Chapter 7
“I’m going out to your car.”
Hank’s ears twitched. He was back in the kitchen trying to peer through the back windows.
Bears didn’t have great eyesight, so it hadn’t helped much.
Typically, his nose more than made up for the lack, but all he could smell right now was Campbell’s chicken soup and Cecilia.
She was a wacky combination of Mother’s lemon dish soap and persimmon.
He’d had that spicy sweet fruit during his time in the military and he’d never forgotten it.
And now that taste was inexorably mixed with her.
He shouldn’t have licked her, but she’d been stroking his face, curling her fingers into his fur, and looking at him like he was a Disney miracle and a Christmas gift all wrapped together. So he’d done what bears do. They taste, they mark, and they remember.
“I need my phone, and I think it’s in there. I’ve got your gun and your keys.”
Hank padded quietly back into the living room. She was at the front door holding his gun like it was toxic waste, but obviously determined to head out into the dark of a dangerous city gone crazy. Not a good idea.
He moved to her side before she could open the front door. She could have just climbed out the big front window, but she was classier than that.
“You don’t have to go with me—”
He snorted. She wasn’t stepping one foot outside without him. The wolves were out tonight in force, and no telling who was crazy and who wasn’t. But first things first.
He knocked the gun out of her hand. Terrible things happened when untrained people handled a weapon. And she was clearly untrained.
“Hey!” she cried as the gun went skittering across the room. “You could have shot something.”
The safety had been on, so he’d taken the risk. And when she went to pick up the gun, he slid in front of her.
“Fine,” she finally said. “No gun. I don’t like the thing anyway. It was used to abduct me.”
He arched a brow at her. He wasn’t sure if a bear could do that. They didn’t have eyebrows, but she understood the expression.
“Don’t look at me that way. It’s a fact. And maybe I don’t exactly see how you could have done it differently, but that doesn’t change the truth. You abducted me with that gun, and now it’s sitting in a pool of blood, so I suppose that’s just as well.”
He jerked his gaze sideways and sure enough, he’d be cleaning that weapon as soon as he was human.
She chuckled at him. He was sure of it. And then she went to open the front door, but he stopped her with a quick bite.
He grabbed hold of her once white lab coat and tugged on it.
Sure it sported stains of a variety of colors, not to mention a whole lot of blood from the hybrid she’d killed.
But that didn’t change the fact that it was white enough to draw attention outside and so she needed to get it off.
She looked at him as he clamped down on her coat and promptly misinterpreted what he meant.
“I’m going out there. I need my phone.”
He gave her coat another tug.
“I’m not going to call the police or anything, and I’m not running. Everything I want to examine is right here.”
Her gesture suggested the two hybrids and the dead werewolf, but her gaze included him.
Was she planning on inspecting him? Probably.
He’d seen the gleam of scientific excitement in her eye.
Did she want to turn him into her personal lab rat?
Or lab bear? That wasn’t going to happen and yet, part of him was interested in exactly that scenario.
If she were the one doing the inspecting.
He wouldn’t let her bring out the knives or anything, but he sure would love to see exactly how she would explore every inch of him.
And that right there told him that he’d been awake far too long.
His libido was running away with his brain.
No rest meant no control of his body or his mind.
He’d learned from his brother’s death that shifters needed control above everything else.
And if he hadn’t known it then, the lesson had been repeated with every drunk patient he’d seen during his stint as a medic.
A lack of discipline created problems. And lack of discipline in a shifter killed.
But he had no choice at the moment. He had to hold it together until morning. Werewolves settled down during daylight. He didn’t know why, but Mother had said it often and she knew wolves better than anyone.
Which meant that Cecilia was not going to go outside in an outfit guaranteed to attract attention. With the moon tonight, she’d light up like she was center stage at the opera. So he tugged again on her lab coat, tossing his head to give her the idea.
“What are— Ow!”
He eased up immediately; he didn’t want to hurt her.
Then he huffed. The woman was a doctor. Why couldn’t she understand the basics of nighttime survival?
He let go of her coat and then burrowed beneath it.
The thing had two big buttons which he couldn’t manage in his bear form.
Hopefully this gave her the idea of what he wanted.
“Hank!”
She scrambled backward, but ran into the wall.
He was nuzzling hard, pressing his nose into her soft belly.
The idea had been to jerk his head back and rip the buttons off.
But once his head was there against her body and he was surrounded by that heady persimmon scent, all sorts of weird things began to happen.
First of all, he forgot what he was doing.
There were too many delicious sensations going on.
It wasn’t just her scent and the way her hands were gripping his fur.
It was the rapid beat of her heart and the giggle she made as he wriggled against her.
It was such a childish sound. Like a kid with puppies, and he felt lighter just hearing it.
Then he started burrowing deeper in. Not just her soft belly, but he wanted to feel her breasts against his cheeks. He wanted to lick the underside of those sweet mounds and taste her essence. He had a large tongue and there were so many tastes that she would give him from all over her body.
“Hold on! You’re going to pop the buttons!”
She unbuttoned the lab coat, relieving the pressure against the back of his nose. Good because that gave him the ability to draw higher on her body, rubbing his cheek against her clothing and licking the underside of her jaw.
“God, you’re just like a dog. Do you want me to scratch behind your ears?”
He should be insulted by that. He was insulted, except the feel of her fingers digging into his fur was heaven itself.
He couldn’t remember any human ever touching him in bear form.
Not like this. Not curling underneath his ears to tug upward.
Not pressing her face against his as she rubbed her forehead against his fur.
Not laughing as she hugged him to her while he licked along her jawline and up to her ear.
“I’ve never had a dog,” she said as she moved to scratch deeper on his neck. “But I imagine this is much better, right? You’re much better.”
Much.
And what the hell was he doing? He was letting her pet him and play with his ears.
She was tugging on them, teasing the shape of them.
Did she know how sensitive his ears were?
And that what she did was sending bolts of pleasure throughout his body?
It was one of the playful rituals of bears before they mated.
And he was getting hard. Good God, he’d never had an erection as a bear before.
He licked her again, this time on her face. She squirmed away, laughing as she went. His face dropped lower as he tried to get a handle on his body and mind, but he was still leaning against her, his nose and his ears pressed against her hip and belly.
He inhaled deeply, his nose twitching and his body warming with her scent.
She was in heat, he realized. Ripe and ready for mating. He rumbled deep in his throat, a purr of happiness. He’d never made a sound like that before and part of him was startled. The shrinking human part of his mind. What was he doing?
He took a step backward as he tried to regroup. And in that moment, her head jerked sideways in reaction to a sound. An annoying human sound.
“Hank, your phone is ringing.”
He heard, and he didn’t want to. He inhaled and was pleased with her scent all over his nose and muzzle. But there was another scent as well. Something sour and—
Hybrid.
He straightened and bristled. He would defend her and the others. The young and the old. The scent wasn’t strong. The hybrid wasn’t close yet, but it was definitely in Hank’s territory.
“Hello?”
It took him a moment to realize what had happened. While his senses were focused outside on catching the hybrid’s location according to the wind, she had answered his phone and was now talking to whoever had called.
“Um, no. This is Dr. Lu. He’s…um…indisposed right now.” Silence. “Yes, I’m a believer. Can’t wait to get my hands on the data you…” Another moment. “No, I can’t access my phone right now. It’s outside where the werewolves are and Hank won’t let me go get it.”
Hank took another deep breath, his mind clearing as his nostrils sorted through the Detroit smells. What the hell had he been doing? He was protecting Mother and Sammy, for God’s sake. There were hybrids out there who could attack at any moment. And he’d been…what? Nuzzling Cecilia?
The enormity of his loss of control was staggering.
Anything could have attacked while she was scratching his ears.
Anything. And he would have been ass to the room completely exposed.
The mental breakdown shook him to his core.
Never before had Hank lost himself so completely in the bear. Not even when he’d been a randy teen.
He had to return to human. Forget the fact that he was a stronger fighter as a bear. He wasn’t fighting anything while he lost to the animal. It might not even want to hang around but choose to wander off to the River Rouge. That was dangerous for the women he protected and suicidal for him.
So he changed. He made the mental shift to human, the conscious reshaping of his body to the image he saw in his mind’s eye, but the bear didn’t want to leave. The instincts were running hot, and it didn’t care what the man wanted.
Meanwhile, she was talking, her voice calm and professional.
Probably giving the sit rep to Simon. That’s the only person who would call now.
But instead of the thought pushing him back into human form so he could make the report, his bear was sniffing the air inside, drawing Cecilia’s scent deep into his lungs.
He stilled, his mind at war. Her scent was intoxicating, but it was also tainted with another smell. No, not her. Outside.
The hybrid. It was closer now. He needed to find it and scare it away. If he couldn’t reform himself into a human just then, he’d damn well make himself useful and go frighten off the danger.
He leapt through the window. It wasn’t a hard jump, but he heard Cecilia gasp in surprise.
“He just…he jumped out the window.” Her voice dropped a note. “That’s a pretty impressive leap for something his size.”
Good. She was impressed with his prowess. She would be even more impressed when he chased the monster away.