Bear Trapped (Bear Creek Grizzlies #5)

19. Finn

FINN

H is only responsibility was to not frighten her, to not drive her off. No matter what she said or did or asked, his bear side needed her close by. When he felt her on the mattress next to him, he tried to create a little separation and focused on her ankle instead of the sexy curves all over the rest of her. He offered to tell her anything, hoping she would distract him with metaphysical questions about his bear side, but instead she asked the hardest thing to answer.

Why was he still there? Finn could have left. Could have easily disappeared in the snow, maybe left her with the sat phone and some money so she had a fighting chance. He could have sent Shotgun and his guys after the smugglers and everything would have gone back to normal. Finn could have returned to the Lodge and the tedium of regular life surrounded by happy families. And cats. So many cats after Zoe’s pregnancy. Cats everywhere. And not a single one of them gave a shit about confronting a bear. He’d surrendered more than one fish to a feline due to Zoe’s likely reaction if any of those damn cats had a whisker out of place.

But he couldn’t tell Lauren why he stayed. She’d bolt. It was bad enough they were trapped in a cabin in a blizzard and she’d learned he turned into a bear, not to mention the armed drug smugglers searching for the forest, but if he just announced that they were soul mates or meant to meet… What sane woman would stick around for that? She didn’t have a choice in that moment, but the second the snow melted, she’d run. Of course she would. She’d already shown a proclivity for dodging problems instead of confronting them. What if he became just another thing for her to flee, like the warrant and bounty and everything else?

His hesitation told too much of a story, though, since her face fell and a guarded expression replaced whatever openness had been there. Finn wasn’t good at this kind of stuff. He didn’t deal with feelings and shit. He left that up to the other guys, the smarter ones or at least the ones who faked it better. “Well, you saved my life, to start with. I need to repay the favor.”

Lauren frowned and shifted around on the mattress, turning onto her side to face him more. The blanket slipped and revealed the smooth, soft spot between her throat and shoulder. “I don’t believe you.”

She shouldn’t have. At least those instincts seemed to be working all right, even if the rest of her wasn’t suited to subterfuge. “It’s true, it’s just not the whole reason.”

Her eyebrows rose and she waited.

Finn huffed a laugh and ran his hands through his hair. He was a coward. A damn coward. “Couldn’t you ask me something easy, like how I turn into a bear?”

“I already know that,” she said.

“You do?” Finn shoved to his feet to pace, despite the overwhelming exhaustion from the day’s exertions and the deep twinge of pain in his leg. It was mostly healed but not all the way, and the bone ached every time he moved. He needed more protein and rest before he attempted any more heroics.

“Yeah,” Lauren said. She watched him, still wary. “Magic.”

He stopped to look at her, hands on his hips, and struggled to come up with a response. He couldn’t argue with it. No one really knew how the shift happened, just that it came from genetics, transmitted like a virus in certain circumstances, and happened during extreme emotional events. Sure, it could have been magic.

When he didn’t rebut the announcement, Lauren sat all the way up. She winced as she moved but Finn didn’t trust himself to get close enough to help her. Not yet. Not when the bear was close to the surface from having to confront their feelings for her. If he was a good guy, he wouldn’t have even considered sticking around her. With his luck, Shotgun would jump the gun and come after anything moving in the park, including him, and being close to him would put Lauren in danger. And Finn didn’t have his own place, so asking her to stay with him in his buddy’s house wasn’t exactly going to blow her socks off. What did he have to offer her except his fucked-up bear side and a whole lot of nightmares?

“Sure,” he said finally. “Magic. Right.”

And he ran out of words.

Lauren took a deep breath. “I know I don’t have any right to question you, since you saved my life and so far you’re still saving my life right now because I think I’d be frozen right now if it weren’t for you, but… I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on. I’m tired of feeling out of control and floating along waiting for something else to happen. I want to know why you’re still here.”

He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He couldn’t say it. If he said it, if he admitted who she was to him, he’d want to kiss her. He’d need to kiss her. And once he started kissing her, how the fuck was he supposed to stop? Even the freezing trickles of air that still leaked into the cabin weren’t enough to distract him.

“I want to know why you’re looking at me like that,” she whispered, her breathing uneven.

“Like what?” He forced the words out even as the bear roared to be let out, to touch her and be next to her. She hadn’t run away. She hadn’t thrown anything at him or wrapped up in a blanket to hide from him. Maybe she wouldn’t flee. Maybe if he took the next step it wouldn’t backfire on him.

“Like you see something no one else does,” Lauren said. Her voice trembled like her hands as she picked at loose threads on the blanket.

God, she was going to kill him. He needed to comfort her. He didn’t like the uncertainty, the wariness. He didn’t like her questioning why he stayed to protect her.

Finn took a deep breath and paced a few more limping steps. Maybe it would be easier to say if he didn’t look at her, didn’t see her immediate reaction. If she grimaced or flinched when he said it, Finn didn’t think he’d recover. But did he want to miss it and chase her, not knowing whether she wanted to be caught? His frustration strangled in his throat and the bear grumbled in annoyance. This was too much think ing . The bear didn’t like complex things. The bear liked simple: hungry meant eating, fatigue meant sleeping, lust meant fucking. That was it. Maybe anger meant fighting.

That was definitely it.

Finn cleared his throat several times, hoping inspiration would strike, and finally faced her. “Look, I don’t know… I don’t know how to…do this. I’m not good at it. I don’t know how to say it.”

She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them, eyes wide. “Are you going to eat me?”

He jerked back, the question knocking some sense into him. “No, of course not.”

“Good.” Lauren exhaled. “I thought maybe you needed a meal and stuck around so you’d have a fresh one that couldn’t escape.”

Finn scrubbed his face so he wouldn’t laugh in relief and confusion. “That’s what you think of me? That I’d save your life just to eat you for dinner?”

Although he did plan to taste every inch of her.

“I don’t know any bears,” Lauren said. “How am I supposed to know what they do? I mean, I’ve studied Bigfoot and Sasquatches and other cryptids, but I can’t say that werewolves or…werebears? Is that what you’d be called? They never really came up in any of the groups, you know, because it’s ridiculous to think that a person could change all the way into…”

Finn held up his hands to cut off the barrage of words, with his mind already spinning, although the tight anxiety in his chest uncoiled with her back to being more the original variety Lauren he remembered from that trek with the sledge. “Uh, I’ve never heard ‘werebear’ but that’s a good thought. We use shapeshifter, but not often. We don’t talk about it much.”

“Smart,” she said, nodding. She glanced at him and away again, a flush rising in her cheeks. “People think you’re crazy when you talk about cryptids or magic or crystals or anything like that.”

God, he loved her. Loved everything about her, including the wonder and wide-eyed earnestness when she talked about cryptids. Finn couldn’t swallow the smile, though he hoped his beard concealed most of it. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and if she thought he laughed at her, she’d be crushed.

“We don’t eat people,” he said. “Fish, mostly, and deer when we catch them. Beef and pork and chicken when we’re in human form. Sometimes fruit and vegetables, though that kind of grazing is more to keep everyone else happy. Unless it’s honey. We do love honey.”

That got a smile, at least, and she looked around at the dark cabin behind him. “No honey here. Sorry about that.”

He begged to differ. There certainly was honey he wanted to dip into.

Finn shook himself to focus. The bear had to put the libido aside, at least for the rest of the night. He had to wait. Had to give her time to adjust, to get comfortable around him. And he’d damn well have to pack snow down his shorts if they shared the mattress again. Maybe he’d shift and sleep as a bear closer to the door so he wouldn’t be tempted.

“Any other questions?” he asked when the silence stretched. She needed to rest. They both did, really, but her more so than him. Finn would keep one eye open through the night to make sure the smugglers didn’t get close to the cabin and Shotgun didn’t raid the whole fucking park ahead of schedule. “It can wait, too. I’m not going anywhere.”

Her gaze slid away and uncertainty reappeared in the tension through her shoulders. She chewed on her thumbnail and didn’t quite look at him. “You don’t have to stay, you know. You don’t. I understand if you want to go, if you’re better off…”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated. Finn couldn’t take it and eased closer to sit next to her. Even if it was the danger zone, he didn’t want her to feel alone. “It’s dangerous out there, and it’s cold, and there are people out there who want to hurt us. So we have to stick together. I’ll protect you. Of course I’ll protect you.”

There was no question in his mind, or the bear’s, that he would keep her safe.

The nail-chewing intensified. Her foot bounced under the blanket. “They would have killed me, wouldn’t they?”

Finn held his breath, wanting to lie to reassure her the smugglers wouldn’t have done it. But she’d felt the pistol against her head. She knew. She’d been on the run and hiding for her life. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time, he’d be willing to bet. He held her ankle again, not wanting the agitation to take over and keep her from getting some rest. “They are dangerous and unpredictable. They would try to harm you, but they won’t. I won’t let them.”

Lauren’s smile twisted uneasily. “But it’s…”

“Lauren,” he said, squeezing her foot. He didn’t know how to prove it to her. “I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She looked at him, the worry clear, and the entire world slowed down around him. Finn knew it to his bones: he would do anything— anything —to keep her safe. Already his mind spun with possibilities to save her from the bullshit charges, to hide her away somewhere that the rest of the bears could shield her from the law and those stupid fucking hippies who abandoned her, to do whatever it took to ensure the next twenty years of Lauren’s life outshone the last twenty like a fucking beacon.

Her lips parted and his focus shifted immediately to her mouth. The soft temptation of her lips and throat and every inch of her hidden by the blankets and the layers of clothes.

Finn debated retrieving a bucket of snow as his body reacted and he faced a long damn night of trying not to show her how much he wanted her.