Bears & Beauties - Complete (11 page)

The shower’s floor flooded with my blood as I stood there, rinsing off my body. I did my best to clear my mind, trying to will the healing faster, but to no avail.

Finally, after deciding that I’d wasted enough time and blood standing there, I turned the shower off and opened the curtain.

Much to my surprise, Megan was standing outside the shower, a pair of towels folded up in her hand.

Megan’s jaw dropped in time with my hand as I moved to cover up my erect manhood. I could tell that she’d just come into the bathroom, probably to drop off the towels.

“I’m so sorry!” Megan yelped, squinting her eyes shut and turning away.

For a ridiculous moment, I felt hurt by her turning away. Almost as if she’d just spurned the sight of me. There was nothing I wanted more than for her to look at me and see me in all my glory. If she was my mate, she deserved at least that much.

At the same time, I knew that she was only reacting the way that most normal people would. Looking at naked strangers wasn’t exactly polite, especially when you’d only known them for a little over an hour.

Megan thrust a towel at me over her shoulder and I took it, thanking her as I did.

“Did the shower help?” Megan managed as I dried off, still facing away from me.

“It did,” I told her, taking the opportunity to better study her body. She’d changed clothes since I’d been in the shower, and was now dressed in a pair of sweatpants that clung tightly against her delicious ass in addition to a black camisole that allowed for more than enough skin to show on her upper back. She had her hair up in a ponytail, offering me the perfect view of a neck that just begged to be kissed and nibbled on. It was all I could do to refrain from grabbing her, right there and then, and doing everything that I could to claim her as my mate. Even without the bear prodding me onward, my cock throbbed at the thought of it.

I dried off with the towel then wrapped it around my waist, stepping out of the shower as I did.

“Thanks for the towel,” I said, leaning in close enough to take in her scent. She smelled of sweat and honey, something that almost stirred up the absentee beast inside me. Almost.

Megan swallowed once before answering, “No problem. Now let’s see about getting you bandaged up.”

I grunted my approval then followed as Megan led me back into the living room where she’d set up a makeshift guest bed for me on the couch. She motioned for me to take a seat on a nearby stool and I obliged as she retrieved a tray full of medical supplies.

“Wow,” Megan breathed when she finally returned and stood behind me. “These punctures don’t look anywhere near as bad as I thought they would. The bleeding has pretty much stopped too.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “Guess I got lucky.”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding skeptical. The woman was smart, not to mention a medical student. She had to know that something was out of the ordinary.

Still, she kept her opinions to herself as she started working on my back, cleaning each wound gingerly as she started applying a dressing to the worst of my cuts and scrapes. After several minutes of silence and work, she finally stood back and let out a deep sigh. “All done,” Megan said, arms crossed as if she was an artist inspecting her work.

“Kal,” I offered after a long, silence-filled moment.

“Excuse me?” Megan said, recovering from her thoughts.

“That’s my name. Kalvin Dare. But Kal works.”

“Wait,” Megan stammered, taking note of the name. She was obviously familiar with it.
“The
Kalvin Dare?”

I chuckled a bit. No matter how much money I made or how much of a reputation I’d developed, I would never get used to being referred to as the anything.

“The same,” I said finally.

“Holy shit!” Megan barked, backing away from me. “I thought you seemed familiar but holy damn! Do you know who you are? I mean, of course, you know who you are. But still!”

I turned toward Megan, doing my best to stifle the laughter that was threatening to bubble up. “Calm down, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“It is a big deal! You were almost dead. Why were you almost dead? Shouldn’t you have bodyguards?” She was spitting out words a mile a minute, her thoughts obviously racing and trying to connect dots she didn’t even know were there yet.

“Wait!” she stammered finally, dawning on the realization that I’d been waiting for. “You’re a
bear
.”

My shifter status was well known, having been outed by some tabloid photographer a couple years back. I’d managed to keep my bear’s appearances to a minimum, opting to only reveal that nature at night in the fight club, but it was still common knowledge.

“So that’s why you’re healing so fast!” Megan shouted.

“Basically,” I acknowledged, smiling at her.

Megan’s mouth formed into the shape of an “O”, speechless at my confirmation.

“Wow,” she managed finally. “Just wow. What happened to you, Mr. Dare?”

“Kal,” I reminded her. “And it’s kind of a long story. Or, more complicated than long, I guess.”

“Right,” she said flatly, coming across somewhat dejected. Somehow, I’d just hurt her feelings. And that made me a little sick to my stomach.

“Ever seen Fight Club?” I offered.

Megan nodded.

“Something like that, only with more shifters.”

“Whoa.”

“Whoa indeed.” I echoed. “And also ouch. I got taken to task by a kitty with a chip on his shoulder.”

“Wait,” Megan said, holding out a hand in my direction. “You, the big bad billionaire bear, got whooped up on by a
cat
?!”

“Well, you don’t have to make it sound ridiculous…” I shot back, feigning embarrassment. Or rather, not feigning it. The thought of losing back in that ring sent pangs of shame throughout my mind, threatening any lightheartedness I attempted to share with Megan. There was something so incredibly upbeat about her, and the last thing I wanted to do was take that away. Still, the more I thought about it, the more bitter and dejected I became.

I caught Megan staring at a clock over my shoulder and raised an eyebrow at her. “Got a hot date?”

She snorted - adorably - then shook her head. “As if. Exams in the morning. And it’s getting pretty late.”

I nodded, taking her meaning. “Understood. I really appreciate you taking care of me back there, but I should be fine to make it home.”

Megan crossed her arms defiantly at that. “As if. You’re my patient. And besides, I went through the trouble of making up a bed for you.” She gestured toward the couch. “You’re sleeping here tonight.”

I smiled at that, doing my best to overcome the darker emotions that were beginning to sink their claws into my psyche. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll throw your shorts in the wash. You get some sleep, Kal.”

“Thanks again,” I told her, then watched as she walked back down the hallway, her hips swaying from side to side in a way that had me drooling.

You’re in trouble, Kal.
I told myself.
Big trouble.

Megan

Kalvin was still snoring on the couch when I awoke the next morning. He lay there, curled up and naked beneath a pair of sheets and an old blanket, looking nothing like the billionaire bear shifter that I now knew he was. If anything, he seemed small and innocent, something that didn’t quite mesh well with the massive amount of space his body took up. Still, it was an adorable sight, and one that I didn’t want to disturb.

Rather than wake him, I started a pot of coffee, scribbled down a note that I had to leave to take my exam, and offered him leeway to whatever he wanted in the kitchen. Then I jotted down that his shorts were in the dryer, and stuck the note on the door so he’d see it.

With a sigh, I gathered my backpack and sneaked out of the apartment, doing my best to avoid waking him up. Even if he was a shifter, the man still needed rest. Injuries like the ones he had last night were still pretty serious, it didn’t matter what branch of humanity you came from.

I made my way to the bus stop, my brain still reeling from the realization of who he was. What were the odds that I’d find Kalvin Dare, ultra-rich entrepreneur extraordinaire, bleeding in an alleyway? Slim to none, I’d bet. If I were a betting girl, that is.

It wasn’t that I’d found him, though, that most surprised me. No, what most surprised me was how
human
he had seemed. In fact, he’d come across as incredibly pleasant. It was a far cry from how the tabloids and media portrayed him. To the world, Kalvin Dare was a closed-off and often cold tech mogul. He’d built a tech empire that had grown to rival the likes of Apple in virtually no time at all, and in doing so had created some pretty bitter enemies in the corporate world. Kalvin Dare, to the world, was a cold, calculating, and sometimes conniving businessman. Period.

Except, that wasn’t all he was. At least as far as I could tell, he was just like any other person. If you ignore the shifting into a bear and engaging in some kind of weird underground fight club thing, I mean.

More than that, I kept coming back to the fact that Kalvin seemed to, I dunno,
like
me.

The way he’d kept looking at me last night, with a softness and desire in his eyes, had taken me off guard. And there was no way that he could hide the massive erection under the towel I’d given him. The thought that
I’d
done that to him had left me more than flustered. It was all I could do to fall asleep without my hand drifting to my own wetness while my mind centered on what was under that towel. If I had even half the courage as my inner goddess seemed to think I had, I’d have either climbed onto the couch with Kalvin, or dragged him back to my bedroom.

Maybe if he’s still there tonight…

I stopped myself. I was his caretaker. For all intents and purposes, I was his doctor and he was my patient. Even if I wasn’t licensed to practice medicine yet, I could at least practice basic ethics. And besides, what are the chances that the erection was for me? The guy was a
bear
for crying out loud. And one who had just survived a near-death experience, no less. His bones were probably jumping at the thought of staying alive, much less getting to know the random curvy girl who’d happened upon him.

I did my best to shake off the thoughts as I continued toward the bus stop. When I finally reached the stop, I took a seat on the bench and waited, all the time trying to focus on
anything
but the naked man in my apartment.

Kalvin

My heart sank when I read Megan’s note. I knew that she would be leaving early in the morning, but that didn’t stop me from feeling dejected when I noticed that she was gone. It had been kind of her to start a pot of coffee and leave without waking me, but part of me wished she’d been a tad ruder. The rest of me wished that I wasn’t such a heavy sleeper. The thought of waking up and seeing her face first thing in the morning filled me with a warmth that I didn’t quite recognize, but the reality of waking up with her gone left me feeling lost and more than a little sad. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing her when I woke up.

Doing my best to get around the overbearing sense of dismay, I clambered around the apartment in search of the washing machine and dryer. I found them stacked in a tiny closet in the rear of the apartment, retrieved my shorts, and pulled them on. Still half-naked, I stumbled my way into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of the coffee Megan had brewed for me. Without adding any milk or sugar, I brought the cup to my lips and let the warm and bitter liquid sink into my belly.

My stomach let out a bear-sized growl and I doubled over from the sharpness of the hunger pangs. Being a bear meant having a huge appetite, and I hadn’t eaten in almost a full day. I scrounged around the kitchen, ultimately settling on an unopened bag of bagels, which I carried over to the couch with me and set on the coffee table alongside my drink.

Megan’s note had said to help myself to whatever I wanted and I was nothing if not a great listener. And besides, I’d be paying her back. Not only for the coffee and bagels, but for patching me up and offering me a place to stay. It was the least that I could do. Hell, if she gave me the chance, I’d pay off whatever loans and debts she needed handling. Even if my bear was still playing hooky, there was no doubt in my mind that Megan was my mate. She had to be.

I settled down on the couch, shoving a bagel into my mouth, and searched for the television remote. I found it on the coffee table and flipped on the TV, thumbing over to CNBC to check the latest stock prices. What I saw sent shivers down my spine and almost made me choke on my bagel.

Somehow, over night, my company’s stocks had plummeted.

It was the leading story on CNBC, and I flipped through to another 24 hour news channel to see if it had been picked up there as well. It had. In fact, it was on
all
of the news channels. My company was in free-fall and stockholders were pulling out at a breakneck pace.