Chapter 15 #2
“Oh.” Jeez, what a stupid response. But she didn’t know what to say.
Congratulations, you’re not half beast? I’m so sorry you can’t kill people with your claws?
Did shifters like running wild in the woods and digging honey out of beehives?
Or did they want to hang out with a girl at prom and not worry that they’d start sprouting fur if things got too intense?
“You should ask Carl.”
She nodded. She should, but her emotions were too close to the surface to even consider that yet. She felt too exposed and too wild around him to broach the topic. Then, as if the thought summoned the man, the front door opened and Carl came in.
He was wearing the tearaway pants and nothing else.
His hair was dripping wet and slicked down against his body.
She looked up at him as he entered, and the lust slammed against her hot and hard.
She drank in every sculpted muscle, every lithe movement of his body, but she didn’t leave the kitchen.
If she did, nothing would stop her from jumping him in the bedroom.
And from there, it was the tiniest step to giving him everything.
Carl didn’t stop as he came into the room. He saw her, of course. And there might have been a slight hitch in his stride but no more as he headed straight for the bedroom.
Ouch. Even though she knew she was the cause, the awkwardness between them hurt. But she couldn’t think of a way through it. Not until she felt more settled. And more capable of controlling herself when she was around him.
Meanwhile, Alan spoke, his voice low. “You need to talk to him, Becca. If you two are going to make a go of this, you have to love the bear as much as the man.”
She jolted at the word “love.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t flirted with the idea. Hell, she’d been fighting tooth and nail to not think the word. “We just met,” she said. “We… He and I…” Hell, she couldn’t get the words out. “It’s a no-strings-attached kind of thing.”
“Is that what he told you?”
She jerked her gaze back to Alan. She’d been staring at the closed bedroom door, but suddenly she was staring at Alan with her chest so tight she could barely breathe. “What do you mean?”
For the first time this morning, Alan looked chagrined and he rapidly started backing out of both the conversation and the room. But she couldn’t let him go. She grabbed his arm and held firm. He could have escaped, of course. She wasn’t that strong. But he didn’t push the point as she held tight.
“Talk to me, Alan. I need to understand.”
He huffed out a breath. “The very first night, he put you in his bedroom, Becca. His den. He hasn’t done that with anyone before.”
She shook her head. The last thing she needed was to realize that Carl was feeling as intensely about her as she was about him.
That made it a scorched earth kind of relationship: wild, passionate, and completely destructive of the world around them.
She knew. She’d seen her sister go through them often enough.
By all accounts that’s how Theo had been conceived.
Maybe that’s how all shifter relationships went.
“We just met,” she said, denying everything he’d said in three words.
“Maybe you feel like you just met. He’s been watching Theo from the very beginning. That’s his job as Max—to keep an eye on potential new shifters.”
“But that’s Theo, not me.”
Alan held up his hand, freeing his arm and silencing her in one motion. “He’s been aware of you, Becca. And if what I saw this morning means anything, he’s fully invested in you. Carl doesn’t do things halfway.”
No, no, no! It was too fast! But Alan didn’t stop.
“You have complete control here. You can say yes or no. He won’t force you in any way. But don’t imagine for a second that he’s just being casual with you.”
She leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
Her hands were wrapped around her empty coffee mug as if it were a grounding wire to reality.
It wasn’t. Which left her reeling from too much too fast. Hell, Theo was missing.
Shouldn’t she put all her attention on finding him? On getting him home safely?
But what more could she do there except wait?
And while waiting, all these other things had happened with Carl.
She didn’t know how to cope. And then she felt a hand, large and gentle, on her arm.
Her eyes shot open to see Alan looking at her with sympathy.
His expression was kind, but his words were anything but.
“I know this is a lot, Becca. And I don’t want to pile more on, but you have to make a decision. Because I’ll be damned if I let you hurt my brother.”
“What?”
He took a breath. “You can’t use my brother to distract yourself from what’s going on with Theo.
It’s cruel enough to play with someone’s emotions like that, but it’s deadly if you do that with an alpha.
Don’t fuck with his head. Certainly not when he’s doing everything he can to find Theo for you. ”
Was that what she was doing? Was she just screwing Carl as a way to pass the time? Everything in her rebelled at the thought, and yet in a situation like this, who knew what tricks the mind played? “I’m not doing that on purpose,” she said, knowing it for a weak excuse.
“Don’t do it at all. For any reason.” Then he straightened and stepped away, his gaze cutting to the right.
She followed his look and saw Carl standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, his gaze heavy on her and Alan.
His hair was towel-dried now, curling every which way.
He had on jeans and a flannel shirt and there were socks in his hands.
She met his gaze, flinching slightly at the raw emotion that swirled there.
She couldn’t read it, had no idea what he was thinking.
But whatever it was, it was wild and powerful.
And it was only in his eyes as the rest of him stood statue still.
She swallowed, wanting to go to him, but holding herself back.
Alan’s warning rang loud in her head. She didn’t want to use him for her own selfish needs.
And until she got some clarity about herself and him, she didn’t want to lead him on.
So she held herself back and wished with all her might that she had time to take a breath.
And then, like magic, he gave it to her.
“Tonya’s got some leads. She and Bryn have figured out some locations where they might be holding Theo.”
Her heart jolted inside her chest. “Where?”
“There are a dozen different places. They’re checking as many as they can, but need help. So she and I are going to the ones around Gladwin.”
That made sense. Tonya would have authority as a police officer and Carl would be there as Max.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Just wait here. I’ll call if there’s any news.”
“But I want to—”
“Just wait here, Becca.” It was half order, half plea.
“Sure,” she said. What else could she do?
Maybe he needed some time to sort things out, too.
So this was the perfect solution for them both.
Except it didn’t feel like it. In fact, it felt awful as she stood there watching him pull on his socks and boots.
Worse, he then crossed to a locked cabinet and pulled out a handgun.
She wondered at first why he needed it when he was Max Grizzly Bear, but then she remembered that he’d already shifted today.
He wouldn’t be able to go back into that kind of fighting mode again until after he’d rested.
Damn it, that made him extra vulnerable, and that scared the hell out of her.
“Wait!” she called as she headed for the door.
He froze mid step.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes, right? I mean you don’t have to leave this second, right?”
He frowned. “Tonya’s still coordinating with her team. I have maybe ten minutes. What did you have in mind?”
A million things flooded her brain, half of them pornographic, but out of all of them the need to make him as strong as possible was the loudest. “You haven’t eaten and you shifted this morning. You must be starving.”
“We’ll grab a doughnut—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Or cliché.” She opened a bottom cabinet and found a skillet shoved in the back. God, it had dust on it. “I’m making you breakfast.”
“You don’t have to do that…” His voice trailed away at her glare.
“Sit,” she ordered. Then she went into short order cook mode, pulling together a breakfast fit for a starving lumberjack. All the protein and tasty carbs she could shove in his body in ten minutes.
He ate every bite, murmuring appreciative grunts throughout. There wasn’t time for them to talk, which was just as well. She had no idea what she wanted to say. It took twelve minutes in total, and he left with a full thermos of coffee and three slices of buttered toast to eat on the road.
And then he was gone. She heard him and Tonya talk as they climbed into the squad car.
Then she stood at the window and watched them drive away, feeling irrationally jealous that Tonya got to sit with him and not her.
Five minutes later, Alan left as well. There were legal things to handle after this morning’s fight.
Which left her alone with her thoughts.
Which—she now realized—really sucked.