Chapter 5 #5
Bear stood there, beer in hand, eyes flat and unreadable, jaw tight enough to crack stone.
He wasn’t here to dance.
He was here to end it.
The song kept rolling, drums heavy, the bass thrumming right through my ribs—but everything around me slowed.
Bear stood there, boots planted, beer bottle hanging loose in one hand. His eyes were on me, not the man behind me. Dark. Flat. Waiting.
The guy—mint-and-cookies beard, warm eyes—let out a low laugh, trying to play it off. “Didn’t know she was with anyone, brother.”
“I’m not—” I started, but Bear’s gaze flicked to me, and the words tangled in my throat.
He stepped closer, close enough that the air between us tightened. The smell of smoke and cold clung to him, cutting clean through the haze of beer and perfume and fried food. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
“Time to go, sugar.”
The way he said it—steady, quiet, final—did something strange to my pulse. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even a request. It was an end.
The other man’s hands slid off my waist. I felt the loss of warmth immediately.
I blinked up at Bear, mouth dry. “Excuse me?”
His jaw flexed once. “You heard me.”
I should’ve been mad. Embarrassed. I was embarrassed—every curious head in the room turned toward us, whispers rising over the music.
But under that, something else prickled low and hot: the unmistakable feeling of being seen, claimed, protected—and I didn’t know which part of it made me more flustered.
Jinx appeared out of nowhere, eyes wide. “Everything good here, Prez?”
Bear didn’t even glance his way. “We’re done here.”
I folded my arms. “You don’t get to just bark orders—”
“Not an order,” he said evenly. “A suggestion. Before you end up in the middle of somethin’ you don’t want.”
The warmth of the club had turned heavy, eyes everywhere. The man I’d been dancing with muttered something under his breath and drifted toward the bar. Bear stepped back just enough to let me pass.
For a long second I didn’t move.
Then, quietly, I said, “Fine.”
I slid past him, my heart thudding too fast, too loud. The cold from the door hit my face as we stepped out into the snow again. The music muffled behind us, swallowed by the night.
I tugged my coat tighter. “You really need to work on your people skills.”
“Did fine,” he said. “You’re still in one piece.”
I glared up at him. “Barely.”
He looked down, eyes catching the light from the porch. “You keep drinkin’ with wolves, sugar, you’re gonna get bit.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “He was my mint-and-cookie lumberjack fantasy. Maybe I just wanted to get in trouble tonight.”
That stopped him cold.
The night air hung still, and his gaze cut back to me—dark, steady, burning from the inside out. For the first time, I wondered if maybe Bear wasn’t all frost and stone. Maybe there was something underneath the armor, something that could still melt.
Then he ruined it by reaching for that ridiculous snowsuit again.
“What is it with you and trying to put clothes on me?” I asked, exasperated.
He didn’t blink. “You’d rather I take ’em off?”
The words hit the air and just stayed there. My breath came out in little white puffs, the cold biting at my cheeks, but the rest of me felt too warm. The wind whistled through the trees. The silence between us stretched, tight as a wire.
I forced a laugh. “I just had a bad breakup, that’s all. I wanted to have some fun.”
He shook his head slowly. “MC men don’t do fun, sugar plum.”
He pointed back toward the clubhouse lights, now just a faint glow through the trees. “That’s Wolf in there. He’s the one who does fun—and he bites.”
I snorted. “Okay, Bear. So what do you do?”
His eyes traced over me, unhurried, assessing. Not leering—just seeing, in that quiet way he had that made me feel both nervous and safe. The night pressed in close; I could hear the snow shifting off the branches, the tick of the engine cooling beside us. My heart was a drum in my ears.
He looked at me for a long moment before answering, voice low and even.
“You don’t want to find out.”
And somehow, I wasn’t so sure he was right.
The world had gone quiet again, just the whisper of wind and the low rumble of the snowmobile idling beside us.
I could still hear his last words, low and rough—you don’t want to find out.
My pulse hadn’t slowed since.
He swung a leg over the machine and jerked his chin toward the seat. “Helmet.”
I climbed on behind him, the plastic cold against my palms. When I settled my hands at his sides he said, “Closer.”
The engine’s growl swallowed everything.
The moment I wrapped my arms fully around him, the vibration ran straight through me—steady, mechanical, vibrations.
I could smell smoke in his jacket, pine in his hair.
Every time he breathed, his back moved against my chest, and I had to remind myself to do the same.
We cut into the trees, the headlight slicing through drifts of white. Snowflakes spun past like sparks. The road was gone; there was only trail and shadow and the hum of the engine.
The cold should’ve hurt, but it didn’t. The rush of air stung my cheeks, the moonlight turned the world silver, and for a few minutes I stopped thinking. No Huntley. No job. No plans. Just the speed, the sound, the feel of his heartbeat under my hands.
When the cabin lights finally appeared through the trees, I almost hated to see them.
He parked by the porch, killed the engine. The sudden silence felt louder than the ride. I slid off, legs shaky, hair tangled under the helmet.
Inside, the cabin was dark except for the faint orange glow of the stove. The fire had burned low, throwing soft light over the floorboards. Bear brushed past me, hanging up his coat, boots thudding onto the mat.
I stood there, still buzzing, still catching my breath.
He crouched by the stove, added two logs, and the flames jumped. The glow caught his face—sharp lines, tired eyes, that same steady calm.
“You should sleep,” he said quietly.
“Sleep?” I tried to laugh but it came out thin. “After that? You just took me on the wildest ride of my life.”
A small sound—almost a laugh, almost not. “Wasn’t that wild.”
“For you maybe.”
He looked over his shoulder, the firelight flickering across his beard, his eyes. “You’ll get used to it.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant—the mountain, the storm, or him—but I nodded anyway.
He rose, towering for a heartbeat in the firelight, then stepped past me toward the stairs. As he did, his arm brushed mine, and the contact—brief, accidental—sent another spark up my spine.
“Goodnight, sugar,” he said, voice low.
And then he was gone, leaving me in the warmth and the quiet and the steady crackle of the fire, wondering if maybe I’d already started to melt.