Bear Love (4 page)

“They didn’t see me,” Mike said after he’d recovered. After
laboriously dragging him over, they’d leaned him up against a wall near a
window, and Suzy had opened the blinds so that they could see his wounds better
and inspect him. Jess had given him her jacket—or had tried to, anyway. He’d
refused outright. He was still naked, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Jess
couldn’t help but take a peek every now and then. His shaft was huge and thick.
Just the sight of it moistened her panties. She was all too aware that Suzy
must be getting a show, too. Occasionally they caught each other looking and
blushed.

“Once the snow got thick enough, I
knew they couldn’t track me,” Mike went on. Streaks of blood leaked from his
chest and arms and back. The lions had truly savaged him. Bear shifters healed
fast, though, Jess had heard, and even now his flesh seemed to be knitting back
together, if slowly, and the flow of blood ceasing. “I broke off from them and
found myself on a high ridge. I saw you girls sneaking through this place and
came on down.”

“You sure Bryce and his goons
didn’t see us, too?” Suzy said. She wrung her wrist as she did, as if imagining
Bryce twisting at her again.

“I don’t think so,” Mike said. As
he spoke, he shifted slightly, and Jess noticed that his cock had actually
hardened somewhat. He
liked
Jess's
attention. She gasped and felt herself grow even wetter. His nostrils quivered
and he grinned. “They were headed a different direction. I drew them off from
the area you were traveling toward.”

Jess felt her heart swell. He had
risked his life once for her, and had risked it even further again. He could
have died tonight, terribly, ripped apart by lions. Only his daring and
strength had saved him. She wanted to throw herself in his arms. Then she
remembered Andrew and her resolution to stay single and held herself back.

Suddenly Mike scowled and studied Jess,
and such was his intensity that she blinked.

“What is it?” she said, exchanging
a look with Suzy, who only shook her head.

“You know,” Mike said softly, his eyes
on Jess. “You know what I am. You don’t act surprised.”

Slowly, she nodded. “A bear
shifter.”

“How’d you know?”

She grinned, feeling her cheeks
burn. “It wasn’t, ah, hard to figure out.” That word! Her eyes darted as if
against their will to his cock, hard and straining upward, as if questing for
her, then jerked away. Her core raged as if with fire.

“Sorry,” he said, but he was
chuckling. “I get that way sometimes after a fight. When my blood goes up,
makes me want to …” He let his words drift off.

“I think we get the picture,” Suzy
said, and her cheeks had gone dark. Becoming aware of Jess, she twisted away.

“So, um, what now?” Jess said,
staring pointedly out the window. “I hate to sound like the helpless maiden
here, but I’m not sure what to do next. Wait for daylight?”

“Sounds good,” Mike said. “Then
I’ll bring you girls to safety.” He lapsed into silence, and Jess turned
briefly to see him frowning. He seemed to be turning something over in his
mind.

She frowned, too. “Who are they?
Bryce and his buddies? Just some random lion shifters?”

“I don’t know,” Mike admitted. “I
was just wondering the same thing. I need to see my alpha. He knows more about
the other shifters. Bear politics has always been more than I could handle.”

“Bear politics?”

“How the different clans get along.
Since our coming out, things have been tense among the clans. Everyone has a
different way to deal with it, and some don’t want anything to do with humans.
Some want to retreat into the mountains like the Black Valley shifters under
Kane. Others want to wipe out the human towns in the mountains and reclaim them
as our territory. Most just want peace and understanding with humans, though,
don’t worry. Anyway, guess I never really had time to figure out how all the
other races were taking it. Or even paid them much attention before the
coming-out, either.”

“Where’s your alpha?” Suzy asked,
and for some irrational reason Jess resented her sticking her nose in. Jess
wanted to shout,
He’s mine! Hands off!
She knew that was ridiculous, though, and fumed to herself.

“In town,” Mike said. “My crew had
been just outside of town till recently, and now we’re scattered about. A
couple still stay at the resort, but now that it’s partly open it’s pretty much
out of room.”

“Why did you move?” Jess said
before Suzy could open her mouth.

Mike grunted. “Politics. My clan
has an alpha, but all the regional clans share a Great Alpha. He told Connor,
my alpha, to arrange the move.”

“Like, for some ...
reason
?”

Mike grinned again, that
infuriating confident grin of his. “We bought the Ski Resort.”

To Jess’s dumbfounded look, Suzy
said, “It operates all the skiing here. The lifts, maintains the slopes. It’s a
private company, but the boys who run it are local. Or were,” she added, giving
Mike a sour look.

“Why would bear shifters buy a ski
resort?” Jess said.

“Public relations,” Mike said.
“It’s going to be our front to the world. Our public face. It’s a big thing. My
crew, the Pine Ridge crew, we’re real proud to have been asked to do it. The Great
Alpha said we have good heads on our shoulders.”

“You sure do,” Jess couldn’t help
but say, and she was relieved when Mike’s smile only widened. His cock throbbed
between his legs. She could see just a tiny drop of dew glistening on its end.
She wanted to lick it off. For a moment she wished Suzy weren’t there.

Suzy was watching the two of them.
“You know,” she said, with an exaggerated yawn. “Maybe I should just get some
sleep. It’s been a hell of a night, after all. I think I’ll just …” She hugged
Jess goodnight, then passed through an archway and into another room.

“You really don’t have to do that,”
Jess called, but Suzy didn’t reply.

“Good night,” Mike called, then
looked up at Jess. His annoying grin fell away, and he stared up at her soberly
but warmly. She felt as if his soul were reaching out to hers.

She knelt beside him, and now he
was taller than she was. Once more she realized how big he was, huge, his
shoulders broad, his chest deep. Blood like oil dripped down his eight-pack and
sweat greased his erect shaft. She just wanted to reach down and grip it. She
knew it would be hot in her fingers. Then she would jerk it, feeling it pulse
in her hand, and the bead on the tip would grow fatter and fatter …

She snapped out of it when she
realized he was leaning in for a kiss. She pulled away. His hand had gently
cupped the back of her head, but she jerked to the side and went sprawling.

“What was that for?” he asked.

She propped herself up.
“No,”
she said. “We’re not doing that.”

“But why not? My bear aches for
you, Jess.”

She stared at him. He had said that
so sincerely. His eyes shone by the light of the moonlight streaming through
the windows. He was so powerful, and strong, and protective, and she wanted him
with every fiber of her being. But it was too soon. If she just jumped from one
man to another, she would never know what it was like to stand on her own two
feet.

“I can’t,” she forced out. Picking
herself up, she felt tears spring to her eyes. She was giving up something,
some
one,
she wanted desperately. “I
just can’t.”

Crying, she fled the room.

Well, that hadn’t gone as well as Mike had hoped. Things had
been going better than he’d expected before that part at the end, when she’d
burst into tears and run hysterical from the room, but that last part had kind
of ruined it. What had he done wrong? Was the head cup too much?

He shook himself, a growl tearing
from his lips. His bear surged inside him, angry and frustrated. It had just
been about to consummate with its mate, but something had denied it, and it was
about to break Mike apart from the inside in its fury. He growled again and
pounded the floor. Slowly his bear subsided.

The sound of Jess crying softly
from another room reached his keen shifter senses, and his bear growled again.
Her own pain had put it on edge, and Mike knew it wouldn’t calm down until she
did. His whole being vibrated with her pain.

With some effort, he rose to his
feet. Pain threatened to overwhelm him, and a wave of dizziness made him press
a hand against the wall to steady himself. He really had lost a lot of blood
against Bryce’s pride and probably shouldn’t be moving around. But Jess’s sobs
compelled him to shove off from the wall and press through a doorway into
another room, then another. He found her in what he supposed was a bedroom,
although without furniture or decorations it looked just like any other
room—and he could see it, quite well, with his shifter vision, bare walls and
carpet and all. Doubtlessly Bryce could have seen it even better with his cat eyes.
The lions’ ridiculously good vision had made losing the asshats doubly
challenging, though luckily not even a lion’s vision could penetrate a snowstorm.

Jess huddled in a corner, crying
softly, the very picture of misery.

Mike hunkered down next to her.
“What’s wrong? I mean, besides everything.” He tried to smile, to show it was a
joke, although it wasn’t, really, and she must know that.
Real smooth
, he thought.

She glanced up at him from
red-rimmed eyes, though he knew she wouldn’t be able to see him clearly, only
be aware of him as a huge shadow.

“Andrew,” she said simply. Emotion
choked her voice.

Worry raced through him?
“Andrew?”
Was that her mate? Was she
already taken? Suddenly he felt dizzy again and pressed a hand against the
wall.

“Are you okay?” she said,
apparently able to see that much.

Instead of answering, he said,
“Who’s Andrew?”

“My ex.”

“Oh.” His bear, which had reared its
head higher, calmed somewhat, and he was able to remove his hand from the wall
and support himself. He scowled, confused. “Why is Andrew what’s wrong? Do you
still love him?”

She let out a long breath. It
sounded like it had been pent up inside her for years. “I’m not sure I ever did,
to be honest.”

That’s
because you’re my mate,
he wanted to say.
We’re fated to be together.
Only sometimes fate had other plans.

“Then why were you with him?” Mike
said.

“I thought I was in love. We just
seemed so right together. We looked good together. We wanted the same things.”
She gave a bitter laughed. “We had the same taste in furniture.”

He allowed himself to smile. “Solid
reasons.”

“Yeah.” She started to reach out
toward Mike’s face, but then her hand dropped away. He grabbed it, though, and
put it to his cheek. “You’re so
warm
,”
she said. “I can’t believe it. You’ve lost so much blood, and you’re still so
warm.”

He rolled his huge shoulders. “So
if you don’t love him, and you never did, why is Andrew what’s wrong?”

She groaned. “Back to this?”

“Back to this.”

She pulled her hand away, and his
bear raged inside him at the loss of her touch. Her fingers had been so silky,
so delicate.

“I haven’t been with anyone else
in, well, forever,” she said. “And before you ask, yes I mean sexually, but
emotionally, too. As for sex, we haven’t, you know,
done anything
in over a year. I’m practically a virgin all over
again. And when we did do it there wasn’t any passion there.” She grimaced.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”

“No. I want you to tell me
everything about you.” He longed to run his fingers through her silky hair, to
kiss her eyebrows and plunge his tongue past her lips, but he held himself
back. “So—what you were saying …”

“I just mean, I haven’t been with
anyone—you know, romantically, not physically, if that makes sense—maybe ever.
And I want to.” In a smaller voice, she added, “With you.”

Now he did reach out and stroke her
hair, but again she pulled away. Stung, he pulled his hand back, feeling his
bear gnash its teeth inside him.

“I can’t,” she said, as if in
apology. “Don’t you see? I’ve never really been with anyone, but at the same
time I’ve been with Andrew for ten years. I can’t just jump from him to someone
else so soon. I can’t be that kind of woman. I want to stand on my own two
feet.”

My
own two feet.
She said the phrase mechanically, he noticed, as if it’s
something she’d been telling herself a lot lately.

“I need to earn some self-respect,”
she added, and again her voice quivered.

Mike yearned to wipe the tears away
with the ball of his thumb and kiss her trembling lips, but he knew she
wouldn’t let him. Doing so just might make things worse.

“I respect you,” he said quietly.

She blinked. “You do?”

“Of course. Look how brave you are.
I knew it when I saw you in the bar. I could see the strength in your eyes.
It’s what drew my bear to you, I think. And I saw it again, on the road, when
you were standing up to Bryce.” He grinned. “You were one badass momma bear.”

She smiled. “You think?”

He tapped his chest over his heart,
although she probably couldn’t see it. “I know.”

Slowly, she reached out a hand and
touched his leg. He almost gasped at the touch of her cool, soft fingers. She
let her fingertips trace the thick muscles of his calf and run through his body
hair. He hoped she would continue exploring—if she did, he would start
exploring her body, too—but after only a few seconds she pulled her hand back
and let out another sad little sigh. It was too soon. He could almost hear her
think it. Making love to her would have to wait, he realized, if it happened at
all. But she was worth it. Oh yes, she was worth everything he could give and
more.

She shivered, and he realized she
must be freezing. His shifter blood kept him warm, but there was no heat in the
cabin. The girls must be freezing. If he concentrated, he could hear Suzy’s
teeth rattling a couple of rooms over.

“Maybe I could wrap an arm around
you,” he said. “We could, you know, cuddle. Body heat will keep you warm.”

“What about Suzy? No, I couldn’t be
warm if she’s freezing.”

So
noble!
he thought, and smiled in pride. His bear had chosen well. “But it’s
snowing out there,” he said. “It’s below freezing. You could die.”

“And Suzy? No, I’ll find her and
we’ll
cuddle, Suzy and me. That will
keep us warm enough.”

She started to rise, and he let
her, but he stood, too, and when she made to edge around him, he laid a
restraining hand on her arm.

She raised her eyebrows in
question.

“I have a better idea,” he said.