Bear Love (7 page)

Jess shivered as the chairlift approached the ramp.
Oh God please don’t let me embarrass myself
by falling on my ass
. It was all too likely, she knew. She was anything but
a pro skier. But when the lift reached the slope, she managed to shove herself
off and skid down the short slope to the level-ish ground with only a few minor
wavers and some serious belly-flops. Her legs shook, but she wasn’t sure if
that was muscle strain or just nerves.

“This way,” Mike said, looking
amused.

He began skiing down what looked
like a little-used trail. Jess had expected him to move clumsily, like a bear
on skis, and was a little disheartened to see him cut down the icy incline with
practiced ease. Jess felt a little betrayed. He’d said he sucked. Well,
apparently sucking for Mike was different than sucking for Jess.
Ha
, she thought.
I’ll show him the true meaning of suck
. Suzy handled it adroitly,
too, if not quite as well as Mike. There was a reason the bears had chosen him
as the instructor, after all.

Jess followed the other two down,
but she had to keep her skies in a fixed triangle. Even then, the uneven snow
beneath them made her clench her teeth and swear under her breath again and
again.

The other two had to slow down for
her, and when she reached them she was gasping and out of breath.

“How … much longer?” she said to
stall for time.

Mike smiled as if he knew what she
was doing. “Not much.”

“How come … there’s no one else on
this trail?”

“We’ve cut this route off from the
tourists. It’s the only way to the Lodge, and that’s just for use by the crew,
so we restrict access.”

“Not only the crew,” Jess reminded
him, and he nodded his head.

“You two are the only others we’ve
ever allowed up here.”

Jess and Suzy exchanged a look.

Suzy grinned. “I feel honored. What
about you, Jess?”

In the face of Suzy’s aplomb, Jess
was forced to laugh. “Yeah. It was all worth it, just for this.”

Mike handled their irony with
patience. “This way, ladies.”

He continued down the slope. Suzy
leapt after him, skis parallel to each other just like his, making her go
faster and straight down the mountain like a cannonball. Jess kept her skies in
their customary wedge, cutting back and forth down the slope to slow her
progress. Even then she was afraid she would go too fast and fly off the trail
into the thick pines that crowded it.

At long last the slope turned, then
evened out a bit, and a structure that had to be the Lodge loomed before them.
Huge and encrusted with ice, the monstrous log cabin belched smoke from a great
stone chimney. For all its grandeur, it looked charming and inviting.

“The original owners meant for this
to be a separate inn,” Mike said. “A ski in, ski out kind of thing, only it
never happened. We’ve decided it should be our crew headquarters.”

“Why not live here, then?” Jess
said. “You said you were scattered all over town.”

“There’s only a few rooms,” Mike
said. “The previous owners never began work on the second wing. That was going
to be all rooms. My brother Taggart and his mate Alice stayed here for awhile
after he came back from Black Valley, but they live in town now. Only one
person lives here at the moment.”

“I was wondering about the smoke,” Suzy
said. “Someone had to light that fire.”

“That’s Cort,” Mike said. A pained
look crossed his face. “Don’t be alarmed.”

“Why would we be alarmed?” Jess
said, suddenly alarmed.

“He’s … scarred. Also, he doesn’t
talk much. The truth is he doesn’t handle people well. There’s a reason he
lives up here all alone.”

“Then is it really a good idea that
we should intrude on him?” Suzy said.

“Don’t worry,” Mike said. “He won’t
harm a woman. Come on.”

Jess hesitated but followed him
inside, and Suzy came immediately after. Jess shivered once she was in, even
though it was warmer, as if her body were just then realizing how cold it
really had been. They had entered into a cavernous den with a roaring
fireplace, and immediately heat enveloped her. The snow that had gathered on
her cheeks and eyelashes began to melt. Gratefully, she tugged off her cap,
knowing she looked ridiculous in it, and squinted her eyes into the gloom.

Other than the fireplace, which
threw hectic red light across rugs and couches and wooden walls, there was no
other light in the room—or the whole Lodge, as far as she could tell.

A large form bent over the
fireplace, throwing on another crooked log. It let out a growl upon hearing the
front door open and wheeled around, lips pulled back from its teeth.
Silhouetted against the fire, Cort, if that was him, appeared only to be a huge
shadow, still holding that log in his hand as though it were a club. Jess
would’ve had to hold that little tree with two hands, but Cort wielded as
though it were made of cardboard.

“At ease, Cort,” Mike said. “It’s
just me.”

“Not … just you.”

Jess could feel the glare Cort sent
at her and Suzy.

“Come,” Mike whispered to the
women, and ushered them over to Cort, who only tensed further. Jess still
wasn’t sure if this was such a good idea, but she went along with it. As she
drew closer to Cort, she could see him better, and pity welled up inside her.
He had been a handsome man once, she thought, and maybe he still was, but a
vicious swipe of some bear’s paws had striped half his face with four long, ragged
marks. He’d grown a thick beard to cover the scars, but his hairs grew white
where they grew out over the claw marks, so that only helped some.

“This is Jess and Suzy,” Mike said.
“Ladies, meet Cort.”

His intense eyes regarded them for
a moment, then glanced away, as if he were uneasy in their presence. He grunted
something, perhaps a curse, perhaps a welcome, then returned to the fire. He
threw on the log, and sparks blazed up.

Mike let out a breath. Something
troubled flickered across his face, and Jess thought she saw sadness there,
maybe even the same sort of pity she felt. It made her like him more. That was
dangerous, so she tried not to notice.

“Well, this is the Lodge,” Mike
said, gesturing around at the huge open space with its aged log walls, rafters
and ceiling. Dimly glimpsed rooms lined the upper floor, but the lower floor
was all den, kitchen, ski preparation areas and so on. “What do you think?”

“I like it,” said Jess. Immediately
she wanted to kick herself.
How bland a
comment can you get?
Then she thought,
Come
on, it’s not like I’m trying to impress him with my witty banter. Hell, I want
to un-impress him! He’s impressed enough already.

“This is where you bears come to
party?” Suzy said.

Mike’s brows arched down in a
frown. “No party. Congregate. Talk clan business. Plan for the future. Bond.
And yes,” he added, his face lightening, “we do have some fun here, too.”

Suzy smiled at him, and Jess’s
inner cat flared up.
Hands off!
Then
she made herself calm down. If she didn’t claim him, why should she begrudge Suzy
from trying her luck?

And yet, damn it all, she
did
begrudge it. This was all so
frustrating.

“So what now?” Jess said. “How long
are we supposed to stay here, anyway?”

“That’s a good question,” Suzy
said. “I have a life to get back to. Not much of one, I’ll admit, but it’s what
I’ve got. I can’t stay here forever. If nothing else, I have a job.”

“I understand,” Mike said. “And I
don’t have the answers. We just have to find Bryce and his pride and deal with
them.”

“‘Deal with them’,” Jess repeated,
then crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t want anyone killing anyone. I
mean, I’ve heard shifters have their own laws, their own codes, but murder is
murder.”

Mike tilted his head, just
slightly, and his eyes flamed with reflected firelight. “We’ll do what must be
done,” he said, and his voice was as grim and hard as she’d ever heard it.

She swallowed and exchanged another
look with Suzy, who shook her head:
Don’t
push him
. Jess agreed. Mike
was
a
bear shifter, after all.

Cort glanced up from the flames. “‘Pride?’”
he asked Mike. He didn’t seem to want to address the females directly.

“It’s a long story,” Mike told him.
“Suffice it to say that some lion shifters want to kidnap Jess and Suzy for
mates.”

Another growl broke loose from Cort’s
lips, and for a moment his eyes burned silver.
He’s going to Shift
, Jess thought, and edged backward. Mike must
have thought so, too, because he positioned himself between Cort and the women.
At the last moment, though, Cort reined himself in. Shaking his head, he hefted
up anther log from the pile along the back wall and broke it in two with a
powerful wrench of his hands. Shards of wood flew, and Jess flinched at the
snapping noise.

“Calm yourself, my friend,” Mike
said.

For the first time, Cort spoke to
the women directly. Gruffly, he said, “They won’t take you. I won’t let them.”

With that, he lurched to the rear
door and shoved out into the snowstorm, slamming the door shut behind him. A
flurry of snowflakes danced in his wake.

“He needs to Shift,” Mike
explained. “His animal is tearing him up, I can feel it.”

“Your animals can sense each
other?” Suzy said.

He nodded. “He’s barely in control
of his bear.”

Suzy watched the door. “What’s his
story?”

“That’s for him to tell—if he wants
to. And he probably won’t. He doesn’t talk much to us in the crew, let alone
outsiders. Let
alone
female
outsiders. Women make him nervous.”

“So how long are we supposed to
stay here?” Suzy pressed. “How long until you, ah,
deal with
Bryce?”

“We have to find him first. And Connor
has to sign off on … what happens then. I know one thing. There’s no way a
pride of lions can stand up to my whole crew. Even three or four of us should
be enough. We just have to be organized, and that’s something we’ve never been
good at. What makes running the resort so tricky.”

“I still don’t understand
why
you’re running the resort,” Jess
said. “I don’t believe it’s all for public relations.”

Mike paused, as if weighing
something. Slowly, he said, “Public relations is important. Some politicians
want us shifters to have to register ourselves with the government. Like we’re
weapons or sex criminals. If we can put on a good face to the world, though,
and people can see that they don’t need to fear us, maybe we won’t have to.”
His huge hands made fists at his side. “Assholes like Bryce could ruin
everything for us.”

“Why?” said Suzy, then seemed to
realize the answer. “Because he’s going after humans?”

“Right. Shifters like him are
making humans afraid, as they should be of pricks like him. That’s another good
reason we have to stop him. He could harm our whole cause, set human-shifter
relations back to zero.” As if it required some effort, he opened his fists so
they were just hands again. “Now—who’s hungry?”

Suddenly Jess realized she was
famished.

Mike liked the surprise in Jess’s face as he entered the
kitchen and began making dinner. It was a bit early for the meal, but they’d
been through a lot, and his shifter metabolism required constant infusions of
food. The ladies seemed eager for sustenance, too.

“You can
cook
?” Jess said, as Mike chopped some onions and tomatoes and
tossed them in a skillet with some butter.

She seemed so shocked that he
laughed. Maybe realizing it, her cheeks colored, and Mike thought again how
goddamn hot she was. He wanted to bend her over right then.

“I just mean,” she said, stumbling
lamely. She and Suzy had sat at the huge wooden dining table, and she fidgeted
in her seat. “I don’t normally think of bear shifters as good cooks.”

“We eat, just like anyone else,”
Mike said. “Hell, more than anyone else. And when you eat a lot, it helps if
you eat well. And me, well, remember I grew up bein’ the oldest kid, and my
parents worked hard, so often as not I had to cook. I learned pretty quick how
to tolerate my own cooking.” As he spoke, he sautéed the veggies, then threw in
some diced chicken. While that was going, he started on the steamed brown rice,
then tossed the buns in the oven. “We get these fresh daily from a shop in
town,” he added. “You should try their pastries.”

Jess watched him with an expression
that ranged from amused to intrigued, from turned on to conflicted. He liked
the turned on part, but the conflicted part troubled him. Every time his gaze
locked with hers, his bear growled inside him, yearning for her, but then she
would get that look on her face like she simply couldn’t let herself fall for
him, and he wondered if he was doomed. If his bear couldn’t be satisfied, it
might tear him apart. He’d known men that grew mad because their bears lost
control, or they lost control of their bears. He’d known two that had to be put
down by their alphas because of it. They’d become a danger to humans.

Jess and Suzy helped set the table,
and they ate with gusto when he served dinner. Cort hadn’t returned yet from
his roaming, but that wasn’t unusual. He might be out all night for all Mike
knew. Cort was unpredictable.

“Delicious,” Jess said, chewing on
her first bite.

“Yum,” Suzy agreed, and lathered
her roll with butter. “Good butter,” she added, after taking a bite.

“We get that local, too,” Mike
said. “For breakfast maybe I’ll whip up some pancakes. You won’t believe the
honey we bring in.”

Jess actually giggled, and again
her cheeks turned red. “Bears and honey,” she said, explaining her giggle,
though he could have guessed. “Is it true bears like honey?”

He nodded, munching. Around his
bite, he said, “Some of us
really
like it. One of my crew is kind of obsessed with it. Jason. He has golden fur
when he’s shifted, and we call him the Honey Bear.” Mike chuckled. “He gets
real tired of that name, but it doesn’t slow him down when that honey comes
round.”

Jess laughed again. Suzy seemed
amused, too. But she also seemed to feel awkward somehow. She kept glancing
from Jess to Mike, then looking down at her plate. Mike thought he understood,
and he wasn’t surprised when she stood up after finishing and said, “You know,
I think I’ll hit the sack. I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I’m
bushed.”

“Of course,” Mike said. He smeared
his roll around the plate, soaking up the last juices, then made sure Jess had
finished. She had, so he said, “I’ll show you your rooms.”

He brought Suzy and Jess upstairs
and gave them each a room, making sure they were at far ends of the Lodge. He
lived in hope that a little sound buffer would be necessary, although so far
Jess hadn’t given him any indication that it would.

Each room had a tiny TV perched on
a shelf in the corner, and Suzy flicked hers on as she bounced on the bed and
pronounced it satisfactory.

“No mint, but it’ll do”, she said.
Giving Jess a look that was probably significant in some fashion, she said, “I
guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

Jess swallowed, and Mike could
smell a sudden wave of emotion coming off of her. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but
it was definitely anxiety.

“Um,” she said. “Yeah. Goodnight.”

The women hugged each other, and
then Mike brought Jess to her room.

“I’ll let you get some sleep if you
want,” he said. “I know you must be tired, too.”

She stared straight up at him. Her
eyes were very clear. “Actually,” she said. “I’m not sleepy at all.”

His bear roared. Mike grinned and
leaned in a little closer, letting her feel his heat and smell his scent. She
still looked up at him, her lips slightly parted. He could smell her, that was
for sure. She was wet. His bear growled again.

“Me, either,” he said, his words
rougher than he’d intended. He reached out and cupped her hand in his. She
leaned into the touch. His heart sang.

“Oh, Mike,” she said.

“Jess …”

He bent his face toward hers. Hers
inclined up at him. She licked her lips, then bit them cutely. He couldn’t
resist. He crushed his lips against hers, and she pressed back. He plunged his
tongue into her mouth, and her tongue flicked against his. His bear growled
savagely. Almost unconsciously, their pelvises pressed against each other. His
cock swelled and shoved against his jeans, then pushed against her. Oh, she was
so wet! Her juices filled his nose and drove him wild.

She laid a hand on his bulging
right bicep and squeezed, then moaned softly, even with his tongue still inside
her mouth. She shoved her tongue against him, almost challenging him, and now
she was in his mouth. He grabbed her ass and lifted her up, and she locked her
legs about him.

“Oh, Jess,” he growled.

“Mike …”

Her groin shoved up against his,
rocking, and his cock strained against his jeans. It drove him crazy that her
womanhood was only millimeters away but separated by all that denim. He wanted
to tear it all away and had to restrain himself.

Then something changed. Jess stopped
kissing him. Her face drew back. Her cheeks blazed red, and her lips had
swollen, but some strange light—caution? fear?—had entered her eyes. She
pressed her groin against him one more time, then unwrapped her legs from about
his middle.

“Let me down,” she breathed, and he
obeyed, not understanding.

“What … ?” he said, or tried to.
His mind was awhirl. All the blood had gone to his cock. His bear screamed
inside him, denied fulfillment. “What … ?”

She shook her head. Tears quivered
at the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I can’t. I can’t use you as rebound
lover, Mike. I … I …”

“Yes?”

She bit her lip again. “I care for
you too much.”

He made a fist, but it wasn’t her
he wanted to punch but Andrew. What a number that bastard had done on her! Mike
wanted to hunt that human down and rip him in two.

Jess seemed to realize that his
fist didn’t hold any danger for her. She laid a hand against his quivering abs.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Me, too.”