Return To The Bear (11 page)

She placed her palms on his shoulders and beamed down at him. His eyes glowed eerily in the light of the half moon. “Brody Bannister, I want to kiss you on every square inch of this land.”

“Hmm,” he rumbled deep in his throat. Lowering her slowly, he asked, “Where?”

Looking around, she pointed to a tree on the edge of the field. “There.”

The grass bent under their careless footfall as they bounded toward the tree. He kissed her and ran his fingertips up the side of her leg.

“And there,” she said, pointing to a wooden sign with hand painted words reading
old barn
. And after he’d kissed her until she felt drunk with his touch, she pointed to a lover’s bench someone had placed along the trail.

It took a long time to get back home but she wasn’t in a hurry. The pull of tiredness hadn’t found her yet and she wanted to spend every moment she could in Brody’s arms. With his house in sight, she turned and pressed her hands against his taut chest.

“Change with me,” she whispered.

“Will my bear scare you?”

Tugging her shirt over her head and wadding it into a ball, she lobbed her garments one by one onto the small porch. “Nothing about you scares me.”

He looked troubled as he watched her
, the only sound the rustling of the breeze against the leaves above. “It should.”

Frowning
at such an unexpected response, she changed and waited as he undressed. When he stood shoulder to shoulder with her, the warmth of his large, furred body seeping into her, they lumbered past the pond, through the corn fields alight with fire flies and around the cabins on the edge of Bear Valley. Late into the night, he showed her places she could tell were important to him, and she rubbed her face against the short fur of his muzzle in silent thanks. In the early hours before dawn, Brody led her home, and in human skin once again, he laid her on their bed and made love to her, his gaze never leaving hers.

She was his, body and soul, and there was no turning back from the bond they’d forged today.

She drifted in and out of sleep in the safety of his embrace, but over and over he woke her with questions, as if he were stalling to make the day last longer. And when at last he fell asleep and his body went rigid beside her, she realized it wasn’t to extend the perfect day.

It was to avoid the demons that visited his dreams.

Joanna awoke to a tickling sensation at the base of her neck. Rain pattered against the roof and trickled in through the screen on the open window, splashing against her skin. Groaning, she stretched and reached her toes for Brody’s side of the bed. It was empty. She frowned in the dark and sat up. “Brody?”

“I’m here.”
His voice sounded raw, like he’d been screaming. He sat on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands. His shoulders were so hunched, she could make out each vertebrae of his spine through the smooth skin of his back.

“You smell like bear. What’s happened?”

When he didn’t answer, she slid over to him and put her arms around his neck, pressing her bare breasts against his back. “Another dream?”

He grunted.

“You know, if you tell me about them, maybe they’ll stop.”

His
shoulders heaved with an explosive sigh. “I don’t think so.”

It had been a week of nightmares. In fact, he hadn’t gone a single day without one since she’d come to Bear Valley. She didn’t have to see his face in the dark to know he was shutt
ing down on her, just like he always did when he woke up like this.

“At least tell me how long this has been going on.”

“Jo—”

“No, Brody.” She slipped of
f the bed and straddled his lap. Placing her palms on either side of his face, she rested her forehead against his. “I care about you.” No, it was so much more than that—he had to know it. She loved him so deeply it scared her how much she wanted to make him happy. “I’m here every night, and every night is the same. If you don’t want to talk about the dreams, you at least have to give me something. Please.”

He wouldn’t look at her and his withdrawal stung like the lash of a whip. She was out there, all in for him and he seemed to feel the same during the da
y. But in the morning he woke angry from whatever was happening to him in his sleep, and she had to work her way back into his heart. She couldn’t just go on forever like this. He was hurting and she had no idea how to help him.

“Since I was a kid. I was
fourteen when…fourteen years. Half my fuckin’ lifetime.” He jerked his face away from her hands and she could smell the bitter rage that washed through him.

Fourteen years of this? How could he even want to sleep? How could he lay in bed every nig
ht and willingly let his body go unconscious, knowing whatever was in his dreams was coming for him?

Her whisper was battered and
scared, even to her own ears, because she knew in her heart how wrong this was. “I don’t know what to do.”

His eyes blazed an inhuman color when his dragged his gaze back to her. His erection hardened between her legs and he nodded his chin. “Yes you do.”

“That’s the solution for this? Fuck and forget about it until we do it all over again tomorrow morning and the next?”

He leaned back on locked elbows and offered her an empty smile.

Furious, she stood, but he caught her wrist and pulled her back against him, his lips colliding with hers. He always won because she couldn’t help her need to be close to him. This wasn’t a solution but she couldn’t deny her attraction to him anymore than she could deny her heart its beating rhythm. His tongue plunged into her mouth at the same time as one of his fingers penetrated her.

Biting her lip, he ground against her, pressing her back
ward until the cold wall brushed her shoulders. She shouldn’t like this, she shouldn’t, but when he was so desperate for her touch to heal him, her body burned for him.

“Please,” she b
egged as he pulled his finger from her opening. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him closer until her heartbeat thrummed against his torso.

His chuckle was deep and triumphant, like he’d won something from her, and he bit her neck as he thrust into her. Powerful
strokes never slowed and he didn’t look at her. He closed his eyes to the world, and though she felt a hollowness at his distance, she was desperate for the madness he was driving her to. She yelled as her body spilled over the edge of hard and fast pleasure, and his hips tensed and bucked as he filled her with his own release. He kissed her hard and pulled away before her aftershocks had even finished. She stood panting against the wall, his wet warmth trickling down her thighs as he headed for the bathroom.

“Brody.”

He stopped but didn’t turn.

Her th
roat felt so tight she couldn’t breathe, but she pushed the words out anyway. “I love you.”

“You shouldn’t.”
His voice sounded gravelly and inhuman.

She followed him into the bathroom
, and he stepped into the shower before he even let the water warm up.

“That’s all you have to say after what I just told you?”

Through the glass, he locked his arms against the wall and let the water rush over the back of his head.

“Answer me!”

Turning away from her, his chest heaved with a miserable sounding sigh.

A sob escaped her lips and she nodded her head slowly. “I guess that’s what I get. You were upfront with me. You told me you couldn’t care about me and I didn’t believe you. I thought if I cared enough, you would feel the same
eventually. If I gave you everything, anything you wanted, then you would repay me in kind. You were right though, weren’t you? You can’t care about anyone.”

She cleaned up and dressed as quickly as possible, then fled the house before he was out of the bathroom.
He was impossible to understand. She’d been patient with his morning distance the first several days, but the more she pushed, the more frustrated she became. Her deepest wish was that he would just let down his walls and allow her in.

It was early but
fight training would’ve already begun. Riker and Chase ran a session every morning before council meetings. Brody usually ran the afternoon classes with Juan after he got out of his meetings for the day.

Chase stood with his back turned, leaned up aga
inst the fence of the arena, scanning a clipboard of notes. He turned his head at her approach and his ruddy eyebrows shot up. “You’re here early.” He frowned and dropped the clipboard onto a table someone had dragged out to the yard. “What’s wrong?”

“I want a fight.”

“I can see that, but the only opponent we have right now at your weight is Stanton and he’s already paired up with Brad. Sorry, kid. You’ll have to wait a few.”

She hopped the fence and peeled her shirt off. “I’ll take them both.”

“Sounds hot…but no.”

She threw him a slit eyed glare to let him know she wasn’t amused with his sarcasm. Two brown bears circled each other on the other side of the arena and she peeled her jeans off.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, going into a fight pissed or upset or whatever you are,” Chase warned.

“Joanna, what are you doing?” Riker asked f
rom the other side of the yard.

He was jogging toward her so if she was going to do this, it was going to have to be now. She sprinted for the two bears and let her animal rip through her. Dropping to all fours, she shook her head as the last tingle
s of the change washed over her, and charged the escalating fight.

So Brody’s way of deali
ng with whatever was hurting him was to lose himself mindlessly inside of her? She was helpless to save him from the fall he was taking and didn’t understand anything. If Brody could use coping mechanisms to avoid a real conversation, well, she could cope with his indifference too.

She’d thrown herself into training
over the past week. Why? Because someday Nathan would come to hurt the people she loved, and when that day came, she would cut him down to nothing. He wouldn’t come to Bear Valley and find some sniveling almost-mate. He’d find a warrior bent on his destruction.

Brody coped with sex.

She coped with training.

Stanton bawled an angry invitation as she ran
, and Brad stood on his hind legs to make himself look bigger. A raging, snarling fight ensued and just as she’d bested Brad, Stanton tackled her so hard, she lost her wind. Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her out from under him and power crackled through the air as Riker said, “Let her be.”

Chase looked pissed.
Even through his beard, she could make out the grim set to his mouth. Red crept into his cheeks and his eyes blazed a strange color. “Change back. Now!”

Huffing
, she pushed her bear back down until she looked human once again. The rain pattered against her skin and chilled her to the bone, and Chase yanked her up faster than should’ve been possible. “What in the actual fuck are you doing, Jo? You trying to get yourself killed? Or are you trying to kill? You don’t go into a fight during training ramped up like that.”

He spun and stomped away, his boots making slick sounds against the mud puddles. Riker stood with his arms crossed against the fence and she felt utterly defeated. She’d gone in there half
-cocked and fully aggressive and she shouldn’t have.

“I’m sorry,” she said, running to catch up. The rain was so cold against her bare skin.

He reached the fence and tossed her pile of soaking clothes at her. “Why, Jo? What happened?”

Her clothes stuck as she tried to pull the wet garments on. At least the rain camouflaged her streaming tears. “Do you ever get bad dreams?”

“About what?”

“Battle
s or I don’t know…anything?”

Chase shot Riker a significant look.

The alpha stood straighter. “Jo, who’s having bad dreams?”

It felt like betraying Brody to out him
like this, so she shook her head and swallowed another sob. “Forget it.”

Chase stepped closer and squeezed her
uninjured shoulder gently with his giant hand. “Is Brody having the dreams?”

Nodding miserably, she clenched her hands against her thighs to steady her trembling.

“Shit,” Riker whispered as he turned away.

Chase, for as big and scary and utterly dominant as he seemed to be, was also apparently a giant teddy bear around sobbing women, because he pulled her in close and held her tight until her hiccupping and sniffling had ceased.

“Better?”

Not really. She was still in a fight with Brody, which seemed like it would be like this every morning for the rest of their lives
, and there was a giant bear charging the clearing. She squinted through the sheets of rain. Yep, still there. There was definitely still a giant bear charging the clearing. And as he drew closer, not even his rain matted fur could hide the scars that she’d memorized. “Chase?”

“Yeah?”

He must’ve seen what she did, because he pushed her back so hard her back hit the fence and an enormous red grizzly tore out of him. Brody came straight through the wooden barrier like a derailed train, and Riker pulled his shirt over his head as the two bears collided with a crash of raw power echoing against the mountains.

“Jo, get Daria,” Riker ordered, rushing after the violent flurry. “Go!”

Panicked, Joanna yanked her gaze away from the savagery of the giant predators crashing through the fence on the other side of the arena, latched onto each other with the vow of death in their eyes.

Slipping on the mud and landing on her hands and feet, she shot upward and ran through the
slick trails as fast as she could. She knew where Daria lived because she’d been to her house so the healer could check her wounds a few days ago, but in her panic she had to slow down and remember exactly which path to take.

Please let Riker be able to stop them
. As long as she lived, she’d never forget the savage focus in Brody’s eyes as he watched Chase hold her. It didn’t matter that his embrace meant nothing. Nor did it matter that Brody probably wasn’t thinking straight because of whatever the dreams were doing to him.

They were going to kill each other.