Southern Shifters: Inked By The Bear (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Black & White Series Book 2) (3 page)

“How do you know that?”

“Because he was from my pack. We heard stories about a wolf and a bear taking off on their own in search of new blood. It was an uneasy partnership and I think you are part bear. Part
that
bear. And the lust that took hold of you a bit ago? It was likely blood lust and because your body doesn’t know how to process the change, it took the form of sexual arousal.”

“What happened to the wolf and the bear?”

“Rumors were death. Poachers, most likely.”

“God…”

“Which brings me to the second part of this tale.” Luke leveled a pointed look at Gus. “And it involves you.”

“Then let’s hear it.”

“The bear was said to be from the mountains to the east of Gatlinburg. He —”

“Wait a second. What are you telling me?”

“The bear who raped her mother… I think it was a member of the family who raised you. A brother, a cousin, nephew, someone. I know the scent. I know…” Luke growled in frustration. “I just know.”

Gus was off the swing so fast, Bex had to grab hold of the arm rest to keep her balance. She kept one eye on him and one on the wolf as best she could. She was struggling to process everything. If Luke Blackwood was telling the truth… Did she even want to imagine that? “Gus?”

“I don’t know, Bex. I don’t know.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Luke added, standing. He looked uncomfortable. They were now, all three of them, uncomfortable.

“You said the rumors were that they were dead? Both of them?” Bex asked. She was searching for clarification. Maybe. She really wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She’d like to go back to yesterday. Hell, go back to earlier in the day. Noon at work. Any time other than the present because the present moment pretty much sucked.

“Dead, yes.”

“How old are you, pretty girl?” Gus was leaning against one of the porch railings, booted feet crossed at the ankles. His knuckles were white, his grip on the railing was so tight. His voice was soft, tender, and she knew he was trying to make this easier for her, less jarring. He was forever trying to keep her sadness and pain at bay.

“Twenty-four.”

“I’m twenty-eight.” He looked away, toward the end of the street, which led to a smaller street, which led to the lake. Did he wish to escape? If so, she couldn’t blame him. She wanted to escape, too. She also wanted to protect him, but how could she?

What could she do to protect him against what Luke had said, what his words implied? How could she protect either of them? How could she protect their relationship, new as it was? They were sleeping together, living together. She hardly knew him and he hardly knew her, but they fit. She didn’t doubt that. People would call it moving too fast, insta-love or maybe insta-lust. She understood that because there were times she thought that very same thing. But maybe it was okay for two souls who didn’t know exactly where they fit in the world because when they were together, she fit him and he fit her.

“So, you’d been living with your new family for a couple of years when this took place.”

“This?” Bex stood and stepped into Luke Blackwood’s personal space, uncaring that he could rip her apart, uncaring that he was a predator, and a dangerous one at that. All she cared about was the fact he was tearing everything apart with nothing more than words. “
This
is my life.” She pointed at Gus. “
This
is his life.”

She didn’t raise her voice, but her blood heated and her pulse quickened, the same as it had earlier. She wanted to tear into him or have sex with Gus. She wasn’t sure which desire was stronger.

Gus was at her back and had hold of her hands before she could reach out for Luke. His touch managed to calm her almost instantly. How did he know?

“There’s only one way to really figure this out, Wolf, and you’re not invited.”

“Tough shit. I’m going with you. I’ll send my pack home back to Deal’s Gap, but I’m going with you.”

“Going?” Bex turned to glance up at Gus. “What are you two talking about? Where are you going?”

“We. Where are we going would be the more correct question. A road trip. To see my family.”

“You believe him? You believe he’s telling the truth?”

Gus kissed the top of her head and tugged her in close. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know, baby. But it seems maybe there are answers to be had and facing it all head on is better than burying our collective heads in the sand.” He lifted his gaze to Luke. “I can’t promise they won’t try to kill you.”

“I can’t promise I won’t try to return the favor.”

Chapter Three

“Gus? Are you sure you want to do this?”

She was nervous, his Bex. His pretty girl. His woman. She was nervous and she couldn’t hide it. He wouldn’t want her to hide it, either. “I’m sure that I don’t have a choice.”

“Was there someone? A bear who just disappeared one day? Do you remember?”

Gus shook his head. God, he needed to shift. He needed to go for a swim. He needed to get the hell out and get into the trees and the forest. He needed to be alone with his thoughts, with the panic that was threatening to overflow and swallow him whole.

He also needed Bex, and needed her to understand things he wasn’t even sure he understood. He tamped down the overwhelming feelings inside and pulled her around and into his lap.

Once he’d gotten her away from Luke and had sent the wolf to join his pack out back, he’d ushered Bex into the house and locked the doors. Not that that would keep Luke or any of his wolves outside if they really wanted in, but he suspected Luke didn’t want bloodshed any more than Gus did.

Looking down at Bex, Gus couldn’t say the same. He sensed that she was ready and willing, if not able just yet, to rip Blackwood’s throat out. "I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I have to say no. I spent a lot of time outside when I was younger, out in the woods, trying to figure out where I fit in because I didn’t fit in. Not really. I missed my parents, but I didn’t know I missed them. I stopped talking. I didn’t cry. I just felt lost. I don’t know if there was someone who was around and then disappeared. I just know I wanted to disappear too.”

She hugged him. Halfway through, she hugged him, arms tight around his neck. Her softness comforted him. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her breath warm on his skin.

“Do you want any answers? Bex, look at me.” He almost gave up on her doing it, but she finally lifted her head. Uncertainty resided in her gaze when her eyes met his.

“Answers to what? What good would it do me to know anything new at all now? What good would it do? My mother is gone and if it happens to be that one of your adopted relatives was my real father, what good does that do you or me? The truth isn’t always a good thing to know. It doesn’t always heal or help.”

“And what if you’re a shifter like Luke said?”

That answer came swiftly, first with a shrug, then a smirk. “Would make sense, I guess, since I want to smack him around.”

“Nah.” Gus nipped at the smirk turned smile on her lips. “Wanting to smack him around would be natural no matter what. He’s a cocky SOB.”

“He’s definitely a something.”

“Would it be so bad, Bex? To be like me?” Gus asked again. “You don’t seem to have an issue with me being, well, me. It would be natural for you to be wary and even hate all shifters simply because of what happened to your mother, but you aren’t and you don’t.”

“Of course not. That wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t change anything from the past.”

“So, then… Would it be so bad if you were a shifter?” It was important to him, important that she would be okay with it, that she wouldn’t fight it. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her that Luke was telling the truth. He wanted her to come to the realization on her own because maybe then she’d be able to accept it a little easier. But at the same time, he needed to hear her say that she was and would be okay, either way.

“If I am, there’s nothing I can do to change it and if I’m not, there’s nothing I can do to change it. It’s just… I not knowing, but what I hate even more is having to admit and say over and over again, that I don’t know.”

Gus nodded. He knew what that was like. “So, what do you know?”

“That wanting to be with you isn’t even a question. I don’t think it was ever a question once we got that you-could-kill-me-with-a-knife-conversation from the first day we met out of the way.”

“Which makes getting answers all the more essential.”

“Are you sure you want me to go with you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s a little early to meet the family, isn’t it?”

“I think the extenuating circumstances make it okay.” He brushed hair from her face and kissed her lips, reassuring her. “They’ll love you, Bex.”

“And if I am a bear, like you? Will they be able to tell?”

“If you’re blood kin? Yeah. They’ll know almost immediately.” If she had shifter blood, so many things, so much would make sense. His initial reaction to her would make sense. His continued desire for her would make sense. The way she felt like home to him would make sense.

He hadn’t considered any of that before Luke’s bombs, but now that he thought about it, Gus knew that her being a shifter was likely the only explanation.

She changed her position until she was straddled across his lap the way she had been earlier downstairs on the couch.

Her gaze met his. “And they’ll know he’s a wolf?”

Gus chuckled at the evil glee in his lover’s voice. “The second he steps onto their property.”

“Good.”

“This is a different side of you.”

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Bad?”

“No, pretty girl. It’s kinda hot.” He’d never been a confrontational guy all on his own. People getting in his face, yeah. People threatening him or someone he cared about, yeah. His size was usually enough to deter most from coming at him or getting in his way. But, Bex? Something fueled her hunger.

“Good. Cause I need you again.”

“Damn. Maybe he and his pack should camp out here more often if it’s going to make you this frisky.”

Bex grinned and smashed her lips to his. “Maybe they should,” she agreed, flipping her shirt off over her head and tossing it to the floor.

Her full breasts were covered by the same serviceable bra from earlier, and he made quick work of the hooks, freeing the lush mounds to both his gaze and his hands. Her nipples extended into his touch and he grazed them with the pads of his thumbs, drawing a moan from her throat.

Gus hadn’t witnessed shifter blood take hold of a person the way it seemed to be taking hold of Bex with Luke around. He’d never be able to explain it to anyone when he barely understood the transformation himself. She hadn’t been timid in sex before, but she was even less so now. Now, she was aggressive and taking the lead. He didn’t mind it. Really rather liked it. But, it was different. The sadness faded from her eyes and under normal circumstances, there was always a trace of it. There was also determination lurking, and this bit of lust seemed to add to it.

“I’m not sure living together is going to be a good idea,” he said as he ghosted kisses along her collarbone. Her skin was heated, her coloring heightened, and her blood thrummed through her veins. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he’d almost be able to hear it. In bear form, it wouldn’t take that much concentration, but in human form, it did.

“Why do you say that?” Her fingers fumbled with the button and zipper on her pants until she simply ripped the button off. Gus sat beneath her, amused.

Aroused.

Smitten.

“Because you obviously find me more and more irresistible as the days pass. Before too long, we won’t have the beginnings of a respectable bed and breakfast.”

She didn’t even pause in her actions. She used his body as leverage go get to her knees and started working her bottoms off her hips and thighs. “What do you mean?” she asked, wiggling her clothes off her body until she was naked. She made quick work of the fastenings on his pants, eliminating the barriers that kept the wetness between her legs from the hardness between his.

She was beautiful, all full of lust and hunger, taking what she wanted from him, what she needed. If nothing else told him they were meant to be, the way her body reacted to him, would've been all the proof necessary. She nudged him until he fell back onto the bed and she leaned down, her nipples teasing his chest.

“What did you mean?” she asked again, this time with the incentive of her sliding back and forth on the ridge of his cock, teasing the head with her clit, teasing the crown with the opening of her body.

Just… Teasing…

He grabbed her hips, helped to guide the sensations where he wanted them, eliciting another moan from her.

He loved those guttural sounds of hers.

He pumped his hips up. “I meant, if you keep this going…” He pushed up again. “If you keep attacking me like this…” And again, grinding himself between the lips of her sex as he held her firm and spread over his thighs. “We won’t have a bed and breakfast. Instead…” He paused, shifted position beneath her, and thrust himself deep inside her, hard enough to make her gasp and her eyes to flutter closed. He pulled one hand from her hip and wrapped his fingers in her hair, bringing her face to his, her lips only centimeters from his. She barely lifted her lashes, enough though for him to see the need reflected back at him. “Instead, pretty girl, we’ll have a brothel. All this sex, all the time…”

She grinned, shook his tight hold off, slid up on his cock until he was barely inside her, waited for the space of several, untimely long heartbeats, before slamming herself back down, taking all of him in one sharp slide. “Then we’ll have a very private brothel.”

Bex rode him relentlessly, without mercy, and it was one of the best fucks of his life. She drove herself down on him time after time, harder with each stroke, and braced herself with her hands on his shoulders, pressing him into the mattress until he could do nothing more than hold on.

“I want to see ink on you.” He grunted the words out because it was all the breath he had and there was so much truth in his statement. He wanted to ink her, mark her, fill her body with color and life so that she never had to travel to the dark places inside herself again. She was brilliant and beautiful and ink would… It turned him on just thinking about it.

As
if
he wasn’t turned on enough with Bex’s mouth on his neck, sucking at the tattoos covering him.

It didn’t take long and she began to quicken her pace, began to breathe more harshly, more sharply. She lifted her head and he watched, fascinated by the light in her eyes, the perfect O her lips formed, the word yes
,
as it slipped from those same lips as she fluttered around his cock and came, rocking harder, prolonging the sensations, and sending him over the edge of his own.

She collapsed on his chest and worked her arms around his neck and shoulders, burying her face in his skin. He held her as his cock jerked and filled her. He sighed deeply, contentedly. He knew he belonged with her. He knew she belonged with him. He knew… He knew the second she fell asleep.

He smiled and adjusted her and his hold on her and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of her breath, reveling in the soft, and solid weight of her body. God, he fucking adored her.

* * * * *

Finally… They were finally finished screwing.

Luke huffed out a breath and laid his head across his front paws. He probably shouldn’t have shifted in a semi-private area where anyone nosy could walk into the woman's back yard, but truth be told, he hadn’t cared. He almost wished for a scrap. He was itching for a fight, for release of some sort.

He knew Gus and Bex were having sex, knew they were going to have sex. Luke had sensed it in her when she’d stood toe to toe with him on the porch for a second time. He knew they’d go inside and fuck. He couldn’t blame either of them. It was how her body and mind coped with the need for something she didn’t understand and no red-blooded man, or shifter, would be able to resist the lust she couldn’t seem to control.

And she wasn’t even in heat. Hell, he wasn’t sure she could shift. Sex may be her only way of dealing with the urges inside her. If that was the case, Gus was one lucky bastard.

Luke changed position, but only slightly. He could still spring to his feet if there happened to be a threat, though he was bone tired. Being tense for so long sapped his energy and strength, both of which he would need in the coming days.

His pack mates had gone for food while he’d been talking with Gus and Bex. Now that he’d been fed, he wanted one of two things. Sleep. Or sex.

Sleep would be winning out.

Did she agree to a blood test?

When shifted, he could communicate either others in his pack when they were shifted as well.
No. I didn’t even ask. We’re on to the next best thing. Going to see some people who might be relatives.

Might be?

Yeah. Might be.

What do you need us to do?

What did he need them to do? Go home? Or did he need them to go home and then back track through the mountains? He wasn’t stupid. He was determined, but he wasn’t stupid. Walking into a bear’s den alone was more suicide mission than anything. Going in with his pack hopefully hidden within the forest? Well, if he ended up needing them, that could get ugly real fast and then he wouldn’t be trusted by other shifters. And trust was paramount.

On the other hand, if he didn’t have them follow through the heavy foliage, keeping an eye on him and his dealings with the bears, he’d be alone and dead, if something went wrong. The woman already wanted to kill him. He knew that as sure as he was lying there under the stars.