Hard To Bear (9 page)

“
I’ll have to have a talk with her tomorrow,” Flint said, clearly annoyed.  “This is getting out of hand.”

“It’s not your fault,” Coral shrugged. “I feel kind of sorry for her. I’m sure it’s not pleasant being hung up on someone who doesn’t feel the same way.”

Flint called their waiter over and paid their bill, and they headed out.  Coral could feel Melinda’s glare boring into her back as they walked to Flint’s car.

A light rain was falling, and Coral begged off the boat ride that Flint had planned for them.  When he suggested they could do it the following evening, she politely demurred.

When he pulled up in front of her house, he insisted on walking her back to her front door.

Don’t try to kiss me, don’t try to kiss me, she thought.  Her resolve was
weak, and she didn’t want to give in to her cravings.

They reached
the front door, and she paused as an unfamiliar scent swirled in her nostrils.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She tipped her head back and scented the air.

“Pardon me,” she said, and partially shifted, her face lengthening into a snout, her ears turning hairy and pointy.  She sank down on her knees and sniffed at the door handle, then stood up, puzzled, and shifted back to human form, her fur sinking back beneath her skin and her snout retreating.

“What is it?”

“A human has been here today,” she said.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.  The mailbox is by the curb, so it wasn’t a mailman.  It’s not my landlord’s scent.” All the talk about mysterious disappearances was making her a little jumpy, she realized.

Flint reached out and tried the door handle. It was locked, just as it should be.

“Let me go in first,” he said. 

“
I should be fine.” She glanced at the house uneasily.

“No, I want to make sure.”

She unlocked the door for him, and he led the way into the apartment.  She partially shifted again, just her head,  to improve her sense of smell even more.   He checked the bedroom and the laundry room and bathroom, before they went back to the kitchen/dining-room, where she stopped at the small round wooden table by the bay window.

“What do you smell?”
he asked.

She picked up her reporter’s notebook
and sniffed at it, then shifted back to human form so she could talk. “Someone human has been in the apartment, and they handled my notebook.  It isn’t a scent that I recognize.”

“
You should call the sheriff’s office and report it.”

“And tell them what?  There’s no sign of a break
in. I know that someone was here, but I can’t prove it.”  The hair on her arms stood up. 

Apparently she’d stumbled on something with all of her questions, and somebody was very interested in
finding out what she’d learned. Unfortunately, so far, she hadn’t learned anything useful – but whoever broke in to her house didn’t know that.

He shook his head. “You can’t spend the night here by yourself. Come home with me.”

A night under the same roof with him? Forget it.  She was already struggling with her conflicted feelings and her desire to rip his clothes off.  She’d just about used up all of her self control for the evening.

“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’m a wolf.”

“And I’m a bear,” he said, exasperated. “Lots of shifters are bigger than wolves.  What if someone like me broke in?”

“I’d call the police. Then I’d
shift and run very fast.”

“I’m not leaving until you come with me.”

  She put her hands on her hips.  “I said no, and I meant it. Thank you for dinner and for checking my house for me, now go home.”

“Stubborn redhead,” he growled.

“Obnoxious bear.”

“I’m sitting outside and waiting for you until you come with me.”

“Go ahead then,” she shrugged.

He turned and huffed out of the house, and got in his car with a slam of the door.

She showered and changed into her pajamas, feeling badly that he was sitting out in his car, but there was no way she was inviting him in.  The living room couch was tiny, which meant the only place that he could sleep would be on the bed, and no way, jose.  And she’d told him to go home.  He could leave at any time.

She went to sleep, tossing and turning.  

Then, around midnight, it started to rain in earnest.

When t
hunder cracked through the air, Coral relented. She scrambled out of bed, raced to the front door, and flung it open.    Water poured from the sky as if angels had turned on a million spigots all at once.  Jagged lines of lightning slashed the night sky.   She hollered “Come in already, you big stubborn bear!”

He raced through the yard in the drenching rain
, but even in the short dash to her front door, he was soaked. 

“I thought you’d never ask,” he
smirked, as she slammed the door shut against the gusting downpour.

He stood in her entryway with water dripping in pools on the floor, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“What are you doing?” Coral squawked in alarm. Not naked. He couldn’t get naked in front of her! How much willpower was one woman supposed to have? Coral couldn’t walk past an innocent chocolate mousse torte without molesting it, and she was supposed to resist a naked Flint McCoy?

“I’m going to give you my clothes to dry,” he said,
eyes wide and innocent. “You wouldn’t want me to catch a cold, now, would you?”

“I…I don’t have anything for you to wear!” she protested.

He peeled the shirt off and handed it to her.   She tried hard not to look.  His body was so perfect, he looked like a super-sized version of a Greek statue.  His burly arms could have snapped a redwood like a twig.  Each square of the six pack on his abs stood out in perfect relief. He had a dusting of dark brown hair on his chest, and a treasure trail running from his navel down below his pants, which he was unbuttoning.

Coral looked away, holding the dripping wet shirt.

“What, you’ve never seen a naked man before?”

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said huffily.

She’d seen naked men before. Not one of them had made her feel the way she was feeling right that moment.  She felt as if liquid fire were pooled in her belly and running hot through her veins.  She could feel her sex pulsing with each heartbeat, yearning to be filled.

“I know you
city shifters don’t tend to get nekkid in front of each other,” he said cheerfully, stripping off his pants and boxers in one swift motion.  She could barely see out of the corner of her eye, but what she could see was magnificent. And erect.  Damn it. He certainly was proportional.  She wondered if he’d fit inside her, quite literally.  He might actually be too big. Not that she planned on finding out.

“No, we don’t tend to shift and go dashing through the streets of New York,” she said. “But New York only has like a ten percent population of shifters anyway.  We usually go up to places in Connecticut or upstate New York when we want to get our wolf on.  It’s kind of a weekend thing. And we have piles of clothing waiting for us in changing rooms when we return.”

“Too bad.  If you ever want to go for a run in the woods here, let me know,” he said, and then he looked serious for a moment. “These woods can be dangerous for people who don’t know their way around.  If you ran into a pack of wolves that weren’t shifters, they’d be liable to pounce on you.  Same thing with mountain lions. If you ever decide to go for a run around here, tell me and I’ll come with you.”

“I’ll do that,” she said to the wall, concentrating very hard on not staring at his nakedness. How odd, she thought, he really sounded concerned at the thought of her shifting and running alone.

He took his wallet and cell phone out of his pants pocket, and then handed the pants to her.

“I’ll be right back with a towel,” she said. “Then I’ll go in the kitchen and make you some hot chocolate.”

“Did you say hot chocolate? I’m in,” he said.

She took his clothing
to the laundry room and dumped them in the dryer.   Then she pulled the pants out and went through his pockets to make sure he hadn’t left anything in them. And, all right, because she was nosy.

Sue me
, she thought,
I’m a reporter. It comes with the territory.

Crumpled up in the pocket, wadded into a ball, was a receipt.  Shame on me
, she thought, un-crumpling it and reading it and not feeling the least bit ashamed.

It was a receipt for
nine millimeter bullets…silver coated.

Thanks to recent federal legislation, only police officers and  Enforcers were legally permitted to carry silver coated ammo, which was lethal to
not just humans, but other shifters.

Shock rippled through her, but it a
lso made sense.  He was a cop or an Enforcer. Or a criminal? No, then he wouldn’t have a receipt for the bullets, he’d have bought them on the black market.

He hadn’t just come back to town to restart his family’s business. He’d come for some other reason.  Could it be connected with the disappearances?

And what should she do with this information?

There wasn’t much point in confronting him with it, she decided, as she dumped detergent into the washing machine and turned the dial.  If he hadn’t told her the truth yet, he certainly wasn’t going to spi
ll any details just because she’d found that receipt.

What did this mean for her and the bear?

Nothing, she thought firmly. It was even more reason to avoid him.

She grabbed a towel, and found that Flint was already in the kitchen, making two cups of hot chocolate for them. He’d gotten the whip cream out of the refrigerator and sprayed it on top. 
He was as naked as the day he was born, completely comfortable with his nudity.   His rock hard erection pointed straight at the ceiling, thick and proud.

“Thank you. And I appreciate you staying here,” she said
, looking only at his face and trying not to blush again.  He made her blush a lot. “I do feel safer.”

She held out the towel, and he wrapp
ed it around his waist, and they stood by the counter sipping the sweet, hot liquid.  She shivered in the cooling air; the rainstorms always brought the temperature down.

He set his hot chocolate down on the counter and reached out to rub her arms, and when his firm, strong hands gripped her, she felt a tidal wave of liq
uid lust washing over her.

“Don’t,” she gasped, bu
t she made no move to pull away from him.  Her knees turned to jello, and she leaned against the bank of kitchen cabinets so she wouldn’t sway where she stood.

“Why not?”

“Because…because I’m not interested.” Her breath was coming out in pants, and she felt the juices of her arousal oozing between her legs.

“Liar.” His voice was husky. How had he gotten so close to her?

“Am not.”

“Kiss me, and if you aren’t interested aft
er that, I’ll sleep in your armchair without a word of protest.”

“Okay,” she murmured. In her lust-dazed state of mind, that seemed to make perfect sense.

The huge bear shifter cupped her face in his hand and tipped it up, and then he bent down, and his luscious lips melted onto hers.  Her lips parted, and she was lost.  She felt his towel dropping to the ground and let his free arm circle her waist and pull her up against his massive, hard body without protest, and she let out a helpless whimper of pleasure as his tongue thrust into her mouth and firmly swirled around hers.

“
Mmmm.” She moaned into his mouth as he probed the caverns of her mouth with his tongue, leading her tongue in a slow, intimate dance.  She drank in his sweetness and the wet heat of his plundering tongue, and felt her knees go liquid.  She started to sag in his arms, and his arms tightened and held her, crushing her closer against him.

His rock hard erection
pressed into the soft flesh of her stomach.  He was so tall he had to bend down to kiss her, and she stood on her tiptoes to receive his devouring kiss.

“Bed,” she moaned.  They needed to be in a bed.

With his shifter strength, he scooped her up in his arms as if she were light as a feather pillow, and carried her down the hallway to her bedroom.  She nuzzled and kissed his neck as he carried her, breathing in his earthy, masculine scent.

When they got to the bedroom, it was a race to see who could rip off h
er clothes faster.  He undid her pajama top so fast that buttons went flying, but she didn’t care.  She shimmied out of her pajama pants, and he pushed her back on to the bed, falling on top of her and covering her with the giant wall of muscle that was his body.

“Not interested, huh?” he growled, pinning her hands above her head.  He moved his body so he could kiss her neck, nipping at her soft flesh and then running his tongue over the area he’d just bitten.