignoring Dustin, she clucked her tongue at Tony and tested his cell door. Locked tight. The third one, on the other hand, hung open, and there was a trail of blood between the cot and the desk.

  Tony put up his hands and shook his head. “I told him not to do it, but he was still coming down from some shit he sampled yesterday. New stuff that’s about to hit the market. If it’ll fuck a Bear up, imagine what it’ll do to humans. Anyway, warned him he wouldn’t get far. Can’t shift twice like that in twenty-four hours and expect stuff’ll work as it should. How far did he get?”

  “The outer door.” Bryan dropped the naked man onto an unmade cot in cell D and accepted the scratchy gray blanket Tamara fetched from the supply closet. “At least we know now not to trust these locks against the strength of a bear on amphetamines.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t that strong,” Tony said. “He wouldn’t have gotten out if it weren’t for the fact he was a locksmith before he got caught up in all this shit.”

  “What the fuck did he pick the lock with?”

  “His claws. Keeps them sharpened, so when he does partial shifts, he has tools. He can’t hold a partial shift for long, though. Five minutes, and the fur took over.”

  “Yeah, none of you can hold it.” Bryan balled the slumbering Bear’s clothes into a lump and tossed them into the cell after him. “Well, Tony, looks like you’re going to have to hold him down while I give him a little manicure.”

  “Help me? Please? Just sayin’,” Dustin mumbled.

  Tamara pushed away from cell D and stood before Dustin. She bobbed her chin toward the gash in his belly. “What happened to you?”

  “I tried to stop that asshole—talk reason into him, you know? Maybe I’m experiencing a bit of Stockholm Syndrome or something, or maybe I know Gene can’t light my ass up in here.” He performed a dramatic shrug that made Tamara sigh.

  “Just sayin’. Ol’ boy got indignant and gave me a nice little slice on the way out. Patch me up and I’ll hold him down myself. Bryan knows I’ll do it right. I’ve done it before.”

  She turned her gaze to Bryan, and he nodded. She fetched gauze and medical tape from the supply closet, grabbed the keys, and then let herself into Dustin’s cell.

  As he lay on his cot and lifted his shirt, Tamara covered her nose. “You’re going to need a shower soon.”

  “I know, right?” He shook his head as if it were all just an unfortunate facet of the job.

  “Alas, we don’t have sufficient staff at this facility to accommodate your request, inmate,” Bryan said with a laugh. He stood in the open cell door holding a deadly looking pair of pliers, a silver knife, a Zippo lighter, and a couple of raggedy towels.

  “You need someone else here,” Tamara said. She cleaned out the gouges in Dustin’s side and held the gauze over them. “Someone here to facilitate when one of us isn’t around. Someone strong enough to deal with them, at least on a one-on-one basis. That way, they could at least shower the stink off.”

  “The list of people who fit that qualification is very short, baby, and right now I don’t trust bringing any Bears in.”

  “Baby?” Dustin tried to sit up, and Tamara pushed him down by the forehead.

  “Bring in a Shrew,” she said to Bryan.

  “What’s a Shrew?” Dustin asked. “Ow, ow, ow!” He cringed as Tamara pressed tape around the gauze edges.

  “Best you didn’t know,” she said.

  “I’ll think about it,” Bryan said.

  “How does this work, if his claws aren’t out right now?” Tamara followed Dustin out of the cell and watched Bryan’s preparations over his shoulder.

  “We force them out.”

  “You can do that with him asleep?”

  “He may be asleep, but his bear is awake,” Dustin said.

  When Bryan nudged the sleeping man onto the floor, Dustin sat on the sleeping man’s back and pressed the side of the man’s face against the cement, nodding at Bryan.

  Bryan put down his supplies and knelt, grabbing the man’s right wrist.

  She almost didn’t notice it, it was so gradual, but his caramel skin darkened, fingers went stumpy, and nails elongated. Pricking them against the inside of the man’s wrists, his arm morphed, too, but before the change could extend to the rest of his body, Bryan held the silver knife’s blade flat against the man’s forearm and the change stopped.

  He was putting out a lot of power, and not only was the exertion evident in his tense expression, but Tamara could feel it down to her bone marrow. That adrenaline surge crashed over her again, and this time he was pouring out the juice on purpose.

  She took several steps away, closer to the desk, and wrapped her arms around her chest. So cold. She kept her teeth from chattering by clamping them together hard.

  Tony raised one bushy eyebrow at her in an evident query, but she didn’t address him. She just moved to the cabinets, pulled out a box of cereal, an aseptic container of milk, as well as a spoon, and handed the meal components to him.

  He took them. “You all right? Not sensitive to the sight of blood, are you?”

  “No.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the stairs. “Bryan, I’ll be in the truck.”

  Bryan, tossed something wet onto the floor, but didn’t turn around. “All right, baby.”

  “Can we talk about this baby thing?” Tamara heard as she pounded up the stairs. “That mean she’s, like, legit off-limits, or is that like a common Romanian middle name or something?”

  She didn’t hear Bryan’s response, and wasn’t sure if she wanted to.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t think it would affect you so much, or I would have had you leave.” Bryan turned down the truck’s heat and stole a glance away from the road as Tamara finally came to.

  “I don’t really understand what’s going on.” She scanned the landmarks around them to orient herself. They must have been driving for hours, because not only were they off the highway, but very near the airport in Morrisville. “Probably should see Doc on the way back to the mountains before we head off for the next thing.”

  “You really think the Shrews will let you back out to play if I take you home all used up?” There was a laugh in his voice, but his expression was wary. He put his gaze back on the road.

  “We’re tough broads. Once they’re done yelling at me, they’ll just give me a pat on the bottom and send me on my way.” She drummed her fingers on her thighs a few beats, and added, “With backup.”

  Backup was a big deal to Dana, especially after some of the shit Sarah had been through in the past year. During a solo six-week undercover job for a federal agency she was loaned out to, Sarah had discovered the boundaries of her mental fortitude. She’d admitted it at the end of Felipe’s case, and they all knew it had to be a hard confession for her to make. Keeping the emotions tamped down was easier than addressing them, but apparently Sarah had her triggers. Once pulled, they sent her tumbling down a self-doubt rabbit hole.

  That assignment had her aiding the rescue of kidnapped women forced into sex labor, but at some point
the lines blurred, and she forgot she was meant to be the savior, not a victim. She’d had to go deep, and lost communication with the team. She couldn’t check in, and Dana had no choice but to trust that Sarah knew what she was doing. Sarah had come through, but not without some mental bruises. She hadn’t even acknowledged her scrapes from that ordeal before returning to North Carolina and getting tossed into more Cat-Bear drama.

  Justifiably, Dana was disinclined to assign long-term solo assignments now. She wouldn’t care that Tamara was with a big Were-bear who was quite capable of taking care of his back and her own. Dana didn’t know Bryan. Hadn’t vetted him. She wouldn’t trust him until he’d been put through the wringer in the same way Felipe had with Sarah, and Felipe had had to take a bullet for that to happen.

  “Dana Slade is one woman I don’t particularly wish to be on the bad side of,” he said, as if he were reading Tamara’s thoughts.

  “She’ll come around eventually,” she said as the hotel came into view. “She’s cranky because she cares.”

  They had barely stepped foot into the hotel’s restaurant before Tamara’s mother was on her with a shriek, drawing her into her cashmere-covered embrace, and clucking her tongue. She murmured some silly baby talk and swayed them side-to-side, rocking, as she hugged her youngest child.

  “Jesus, Mama. Enough,” Tamara whispered in Romanian.

  Her mother whispered back. “You look very pale. Your lips are blue.”

  “Maybe I need more iron.” Tamara peeled herself away from her mother’s embrace, and fisted her hands on her hips, turning to her father.

  Tată didn’t seem to give a damn about the color of her lips or anything else about her. He was squaring off with Bryan, and the two men stood three feet apart, arms crossed over their broad chests, scowling at each other.

  “What?” Tamara asked. “Are you really that put off by Bears, Tată?”

  “What do you know about Bears, Mr. Ursu?” Bryan asked, and his tone was one whisker away from disrespectful, but Tată was unfazed.

  “Plenty,” Tată said.

  “Why don’t we sit and get some lunch, yes?” Mama waved the hostess over to the podium and requested a six-top table near the kitchen.