Bears of Burden: THORN

by Candace Ayers

With a growl, the bear dropped to its feet and turned around. It thundered around the lakeshore, and Elie knew exactly where Jake was headed. She struggled to her feet and followed after at a run, no longer certain what she planned to do when she got there. Stop him? Could she stop him? Should she stop him…?

  Up ahead, Bryan Mosley’s shocked scream answered her questions, and Elie booked it the last twenty feet or so until she saw the great shoulders of the bear—Jake—hunched over a haunch of meat that had once been Bryan. His face was just barely recognizable. Part of his skull was crushed, as if he’d been slapped into a tree by a monstrous force.

  He was dead as a dishrag. Mauled. The sight was something of a relief to Elie, knowing he was gone forever.

  Her relief was cut short as Jake the Bear swerved his blood-soaked muzzled up to regard her thoughtfully.

  “Nice, Jake…” she muttered. It really would be stupid irony if Jake killed her now, after saving her from a rapist psychopath. Life and its nuances, never predictable.

  Thankfully, Jake didn’t seem hungry enough to eat her, even seemed to recognize her in this form. The bear rumbled over to her side, then lowered down to the ground in an unmistakable entreaty. Elie laughed humorlessly.

  “You want me to ride you? For real?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

  Jake snuffled at her, encouraging.

  What a strange day. Elie climbed onto the bear’s back. She’d never even ridden a horse, and had no idea how she was going to stay on. When Jake got to his feet, Elie dug her hands in his fur and clamped her legs around him desperately.

  As a bear, Jake was very wide, and for the most part round, but his back was flat enough for Elie to stay astride him, except for once, when he had to stop suddenly and she slipped off. Darkness was quite full by the time they reached the Framer’s back yard. Jake stopped under the cover of the trees.

  Politely, Elie stepped down. The change-back process looked painful enough without someone sitting on you. It was difficult to watch, even knowing what was coming. The sound of cracking bone and knitting muscle was almost sickening, and by the end of it, Jake was lying on the forest floor, panting.

  “That looks painful,” Elie whispered.

  Jake nodded. His body was very white, very pale, in the darkness. “It is.”

  Elie knelt down next to him. She pulled off her sweater to drape it over his shoulders. Not that she wanted to cover any of him, but it just seemed the polite thing to do. He was a lot of man to look at. Even in the bare light glimmering from the Framer’s back porch, his biceps and shoulders bunched and his torso rippled. The most distracting thing by far was between his legs—he was huge and semi-erect already. Jake sat up and let her do as she liked, passively, watching her.

  “Elie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “C’mere.”

  Elie glanced down and back up before she could stop herself. More than semi-, now.

  If she wanted to stop, there had been better times, but now, finally, Elie admitted to herself that she didn’t want to dodge this one. Much of her life was spent running away. Too much. She leaned forward into Jake’s kiss, hot and firm against her lips.

  It had been an evening full of fear and adrenaline, one shot after another, and it was still pulsing through their veins, both of them. Elie ran her hands over his chest and back. There wasn’t even a scar of the bullet wound. It was gone as if it had never happened. Jake pulled her closer, almost roughly.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “I… All I can think of is tasting you, is that bad?” He chuckled, but his breath was coming short and his mouth had closed on her neck, her ear.

  Elie’s heart squeezed. “Depends on where,” she whispered back.

  Jake laughed and pulled her against his waist. He was kneeling, now, and had drug each of her legs to one side of his hips. His hard length was pressed against the groin of Elie’s jeans with impossible insistence.

  “Anywhere you’ll let me,” he breathed. It had been meant as a joke, but a shiver ran through Elie. He ran his hands up her abdomen, bunching her shirt up around his fingers until her front was exposed. At the sight of her breasts, still cupped in her bra but large and round nonetheless, he growled appreciation. His thumbs kneaded her nipples through the bra and Elie gasped at the pleasure of it. Her own fingers were currently raking through his hair, holding on for support.

  Jake’s stubbled chin grazed against her skin as he kissed a molten line from her collarbone downward along the lacey edge of the bra, between her breasts. Elie pulled off her shirt and shivered.

  “It’s cold,” she said absently. Jake hugged her tighter, still tracing his lips across her chest.

  “I’ll keep you warm,” he rumbled.

  He slipped Elie’s sweater off his shoulders and settled it, one-handed, on the ground. His hands tracked back to the closure of her jeans. Elie could feel his hands shaking, but she doubted it was from nerves. The thought of his desire, that he wanted her so badly he was shaking with need, sent a fiery wave through her body, through her head.

  Jake rolled her to the ground. He was over her, his torso seemed to cover the sky, to fill her entire field of vision, until it disappeared and Jake slipped downward to drag her jeans off her legs. Her tennis shoes popped off whether on purpose or accident. Elie couldn’t be bothered to worry about her socks, as Jake rolled her panties down her legs and off into the night, as well.

  She twisted, trying to get her bra off—she wanted it gone, wanted Jake to be able to touch her everywhere, everywhere. Elie had to arch her back to reach the clasps, and Jake helped her, lifting her easily by the waist. He lowered his mouth to her belly button and started kissing and tonguing up, his chin dragging along across her skin and setting it aflame.

  With her bra discarded in the darkness, Elie moaned under Jake’s mouth, clutching at his shoulders. He’d been cool to the touch at first. He still was. This time of year, there wasn’t much to be done about that. But there was a heat that burned beneath his skin, just below the coolness. A thrumming source of it rested against Elie’s thigh, now, waiting for the time to be right.

  Impatiently, Elie wanted that time to be now, and reached between Jake’s thighs, gripped his shaft, and squeezed lightly. She was rewarded with a sharp inhale from him, which turned into a deep groan as she dipped her hand down and back up slowly, slowly, as if to hint at what Elie wanted to do next.

  But Jake would not take hints, and instead flicked his tongue across her nipple. Elie’s back arched again, and Jake teased, first one and then the other, starting a tremor in Elie’s core that grew and spun wildly, like a spinning top losing balance.

  “Jake,” she breathed. “Jake, please…”

  He moaned pleasantly. “Say it again. The sound of you saying those words—I didn’t think I could get any harder—but you always manage—to surprise me.” He tried to sound casual, but his breath was deep and panting. When Elie put her hands over his chest, she could feel the thunderous pound of his heart, beating away under her fingers.

  “Please,” she smiled, hooking her arms around his shoulders. “Please—oh, Jake—” Her words were interrupted as he just brushed her with his tip, startling her heart into an alarming trip of hyper-speed beats.

  In thrill and rapture, Elie cried out as Jake delved into her, filling her, overfilling her, pumping briefly to wet his shaft until each motion was smooth and without resistance. He covered her mouth with his, devouring her with his kiss. His skin was feverish now, burning with sweat in the cool of the night as the trees whispered overhead.

  Around his tongue Elie murmured pleas—short, one-word entreaties, things like ‘harder’, ‘faster’. Jake was always prompt to accommodate. The muscles of his arms stood out like cords—his chest and torso were rigid with tension as he thrust relentlessly, desperately, even as Elie spasmed and rocked and came in a hot rush beneath his frantic motion.

  Whether he meant to or not, Jake’s pace, the feeling of his size forcing its way inside her,
had Elie’s body humming in orgasm for what seemed like minutes. Her hands and feet felt numb. Her head was reeling. Breathlessly, she whispered in his ear.

  “Jake, I don’t know if I can take much more.”

  In response, Jake reared back. He didn’t stop. Grasping her hips in both large hands, he kept thudding into her, ramming into every niche of space she had. He looked down at her, and his eyes were amber. Elie shivered—he was admiring her body in the darkness, watching as she jiggled and jolted with each thrust, how her breasts bounced along with them, how her hair splayed out across the forest floor.

  With a raw cry, Jake finished hard, pumping warm jets of his seed into her. His movements slowed little by little and he leaned over her, taking deep breaths.

  Soon, he lay next to her on her sweater and gathered Elie into his arms. She inhaled his scent from the safety of his embrace. Maybe it was just the events of the night, but he smelled like forest and musk, familiar and irreplaceable.

  “Elie?”

  She hummed a response, keeping her face buried in his neck.

  “Elie, I killed that bastard. Broke his neck like it was nothing and clawed him open. Doesn’t bother you?”

  Elie let Jake’s words wash over her. She thought of Brittany Langland’s blank, strung-out face as she stared down at her young son. She thought of the evil glare in Bryan’s eyes as he told her how he would kill her, and how aroused he was by her pain. She realized that, oddly enough, it didn’t bother her at all that he was dead, or that Jake had killed him. Elie opened her eyes. She pulled back and looked into Jake’s face. She could just barely see it in the light from the house.

  “No,” she answered evenly. “He got what he deserved.”

  Jake studied her curiously. “You don’t care that I killed him?”

  Elie shook her head. “The world is a better place with one less drug-pushing rapist.”

  It was hard to guess whether her reply reassured or unnerved him. Jake pulled her back into an embrace and held her tightly.

  The moment Elie shivered with cold, Jake noticed. “Let’s get inside,” he murmured. “You’ll freeze.”

  They gathered their clothes and walked across the grass of the yard barefoot and naked. Jake dug through his pants’ pockets until he found the house keys, and they crawled into his bed together, warm and nuzzled in the sheets and blankets left behind by his parents when they died.

  Elie didn’t notice what Jake did because she was asleep too quickly, and she had never had to spend a silent night under this roof, listening to the roar of all that was absent. But Jake lay awake for as long as he could, resisting the exhaustion that pulled at him. There hadn’t been another person in this house for years. He’d almost forgotten what the sound of someone else’s footsteps on the floor was. How voices other than his own bounced into the corners and brought life into his space.

  Gingerly, he tucked an arm around her as she slept. Elie flattened herself against his side without waking, muttering with a smile on her face.

  When he was too tired to think any more on the subject, Jake wrapped his strong arms around Elie and finally, after all these years, held his love as they drifted into dream land.

  Chapter Ten

  She’d definitely forgotten something. Elie frowned and tried to go back to sleep. Whatever it was, she could deal with it later. Unless something was on fire, more sleep was more important.

  There was that buzzing again. Elie realized through her sleepy delirium that it was her phone, and reached for it on the nightstand. Her hand floundered through the air, because her nightstand was back in her apartment in Denver, and she was neither there nor in her parent’s guest bedroom with the lacy white curtains.

  A smile spread across her face, even as the phone continued to buzz through her jeans’ pocket on the floor. She was in Jake’s bed.

  The smile withered as she recalled the events of the previous night, extraordinary and terrible as they were. She’d almost been raped. She’d almost been killed. In her drowsy little hometown of Hemford, of all the damn places.

  Jake was missing, so Elie sat up and reached toward the floor for the phone. It had stopped ringing, but since she’d been out mysteriously all night, with a flash of panic she remembered Jasper, but he’d probably run home after the bear had appeared, Elie had a feeling she knew who’d been calling.

  Hemford, of all places. Elie sat up, naked, in bed and opened her phone screen. She’d always expected danger in Denver. Don’t walk down dark alleys, stay in sight of people, don’t leave your drink unattended, all that and more had been standard routine in the city. No wonder scum like Bryan Mosley lurked here, where people were good and neighbors trusting. It made for easier hunting.

  Thirteen missed calls from Alison Barner. There was something immediately uneasy—ominous, even—about seeing such a number of missed calls from your mother. In France, Elie’s friend Rachel had checked her phone at the end of a Saturday night to find twenty-two missed rings from her parents. They’d been trying to tell her that Rachel’s sister had died in an auto accident.

  Elie shook off the unease and started to call Alison back, but the phone began ringing in her hand before she could press CALL. She almost dropped it altogether, but managed to answer the call and hold the phone to her ear without any further incident.

  “Elie?! Elie, oh my God, we were so worried, Elie where are you?!”

  Her stomach was doing jumping jacks, and Elie had never been much of a jumper. “Mom, I’m at Jake’s, Mom. What happened? Are you all right? Is Dad alright?”

  “Oh, God, Elie, it’s terrible—no, we’re all safe, it’s not that,” Alison cut off abruptly. “Did you say at Jake’s?”

  Her mother’s tone had hopped from panicked relief to curiosity as quick and smoothly as a lane change. Elie grinned a little, seeing in her mind’s eye Alison raising her eyebrows into the phone.

  “Well, I’m glad you made up,” Alison said finally. “Jasper came home alone last night dragging his leash, we found him in his dog house in the backyard this morning. You could say it worried us a little.”

  Elie winced. “Sorry. He, um, he got spooked and yanked the leash out of my hand. Jake and I were looking for him…”

  “And got distracted?”

  “Mom.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you.” This last was whispered conspiratorially into the phone.

  “I’m glad Jasper found his way home. I figured he would, he knows the way. That’s why I didn’t call. It was late. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “Well, say hi to Jake for me,” Alison added coyly. “Don’t let me keep you. It’s already eleven. Sounds like you two had a long night.”

  “Bye, Mom,” Elie rolled her eyes and hung up.

  Elie swung her legs over the side of the bed. Cold air washed over her immediately. She almost dived back under the covers, but Jake wasn’t under the covers. That took away from the appeal.

  There was a light blanket thrown over the edge of the bed, and Elie grabbed it and wrapped it around herself to stop the shivering. It worked well enough, and she ventured out into the landing of Jake’s stairs.

  The Framer house was a level and a half, one modest floor that comprised kitchen, living room, bath, a bedroom that had always been an office for as long as Elie could remember, and the two upstairs bedrooms. The master had belonged to Jake’s parents. It stood across from Elie, now, silent.

  She approached the door. It was shut. There was a sorrowful feel to it, as if it were ice, as if cold wafted from that closed door in waves. A strange urge to look inside gripped her, and Elie set her hand on the knob. There was the cold and finite feeling of a mausoleum in the handle, but Elie turned it and looked inside.

  If she expected ghosts, in a way, that was what Elie got. Inside the master suite, time had slowed to a steady-dripping crawl. Someone had been in to clean, vacuum, dust, change the bedding and clear the windows. But in doing so, they had left out the book Gwen had been reading when sh
e died—Broken Business, which looked like a dramatic thriller purchased off the discount rack—and the old work boots that Nate Framer had died in.

  Her throat closed, and Elie shut the door softly.

  Down the stairs, she heard the shower running and made an educated guess about Jake’s whereabouts. She wandered into the kitchen. The bottom floor of the home was all hardwood floors, which were quiet chilly on her bare toes. She pawed through the cupboards for coffee, filled the machine, and set it to brew.

  The shower shut off and Elie walked over just as the coffee began to drip and tested the bathroom doorknob. It was unlocked, so she pried it open silently and peered in.

  Jake stood at the mirror, naked, still glistening with water droplets in the soggy air of the bathroom. The mirror was fogged up, so he didn’t see her open the door, and Elie crept in, feeling playful. The soft rug across the tile muffled her steps, and Jake seemed busy with his razor, a collection of its pieces were scattered on the wood counter.

  Elie stepped closer… closer... she was going to envelop him in a hug with the blanket, bringing his naked body back into contact with her own, but Jake was too fast.

  Without seeming surprised to find her there, he spun around, hooked her waist, and brought her around against the counter. He ground his hips to hers. He was hard already, hot and ready to go. Elie’s heart quickened instantly, and she smiled breathlessly.

  “You’re no fun,” she joked.

  Jake grinned. His eyes roved down her body, across the curves that stuck out through the thin blanket tucked across her breasts. Smoothly, he propped her legs open, trapping her against the counter. Elie was wrapped so tightly in the blanket she could hardly move.

  “I think you’ll probably change your mind in a minute or two,” he replied. His voice was gravelly with lust. “Besides. I’m a werebear. I heard you coming down the stairs and making coffee, even over the shower.”

  Elie had no time to answer; Jake’s hand slipped between the folds of the blanket and dove between her legs. The only thing Elie could do was stand there and let it happen, which, coincidentally, was the only thing she wanted to do. She started to say so, but Jake set a finger on her lips—his own lips followed a moment later, stealing the breath she was struggling to draw as he touched and tested and teased.