Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (21 page)

Without thinking, I threw my arms around his huge neck and pushed up on my tip toes so that I was just tall enough to kiss his neck right above his collarbones. There was sweat on his skin that stung my lips. Ash’s hard, leathery scent thrilled every inch of me, and as I kissed him again, he lifted me off my feet.

His huge thumbs running along my jaws pushed my head backwards. I parted my lips, waiting for his kiss, and when it finally came, it was like breath after being underwater for way too long.

Hungrily, we sucked at each other’s lips, and then in one brilliant flash, I felt his tongue swirl inside my mouth. He explored me, and I explored him. My hands on his back, my tongue sliding around his lips, I drank in as much of my huge bear as I possibly could.

Why did it have to be like this? Why were we thrown together in this crazy, wild circus that ended here – in the middle of nowhere – about to chase down a bunch of kidnapped girls? Why can’t
anything
in my life be normal?

Ash smiled deep and warm when he finally pulled away from me, sucking my bottom lip for just a moment longer. “Not long,” he said. “I promise. As soon as this is over, we can...”

“We can
what
?” I asked. My voice was maybe a little more pointed than I meant for it to be. “What are we going to do?”

He took a deep breath. “I... I don’t know,” he admitted. “All I know is that you’re all I’ve thought about for the last three weeks and three days. You made me feel... calm. And anxious at the same time.”

I put my hand on the side of his face, flattening my palm on his stubbly cheek. I stroked him slowly, staring into those big, soulful, brown eyes. “We’ll figure it out,” I whispered. “I don’t have any idea why I’m saying that or why I think it... but I know we’ll figure it out.”

He swallowed hard, kissed me one last time, deep and hungry and desperate. His hands spread out along my back. For a second, I felt whole, I felt safe and secure... even though I knew deep down that we were anything
but
safe and secure.

As my feet touched the ground with a soft crunch, I looked up at him. “What do we do?”

“I follow them, you follow me,” Ash said. He brushed the hair out of his face and clenched his jaws tight. “When we know where we’re going, you go and get... shit, whoever you think will listen.”

“Been gone too long?” I asked. Ash gave me a quick half-grin.

“Guess so,” he said. “On the road the only justice is, you know, the people on the road. It kinda gets rough out there. Most police would just as soon let us murder each other than step in to solve any problems.”

“How did you do it?” I asked. If I were a superhero, one of my powers would be asking questions at the wrong time.

“Fight?” he asked, as he got to his feet and reached down for me. “Easy,” he said. “Didn’t have a choice. It’s the one job where flipping out and destroying people every day is a
good
thing. Even though I always held back.”

Without saying anything else, the two of us made our way through the waist-high grass and got ready for what might be the stupidest and most exciting thing I had ever done.

I watched, touching my chest like I was in a Louis L’Amour novel, as Ash revved his bike.

The heavy, throbbing beat of his engine set my heart on fire. I couldn’t believe the things running through my mind, but none of them involved propriety. I imagined him throwing me across the back of that huge bike and taking me right out in the open, right out under the sun. Then I imagined him dragging me into the middle of the field and doing it again right there... without even using a blanket.

I wouldn’t care – couldn’t care – as the scratches on my knees and my wrists mounted into a wild crescendo, I’d just cry his name and he’d hold me close and—

“You ready?” he called back, turning his gorgeous face toward me. In the sun, his eyes glittered, and his slightly tanned face struck me. “If you’re going to follow someone it helps to turn your car on.”

The next look he gave me was one of those grins – one of those damn grins that won’t let me keep control. I swallowed hard and chewed my lip as I nodded to him.

“So... turn it on?” he said, laughing.

I shook my head to clear the naughty cobwebs, and slid the key into the ignition just like him sliding... no, no, no, I thought. Not now. I had to keep my mind well clear of the gutter if this was going to work. And it
had
to work. God only knows what those girls were heading for, and how long they had until that horrible witch Leota reduced them to... whatever she had in mind.

The engine in my decade old Civic was a lot less exciting than the one thumping and pumping between Ash’s muscled thighs. Between those huge, powerful, oak-like legs that – nope, nope, I thought, gotta get over that. Time to shine, time to be brave and to
stop worrying about getting him in bed!

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. What would Henry think of this? I knew what she’d think – she’d tell me I was at the same time crazy as all hell and also that she was proud of me for following my heart. And... that’s what it really was, that’s what it came down to in the end.

I was following my heart.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I was doing something because I believed in it, not because I was
supposed
to do something.

All at once, it hit me in the chest like a wave breaking over a rickety beach hut concession stand left abandoned in the middle of a hurricane to die.

To die.

Left to die.

I had to go, right then. We had to go. My heart was one thing, and every time I looked at the muscled up bear in front of me, it broke a little more. But right then, my heart didn’t matter. What mattered were those girls, and getting them away from that crazed witch.

“Ash, wait,” I grabbed his arm. “Why don’t we just call the cops? I mean, getting a whole bunch of hyena police would probably be for the best, right?”

Ash’s jaws tightened. “Two problems with that. First of all, if the cops show up and nail Marlin to a wall, he’s going to start spouting names to get himself out of trouble. The other problem is that my phone is dead out here, and I’m sure yours probably is too.”

“Are you,” I gulped, “saying you’re involved in this somehow?”

He shook his head. “Only by association. But I have this gnawing fear in the back of my mind that even that’ll be good enough to get me in a lot of trouble I don’t want to be in. If they don’t show up until later though? We can get away.”

I took a long, hard look at him. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. There’s some other reason besides bad reception and tenuous legal reasons.”

“I want him, Violet,” Crag said in a low, dangerous voice. “I want Marlin. He’s used me, he treated me like dirt. He hurt me and my family, and these girls and I... I just want to get back at him.”

I swallowed, hard.

“If you don’t want to be a part of this, I’m not going to hold it against you. This is my fight, I know that.” Ash grabbed my hand and made me look deep into his eyes. “I won’t love you any less if you say no.”

I closed my eyes, sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down.

“I want to help these girls,” I said. “And I want to help you. I’m... scared though. It just seems dangerous and, I don’t know, kinda crazy?”

“It is,” he said, pulling me close. “A lot of crazy’s happened between the two of us. It’s all turned out pretty all right though, I think.”

When our lips touched, Ash parted mine and swirled his tongue into me. I let all the air out of my lungs, tangled my fingers in his hair, and let the taste of his kiss take me away from everything for just a second.

“Yeah,” I whispered when we parted.

“Trust me,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Not now, not ever.”

*

W
e got as far as the edge of the woods before I didn’t need to bother following anymore. I knew the place.

I’d known it since I was a little girl. My dad always warned me about what he called The Witch Woods. Always told me never to venture too far out into the weird forest between Jamesburg and Clinton, because he said there were dark things there, bad things – though he never went into any specifics.

I always liked the woods, but for the most part I did what he said.

Ash got off his bike and pushed it under some vines, then made his way back toward my idling car.

Watching him reminded me a little of my dad. The kind, knowing eyes, the sensitive smiles he used to give me.

But then there was the one time I
did
ignore what my dad told me.

A shudder crept through me as I remembered, and when Ash got back to my car, I guess I was just sitting there with my mouth open.

“You all right?” he asked. “Which way is it to this house?”

As though I was in a trance, I just started babbling. “I was drawn in one afternoon when Henry and I were riding our bikes out here. The leaves were starting to turn blue and pink and purple, as they do every year. It
is
woods full of witches after all. We just had to stop.”

“Huh?” he asked. “What are—”

“Henry and I poked around,” I continued. “We had a little scamper – which is totally more fun when you can ride your turtle friend’s shell – and turned back to leave a little while later. Only we couldn’t. There was no way out. It was like the woods had swallowed us up and were going to keep us inside them forever.”

I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until Ash grabbed one of them around the steering wheel and steadied me. He didn’t say anything though, instead just waited for me to finish. His calm, consistent breathing did help me calm down some, but the horror I saw wasn’t going to leave me. Not ever.

“There was this house – a square brown one – right at the end of a path we were following to try and get out,” my voice was hollow and distant, but he wasn’t letting go of me. “We kept walking along the path, but the house never seemed to get any closer. And we were just dumb twelve year olds. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

Silently, Ash stroked my hand.

I turned at looked at his face, and smiled as tears ran down my cheeks. “We saw skeletons. Hundreds of them, all along the side of the path. Squirrels, rabbits, even fo... foxes. They were just discarded like trash, all over the place. I don’t know if they were real, or if they were just illusions meant to lure us to run for that little hut, but that’s exactly what we did.”

“And it was her? This witch that’s buying girls from Marlin?” Ash asked in a low voice that was near a whisper. “Leota, you said?”

I nodded. “At the end of the path, she was standing there, motionless. We didn’t see her until we were basically right on top of her. I remember, Henry, she asked for help. Leota had this sickening, awful grin on her face.” I gulped, still remembering the smell of the place when the door opened. “It was like... sickly sweet inside the house. Everything smelled like decay. It was... it was hot, too.”

The next time I swallowed, my throat clicked painfully. “It was like a dream though, like I was wandering around in something surreal and horrible. But neither of us could turn around. There was some force pushing us deeper into the house.”

“How did you get out?” he asked, eyes wide open in shock. “Something must have happened.”

“Not some
thing
,” I said. “Some
one
. To this day I don’t know who it was, or how they found us, but a big, like seriously big, black bear with tattoos around his eyes just like yours... he... Oh my God,” I whispered as revelation snuck through me. “It must have been...”

Ash chewed his lip. “I’ve heard this story before,” he said. “Only, Aiden – that was my brother’s name – he left out most of the part about saving two girls. He was always kind of modest.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “He... he saved us, Ash. Me and Henry. Without him, we would have been – jeez, I don’t even know what we would have been. Cooked? Turned into potions? I can’t even imagine.”

His face got grim. “He was never the same after that,” he said. “He always had some problems, but after that... yeah he wasn’t ever the same.”

“It was just so hot and sticky and awful,” I said. “That’s all I remember until he burst through the front door, gave that witch a huge swipe with one of his paws, and dragged us back out. I remember his fur singeing, like catching on fire. I remember him shielding us from a heatwave.”

“Yeah,” Ash said. “The scars on his face.” He let his eyes look left and up, like he was searching his memory. “They were all over his face, his arms, his back. He’d never tell me what they came from, not even when I begged him to tell. He just said they were from an accident.”

I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed Ash’s hand in mine and squeezed as hard as I could manage. “We’re going to do this,” I said. It was more to comfort me than him, I guess. “For all those girls, but also for your brother, and everyone else she’s hurt. Probably doing it for her step-daughter, too.”

“Straight in,” I said, remembering the question he asked before I drifted off into my awful memories. “Go straight in and when you come to a creek, turn right. I doubt you’ll have much trouble finding the house, but there’s a square brown one with a separate cellar. That’s...”

I swallowed. Ash leaned in and kissed me, hard and deep and honestly. He sucked my bottom lip. I tasted him deep in my chest.

“Go,” he said, turning away. “Bring whoever you think you can. But...” he stood stiffly, frozen not ten feet from me.

As I turned the car back on and started to back away, I realized he said something. “But what?” I asked. “Do you need something else?”

“No,” he said. “But don’t hurry
too
much. I don’t want anyone taking Marlin anywhere before I have my way with him. This has been coming a long time. A
really
long time. All right? This is my last fight. The last one I want. The last one I need. But it’s one I
need
. I won’t let this fucker control me anymore. He doesn’t get my thoughts or my feelings or anything else. And I’m going to make sure he knows it.”