Bodyguard (Shifters Unbound #2.5)

Bodyguard

by Jennifer Ashley

Book 2.5 of

Shifters Unbound

Bodyguard

Copyright 2011 by Jennifer Ashley

All rights reserved.

Excerpt from
Wild Cat
copyright 2011

by Jennifer Ashley

Excerpt from
Pride Mates
copyright 2009,
2010

by Jennifer Ashley

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from
the author.

This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's
imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locales or organizations is entirely
coincidental.

Books in the Shifters Unbound Series

By Jennifer Ashley

Pride Mates

Primal Bonds

Bodyguard

Wild Cat

Fighting Cat
(Spring 2012)

Mate Claimed
(Oct 2012)

And more to come!

* * * * *

BodyGuard

Chapter One

The store's owner had short and sassy black
hair with a few red streaks, a compact but curvy body, and a
fine-lined tattoo peeking over the collar of her shirt. Her blue
eyes right now were wide as she contemplated the gun barrel aimed
across the counter at her.

Ronan ducked his huge bulk back down behind
the aisle partition, where he'd been crouching to examine
merchandise on the bottom shelf. The robber hadn't noted Ronan,
who'd come in to do some late-night shopping, almost hidden at the
back of the SoCo novelty store. Ronan was willing to bet that the
store's owner, Elizabeth, didn't remember at the moment that he was
there either.

It was just the three of them on this Friday
night: Elizabeth, the robber with the gun, and Ronan, who started
making his way noiselessly toward the front counter. Ronan didn't
dare charge while the gun was almost against Elizabeth's nose--one
wrong move, one sound, and Elizabeth was dead.

Wait for it.

The robber wasn't much more than a kid; maybe
twenty as humans figured age. Would be still a cub if he were
Shifter. Humans couldn't control their young, Ronan thought in
disgust. He'd have taken down any cub that even contemplated
carrying a gun, let alone robbing a store.

Elizabeth had her hands flat on the counter.
Ronan smelled her fear but also her rage. This was one of the few
stores that allowed Shifters inside it, so Ronan knew a little bit
about her from the Shifters who regularly shopped here. The human
woman Elizabeth Chapman owned this store and worked it with her
younger sister, Mabel. The store and the money in it were all they
had.

Just stall him, sweetie. Don't do anything
stupid.

The man put a shoulder bag on the counter.
"Put the money in there. All of it."

"I only have about two hundred dollars."
Elizabeth's voice was shaky, but Ronan heard the desperate edge to
it. She was going to try to bluff him.

"I didn't ask you how much you
had
,
bitch. I said put it in the bag. Then we'll check your safe."

Give
him the cash,
Ronan willed
silently.
Lead
him back here
.

"I already made the night's deposits,"
Elizabeth said.

"Don't lie to me,
chica
. I know when
you make your deposits. I've been watching you. Now put the cash in
the bag."

Ronan sensed Elizabeth's pounding heart,
scented her fear sharpening over the oily smell of the arrogant
young man. The kid wasn't wearing a mask or keeping out of sight of
the store's cameras. That meant he didn't care if Elizabeth would
be able to identify him later, which meant that either he was
overconfident, or he meant to kill her and be long gone before any
cops arrived.

Not
gonna happen.

Ronan heard rustling as Elizabeth put the
cash in the shoulder bag. "That's it," Elizabeth said. "See?"

"Open the damn safe."

"It isn't out here. It's in the back. In the
office."

"So we go in the back."

Elizabeth made a little sound of pain, and
Ronan knew the man had grabbed her. His blood boiled, the Shifter
in him wanting the kill, and he almost came up roaring.
Not
yet. Not yet.
But the bastard would pay for hurting her.

Elizabeth and her robber went by the end of
the aisle, the guy carrying his shoulder bag, his gun shoved into
Elizabeth's side. The look on Elizabeth's face was blank, resigned.
She thought she was about to die. She didn't look around at the
faint sound of Ronan shucking his jeans; never turned her head to
spy him in the shadows, ready to shift. The robber kept his gaze
straight ahead, focused on the office door and the potential money
behind it.

Elizabeth fumbled with her keys, unlocked the
door, and opened it. The lights were off. The robber shoved
Elizabeth inside in front of him and let go of her long enough to
reach for the light switch.

That's
my cue.

Ronan shifted, and charged.

Elizabeth heard a small sound then felt a
rush of air as something huge barreled at her in deadly silence.
She saw a giant face, a massive ruff of fur, an open maw, a collar
around a gigantic neck, and wide dark eyes with murder in them.

The robber, a young man with black hair and
dark eyes, still had his hand on the light switch. In the next
instant, the doorframe and wall around it splintered, and the
robber found himself knocked to the floor with a Kodiak bear on top
of him.

Elizabeth scrambled to her desk, grabbed the
pepper spray she kept in her drawer, and snatched her cell phone
out of her pocket at the same time. She turned around, but stopped,
watching in shock as the young man struggled against all odds with
the colossal bear on her Victorian pile rug.

The robber's gun went off with a
boom
of noise. Elizabeth screamed. The bear roared, the sound shaking
the walls, and blood splattered to spray the floor.

The bear drew back a paw with six-inch claws
and backhanded the robber across the face. The guy's head rocked.
Still he fought, and the bear struck again. This time, the young
man went limp, slumping to Elizabeth's rug in an ungainly heap.

The bear climbed to his feet, swung his great
head around, and fixed red-raged eyes on Elizabeth.

He was the biggest living creature Elizabeth
had ever seen. On all fours, the bear stood about six feet tall at
the shoulder, which put his head well above Elizabeth's. His breath
huffed between immense and sharp teeth, his growls rumbling from
his throat like thunder. His gaze still locked on hers, he took a
step toward her on one massive paw.

Elizabeth brought her hand up, aimed the can
of pepper spray at his face, and gave him a full dose.

The bear blinked, drew back, blinked again,
sat down on his hind legs, and rocked his head all the way back.
Then he
sneezed
.

The noise exploded into the room like a sonic
boom, vibrating papers on the desk and rattling the Victorian
prints on the walls in their prim and proper frames.

The bear rose on his hind legs again and kept
rising, ten feet--twelve--fifteen, his bulk hunching to fit under
the low ceiling. At the same time, his immense body started to
shrink. The bear's face contorted, muzzle shortening, as did, thank
God, his teeth.

In about thirty seconds the bear was gone,
and a man stood in its place. The man was just as massive as the
bear--at least seven feet tall, with chocolate brown hair buzzed
short, eyes as dark as the bear's, an almost square face with a
once-broken nose, and a chin and jaw dark with five o'clock
shadow.

His arm bore a bloody gash where the bullet
had whipped by it, but his body was muscle on top of muscle on top
of muscle, not an ounce of fat that Elizabeth could see. And
Elizabeth saw it all, because the man was stark naked. Except for
the Collar, which had shrunk to fit his human neck, the bear-man
wore not a stitch.

He wiped his streaming eyes. "Shit, woman,"
he said in a voice that brought down a trickle of ceiling tile dust
to whiten his hair. "That
itches
."

* * * * *

Chapter Two

Elizabeth Chapman's red-streaked hair was
mussed and her blue eyes were filled with fear as she faced Ronan,
but she kept her hand firmly on the pepper spray.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Ronan. At your service." Ronan raised his
hand in a mock salute, and blood from the bullet wound pattered to
her pretty carpet. "Why'd you hit me with the pepper spray?"

Said pepper spray didn't move. "Why'd you
keep coming at me, looking like you wanted to kill me?"

"I didn't. I was fighting my Collar, trying
to keep it from going off. Hurts like a bitch when it does." He put
out his hand and lowered the pepper spray without taking it away
from her. "Now I know what stops it. Pepper spray." He shook his
head again. "Shit."

"Sorry," Elizabeth said, not sounding very
sorry.

"Don't worry, sweetheart. I only go after bad
guys." Ronan gazed with contempt at the human stretched out on the
rose-patterned rug, which now contained extra red blotches from
Ronan's wound. Unconscious, the robber looked very young.

Elizabeth snatched tissues from a box on her
desk and handed them to Ronan. "He shot you. You need a
hospital."

Ronan took the tissues and started wiping the
blood from his arm. "Grazed me, and hospitals don't know what to do
with Shifters. You gonna call the cops before he wakes up?"

Elizabeth stared at the cell phone in her
hand as though surprised to find it there, then she turned around
and punched in the three numbers.

Ronan lifted the pistol from the floor and
held it between his thumb and forefinger. He hated guns. Any
projectile weapon, in fact. He guided Elizabeth out of the office
as she started babbling to the 9-1-1 operator, then he set the
pistol on the nearest counter and started looking for his
clothes.

He found the jeans he'd tossed into the
corner and pulled these back on, but his shirt, which had shredded
with his swift change, was a total loss. He rummaged the nearby
racks and pulled out the biggest T-shirt he could find, a bright
red one with
Red
-Hot Lover: Handle with Care
printed
on the front.

Elizabeth still had her cell phone to her
ear. "You all right?" she asked Ronan, her gaze going to the
wound.

Ronan shrugged. "Will be."

"Here. They don't want me to hang up."

Elizabeth handed him the open phone, snatched
some paper towels and a first aid kit from behind the counter, and
gently dabbed residual blood from his triceps. Ronan liked the
brush of her slim fingers as she fixed a gauze bandage over the
wound, the smell of her hair under his nose. Strawberries and
honey.
Bears
like honey.

"Thanks," he rumbled.

"What were you doing in here, anyway?"
Elizabeth asked as she closed the first-aid kit.

"Shopping. This is a store. I needed to buy a
birthday present."

"This late?" It was going on midnight.

"Only time I had free." He growled into the
cell phone. "Hey, will you guys be here any time soon? This lady
needs to go home."

As though in answer, red and blue lights
flashed outside, and the shop soon filled with police and
paramedics. They made their way into the back office and found the
inert robber, and the paramedics bundled him up and carried him
out.

One of the police--a woman with black hair
pulled into a hard bun and a take-no-shit stare--handed the kid's
pistol and shoulder bag full of Elizabeth's money to her colleague
and stayed behind to ask questions. Elizabeth described what had
happened, and the female cop eyed Ronan in suspicion.

"Name," she said to him.

"Ronan."

"Ronan what?"

"Just Ronan. Bears don't have surnames."

The police officer had a smooth face and
cold, black eyes. "You're a Shifter," she said.

"No kidding." Ronan glanced at Elizabeth,
whose lips were too bloodless. "Can you let her go home? She's
pretty shaken up."

"After she gives me her statement. You too,
Shifter. In fact, I want you coming in with us."

She put away her little notebook and took out
a pair of cuffs. They were big cuffs, and Ronan saw the markings
that told him they had Fae magic in them, fashioned to contain
Shifters.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked,
wide-eyed. "Ronan didn't rob me. He helped me."

"He's a Shifter," the woman said. "He hit a
human, and the human's going to the hospital. That's assault, and
for Shifters a capital crime. I have to arrest him."
Rules
are rules,
her flat eyes seemed to say.