by Holley Trent
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What are you doing, you fool?” Tamara asked.
Bryan nestled his boots at the base of a large oak and tucked his socks into them. He put his hand next on the catch of his jeans, which he nimbly unfastened, and then he pulled the zipper down.
He wriggled the waistband past his hips and stepped out of his pants.
Folding them over his arm, he said, “I’ll be more rational if I run off some of the energy. I need to have a clear head in the morning.”
“Okay, and what does that have to do with me?”
“You’re my mate. I think it’s time you saw me shift in a controlled situation.”
“You can’t just call me your mate without discussion. Whether you’ve roused my bear or not, saying I’m it doesn’t make it so.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Add that to your list.” Leaning in, he brushed his lips across hers, and drew back smiling as he pushed buttons through the holes of his plaid shirt. “Do you want to be my mate, Tamara? You do have a choice.”
“I do?”
“Mm-hmm.” He handed her the jeans and his shirt, and she pressed them against her chest, shifting her weight to one hip. “You always have a choice, Tam. If you don’t want me forever, you can go. Any time. I’m not going to waste away or die if you refuse me, but I won’t exactly be happy. Neither will my bear be.”
“Good to know.”
He added his boxer briefs to the tidy stack of clothes in her arms and pulled her close, his hands cupping her bottom as he ground her front against his.
Leaves crunched underfoot behind her, and a male voice muttered, “Căcat.”
Closing her eyes, she sighed, and turned around.
She opened her eyes and wished she were the sort of mutant who could shoot lasers through her eyes. Her cock-blocking brothers would deserve the burns.
Bryan’s laughter gave way to grumbles as his shoulders widened, skull enlarged, and thick, dark fur overtook his skin. If a bear could chuckle, this one was doing it as he nudged his cold nose against her right palm.
Soren and Peter dropped their boots and peeled off their shirts, giving her bland looks in return to her glower.
“You couldn’t have used any other entrance to the woods? As if it’s not all around us, you had to take this particular path?”
Bear-Bryan loped off, still doing that weird growl-chuckle.
Peter shrugged. “We need to run with his bear for practice while we have a chance. Never know what’ll go down in the coming days and months.”
“Why don’t you go run with Drea? The word babysitting comes to mind.”
Peter winked, and Tamara averted her eyes as he stepped out of his ripped jeans.
“I’ll let her sit on me later.”
Just as Bryan had, Peter shifted into his bear, followed by Soren, and they paused there, letting Tamara scratch their chins and assess their animal forms for the first time. Soren’s fur was a bit redder, Peter’s more blond, but both were more or less brown, compared to Bryan’s black.
She gave them both smacks on the haunches and told them in Romanian to, “Get the hell out of here.”
Tamara had barely gotten settled in on a dry patch of ground near the clearing, when Drea, chafing her hands up and down her naked arms, strode across the field and joined her at the wood’s edge.
With the weather turning, some days started with bare arms and ended with parkas.
“I guess the overprotective big brother thing is prevalent amongst Bears.” Drea bobbed her head toward the piles of discarded clothing.
“Can’t say,” Tamara said. “Growing up, if I was around other Bears beyond my family, I didn’t know it.”
The more she thought on it, she realized that may have been why close friends growing up were always unavailable during certain times of the month following puberty. She’d thought it had to do with synched cycles and killer periods, but now she wasn’t so sure. She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and fired off a quick text message to her mother.
“I hear it’s different in other strains of Bear,” Drea said. “Female Bears, at least the run-of-the-mill black ones, tend to be pretty passive, and that carries over to our human personalities, too. I’ve heard some people say that grizzly females are more aggressive, and then there are polar bears, and you European bears. Guessin’ you’re brown.”
Tamara nodded, remembering her brothers’ tawny coats.
“We don’t mix so much, we born-Bears. Tend to stay near where we’re born so we don’t interact much with outsiders.”
“Is that accusation I hear in your voice, Drea?” Tamara bumped Drea’s shoulder with her own so the woman knew she was joking. Tamara hadn’t known Drea very long, but she knew the woman was programmed to be a bit sensitive. Drea was the type of woman who always assumed the worst, and had to have someone bring her around to the other direction.
Tamara couldn’t think of anyone better than Peter to navigate such a tenderhearted woman, but Tamara wouldn’t dare say so now. Drea needed to work on herself before she let a man get close. Peter may have been patient, but he was still an Ursu, and Ursus had a way of making people agree with them, even without trying. Drea needed to shore up that backbone of hers, and be able to talk back when she needed to. Be able to say no if she wanted.
Besides, she was only twenty-two. Peter was nearing thirty. He’d want to settle down soon, and once Drea seemed open to that, he wouldn’t give her any room to roam. He’d smother her, unless her flame grew a bit hotter.
Maybe Drea needed Dana to take her under her wing for a while. They’d been looking for a receptionist back in the Durham office, anyway, and that would get Drea out of the mountains while the Bear mess raged on.
“No, not accusation.” Drea fiddled with the ends of her right shoelace, scraping the plastic aglets with her thumb. “I think it’s good. Sometimes you don’t realize your eyeglasses are dirty until someone takes them off you, cleans them, and puts them back on.”
“I don’t want to shake things up, Drea. I just want to go back to my condo and watch trashy television on weekends. No offense. Being here so much sucks.”
“What about Bryan?”
“What about him?”
“Yes, what about me?” Bryan ran out of the woods in his human form, glancing behind him, and wearing a troublemaking smile on his face. He barely stopped running long enough to grab Tamara’s hand. He pulled her to her feet and grabbed his boots with his other hand.
“Wait! Where are we going?” She stumbled, running behind him and clutching his clothes to her chest.
“While your brothers are busy rubbing their coats against a particularly bumpy pine tree, I need some time with you.”
He pulled open the back door of the lodge and they pounded up the lesser-used staff stairs, Tamara saying a silent prayer that no one was in the halls.
The door to the room they’d claimed for the day was unlocked, and Bryan closed it behind them, turned the deadbolt, and slid the chain home as if for emphasis.
He dropped his boots, took his clothes from her arms, and set them on the dresser.
His hands were suddenly everywhere—on her lapels, spreading her jacket open. The sides of her face, angling her lips up to meet his soft, sensual mouth. At the front of her waistband, pulling her closer to his engorged cock while unfastening her jeans. On her ass, kneading and cupping as he did outside before her brothers had so rudely interrupted them.
Before her pants even hit the floor, he had her scooped up into his arms, laying kisses all over her neck so tender they tore gasps from her throat. He carried her to the bed and tossed her onto it.
Obviously frustrated by her bootlaces, he let out an impatient, but wouldn’t let her help.
He pressed her back flat against the bed, kissing her so urgently she could hardly catch her breath.
She drew her nails down his naked back, pulling his single-minded attention away from her face and down her clothed t
orso.
Kneeling at the foot of the bed, he worked clumsy fingers over her laces and yanked her boots off in two graceless tugs.
Her pants went next, although he took more care there. He kissed the skin he exposed, inch by inch down the insides of her thighs, knees, then and calves before he let the denim fall to the floor along with her panties.
He spread her legs wide, draping them over her shoulders as he crawled back up to conquer her lips. “I hope at some point soon, I’ll actually get to make love to you in my own bed.”
“You going to buy a new one?”
Had he forgotten already that he was temporarily indigent and therefore had nowhere to put that bed?
“Yeah, you can pick it out.”
“I’m not picky. As long as the mattress is soft, I’m happy.”
He nipped at her lips, and ran his tongue around the edges to heal the hurt. “Why soft? I like firm.”
“You’re heavy. Nice to have some cushioning.”
“Forgot about that.” He let her legs down, and wedging his hands beneath her hips, rolled her onto her belly. His cock probed tentatively at her entrance as he pulled her hips back. “That better?”
He seemed to be enjoying himself, kneading her naked ass with his palms and spreading her cheeks.
“Just take it easy back there. I think that bear of yours is far too excited. Do bears get ADHD?”
A low rumble of laughter escaped his chest as he eased into her, moving his hands up to her waist. “Excitable, he is.”
He stroked into her, at first slow and easy, and gradually increased his speed so his balls slapped the backs of her thighs with each thrust.
“So good,” she said into the sheets. She curled her toes into the mattress, and let her heavy eyelids close.
“Good for me, too.”
“Get out of my head. It’s distracting. Need to concentrate.”
“On what? I’m doing all the work here.”
She gave her Kegels a clench in warning, and his rhythm faltered.
“You win. You can win everything from now on.” He swiveled his hips in a circular motion, stretching her wider and creating a pleasurable burn that had her panting.
“Baby?”
“Distracting.”
Once more, his rhythm faltered, and his thrusting slowed, but he moved his hands up her back, kneading the ticklish spots next to her backbone. “You’ve got to let me say sorry.”
She wriggled her ass against his front. The implication was clear—fuck me—but he seemed intent on talking it out. She sighed. “Sorry for what?”
“Everything. The things on your list.”
Her list?
He started moving again, but more gently this time.
“I didn’t want you to think it wasn’t on my mind. I don’t mean to upset you, Tam. I just…”
His breathing was ragged as he lengthened his strokes. “I feel like I have so much to explain to you. I’m not used to working in teams, for one thing…”
“And I come with a giant entourage.”
The tip of his cock probed the very end of her, making her arch away from him, but he drew her back with gentle hands, rubbing her hips as he increased his pace again.
“Used to keeping my own counsel,” he said.
“And I’m in your head all the time.” She pressed her palms against the headboard and pushed back, or else his vigorous fucking would have her head through the wood soon.
“I like you in my head. I like that you want me.”
Of course she wanted him. Who wouldn’t?
Her toes curled against his calves, and she came, letting the mattress muffle her moans.
He went next, holding her hips tighter and whispering her name.
She registered stinging wetness on her upper back, and then there was the outright pain.
Craning her neck and looking over her shoulder, in her periphery she caught Bryan lapping around her wound with his tongue.
“Silly Bear.”
“Sorry.” Carefully, he pulled out of her and rolled onto his back. He extended his arms to her, and she snuggled next to him, content.
“It’s an instinct. My bear thinks you’ll try to run away before I’m done.”
“I’m not going to run away.”
His hand, which he skimmed up and down her arm, stilled. “Ever?”
“Shrews don’t run unless we have a plan to come back stronger.”
That seemed to pacify him, as he resumed his fondling of her arm. “What was it you were talking to Drea about before I grabbed you?”
“Going back to Durham. My house.”
“Wish I could leave.”
“Can’t you?” She sat up, bearing weight on her forearms, and looked down at the handsome face that now wore an expression of contemplation.
He’d never mentioned wanting to leave before.
“I don’t know if I can, at least not anytime soon. Not until the group is stable. Then it should be able to run itself like it used to.”
“Then I guess I can’t leave, either.”
“That’s probably your bear talking, baby.”
“No, that’s Tamara talking.”
“Oh.”
He didn’t push. Didn’t probe, and good thing, because she wasn’t the kind of woman used to waxing poetic about her feelings. She wouldn’t know what words to use or what order to put them in so the delivery would be soft instead of her usual “take it or leave it” modus operandi.
She’d picked at it. Poked fun at Dana and Sarah when it’d happened to them because Shrews weren’t easy to love, and they sure as shit didn’t give love back easily. Now she’d be embarrassed to admit she’d had no faith in romance. It wasn’t for her, she’d thought.
Maybe she’d been thinking of it in the wrong context.
Romance wasn’t always about flowers and chocolates and silly little greeting cards.
Sometimes it was about pushing someone to feel something. Whether it was with the sting of teeth in skin by an anxious bear, or with words that were hard to speak didn’t matter.
And she felt.
Dear Lord, she felt.
She wanted to take this man home with her and settle him into her routines, but first, they had a mess to clean up.
Bryan pulled the covers over them and rubbed his chin atop her head. “Get some sleep. We’ve got to be out of here early before Gene moves out. He’s usually done with all his meetings up there within a couple days.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“I know, baby. You’re always ready.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Was this how it was going to be from now on?
Bryan liked the thought of it—his woman riding shotgun with her booted feet up on the dashboard while she twisted the silencer onto a gun she hadn’t used in weeks. Her brothers in the backseat, one half-asleep, and the other having an animated cell phone conversation in what Bryan supposed was Romanian.
When Peter had pulled the ringing phone out of his pocket, he’d mumbled something about wishing a fucking contract was over.
The walkie-talkie clipped to his visor connected them to Dana and Patrick, who were trailing them about a mile back. They didn’t want to arrive at the quartermaster’s right on top of each other. One car wouldn’t be suspicious to lookouts, but two would raise hackles.
Bryan’s cousin had fed to him information that Gene was coordinating some drug shipments out of the workshop of the Bear quartermaster near Boone. Quartermaster was a position that didn’t exist in the group before Gene made it one. It was really just a fancy title for the guy that kept track of who was using Bear property, Bryan, included. The quartermaster was also one of many spokes in the wheel of Gene’s drug distribution network. The quartermaster not only stored the shit, but also cooked it.
What made the situation so sickening was that this drug-cooking junkie was actually related to Chauncey. An uncle, according to Bryan’s cousin. The kid had thought he had no family, but wit
h family like that, he was better off ignorant of the truth.
Bryan would need to do some investigation to find out where that family came from. They were born, but not from the Smokies group. Fringe members. It wasn’t unusual for clans to occasionally assimilate Bears from other groups, especially singletons that were left on their own such as the Bears from Florida, but usually they came with some history.
Chauncey didn’t know his, beyond the fact he’d been in the foster care system until Gene plucked him out at puberty. It made sense now that Gene would know what Chauncey was if the quartermaster had warned him. Shifters were still in the closet in most parts of the world, so it wouldn’t have been good news for a teenaged boy to suddenly go furry and tear up the house during a full moon.
“Remember, guys, we’re going to try to take him alive,” Bryan said, looking at Soren and Peter in the rearview mirror.
Peter was still on the phone, but nodded.
Soren rolled his eyes, and Tamara’s resemblance to him became that much more striking. They looked like their mother. Peter, on the other hand, was spitting image of their father, though blond where Joseph was silver.
Bryan would have to watch out for that guy, because it was obvious he didn’t share Bryan’s low-kill philosophy.
That was the reason they needed four of them and not just one. If Bryan were going to kill Gene, he could do that with no help. Getting the guy subdued and bound without accidentally breaking his scrawny neck…well, that would take some finesse.
Gene may have been small, but being Alpha gave him some power he wouldn’t have otherwise had. He’d used that power a time or two in the past to keep Bryan in check, but the day Gene had left Bryan and Drea to suffer with that perverted circus—something broke. The shackles of loyalty had slipped away, and his bear had growled out a reminder. The bear reminded Bryan of who he was and who he was meant to be. Peacekeeper. Guardian.
And now, with his woman at his side, he knew Peacekeeper wasn’t a solo job. Peacekeeping was done in teams, and it meant making hard decisions.
“What are you thinking about so hard, Bryan?”
Bryan looked over at Tamara and found her tucking her gun inside the black jacket she’d borrowed from Dana. She’d probably gotten sick of the draft from the denim one.
