Bear Outlaw

by Candace Ayers

  "Well, what the hell is it, Bentley?" Donovan demanded in a hard whisper. "Are you wearing perfume?" She didn't flinch from the temperamental tone of his question; she was mesmerized by it. She had never seen Professor Donovan acting this way before. His loss of composure made her feel raw and achy, almost as if she wanted him to turn that aggressive energy on her.

  "No," she gasped. "I don't wear perfume, professor."

  "You smell different. You're… everything about you is different." He drew her closer, until she was practically seated in his lap. His hand inched upward, and Kira bit her lip to keep from making any sound. "I think I know what this is. Jesus."

  "What?" she demanded tersely. "Is there something wrong with me? If there is, just tell me. I've felt like this all weekend ever since I left your apartment! I feel…" She struggled to form the words. The hand creeping up her thigh was doing nothing to help her concentration. Had he forgotten it was there?

  "I feel… like I need something. Desperately. But I don't know what it is."

  Professor Donovan dropped his bomb. "It's possible you've gone into heat," he murmured. "I've heard about it happening in the wolf world. Your body senses that there is a viable mate around, and it begins to produce pheromones to let them know you're sexually available."

  "That's creepy," Kira said, but she couldn't hide the fact that she was blushing behind her unhappy tone. "And clinical. How do I stop it from happening?"

  "It's unconscious, from what I understand. I doubt you have any real control over it."

  "It would explain the way everyone is acting," she mentioned. "At least, the way the males on campus are acting."

  Donovan's steely eyes narrowed territorially. "How are they acting, exactly?"

  "Like they're attracted to me," Kira said despondently. "Like they're' stupid attracted to me. But I don't understand how anyone else would even pick up on it, if what you're saying is true. Isn't that something only a werewolf would know?"

  "Pheromones are something that every species gives off to varying degrees. You're a wolf, but you're also a human woman." Professor Donovan paused, and she saw his throat work. "Those poor fools probably have no idea what's hitting them now."

  "Are my pheromones affecting you?" Kira asked in a breathless whisper.

  "To say the least."

  The hand that gripped her flank drew her all the way in against him, and Kira settled into straddling his lap. The magnetic pull between them only grew stronger the closer they were. She had a hazy awareness that they were still in his classroom, but it seemed somehow less important than it had been only moments before. She slipped her arms around him as he lowered his mouth to her neck. It felt so easy to come together like this, so natural, so…

  "This is a mistake," Donovan insisted huskily. His hot breath gusted across the base of her throat, but he held back from giving her what she wanted. Kira wanted his lips on her, not hovering maddeningly close to her skin in a state of unbearable indecision. "I don't want to do this with you now. Not when it's some… biological imperative."

  "But you've been wanting to do this," she said. She was getting better at reading between the lines of his words. "Haven't you?"

  Donovan groaned. "God, Kira, you can't say stuff like that to me. Not now."

  She had never seen him like this before. She had found herself on the receiving end of his overwhelmed passion for her, of course, but she had never had him eating out of the palm of her hand. The animal in her wanted to take full advantage of it.

  "We can't do this here," she whispered against the shell of his ear. "What is someone sees us?"

  Donovan shoved her off of him immediately and rose to his feet. "My office. Five minutes," he ordered.

  Apparently 'biological imperative' was about to take precedent over romance. Not that she was complaining—she needed this heat inside her extinguished.

  Kira recovered her bag hastily and moved ahead of him out the door. Her heart beat wildly in her ears. It felt like it hadn't ceased pounding this hard all morning. She walked briskly down the hall to the water fountains and occupied herself with slaking her thirst, but it definitely wasn't the thirst that needed to be quenched. When she was finished, she turned and stared hard at the bulletin board as she waited a few minutes more.

  Then she was mounting the steps to the upper offices, trying not to sprint in her eagerness to get where she was going. She strode down the hall to Professor Donovan's office and pulled opened the door.

  The moment it was secured closed behind her, the man was upon her. Kira gasped, and the door thudded hard in its frame as he thrust her up against it in a sizzling encore of their first kiss. He lifted her off the ground and pinned her beneath his insistent body as his hand shot behind her to lock the door. Their mouths collided in a fevered exchange; her teeth caught on his lower lip as he tried his best to devour her whole.

  His thumbs glanced beneath her rib cage and hooked themselves on the hem of her shirt, yanking it up and over her head without even the briefest break in contact. Now the black pushup bra he had first seen at the Fun Fair bleeding through her wet T-shirt was in full evidence. He palmed one of her proud breasts and squeezed, and Kira went wild; she wanted to throw her head back, but his mouth kept hold of her, swallowing her impassioned moan.

  He whirled away from the door, carrying her with him. She wrapped her long legs around his waist to secure herself to him as he deposited her on the edge of his desk. Papers scattered beneath the careless sweep of his hand and fell to the floor in fluttering clumps. He pushed his hard body between her legs, and Kira opened to receive him, her form-fitting camel-colored skirt riding all the way up her thighs. His right hand detached itself from the desk to aid in its ascent, and she shuddered.

  "I can't count the number of times I've wanted to throw you across this desk," he growled into her neck. He followed up his dark admission with a nip beneath her ear, and Kira gasped. "Did you ever think about that, Kira, all the times I had you in here? Did you think about what you would do if I tried to have my way with you? Would you let me?"

  She cried out as his hand delved beneath her skirt and cupped her between her legs. Only the cotton of her panties remained as a barrier between them, but it suddenly felt as thin as tissue paper. Donovan's hand rubbed her, and she moved her body in time to his deep caresses, latching onto him with her mouth once more.

  "I'll take that as a yes," he concluded as he thrust his tongue past her parted lips. His kiss was hot and penetrating, and her awareness narrowed instantly in that moment to the way their mouths danced and joined. She barely noticed how he shifted their lower bodies closer until his pelvis was grinding her back against his desk.

  The fingers caressing her between her legs gave a firm, intrusive press over her entrance, and Kira nearly shot off the desk. Donovan's strong body barricaded her, forcing her back until she was situated precisely the way he wanted her to remain. There was nowhere for her to escape to… nowhere to turn except to the release his touch promised… she opened her legs wider, and the pads of his fingers slid at last beneath the damp fabric of her panties…

  A low knock at the door had them separating from one another in an instant. Kira gave a flying leap across the room as Donovan dove for her T-shirt, which was still hanging off the door handle where they had left it. He turned, reared back, and pitched it to her like the outcome of the ninth inning depended on it. Kira caught it handily and yanked it down over her head as Donovan straightened himself out.

  "Yep! Just a minute!" His voice sounded rough around the edges and much deeper than usual, and he hastily cleared his throat. His thumb flicked the lock and he leveraged the handle down just as Kira tossed herself down onto the couch and grabbed a book off the nearest shelf. She flipped it open to a random page and lost herself behind it just as the door opened. She didn't look up to see who it was.

  "Was this door locked?" Dr. Kilman's voice resonated from the other side. Kira pushed her hair back and glanced up incuriously. S
he was certain the frantic beating of her heart could be heard miles away, with or without heightened werewolf hearing. Donovan's glance in her direction seemed to confirm this.

  "No." His voice was neutral. "What's up, Kilman?"

  Donovan's fellow faculty member leaned around the corner to look at Kira. She raised her hand in a bored little wave. "Just waiting for Professor Donovan to finish grading my last essay," she explained, her tone implying it was the most inconvenient thing on earth and she was so over it. Dr. Kilman's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly behind his glasses, but he nodded in acceptance of this. He withdrew and started back down the hall to his own office. Donovan pulled the door closed once more. They both expelled a simultaneous sigh of relief.

  "Holy shit!" Kira tossed her book aside and covered her mouth to keep from laughing uncontrollably. Donovan collapsed behind his desk and dropped his head into his hands. He looked like he had just lost years of his life.

  "Jesus. That has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever done," he muttered.

  Kira raised an eyebrow. "Does that mean we're done?"

  His pencil holder sailed across the room toward her in response, and she laughed as she shielded herself against it. They hadn't consummated their feelings, but she still felt good. Really good. Apparently all the wolf in her had required to be satisfied for the moment was a quick tryst at the hands of the man who sired her.

  "You're going to get me fired, Kira. I'll be blacklisted from ever teaching for the rest of my life." Donovan raised himself up from behind his desk and straightened the front of his sweater. Kira licked her lips playfully, and he noticed this immediately. Donovan raised a finger and pointed it at her. "No. No more. I don't care how fucking sexy you look or how good you smell. We're not doing this again here. There's a lot more at stake than either of us can easily remember when we get like this."

  "Fine." Kira pouted. "But there goes your perverted fantasy of having me over your desk."

  Donovan groaned and dropped his head into a stack of papers; unnoticed by Dr. Kilman, most of them still resided on the floor. Content that she had won, Kira picked up her book and resumed pretending to read. She didn't even notice that her tag was sticking out in front.

  13

  Professor Donovan?"

  It was Tuesday, a day later, and Donovan was sitting behind the desk in his classroom. It was unbearable being inside his office after his near-transgression with Kira Bentley; the scent of her still lingered, and it made grading papers or engaging in anything else remotely related to his career as a professor impossible. More and more often these days he was contemplating finding a new line of work. Remaining an upright instructor who taught in the hallowed halls of Rider University and being a horny werewolf were proving increasingly impossible to juggle. To think all of this might have been easily avoided, if he had only made better decisions on a full moon…

  Then again, given the chance, would he have done anything differently? Who's to say he wouldn't have found himself entangled with Kira Bentley in some other way? There was more than animal magnetism at work between them, of that he was now sure. He found her irresistibly attractive, and infinitely fascinating, and his feelings for her were…

  "Professor?"

  Donovan glanced up sharply over the rims of his glasses. There was a female student standing in the doorway, one who looked vaguely familiar to him. He sat back and removed his eyewear to have a better look at her.

  "Yes? You're…"

  "I'm Shannon Drieling. You had me last semester," the girl explained. "I'm Kira Bentley's roommate."

  "Yes? What can I do for you, Miss Drieling?" Instinct already told him what this was about. "Is everything all right with Kira? She missed my class again today. Not unusual," he added out of a bit of playful spite. If she insisted on keeping up their old pretense, even in the face of everything that had come to pass between them, then he was certainly game to continue giving her a hard time.

  The expression on Shannon Drieling's face instantly took the fun out of it for him, though, and his wan smile curled into a thoughtful frown. "Is she ill? If she is, tell her she can makeup her assignments when she gets back. Either that, or I can send them with you now." Donovan pulled open a drawer to hunt for a spare copy of the reading assessment. "Classic literature will always be here. It's more important that she remains healthy."

  "She talks about you all the time, like you're her advisor or mentor or something," Shannon blurted out as if she hadn't heard him at all. Donovan froze. Now he could definitely see that something was wrong. Her eyes were nearly brimming over with tears, and he could smell her heightened anxiety suspended like a cloud above them both. He eased the drawer shut.

  "What is it, Drieling?" he asked quietly. "I assure you that you have my complete confidence." It was a promise he might have to break, depending on what she told him now. If he was her first point of contact… if there was an emergency…

  "I came home last night and our room was completely trashed!" Shannon sobbed. "All the furniture was overturned, and there were clothes everywhere. It was all Kira's stuff—none of my stuff was touched. Even her bed was flipped over. It looked like… it looked like… oh God." Shannon sank to her knees, and Donovan came instantly out of his chair to join her on the floor. He could still hear her voice muffled behind her hands. "It was like someone tore through it with a knife. There were these long jagged marks in it…"

  "And Kira?" he demanded. "Where's Kira?"

  Her sudden silence unnerved him, and Donovan grasped her shoulders to force her to look up at him once more. Her eyes were streaming, and her face was deathly pale.

  "I think someone broke into our dorm room," she said. "I think something has happened to Kira."

  Kira woke in the woods.

  She blinked blearily up at the sky as she tried to remember how she had gotten outside in the first place. She could see a patch of blue through a fringe of autumnal leaves, but nothing about the canopy above her recalled any memories. She overturned herself to look for any familiar landmarks, and was greeted by a terrible discovery.

  She wasn't naked—that, at least, was a relief. But her clothes were torn to ribbons, and the skin beneath her tattered clothing was scratched as if she had been in a scuffle with some wild animal. Even her jeans were ripped beyond recognition.

  Panic flooded her system, and Kira sat up quickly. She was hit by an immediate dizzy spell, but it didn't succeed in knocking her back down again; if anything, her lightheadedness forced her to take quick stock of her surroundings in case she happened to pass out again. Aside from her clothes and the superficial wounds, she appeared otherwise unharmed. Judging by the noonday sky overhead, she was able to guess that she had been out for a while, which would account for some of her dizziness—her stomach felt empty, and she was likely dehydrated. The surge of energy she had felt upon waking was only due to adrenaline, and that would probably deplete itself shortly. She needed to figure a way out of here before then?

  But where was she? She wanted to say Gosling Park, but she couldn't be sure how she knew. Relying on her largely-untested wolf instincts to tell her where she was seemed risky, but it was all she had to go off of at this point. She thought she could tell from the position of the sun that time had passed, but what was the last thing that she could remember?

  She had been up late studying well into the early morning. Her roommate was out—likely sleeping over with a new guy she didn't want Kira to know about yet. So Kira had been in her dorm room alone, and then… chaos.

  Someone had splintered the door in. She remembered that much. No knock, no trying of the handle first—the door had caved upon first impact. Her body had reacted out of instinct, and shifted her partway before she even had time to draw a startled breath. She remembered a whirlwind of claws, teeth, and fur… but whose? Surely it wasn't Donovan who had attacked her.

  Was it possible she had done this to herself?

  The prospect was starting to seem more and more likel
y. She knew that werewolves occasionally blacked out, depending on the circumstances—Professor Donovan was a testament to that. Could it have been lack of sleep that allowed the wolf to take her over with a vengeance? Oh God, what if she had hurt someone?

  Kira staggered to her feet, pressing a palm to her forehead in shame. The only blood on her was blood that she could readily identify as her own, and there wasn't much of it. Her mouth was dry, and as she swept her tongue between her teeth for a telltale taste of copper, she came up short. All signs were pointing toward a positive conclusion, but that still didn't explain what had happened, or why she was here.

  A rustling in the undergrowth drew her attention, and Kira froze. Her sensitive ears picked up on something close, something large, moving steadily toward her location. She turned and planted herself in a defensive position, legs wide and fists raised. Whoever, or whatever, it was, they were approaching at a speed that couldn't be mistaken for anything other than intentional. They knew her location, and were banking on her still being there.

  She wasn't out of the woods yet.

  14

  And this is how you found it?"

  Kira Bentley's roommate, Shannon Drieling, nodded.

  Donovan stood in the doorway to the girls' dorm room for a long, terrible moment; then, taking Shannon's silence for permission, he stepped over the threshold.

  The room was a disaster—exactly as she had described it to him and then some. The bed was overturned, assignments and clothes were scattered everywhere, a desk lamp was shattered and pillows were torn to ribbons. There were goose down feathers littered everywhere, covering half of the room like a fresh powder of snow.