by T. S. Joyce
Boone crossed his arms over his chest like a protective shield, and Cora tried and failed not to gawk at his flexed pecs and biceps under the thin material of his shirt. Down one arm was a sleeve of tattoos, lacking any color save black ink, in intricate designs she couldn’t understand. She was staring. Cora cleared her throat and forced her eyes to meet his. “I’m sorry. You know, for earlier. I shouldn’t have looked at that stupid video. It was awful that happened to you. I’m…sorry.”
“You already said that.”
“Well, I double mean it.”
“Who’s Eddie?”
Cora opened her mouth and clacked it closed again, frowning so hard her forehead hurt. That wasn’t what she’d expected him to ask.
His golden blond eyebrows wrenched high as he waited.
“He’s nobody to me anymore.”
“But he hurt you.” A statement, not a question.
“Anyway, I just didn’t want you to fail Jos’s shop because of that really bad lapse in judgement.”
“So, you pulled me away from the inspection to let me know you’re sorry you were caught—not to actually talk to me?”
“Yeah. No.” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him, feeling unbalanced. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Boone twitched his head like he’d been wounded. “I wouldn’t have failed a shop for personal reasons, you know. That’s not me, and it’s not my brothers either. Thought you would’ve known that.”
“Wait,” she said, grabbing his arm as he turned to leave.
He yanked it back, just as he’d done before. “What, Cora?” His eyes sparked with fury.
“How would I have known that? I don’t even know you.”
Boone nodded slowly, and a humorless smile took his lips as he hooked his hands on his waist and looked at the ground. “That’s right. You don’t. But you defend me and my kind enough. I thought you, of all people, would see me—us—as good, decent people. Not just mindless animals.”
He turned and left her in the hallway. She made an exasperated sound deep in her throat, utterly baffled at the exchange. She did defend them, often and publicly. She worked for the news and put her career on the line to point out when the anti-shifter rioters were being dick-pastries. How rude that he questioned her support. She’d been the loudest one at all the rallies when they first came out a few months ago, risking her job to loudly support their side. The right side. The side of justice and fairness. The side of equal rights and the right to live safely like the rest of the public.
“Jerk,” she muttered.
“I heard that,” Boone called.
“Shit,” she murmured.
“Heard that, too.”
An angry little screech marched up the back of her throat, and she left in a huff. Stupid bear hearing. Jos was with a customer, so Cora waved a frustrated goodbye and yanked her coffee off the counter, then made her way out the door. She’d call her cousin later, but right now, her temper was as hot as a roman candle. She could blame that on her Irish heritage, but really, it was Boone’s fault. As if she needed to be called out by a stranger. Her insides were breaking apart after Eddie had stomped on her devotion. Work had given her a few career-smudging “mental health” days off, and her cameraman, Carl, had jumped right on over to Ivanna Prichard, who was an intern after Cora’s job and openly anti-shifter. And now Boone Keller was giving her shit? Confusing and sexy, the stone-bodied Viking had given her grief like they’d been childhood friends.
That exchange with Boone bothered her the most, but she had no guess why. He was just a man. A stranger with big muscles and a tattoo she wanted to decipher, but still.
He was nobody to her, just like Eddie.
Chapter Three
Boone tossed a regretful look at the door Cora had disappeared through. “Dammit,” he muttered with a sigh. That wasn’t how he’d planned for their first conversation to go. No, scratch that. He hadn’t planned on there being a first conversation. Cora couldn’t know about him anymore than she already did.
But he felt like a total dick talking to her like that.
“What did you do to piss Cora Wright off?” Cody asked in that disapproving tone he adopted when he or his brothers did something stupid in public.
“Don’t act like you didn’t hear.”
Gage shoved Boone’s shoulder. “Dude, we need her to stay on our side. What’s your problem? I could see plain as day she’s hurting over something. Don’t you know anything about women? You don’t pick at them when they’re hurt. Doesn’t matter if they’re humans or she-bears.”
“I should apologize,” Boone said. Geez, he sucked. He should let her be pissed and hate him, but already, he was planning ways to see her again and make sure she didn’t think he was a “jerk.” His brothers called him names every thirty seconds, but they never carried the sting the insult from her lips had. With a frustrated growl, he told Cody, “I’ll meet you out front.”
Quick as a whip, he purchased a small bag of hand-dipped chocolate-covered cherries from the shop owner, then jogged out of the candy store. Cora’s scent was easy enough to follow, thanks to the boner-inducing strawberry and mint shampoo she’d washed her hair with. Most perfumes hurt his sensitive nose and gave him headaches, but her fruity smell made him want to shove his nose in her hair and only breath the oxygen saturated with her scent.
Boone drew up short as he turned the corner and saw Cora sitting on a bench in an alleyway off the main sidewalk. It was chilly out, and even with her heavy coat covering the top half of her, she was shivering. Tight jeans clung to her legs like a second skin, and her hiking boots were so damned cute all tied up over her pants. When he watched her on the news, her shoulder length hair was always curled and perfectly in place, but today, she’d worn it straight and pulled back into a ponytail. The shortest of her hairs stuck out of her hairband in little spikes he wanted to nibble.
Nibble? Boone didn’t do nibbling. He bit. Hard. He should leave.
“What do you want?” she asked him, making it too late to run.
Boone’s heart banged against his chest as he approached and sat down beside her. “Here.” He handed her the bag of sweets.
“What are these for?”
“An apology.”
Cora sniffled and laughed thickly. “It seems all we’ve done since we met is apologize to each other.”
He twitched his head and stared at a row of dried summer plants in colorful pots against the brick building they were facing. “You want to talk about it?”
Cora laughed again and shook her head. “No. You already think I’m silly enough.”
“I don’t. And I’m a good listener and really fuckin’ good with secrets. Plus, we don’t know each other and may never see each other again. I’m the best person to unload on.”
“Aren’t you working?”
“We’re passing your friend’s shop, you know. All she has to do is move some of the boxes from in front of the fire exit and watch her maximum occupancy. We mostly do this with new buildings and businesses so we can familiarize ourselves with the layout, in case we ever need to fight a fire there.”
“You’re passing her?”
“Yeah, her shop wasn’t ever in jeopardy from us.”
Cora pulled open the crackling paper bag and handed him a chocolate cherry. “Jos is my cousin. We grew up together, and I was scared I’d ruined it for her. She’s worked for a really long time to open up the candy shop.”
Boone popped the treat into his mouth and nodded his approval as the dark chocolate converged with the tart fruit on his tongue. “Who’s Eddie?”
“Eddie would be Edward Bills, a writer for the town newspaper. He’s also my recently demoted ex.”
Green fog drifted through him. He inhaled deeply to settle his snarling bear and said, “Mmm. Why was he demoted? If you’re crying, it means you still care for him.”
“I care for what we could’ve been.” She brushed a finger under her sunglas
ses and leaned back against the bench. “We were together three years, and I thought for sure he was going to propose any day. Problem was, I couldn’t see it at the time, but I cared about him a lot more than he cared for me.”
“Did he leave you?”
“No. He moved on, but he didn’t have the decency to leave first.”
Boone leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees to calm his shaking knee. He wanted to crack the fucker’s skull. “He cheated?”
“Yeah. In our bed and… God, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but…I caught him.” Her voice turned bitter and shaky. “He was fucking her from behind, and he said he was going to… Swear not to be mad?”
“Why would I be mad? I had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Just swear.”
“Okay.” Boone leaned back and draped a casual arm around the bench, not quite touching her shoulders. Just being this close to her was making his dick thump against his pants. “I swear.”
“He was telling her he was going to fuck her like a werebear, which doesn’t even make any sense, because he is anti-shifter, but she was screaming for him to, and when I walked in, I got a perfect shot of his ass and his spread legs. His perfectly shaved chode now visits my nightmares. I saw his balls clench as he emptied himself into this woman on our bed. And then he turned around like, hey honey, I thought you were working late tonight, like we were having a normal conversation and he wasn’t buried balls deep in that woman. And then the woman he was banging—the one still attached to his dick—turned around with this pouty face and called Eddie a liar, and I thought for a second that he’d told her he was single, and for a tiny moment, I didn’t hate her, but then she said that Eddie was a liar because he’d told her I was ugly, and I wasn’t ‘half bad.’ And then I told him to get out, but he kicked me out instead, and I’ve been living in one of the condos trying to figure out what to do with myself. And I shouldn’t miss him, and I don’t miss him per say, but I miss being the other half of something. I’m rambling.”
Boone ate another chocolate to wash away the vision of that prick’s balls clenching as she’d described. He had the overwhelming urge to rake a claw down Eddie’s soft human stomach until his guts fell out, but Cora didn’t need to hear the bloody plans his inner monster was currently hatching. Clearly, a strong woman like Cora Wright didn’t need him to avenge her.
“That was too much information,” she said in a voice that sang of bone-deep regret.
“No, it was just enough,” he lied. Humans couldn’t hear dishonesty like he could. “Have you told anybody anyone else all of those…details?”
“You look really grossed out. No, only you.”
Well that perked him right up and made his innards glow like a friggin’ fiery s’more marshmallow. Damn, he made a pathetic monster around Cora. “Eddie’s an idiot. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just hard to not feel like it was my fault somehow. Like”—her voice dipped to a quavering whisper—“maybe I wasn’t good enough.”
“I can tell you right now, that isn’t it. Speaking as your friend—”
“Stranger,” she corrected.
“And as a man—”
“Bear shifter.”
“I can say with full certainty that Eddie is a sniveling taint-weevil who enjoys feeling powerful by treating women like they are beneath him. And also, werebears don’t just fuck from behind, so he’s obviously shite at animal science as well.”
Cora’s face had dipped into a relieved smile, but at his final revelation, the grin faded off her face completely. “Really?”
“Not that I haven’t before, but I enjoy all positions.” He frowned and amended, “Most positions.”
“I bet you do. You have quite the reputation around town, Boone Keller.”
“Do I?”
“Oh, yes.” She cocked an eyebrow seriously, but her smile gave her away. “I read a picket sign about you. Riddled with animal STDs and fleas, it hinted.”
A snort blasted up his throat as he tried not to laugh. “No to fleas, and we don’t get STDs, so clearly, the picketer was another sadly misinformed human. Now that you know, you can call bullshit on them next time you pass by.”
She giggled, and the easy sound cast away the chill and warmed him from his guts out.
“You said taint-weevil,” she said, pink, glossy lips shining in the morning light. He wanted to suck them to see if they tasted as good as they looked.
“And I meant it.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“I’ll draw you a picture someday.”
“He never bought me flowers,” she said suddenly, her lips pursing as if she tasted something sour in those words. “I should’ve known that was a bad sign. And I get it. Some girls don’t want flowers, but I asked for them. Often. He didn’t like saying the L word, so I thought if he bought me flowers, it would be proof he cared. He just wouldn’t buy me any. Not even cheap ones, not ever.”
Her back brushed the inside of his elbow he had draped behind her, and his heartbeat stuttered in his chest. “You want me to eat him?”
There it was, that beautiful smile. “Do you actually do that to people you don’t like?”
No, he shot them with sniper rifles or sicced dragons on them. Cora was good to the bone and didn’t need to hear about what he’d done to keep the Breck Crew safe, though. “I don’t have a taste for human flesh.”
“I’m glad you didn’t catch those kids who taped you,” she said softly. “It would’ve brought you more trouble.”
Unease slithered through his middle, and he dragged his gaze back to the red brick wall in front of them. He’d gone through hell since that tape had released a few days ago. From Cody and from some of the shifter-opposed in town. That little gem probably would’ve overturned the vote for them to go back to work as firefighters if it had come out a week earlier. “Out of all the people who have watched that video,” he murmured low, “I wish you hadn’t seen it.”
“What were you dreaming of?”
Nope, he definitely wasn’t telling Cora he’d been dreaming of her death. “Fishing and raspberry patches and jars of half-eaten honey.”
She scrunched up her adorable nose and huffed a soft laugh, then shook her head. “I imagine it’s hard to open up to people when you’ve had to hide for so long.”
“Not really.” More lies. “I just don’t have any nut-clenching stories to share with virtual strangers.”
Cora swatted him and laughed. “You think you’re traumatized by that visual? I saw it with my own poor eyeballs. I’ll never get that vision out of my head. Hey,” she said, pulling her sunglasses from her face and swinging her open gaze to him. Her eyes were blue around the edges and brown in the middle, making them look gold in the saturated sunlight. “Thank you for this. You didn’t have to take the time to talk to me, but I actually feel a lot better.”
“Sure. Anytime you have horrifying, mind-damaging stories to tell, you know who to come to.”
Cora grabbed her middle and giggled until her eyes crinkled at the corners. “I am kind of sorry.”
“Kind of? I’m going to have nightmares and uncontrollable shifts for weeks.”
“Please. Half-eaten jars of honey sound much more terrifying.” She popped a chocolate-covered cherry into her mouth and her eyes went wide. “These are orgasmic.”
Boone huffed a laugh and stood. “All right, stranger friend. I have to go find my crew and get back to work. Gage has probably bought out the entire candy shop by now. He has a ridiculous sweet tooth.”
“See,” she said, standing and dusting off her backside. “That is the kind of stuff the public needs to know. It humanizes you.”
Boone slowed his long strides so she could keep up beside him. Damn, she was cute, and to stop his fingers from itching to touch hers, he linked his hands behind his head. “Cody says we need a publicist. He gave me a stack of applications last week and told me to pick one, b
ut none of them seem the right fit for my crew.”
“A publicist would help, but I agree. You need someone you can trust with your image. How people perceive you is everything right now, and you shifters are going to have to build from the ground up. I can ask around and see if I can track down a couple of options for you. I have a lot of connections at the station.”
“I’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t mind you interviewing my family either, if you ever get the time.”
“You’d give me an exclusive interview?”
“Yeah. It’s something Cody has brought up a few times already.”
“All right, gimme.” She fluttered her fingers. “Let me see your phone.”
He pulled it from his back pocket and handed it over. Cora punched in her number and hit the call button. When her phone rang, she pulled it from her purse and saved his contact. “Since we’re now friends, we should have each other’s numbers anyway, in case I ever think of another wildly inappropriate story to tell you. And you, Mr. Keller,” she said, handing him back his phone, “are the first man I’ve given my number to since I met Eddie. Call me when you’re ready to set up that interview.” Cora waved and walked away.
And as he watched her leave, phone clutched in his hand, he inhaled deeply and reveled in the silence.
For the first time in months, his inner bear wasn’t snarling to escape his skin.
Chapter Four
“Tish, I don’t know. I just feel better. Lighter without him now. It was so heavy that first week, but now I feel freer than I’ve felt in a long time.”
Tish, the station’s hair stylist, pulled at the bright pink tress of hair Cora had dyed last night. “Is that freedom where this came from?”
Sheepishly, she smiled. “I know it seems weird, but Eddie hated spontaneity, and I’ve always wanted to rock a little peekaboo color, and I don’t know. Last night it was just nice to do something I wanted. Something that made me feel good.”
