Chapter Two
Jay
It said something about the world I lived in these days that a knock at the door could make me nervous.
Who knew what lay on the other side of the door? If I was lucky, it would be Jehovah’s witness. That was a testament to how bad things had gotten, that religious zealotry was the best I could hope for. Something was definitely rotten in the state of Tennessee.
I risked a glance out of the peephole and my front step empty. Weird. Was this a prank? Would I find a bag of flaming dog crap on my front step, or was this something more insidious? What if it was a ploy to lure me out?
This town, and all the little towns that dotted the countryside, were tiny. It was part of why I’d chosen this place. It was all but isolated, a far cry from the apartment in Queen’s that I’d shared with Valerie. I’d grown up in the sweltering heat of Arizona, and I liked the solitude. I wasn’t sure if it was the bear that had been born a part of me, or if I was naturally an introvert. I doubted I’d ever know for certain. After years, I’d traded the bustling streets for back country roads and the concrete jungle for thick copses of trees. None of it mattered. I was something approaching peaceful here.
Not happy. Never happy. I hadn’t felt like that since Valerie had died. I twisted the ring apprehensively on my finger. Life wasn’t the same after she’d passed on. My bear was long absent, leaving me all alone with my grief. The core of who I was had been scooped out and buried six feet under, just like Valerie.
The protesters who gathered around my garage were usually pretty harmless. They scattered if I looked at them wrong. But would it really matter if someone was here to kill me? Would it really be so bad? A moment of pain and-
No. I’d made a promise. I’d keep living. I had to. She’d wrung it out of me, and now that she was gone, there was no way in hell I’d bite it without putting up a fight.
So, I reached over to my work bench and picked up the pistol I kept there. Mostly it was for show. It would take more than a .22 to take down a shifter if one decided to track me down and start a territorial dispute. Humans, however, would back off if they were staring down the barrel of a gun.
I tucked the pistol carefully into the waistband of my jeans and approached the door. After a moment’s consideration I also grabbed the cotton-blend shirt that Val’s mom had sent me for Christmas. It had been a rough holiday, and I didn’t have the heart to stain the gift with engine oil.
I turned the knob after another round of insistent knocking. Who wanted in this badly at nearly a quarter to ten? I kept one hand behind my back, ready to draw the second I saw trouble. I swung the door open.
I blinked in surprise when I finally caught sight of her. My first bewildered thought was that she was a girl scout. Her thick mane of curls made up several inches of her height, which wasn’t considerable. She wore a pair of khakis and a green shirt. But as I looked more closely, I could see that her proportions were all wrong to be a child’s. Though she wasn’t especially curvy, she was a woman, no doubt about it.
She was tiny, though. Not that all humans were small. The fact was most shifters, bears in particular, had the genetic advantage when it came to height. Even by human standards, she must have been short. I doubted she was even five feet tall. But all these observations were shoved to the back of my mind as my searching gaze found her face.
Her eyes were Caribbean blue and as deep as the ocean they resembled. Her pert little nose was wrinkled in distaste, as if she smelled something unpleasant. I really hoped it wasn’t me. Our eyes locked, and for the second time in my life, the entire world shifted.
No! The rational part of my brain shouted in protest. No, this could not be! I’d found a mate once, and there was only one mate in the world for any one bear. Valerie was gone. Dead. The end, finito. There was no happily ever after for me. This wasn’t possible.
Yet there she was, on the doorstep staring up at me with wary interest. Her nose had un-scrunched and the overall effect on her face was mesmerizing. She was a vision.
She was also pissed. Maybe it was because I’d experienced the sensation before, but I was able to push the euphoric haze away with relative ease and perceive things the way they were, not the way my mind wanted them to be. I didn’t need to be entertaining thoughts of a life and a future with this woman, whoever she was. She wasn’t my mate.
It had to be a fluke. Maybe I’d finally snapped, driven crazy by the loneliness and the tedium of living a hum-drum little life in the boonies. But why wouldn’t I hallucinate Valerie, if that were the case?
“Hey,” the girl said and held a metal tray up to the light so I could see the contents. My stomach grumbled audibly as it was confronted by food. I must have skipped lunch or dinner, or maybe both. I tended to do that when I was preoccupied. And I always kept myself busy these days. If I was exhausted, it was less likely I’d lay awake, my mind spinning in circles trying to figure out how my life had gone so wrong.
“Want some brownies?” she asked, when I said nothing. Her voice was bright and bubbly, and it was completely at odds with the anger I scented on her skin.
“I haven’t had dinner yet.” I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly.
She blinked up at me, confusion flitting across her face. I wasn’t sure what she’d expected me to say, but apparently it wasn’t that.
“Oh.” She seemed to think about it for a moment before the smile returned. “All right then. Let me in and I’ll make you grilled cheese.”
I’d stepped aside and let her pass before I really had time to think about it. She couldn’t be my mate. She just couldn’t. If she was my mate, my bear should have responded to her. It should have at the very least put in an appearance. It was eerily silent, as usual.
She set the brownies aside and glanced around the garage. Most women, even dear Val, looked at the garage in either bemusement or disgust, depending on how dirty the place had gotten. This new girl, I refused to think of her as my mate, was looking around like she was trying to decide what sort of wallpaper to put up.
“Is that a Pontiac GTO Judge?” she asked in the reverent tones of a true car enthusiast. Well, damn. First the brownies, and now the car knowledge. I still wasn’t sure what she was doing here, but I was beginning to like her.
“Yeah, it is.”
“One of yours,” she said. It wasn’t a question. And yeah, it was probably a fair guess. Most of the local cars that came through the garage were junkers, worth more as scrap than driving. The sole exception I’d seen was a Mercedes Benz that had belonged to a flashy blonde. She’d come on strong, and even if I weren’t mourning Val, she wouldn’t have been my type.
I opened a side door and stepped into the hall that led to my very humble abode. She followed reluctantly, still admiring the car. I cleared my throat. It was hard to talk about her even now.
“Yes. It was a gift from my late wife.”
Her face fell.
“I should go,” she muttered, mostly to herself.
“No.”
My arm shot out and blocked her path to the door before I’d had much time to think about it. I couldn’t let her go, not until I got to the bottom of…whatever this was, between us.
It took me a minute to realize why she’d frozen to the spot as removed from people as I’d been of late. I nearly groaned. Of course, she was nervous. I was at least one, if not close to two feet taller than she was, and there wasn’t anything scrawny about me. I must look intimidating as hell in the cramped confines of the hallway.
I gave her a lopsided half-smile, hoping to set her at ease. “I’d really appreciate that sandwich, if you don’t mind.”
Her full, pouty lips thinned into a line and I had to resist the urge to swoop in for a taste. Damn it, no. I wasn’t jumping into bed with a woman just because my hormones had suddenly decided to go on the fritz.
With palpable reluctance she followed me down the hall to the kitchen. It wasn’t much, but it was at least clean. She crossed over to my fridge and rummaged in the drawers until she produced cheese and butter. She pulled the bread from the top of the fridge and deftly undid the tie in one swift move.
She caught my incredulous look and raised an exasperated brow at me. “What?”
“Butter?”
“What, you don’t make your grilled cheese with butter?”
“Well, I haven’t had it since I lived with my parents. Mom was a vegetarian and a health nut. So it was non-stick pans and spray all the way.”
“This is the south, buster. If you can’t feel your arteries clogging after every meal, you’re living with a terrible cook.”
I laughed. When had that started to feel strange? When did all my actions start feeling alien to me? It was sad to realize that I hadn’t had any meaningful connections outside of my family. She set the pan on the stove top with a loud clank and shook me from the reverie. Only then did I realize she’d continued to speak, apparently continuing along the same line of thought while my mind had been elsewhere.
“Weird. I thought you guys were rustic types. Isn’t your mom like you?”
My smile turned brittle as a few puzzle pieces snapped into place. That must be it. “Yes, she’s a bear. We’re not ravening carnivores, you know.”
She flushed an attractive shade of pink. “I know that.”
“Do you? Because most of your ilk seem to think that I enjoy eating babies for breakfast. Bears are omnivores, just like humans.”
“My ilk?” she echoed. She paused, knife and a liberal amount of butter halfway to the first slice of bread.
“Zoophobes. That’s why you’re here, right? To spy?”
“I’m not a zoophobe!” she protested, the angry flush spreading down her neck. She slathered the other slice with butter and hastily constructed the sandwich, slapping it almost violently into the pan. Sizzling filled the angry silence.
“Then why are you here, Miss…?”
“Millie Allbarn,” she snapped. “And if you’d stop making unfounded assumptions, I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
She slapped the piping hot sandwich onto a plate and slid it across the table toward me.
“Now, shut up and listen.”
I glanced doubtfully at the sandwich before doing as I was told. The first bite nearly scalded my tongue and I swallowed hastily. I was more cautious with the next bite and what I could taste was actually pretty good. It was a minor miracle that all the food in my fridge was still edible, considering how little I got out these days.
“I’m not here because you’re a were-bear,” she said, leaning against the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m here because you keep slashing your prices and its killing my business.”
I must have been more tired than I thought, because nothing in that sentence had been comprehensible. “Pardon?”
“Your shop,” she said with exaggerated patience. “You’re practically giving your services away for free and I can’t compete. You have to be losing money. How are you still in business?”
The metaphorical lightbulb flashed on and everything finally made sense. I was torn between laughter and irritation. “You mean you went through all of this just to give me a lecture about my business practices?”
She scowled ferociously at me. Well, I’m sure she thought it looked ferocious. It was actually kinda cute. I liked it when her little nose scrunched up like that.
“Well, I’d kindly tell you to fuck off and find another town to service, but I get the feeling that you’re not going anywhere. So I need you to at least run a stable business model. Can we at least agree to that?”
“You’re right, I’m not going anywhere.”
Though that would be the smart thing to do. I’d drive myself nuts staying in this one-horse town. If I were being reasonable, I’d run all the way back to New York and settle in with Val’s parents until I found something stable. I could move on with my life and leave my not-mate here to do as she damned well pleased. It would be the sane thing to do.
But it had become abundantly clear to me in the last year that I was losing the battle for sanity, anyway.
She blew out a sigh. “I didn’t think so. Will you at least agree to jack up your prices?”
“Why?” I leaned forward, pushing away the half-eaten sandwich. “What gives you the right to march into my place of business and dictate how I should run it?”
Maybe the discovery of the mate bond had affected me more than I’d thought. If she’d been a man I might have hit her. But she was a girl. A small, attractive and distractingly feminine girl.
She pushed away from the counter and made for the hallway. I stood, my chair squealing on the tile floor as I did. I was in front of her in less time than it took her to take a step forward. She ran headlong into my chest and practically bounced off of me.
“Get out of my way,” she demanded, trying to go around me.
I shot out an arm and hauled her back into my body, caging her with my arms.
“What are you doing?” I didn’t miss the distinctive quiver in her voice. “I need to go.”
She tried to reverse course and her breath hitched when her back hit the counter.
“Not yet,” I breathed. “There’s something that I want to try.”
I bent toward her slowly, giving her time to protest or scream, or tell me to back off. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and her pupils dilated. She was at least subconsciously interested, but that wasn’t enough.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.
“I shouldn’t.”
“But do you?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
With a sound that bordered on a growl, I claimed her mouth. Without conscious permission it seemed, her body melted into mine, her limbs supple and pliant. I lifted her off her feet and set her none-too-gently on the counter. Her arms wound around my neck, pulling me closer and her legs formed and inescapable cage around my waist.
Her lips moved ardently against mine. Desire shot straight to my groin, making even the baggy jeans I wore distinctly uncomfortable. I ground up into her, seeking the delicious friction which would bring me that much closer to relief.
She broke free of the kiss with a gasp. I expected her to shout at me. Sure, I’d asked her first, but we’d just met. She’d been incredibly pissed at me not five minutes ago, and she clearly didn’t like me. And it might seem to her that I’d kissed her to shut her up.
Her pupils were huge, and her lips were swollen from the heated kiss. She reached between us and undid my belt buckle, quickly pulling my belt through the loops.
“Get those off now,” she ordered.
I hesitated. I’d completed my expirement and found exactly what I’d expected. She wasn’t my mate. The semi-violent claim I’d laid to her mouth should have awakened my more primal instincts and stirred my bear to life if that were the case. There was nothing, no reaction to her at all.
Okay, so that was a lie. There was definitely a reaction, just not the sort I’d been hoping for. The hunger that consumed me was all human, the drive to claim a willing woman.
“We can’t,” I protested. It was wrong, for so many reasons.
I wasn’t a Christian, by any means. I didn’t believe that some higher power was going to smite me for having some good old-fashioned premarital fun. In fact, the sex act was an act of worship to Freya, or would have been, if she hadn’t been killed by the Aesir over a year previously.
Freya had been Val’s patron goddess. It was the reason I’d signed up to fight for the Vanir in what capacity I could here. I was a glorified pit stop for Vanir soldiers heading east, but I was at least doing something. Having sex with this woman here and now felt like the worst kind of sacrilege.
“Please.” She clung even more tightly to me and even without my heightened senses I could feel her need.
My cock, stubborn thing it was, urged me to part her legs, tear through her flimsy clothing and lay into her. It was a simple creature that didn’t care much about emotion, right and wrong, or how much damage a simple fuck could do. And that was all it would be, if I gave in now. A fuck. I didn’t know Millie well, but I knew she deserved more than that.
Maybe if the circumstances were different, I’d try to date her. It would be a pale shadow of the love I’d had before, but no one could begrudge me a shred of happiness after what I’d lost. But things weren’t different. We were in the middle of a war, and now was not the time to try to pick up the pieces.
I tried to disentangle myself from her, peeling her off of me. The smell of arousal was heady, and it made it hard to think clearly. She was putting out the fuck me pheromones like crazy. I’d need to drive her home so she didn’t attract unwelcome male attention. They were strong enough it might even attract human males, and I hadn’t liked the cross-section of unmarried males I’d seen in Fairchild.
“Don’t,” she groaned, as I set her gently on her feet. She pressed her modestly sized chest into mine, rubbing in a rather suggestive manner. Her hips moved restlessly, trying to ease the ache of unmet desire.
I winced. I knew what it was like to be so aroused that it was painful. Maybe if I took the edge off it would solve both problems. So I lifted her off her feet once more and lay her across the table in the middle of my kitchen.
“Lie back,” I ordered. She complied almost at once, letting out a relieved sigh.
Slowly, leisurely, I trailed my fingers down her body. She was thin, almost dangerously so. I’d have to make sure she put some weight on. Then I nearly slapped myself for having the thought.
No, no. This was a one-time occurrence. I had a duty, and she would be nothing but a distraction. I popped the first button on her jeans. She squirmed, and her eyes found mine.
“Please,” she whispered again. I unzipped her fly as well, and then stripped the khakis off of her in one fluid movement. My cock hardened still further. I was going to have serious blue balls when all was said and done.
I let out a low sound of appreciation when I saw the lacy black thong she wore. I rubbed her clit through the fabric, watching her face intently. First shock and then pleasure played across her face. Her mouth popped open in a silent ‘O’ and her back bowed.
It was getting harder and harder to convince myself to just get her off and be done with it. Millie was beautiful, and despite the lack of my bear, there was still something compelling about her that went past her physical appearance.
“Spread your legs,” I said, voice more of a rasp than anything else. I hooked a finger in the waistband of the thong and pulled them down her slender legs.
I dropped to my knees and drew her to the edge of the table. I nipped a trail up her leg, starting at her instep. She let out a soft cry when I reached her knee, and then began to tremble as I kissed her thighs. I finally reached my goal and placed soft kisses on her, relishing the tremor that ran through her body. Seemingly without thought, she arched up again, an offering to me.
I licked her in one broad stroke, and it was my turn to shiver. God, she tasted good. She tasted like youth, like homemade ice cream and strawberry shortcake. That didn’t encapsulate it fully, but it was the best comparison I could draw from my memory. It was hard to define beyond the fact that she was deliciously sweet. If it was pure sugar and addictive as hell, that’s what she tasted like. One taste wasn’t enough. I pushed my tongue further into her warm, wet core, needing to taste more. I wanted everything.
Whimpers and pleas for more fell from her lips. Unnecessary, really. I didn’t feel like moving any time soon. She wound her fingers into my curls and yanked almost to the point of pain. Her legs trembled around me and her thighs clenched. I laughed. Did she think she was done? That that was it?
I slid a hand beneath her ass and lifted her, getting a better angle. With the other, I slid two fingers inside of her and began to pump them gently in and out. It was more difficult than I’d expected, at first. She was so damned tight.
“Oh, my God,” she choked out. “More. Please I need…”
I smirked a little despite myself. Maybe, if the war ever ended and she was still around, I’d come calling and remind her of the time she’d begged for my cock. She came a second time, and I rode it out, not drawing away until she’d sagged limp and boneless on my table.
Twelve tires changed, a Vanir liaison scheduled, and one very sated woman leaving my garage. One of my better days, if I did say so myself. I retrieved her pants and underwear from the floor and offered them to her. My hand fell limp to my side when I saw something very odd playing out on the table.
At first, I thought she’d had yet another orgasm and was riding out the aftershocks. Her hair crackled with static electricity, as though she’d rubbed it against a balloon, and her skin was giving off a faint golden glow. She turned her head to look at me, though I didn’t think she was actually seeing me. Her pupils were huge, larger even than they’d been when she’d been aroused, eclipsing her irises almost entirely. A voice that sounded eerily detached and not at all like Millie issued forth from her mouth.
“They’re coming,” she intoned. “Be ready.”
And then the garage and everything in it exploded, sending shrapnel flying straight toward us.