Jack woke up the following morning about fifteen degrees hotter than anyone in their right mind would care to be. But he didn’t find that he minded all that much, considering the reason was that Thea was completely laid out over him, her breath hot on his neck and her palm over his heart.

He was surprised. They’d been sleeping in the same bed, sure, and had often woken up touching. But she mostly kept to her side. This morning, though, she was plastered to him, head to toe. He hated to do it, but had to get up for the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth out, lingering in the doorway to watch her for a moment on his way back.

“What’re you looking at, you old perv?” she grumbled from her cave underneath the covers. One eye and a river of dark hair poked out.

“Tell me about this homestead,” he said, thoughtfully running a finger over his bottom lip as he watched her.

He could have sworn the temperature in the room changed.

“What do you want to know about it?”

She guarded her privacy and her lifestyle like a pitbull. It didn’t surprise him that she wasn’t exactly forthcoming with details. Especially not at 6 a.m. Pre-coffee. “Tell me about it. What’s it look like? What’re your days like?”

“It’s forty acres. My neighbor mostly manages the fields of soy and wheat that we grow and process together. I care for the animals. It’s completely paid off. I live simple.”

It was like she was reading the words off a cue card. He might have thought that she didn’t have passion for the lifestyle. But he knew her well enough to know that her flat voice was really a way of hiding from him. From his questions. She didn’t understand why he was asking them. But she would. Soon enough.

“You live alone?”
She nodded.

“Got family?”

She nodded again.

“Jesus, this is like pulling teeth.”

She chinned down the blankets and let her eyes travel over him for a second. He was naked as a jay bird, and though her appraisal of him was mostly clinical, he felt himself stiffen and grow under her eyes.

“I’ve got three brothers. Had a grandfather. He passed away. Left me the map.”

Ah. Must have been the ‘Chet’ he’d heard her mumbling about all those days ago. Some things fell into place. He could tell, without having to ask, how much she must have loved this grandfather of hers. Only a true devotion of the heart would have a practical woman like Thea Redgrave on such a wild goose chase. “How long ago did he pass away?”

“About a year.” She cleared her throat. “He raised us. My parents weren’t around.”

“Your brothers don’t run the homestead with you?”

“Nah. One’s a lawyer in New York. One’s a teacher about sixty miles down the road and the other’s in L.A. trying to hack it as a musician. The land didn’t call to any of them the way it called to me. Besides, after Chet died, we scaled back the operation so the work that has to be done isn’t much more than one person can handle.”

She sat up and the covers pooled around her waist. She searched the blankets for her hair tie, found it and slapped her hair up into a messy bun. Thea lifted her hands high in the air and stretched. When she opened her eyes again, Jack was next to her, leaning across the mattress and taking one of her nipples into his mouth. She couldn’t fight back the moan. She’d tried wrestling this great, rising wave of feeling last night and that hadn’t worked for shit. She figured the only thing left to really do was ride the wave and try to swim back to shore when it was time to leave.

But he didn’t sweep her away. He pulled his mouth off her breast with a wet pop and looked up at her. Green eyes, she reminded herself. They sometimes looked brown from a distance, but those babies were green alright. “It sounds lonely. Life at the homestead.”

“I don’t really get lonely,” she answered honestly. “I’m not built that way.”

“Huh.”

“Are you? Built that way, I mean?” He sensed that her question was completely genuine.

He considered his answer for a moment, nibbling his way to her other breast and sucking the tip into his mouth. “Now that you mention it, not really. I prefer being on my own. And never have trouble finding company when I want it.”

She raised an eyebrow at him and they both laughed.

“Didn’t mean that kind of company,” he said, just the lightest shade of pink on his cheeks.

“Yeah, but you didn’t not mean that kind of company either.”

He couldn’t think of a reply. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time someone had him so firmly pegged. She understood him, that was for sure.

“It’s okay, Jack. I wasn’t under the impression that you were a blushing virgin last night. I’ve been with other people, too.”

“I’m glad I didn’t seem like a blushing virgin,” he said, kissing his way up her neck, neither of them caring that he may or may not have been leaving marks as he went. “Cuz I kind of felt like one.”

“What?” she pulled back and looked him close in the eye. “What do you mean?”

He leaned his back against the headboard and pulled her into his lap, all the better to play with her. They were both completely naked and her wetness trailed across the base of his cock and made both of them gasp. Thea reached for a condom.

“I guess I mean that that was uncharted waters for me. Parts of it felt brand new. I’m not an expert, by any means, but I usually know where the ship is headed. Last night—ah, damn—” he hissed when she rolled the condom onto his length. “Last night was… different.”

She climbed tighter onto his lap and let herself slip across him. They both gasped. “Why?”

“Well,” he tried to talk through the spots clouding his vision. She took his hands and traced them up the sides of her body, gave him a handful of breast and ass before she sucked on his earlobe. “I never tried to make somebody’s whole body come before.”

She tilted her hips back and caught him inside just an inch. “Is that what you were doing to me?” she asked, and then pushed her hips down and took him to the hilt.

Jack knocked his head back onto the headboard and just breathed for a minute. A man had to have enough oxygen to live. And enough blood in his heart. He thought he might be running dangerously low on both. “I wasn’t trying, I was just doing.” He experimentally thrusted his hips up, even though he was seated all the way inside her. It made her breasts bounce and his heart trip over itself. “I couldn’t stop touching all of you, with all of me. I wanted to thrust,” he bounced his hips again. “But I couldn’t bring myself to pull out of you. Even an inch.”

It was true, Thea remembered, clenching down on him as she remembered the way he’d ridden her last night. Deep then deeper. All that slide and rub. She bore down on him from the inside and a harsh breath ripped out of Jack. His hands tightened, almost painfully, over her breasts. “I never wanted to pull out. I would have slept inside you.” His hips were pressing up slowly. He was planting his feet and lifting them both up off the bed, impaling her on his cock. She’d never been filled like that. So completely, so patiently. There was no juvenile pound-pound-pound. No, this was a man giving her everything he had, because he knew she could take it.

He dropped his hips and took her with him, and she fell forward onto his shoulder. Jack threaded his fingers through her pulled-back hair and brought her face to his. “I wanted to fuck you bare,” he told her. “I hated that fucking condom.”

She clenched down on him, even tighter than before. “I hate it, too,” she said, leaning forward and sharply nipping his mouth.

They’d been all hot, sliding kisses up to now, but they were fused in the most carnal way a man and a woman could be and there was only so much soft they could take. First her teeth tugged at his lips and then his tugged at hers. There was nothing soft in this kiss as they pressed against one another, pulling and grinding, neither one thrusting. He was right. Pulling out, away from each other, even if only to slam back down, was torture. She couldn’t bring herself to lift off him. They just ground against each other, swiveling hips and sweating and moaning. Thea gripped the headboard and it knocked hard against the wall. She didn’t care. Jack dropped that biting mouth from her lips and to her breasts. He ravaged one nipple and then the other. Took it raw, raked it with his teeth and then his stubble and then smashed her sensitive chest against his chest hair as he banded his arms around her.

She did the same to him. They were hugging one another so tight there was barely room to breathe. They were gasping and swiveling and grinding. Thea’s head fell back and his teeth scraped across her throat. She tried to lift her head but his fingers twisted through her hair and held her bared open to him.

“Jack,” she gasped, barely recognizing the raspy wail of her own voice. She was gripping him, her legs and arms around him, her nails digging in, her clit jamming and tensing and dragging across his pelvic bone. She could feel him so deep inside her that he was pressing hard against her cervix. It was a jolt of aching pain that set her on fire. If he’d been hard-fucking her this deep, he might have really hurt her. But that grinding, pulsing shove that he was doing inside her just stoked her, pulled her muscles and her nerve endings tight. Her orgasm started there, from the core of her, the center of her body. The head of his cock nudged it right out of her. Jack let her hair free and she slammed her face into his neck, shaking and begging and screaming.

She felt a flood release inside her and all over him. She was coming deep inside and then it radiated out, to her clit. She came sharply, hard, a stab of pleasure as bright as a hard suck on a lemon, but then it echoed back, into the cave of her, where it tightened down like a fist and held, held, held. Thea trembled on the echoes of it, and smashed her closed eyes into his skin. He was wet there, whether from her tears or spit or sweat, she’d never know.

He was breathing hard, like he might not make it back from wherever she’d just taken him. And he hadn’t come yet. She thanked God that her orgasm hadn’t made her blind to his. She raised her head up and stared him in the eye. He saw nothing through blind eyes, she could tell that. He was lost in it, grinding against her and lifting her up off the bed with his hips. He was thrusting up, but pulling her down with him too, so that he never really pulled out of her. He was questing, searching, needing.

She knew what he needed and pushed back from him. She leaned back on her planted palms, giving him an unimpeded view of her body. His eyes focused in on her breasts, shaking from the movements of his hips. Her fire partially quelled, she pulled herself slightly off of him and pushed back down. He grunted. She did it again, both of their eyes planted on the slow reveal of his cock as she slid back. But his hands landed on her hips and he pulled her down, hard, grinding her onto him. He looked wild, lost, out of his body and his time. He needed, needed, needed. Thea sat up abruptly, sinking him even deeper into her, grabbed him by the back of his head and planted him on her breast. His mouth clamped down, hard and unrelenting. He gave an impossibly strong suck on her nipple that had her toes curling and her breath stuttering. His body went tight as he sucked again, bucking his hips upward, taking both of them off the bed. He sucked hard and came hard. It was almost as if they were one organism, and by suckling at her breast, he was summoning his orgasm from the depths of himself. He sucked harder and came harder, a never-ending pull that emptied him out so hard they collapsed to the side as he finished.

They both shivered and jerked, their bodies almost too sensitive to be touching, even though he was still lodged deep inside her. His breath stuttered and shook, his eyes still blind. Thea had come a little bit back to herself. She was just now registering how wet they were, chilling quickly in the cool morning air. She needed coffee. And a gallon of water. And bacon. And a shower.

“Ow,” she said, with a certain tone of fascination as she landed a palm over the nipple he’d just attempted to suck her life-force out of.

“Shit,” he murmured, coming back into himself just a little bit, his eyes focusing on her face and then her palm. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. Not in a real way. It felt so good. And now it kinda aches.”

“Let me see.”

She dropped her hand and her normally soft, mauve-colored nipple was dark and purple, standing up tall as if it had been molded like clay. “Whoa. Ho-ly God, woman. You’re gonna kill me.” In fact, she felt his cock jerk inside her as he looked at her fully-worked breast. “That’s gotta be the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ve always had good tits,” she said, holding the base of the condom and sliding up off him. They both winced at the loss of the other.

“I’ll say. I’ve always been more of an ass-man, myself, but damn. I’m happy to convert.”

“You’re not a fan of my ass?” she asked him, shaking it a little as she stood up off the bed.

He crawled forward toward her, like he was on a leash. “No. I didn’t say that. I am. Hold still and I’ll show you.” He swung an arm out to catch her, but she was forward like a shot.

“Shower,” she told him, zero nonsense in her tone.

She didn’t have to tell him twice.

***

 

They didn’t move back downstairs from that queen-sized room. No one complained. There were plenty of bedrooms and nobody minded not having to hear Thea and Jack bang away at each other, one day at a time.

Both of them felt as if they were walking a very skinny path, icebergs on one side and boiling water on the other. Neither of them were people who got particularly mixed up in relationship talk. Where things were going or where they weren’t going. But they were both painfully aware of the coming of the new moon.

In a way, Jack was dreading the new moon more because it marked Thea’s departure date than he did because it marked the date of his first shift.

They spent most of their time together, something that neither of them had ever really done with another person. Usually, they prized their privacy to the maximum. But Thea found herself tagging along with him when it was his turn to pick up groceries. He found himself starting to head out for a walk alone and tugging her with him. They weren’t snugglers, but whenever the group sat down together in the evening, they were always leaned in close to one another, all eyes and slow hands.

The group was pretty grateful that they were together. It made the days a bit more interesting to watch the new couple flirt and navigate one another. There wasn’t a ton else to watch. The rest of the group simply waited. Jean Luc ducked phone calls from his agent at least three times a day. Celia ducked phone calls from her family. Tre lamented the deathly slow internet. Caroline had taught herself to knit and was working away at some lumpy, fuzzy thing that everyone secretly worried was going to be for them. No one knew exactly what Martine was up to.

The days passed strangely, they all felt that way. Ice water fast and syrupy slow all at the same time. Everyone wanted the days to pass both slower than they were and faster than they were. Each night they watched the moon grow smaller and smaller.

It would be a new moon soon. And then the transformation would be complete.

The three men, both separately and together, couldn’t quell their nauseating curiosity and concern over what it might feel like to shift. Martine showed them over and over her own shift. She talked them through the intricacies of how to do it and what it felt like. But it was unimaginable, really.

The day before the new moon, Tre stood at the shore of the black lake in the backyard and peered across at the distant buildings on the far shore. He turned and looked at Celia’s family’s house, and then turned back to the shore.

He did it twice more before Caroline simply gave up her attempt at giving him privacy and jumped down from the back porch.

“Whatcha doin’?” she called.

Tre stiffened, recognizing her voice immediately. She was the one member of the group who Tre was the least comfortable with. Not just because she was so clearly born rich and kept rich, though that was a factor. And not just because her round, friendly face and long, brown hair was just so dang pretty, though that also was a factor. No. It was mostly because Tre was almost certain that she was keeping some sort of secret from the group.

He’d been tempted to look into her. He had his computer after all. It wouldn’t take much more than a connection to WiFi for a hacker as skilled as Tre to know everything there was to know about Caroline Clifton. From her bank accounts to her Facebook to her Google searches. He could sniff out every single digital trace of her in less than half an hour, he was certain. More than certain. But something held him back.

Sure, Jack, Jean Luc and he had been the ones who’d surged forward, and by result, been hit with Arturo’s curse. The three of them were the ones who were set to endure this transformation, whatever it was going to end up being. They’d made one choice and now they were stuck together. But the ladies? They were staying for other reasons, maybe more honorable reasons. Caroline and Celia and Thea and Martine weren’t bound by the same magic that the men were. Or at least not quite as strong. They could at least attempt to up and leave at any time. But they stayed. They chatted and whiled away the time and checked up on him. Babied him even, at times. They were staying out of the goodness of their hearts. And that meant something to Tre.

Did he love that he was almost certain that this Caroline Clifton wasn’t who she said she was? No. Of course not. It kept him watching her, paying attention, waiting for slip-ups that he knew were inevitable. But her loyalty to the group, and by default, to him, kept him from snooping.

He supposed that the existence of a secret wasn’t reason enough to have that secret exposed.

So he simply turned to her, watched her walk across the dark green lawn barefoot. She wore little blue shorts that he thought of as sailor shorts, though he had no idea why. There was a red one-piece on under them and a towel around her neck. She liked to swim the lake, he’d noticed.

“Nothing, really,” he said to her as she came to stand at his side. “I just realized something, though. That’s a summer camp across the way.”             

“Oh yeah?” she asked in excitement, squinting and leaning forward, trying to make it out. She didn’t have very good eyesight, but didn’t wear glasses or contacts. Something else he’d noticed about her. “How can you tell?”

“I’ve been there before.”

She turned to him now. “Really?”

“Yeah. A couple of summers when I was kid. Camp Mapleleaf.” He paused. “I knew that we were somewhere in the same vicinity as Mapleleaf because I knew that the star on the map wasn’t very far from it. But when I went to camp, we always called the lake Maple Lake. Not Curtain Lake, the way Celia calls it. I didn’t realize we were on the same lake.”

“Huh,” Caroline said, genuine wonder in her eyes. “That’s crazy.”

“I know. And what’s even crazier,” Tre continued, straightening his glasses and attempting to ignore the way the sun caught on her chestnut hair and turned it just a touch gold, “is that we used to talk about this house.” He nodded back toward Celia’s family’s house.

“Really?” Caroline’s mouth fell flat open and she showed him all those neat, white teeth.

“Yup. It’s so big that you can see it really well from across the lake. We used to make up stories about it. Kind of a haunted house kind of thing. I never imagined that I’d be staying here as an adult.”

“While you completed your transformation into a bear shifter,” Caroline completed, looking so solemn and believing, that Tre couldn’t help but cock his head to the side, study her a little harder.

“What does your husband think of all this, Caroline?”

She snapped out of her dreamy, beguiling expression so fast that Tre wished he’d kept his trap closed. It was like he’d slapped her.

“Oh.” She kicked a foot through the dirt at their feet, her eyes on the ground and then on the sky and then on the summer camp across the lake, even though he was positive that she couldn’t really make it out. “He’s as amazed as I am, of course. It sure is a crazy thing to have happen.”

“You told him the whole story and he believed you? Wished you luck when you decided to stay here?”

“Oh.”

He wondered if she knew that she said a sweet little ‘oh’ right before she scrambled to think of a lie.

“Um, I’m not sure what Peter really believes in.”

He wanted to press her further. What exactly had she really told him? But then, quickly scanning back through his thoughts, he couldn’t remember her ever stepping out to make a phone call. And their bedrooms were right next door to one another. If she was talking on the phone at night, he would have heard her. He supposed that they could be texting or messaging, but service was shit out here, and the WiFi was dinosaur-slow. He also didn’t think a married couple would be completely satisfied just texting for two weeks. Wouldn’t they have phone sex?

His eyes involuntarily skated down Caroline’s body. Her trim little legs and small breasts in that modest suit. In fact, the only thing on Caroline that wasn’t modest was that ass. Yeah. Caroline had quite the back seat. Round and high and completely disproportionate to the rest of her body. She wasn’t quite an hourglass figure, because her top was so small. Tre was sure there was a much more delicate way of saying it, but the woman just had a big, juicy ass. And that was that.

Yeah, if he were Caroline’s husband, which he wasn’t, he would definitely want to be having phone sex with her if she went away for two weeks.

In his imagination, her voice floated to him over the crackling connection of a phone line going in and out, which somehow only made it hotter. She was breathless, begging for something—

He twisted that thought off at the root. Yikes. Wowza. No, no, no, no, NO. Bad road to head down. Time to veer back. He pumped the brakes and tried not to let his hard breath crash between them.

He cleared his throat. “You’ll head home after the new moon?” he asked her.

He swore that she visibly winced on the word ‘home’.

“Oh, I suppose so.” She shrugged and gave him a smile that was way too bright to be believable. Even for Caroline’s sunny disposition. “Where else would I go?”

She decided to take her swim then and he headed back into the house. He cast a grumpy look at the piece of shit WiFi router that was barely fast enough to load a Facebook page. A thought drifted down to him.

He wasn’t comfortable tracing Caroline through the internet. Something told him that that would be crossing a major line, flaunting a thin line of trust in this group of people who were only recently starting to feel less like strangers. But…

He played with an idea, testing its natural bounds of morality. Was that his conscience piping up in the background? Why no, no it certainly wasn’t.

He wasn’t going to cyber stalk Caroline. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t cyberstalk her husband.

Tre grabbed his backpack from his room and called to Jean Luc, reading in the living room, to let him know he was going to head into town for a little while.

He wasn’t more than one foot out the door before he felt Jack enter the room behind him, eyes on his back. He turned and there was that smug, smiling bastard, looking so well satisfied, the way he always was these days. “Headed out?” Jack called.

“Town and back. Need anything?” It would have bothered him in any other context to have someone check up on his comings and goings the way Jack and Jean Luc did. But Tre understood. The bonds that connected them were deep and unusual and couldn’t be ignored. Tre could feel, in his bones, the second that Jean Luc decided to go for a run around the lake. And he wasn’t comfortable until the big man was back and in the house. He could tell the minute Jack started thinking about getting Thea naked. Though Tre tried his valiant best to stifle those thoughts as best as he possibly could. They were connected and there wasn’t anything any of them could do about it.

Jack cocked his head at Tre, his eyes falling to Tre’s backpack, and for a minute, both men wondered if Jack was going to ask about the strange, sort of sneaky energy emanating from Tre. He didn’t. “Nope. See you when you get back.”

Tre disappeared out the front and into Celia’s car that she let anyone borrow at any time. He’d used it on countless occasions. Tre couldn’t help but speed down the country roads toward town. There was an internet cafe there that had passable WiFi as long as no one else was there. But, he’d discovered, the dentist’s office actually had lightning-fast DSL and he’d hacked into it to get their passcode, no problem. All he had to do was go to the corner of the public library that was closest to the dentist’s office and he was made in the shade.

It was there that Tre first viewed Peter Clifton’s Facebook page. And then any Boston area news alerts about him. He was a rich man from a rich family. He’d met Caroline eight years ago and married her six years ago. Tre thumbed through an album of their wedding photos before a nauseated feeling overcame him and he clicked out of it. She’d looked thrilled. Impossibly young, but wildly happy and hold-your-breath beautiful. He viewed Peter Clifton’s life first as an outsider. His shitty food-porn Instagram page and his quasi-liberal Twitter account. It was then that Tre got impatient and he put his real skills to work.

He started by accessing his general email account. There were mostly work work work emails there. Apparently he was in some kind of lawyerly position at some financial firm that Tre forgot the name of as soon as he read it. He scrolled through those emails. Tre had hacked enough financial companies to know that if he looked hard enough, he’d be able to find something that would make Peter Clifton blush, or even make his knees knock. He’d even probably find something that could send him to jail. But he kept going, because who cared about this douche and that most likely wasn’t the secret Caroline Clifton was keeping anyways.

He hovered over some personal emails from Caroline, but couldn’t bring himself to snoop into them. The email browser showed the first line of every email and they were enough to make him feel like a royal asshole for doing this in the first place.

Hi, honey! I was wondering about having the McCall family over on…

Hi, sweetie! Do you know what time you’re coming home tonight…

Sweetie, I miss you! How’s Tokyo? Were your meetings what you hoped…

Tre felt sick just reading them. She was a sweet, kind woman and he was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. But then something caught his eye as he did a few quick keyword searches that he’d learned to do throughout his years of professional hacking and snooping.

Dude had a Tinder account apparently.

Tre wasted zero time tracking it down and hacking into it. Actually, he barely even had to hack it, seeing as he had all of Peter Clifton’s login info at his fingertips. What he saw turned his stomach immediately.

There were dozens of message strands with dozens of different women.

The tone of Caroline’s emails echoed in Tre’s head.

Hi, honey!

Hi, sweetie!

It was all horribly juxtaposed against these sleazy messages to random women.              

Hey, girl.

What are you up to tonight, sexy?

Tre swallowed down his disgust and exited Peter Clifton’s hook-up app. It hit him all at once what he was doing. He was messing around in someone’s marriage. Caroline Clifton’s life.

And he had no idea what was what. Maybe they had an open marriage. Or maybe Peter Clifton’s kink was to message random women and then head home and screw the heck out of his wife, no harm, no foul.

Tre closed his computer.

He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that was it.

Part of what made him a gifted hacker was not just his prodigious skill. It was his intuition. People didn’t leave neat little trails here and there. They left a hundred different threads to follow and somehow Tre always knew which one to pull.

He took a long, slow breath. He knew, deep down, that Caroline’s husband was cheating on her. And that it wasn’t something she would just magically be okay with.

He shoved his computer into his bag, feeling like a complete jerk for snooping on her life. So he’d sensed she wasn’t telling everyone everything. Who cared? That wasn’t his business. And now he’d gone and opened a can of worms that couldn’t be closed.

Would he tell her? He had no idea. He barely knew her. But even so, he knew, in his heart, that that perfect, happy, sweet woman didn’t deserve to be tricked or lied to.

Tre groaned.

God. He wished he could just turn off his annoying-ass conscience. Everything would be so much easier if he could.

His whole life would be different if he could.

 

***

 

Thea watched the men as the new moon got closer and closer. She was amazed that they weren’t losing their minds.

Jack said that beyond the bond between him and the boys, there weren’t really any noticeable differences. The pain that Arturo had inflicted on them that first night had taken a few days to heal, but then it was gone and they were all fairly comfortable after that.

They’d had to get used to their minor telepathic connections to one another, but beyond that, Jack insisted that he felt completely normal. Thea could only assume that the other men were in the same boat, though she didn’t know them nearly well enough to really ask.

She felt strangely on the outside of the group, except with Jack. She was the only one who’d left. Though no one seemed to hold that particular grudge, she was still sensitive about it. She was the only one who’d stood up from that kitchen table and walked out. Gotten halfway to the airport. She’d had a good reason to do it, and it was one she still stood by. This, here, in Northern Michigan, surrounded by burgeoning bear shifters, was not her real life. She had a real life back home. A good life. And none of these people were going to go back to it with her, so why bother getting close to them? Sticking her neck out for them?

Why bother? Well, the fact of the matter was that she was bothering and she couldn’t exactly explain why. She was sticking around until the new moon. And she would be there when they shifted for the first time.

But that still didn’t make her one of them. She had strange friction with Martine which Thea chalked up to them both having alpha personalities. And no small assortment of skills.

Thea knew she wasn’t the most sympathetic presence either. Martine had answers if the boys had questions. Caroline was funny and sweet and like a burst of sunshine when she came in the room. Celia was calm and rational. Thea, in contrast, clearly barely believed in any of this and was pretty much waiting for the new moon so that she could split and head back to her regularly scheduled programming.

She had it figured in her head that whatever mystical pull had roped her back in when she’d first tried to leave would dissolve at the new moon. Why? Well, Martine had told her so. Besides, she figured that Jack was still transforming. And that while that was true he was more vulnerable. But after he was able to do this bear shifter thing, whatever it was, he wasn’t going to need her anymore.

He’d have Jean Luc and Tre, but even Martine had admitted that once they’d fully transformed they’d be free to separate from one another. They’d always have a bond but they wouldn’t be quite so connected.

Thea thought that whatever her connection was, that was likely to similarly dry up at the new moon. And then she’d be on the first plane back to Montana. This place would be in her proverbial rearview mirror.

The thought of that filled her up with both relief and an unexpected melancholy.

Melancholy was a new feeling for Thea. And in fact, she’d had to ask Celia about it to even be able to properly identify it.

“What’s wrong?” Celia had asked, watching Thea pace around the room, her hands in the front pockets of her jeans.

“What? Oh. Nothing,” Thea had replied. “I think I’m just bored. At home I’m used to always having a million things on my to-do list. It’s strange to just have a whole lot of nothing to do.”

“Well, except for Jack, that is.”

Thea turned at the dry tone in Celia’s voice that she’d come to expect. Celia dropped her Kindle from in front of her face and revealed a little quirked smile.

“Sorry,” Celia had apologized. “Low-hanging fruit.”
Thea shrugged. She didn’t care that everyone knew that she and Jack were hooking up. It wasn’t like they were hiding it. They were banging like bunnies every chance they got and sleeping in the same room. They were all adults here, no one was scandalized at the idea that they’d found company in one another.

She started pacing again. She was glad, actually, that everyone knew about her and Jack. Because Thea wasn’t sure if all of them were planning on staying together after the new moon. She hadn’t asked either way if the boys were going to stay on with each other while they figured out the shift, and if the other girls would stay, too. But if they were staying together, and Jack was maybe… disappointed… that Thea had left to go back home, then the others would understand his predicament and offer some comfort to him. Comfort that she herself wouldn’t be able to offer, seeing as she planned to be halfway across the country in a few days’ time.             

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Celia started slowly, “you don’t seem bored.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you actually seem really bummed. And kind of anxious.”

Bummed and anxious? Those were two words that Thea had rarely, if ever, heard applied to herself. She opened her mouth to deny it immediately, but caught Celia’s sharp eye. She sighed. What was the use in lying?

“I definitely feel weird. I don’t like all this waiting.”             

“I hear that,” Celia agreed. “I feel like there’s gonna be some sort of big show on the new moon and none of us have known what the hell to do to prepare for it. Not that I haven’t tried my hand at a little research.”

“Research? On demons and bear shifters?”

Celia shrugged. “It’s not an altogether uncommon myth. There’s plenty of background reading to do. Legends, conspiracy theories. Hell, there’s a shit-ton of fan-fic.”

“Fan-fic? Do I even want to know what that is?”

“Motherfudger, Thea, is the entire state of Montana under a rock? How do you miss this stuff? You’re a millennial, for God’s sake!”

Thea leaned her back against the cool panes of the window and faced Celia. “Better things to do, I suppose.”

Celia leaned back too, her eyes bright and sharp on Thea’s face. She spoke slowly, and when she did, Thea had the distinct impression that she wasn’t really asking a question. No, more like she was conducting an experiment.

“Thea… Caroline mentioned the other day that she wanted to see your homestead. She’s never been to Montana. She wanted to visit.”

This was news to Thea. And pretty surprising. It wasn’t like her neck of the woods was exactly a tourist hot spot. Thea shrugged. “It’s beautiful there. And it would definitely be a change of pace from Boston, if she came.”

Celia’s eyes narrowed. “What if both of us came? Caroline and I. To visit you and see your home.”

Thea’s eyes traced back and forth between Celia’s. She wasn’t confused by the question, but she was definitely confused by the layers of subtext it rode in on. “What are you really asking me, Celia?” Well, she was nothing if not blunt.

Celia set her book aside. Thea had noticed that Celia had a rather straight-to-the-point way about her, as long as there were no men in the room. If there were men, well, she kind of retreated into her silver-haired, tattooed turtle shell. “Would we be invited?”

“Sure,” Thea shrugged. “Not much to see there, but sure. If you wanted to come, there’s room at the homestead.” Thea cocked her head. “Again, I gotta ask. Celia, what the hell are you really asking me?”

Thea threw her hands up in exasperation, but there was nothing hostile in the action. It was a motion that Thea herself made with her brothers all the time. “I’m trying to ask you if when you leave in a few days, if you’re really leaving us! Has any of this meant anything to you? Can I expect a Christmas card? Do you text?” She laughed at the affronted expression on Thea’s face.

“Of course I text, I’m not a caveperson.”

“Well, that may be, but you’re hard to read, Thea. None of us know if you even care about any of this. For some of us, this has been kind of an experience of a lifetime. And you act like it’s merely a pitstop between being here and getting back home.”

“None of you?” Thea asked. She wondered, for a moment, what Jack thought of it all.

Celia shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”

It surprised Thea that Celia had hit the nail on the head so firmly, but also, it didn’t surprise her at all. The woman was an observer.

“I’m starting to think,” Celia had said, “that you don’t understand it either, this constant insistence that you’re leaving. Because here you are, melancholy as hell, moping around and dreading the day you have to leave.”

Thea had sat up straight at that. But when she turned, Celia was holding her Kindle up again, scrolling through the pages of some book.

The word had taken up shop, so to speak.

Melancholy.

So she was sad that she had to leave. She was human after all.

Now, a day after that conversation and one day from the new moon, Thea found herself searching Jack out on the property. She found him in the woods. On the direct spot where he’d been lured by Arturo. Where she’d saved him.

He turned when he heard her coming through the woods. It didn’t surprise him that she’d found him. She seemed to have some sort of radar on his whereabouts.

“Why do you think he came for me?” Jack asked, his hands in his pockets and deep, balmy shadows over his face. “That night. He sent the light for me, lured me from the room, tried to take my soul. Why me? Why not one of the other two he’d transformed?”

Thea shrugged and stepped forward, light and shadow alternatingly dappling her face. “I don’t know.” But then, like a bucket of ice water over her head, she knew. She knew the answer. She knew exactly why Arturo had chosen Jack that night. And not one of the others. And why, after she’d returned, Arturo hadn’t tried again. He’d left them alone.

She felt as if a bomb had gone off inside her. She was hot and carved out, there were simply rocks sliding down the cliff face of her heart and there was no way of stopping it. She hated this feeling. This downward, sliding momentum. She was a solid person, for God’s sake! But with Jack, she was always holding on for dear life while that magnet he called a heart was just summoning her off the edge of some waterfall or another. Ever since she’d met him, she’d been knocked off her footing, sliding toward some inevitable outcome and she was sick of it. She was over it. There was only one person in control of her life and it was her. She pushed down the discovery inside of her, told herself it wasn’t true, brutally ignored it.

If Jack sensed the civil war happening inside of his girl, he didn’t outwardly show it. Maybe he’d missed it, as his eyes had been trained on the spot where that blue ball of soul-stealing light had glowed. When he turned back to Thea, she had a strangely blank look on her face, as if all of this sort of bored her. That benign, nothing look wasn’t a slap, but it was definitely a stiff flick to the forehead. It annoyed him, and hurt a little bit, that she wasn’t allowing herself to be swept away in all this. In the mystery of it, the unknown, and—yes, goddammit!—the fear of it.

She’d come back, he reminded himself. She’d come back that night and ended up saving his life. That was what had mattered in the end. Yeah, but she’s leaving again as soon as she can. And that mattered, too. When it was just the two of them, alone in their room, Jack felt a stronger connection to her than he did to anyone else in the history of his life. It was like she wasn’t even really a separate person. She was a part of him, walking around with those long legs and perfect face and all those freckles. Meeting her had been like meeting himself. And that was just the best he could explain it.

But standing in that forest, he realized, it wasn’t just the two of them. It was the two of them plus this mystery that they were all desperately trying to understand. Except for Thea. All six of them were trying to figure out what the hell to do next, now that he and Jean Luc and Tre were supposedly turning into bear shifters tomorrow. Except for Thea who didn’t chime in on the conversations, who didn’t speculate or offer theories. Who did nothing but warm his bed at night and count the days until she could blow dodge.

Silence stretched out between them as they looked at one another and so did the tension. Perhaps only thirty seconds passed before he rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Packed up yet?”

“Sorry?”

“For your trip back to Montana, have you packed yet?”

She eyed him. She was a smart woman, she could see the silver glint of the trap he’d just laid. “No. I haven’t.”

“Well, I thought you’d want to get on that, considering how close to the new moon we are. That’s your plan, isn’t it? To leave after the shift is complete?”

“Martine said that she thought all of our bonds to the group would lessen at that point and we could go our separate ways.” She responded carefully and calmly. So calmly that it pissed the hell out of both of them.

“Not sure anyone else is thinking of leaving.”

She knew when she wasn’t having the argument she thought she was having. To her thinking, might as well throw the sheets off the matter, give it a little daylight. “Jack,” she asked carefully, cocking her head to one side, “what exactly do you think we’ve been doing here? You and me?”

There were those words again. Me and you. You and me. Something he’d loved so much during their sex suddenly seemed to mock him, here in the woods with Thea. In the place she’d come back for him. “You’re acting like I set this whole thing up to trap you, Thea. If you want me to apologize for getting myself turned into a bear shifter and somehow binding you to the group, I’m not going to do it.”

Thea’s eyes narrowed. “If you wanna fight, Jack, we can fight. But that’s not what I asked you. I asked you what you think is going on between us.”

He’d been on earth long enough to know that not answering wasn’t an option. And he’d been himself long enough to know that lying wasn’t an option. He was mad at her, pissed as hell, actually, but he wasn’t about to let anger spoil the gorgeous thing they’d built up between them over the last few weeks. He stepped forward, letting his anger show on his face. “I don’t know what it is, Thea. Because frankly I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

He watched as her shoulders lowered like their marionette strings had been cut. “I don’t know what it is either, Jack.” She stepped forward and put her arms around his waist, hard. She obliterated the space between them by smashing their fronts together. Up on her tippy toes, she kissed him hard on the mouth. “I’m not leaving yet.”

He didn’t know what that meant. But just then, kissing her in the warm afternoon, the forest dewy around them, he didn’t think he had it in him to ask.

 

***

 

Arturo watched from behind a sort of dimensional curtain. He could have reached out and touched the woman’s hair and she wouldn’t have even known. Instead, he stood against a tree, unknown to either Jack or Thea. He watched them have their embarrassingly mortal argument.

He almost sighed. How boring. These mortals with their ridiculous misunderstandings. Just tell each other how you feel! He wanted to yell it at them. But, of course, he didn’t. Because if they were to really saw through their feelings to see what lay inside, well, then he wouldn’t get what he wanted.

Which was Jack Warren’s bear shifter soul on a silver platter.

Arturo wanted it so bad that his fingers twitched at his side as he watched them argue. But he knew better than to take now. He knew that Jack had regained strength, would likely be able to resist. And with the woman at his side, he would almost definitely be able to resist.

It was tempting to attempt to take the man’s soul right here in broad daylight and just put an end to all of this. Finally.

No, no, it was best to stick to the original plan. The men would have their first shift tomorrow night. And they would be incredibly vulnerable. Disoriented. He wouldn’t even have to fight them to take one of their souls. He could simply lure them. Tomorrow night.

After centuries of waiting, tomorrow night, he would finally find his relief.

 

***

 

All three men woke the morning of the new moon feeling like they’d already downed too much caffeine. All the women in the house still slept as the men found one another in the kitchen, blinking against the sunrise and shoving their shaking hands in their pockets.

“Hell of a punch, this bear shifter thing, huh?” Tre asked, slugging back some orange juice in lieu of anything that might make him even more jittery.

“Hasn’t really been anything to write home about up till now,” Jean Luc said, dunking his head into the sink and drinking from the tap. “Honestly, if it weren’t for the connection to you two, I would have questioned this entire thing. Whether or not it was really real.”

“Thea doesn’t believe in it,” Jack said, leaning against the fridge and looking dully out toward the lake.

Jean Luc and Tre exchanged eye contact. Jack didn’t quite have his usual sparkle today. Something was off. He seemed dull. Like fingerprints over bronze.

“She told you?”

“Nawl. She didn’t say as much. But I can feel it. She thinks something happened, sure. I mean, she got called back here because of whatever bond we all forged in that clearing. But I think, somewhere deep inside her, she’s not expecting us to turn into bears tonight.”

“Well,” Tre shrugged, “why would she? Frankly, I’m shocked that the others believed it so easily.”

“Martine didn’t take any convincing and Celia and Caroline are lonely,” Jack said, bluntly but not unkindly. “Neither of them particularly strike me as women who are dying to get back to their regular lives.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s easier to believe if you want to believe.”

“Jack, are you alright?” Jean Luc stepped forward. He wanted to clap a hand on Jack’s shoulder, the way Jack often did to him. But he stopped at the last second, pulled up short.

“It won’t hurt, you know,” Martine said from the entry into the kitchen. “I know we’ve been over what to expect from the shift, and I can’t imagine how strange you all must feel, knowing it’s about to happen to you. But I just want to remind you, it’s not going to hurt.”

“We’re not afraid of it hurting,” Jean Luc said, subconsciously speaking for all three of them. Because why not? He could practically feel their thoughts pulsing in his heart anyways. “We’re afraid of it changing everything.”

Martine nodded. “Everything has already been changed. The second the three of you stepped in front of the women and took Arturo’s hit, your lives were forever changed. It’s up to you whether or not you regret it.”

 

***

 

When Jack returned to his bedroom, their bedroom, in the late morning, he froze in the doorway. Was she—? Yeah. Great. He was pretty sure he’d just caught Thea packing her things. Instead of packing the shirt in her hands, though, she pulled it over her head and turned to him.

“You’re all wet,” she said, those clear blue eyes trained on him.

“Went for a swim.” Actually, he’d damn near swam around the entire lake.

“Very bear-like of you,” she said sagely.

His lips twitched. “Yeah. Then I ate some salmon. And for dessert I polished off an entire jar of honey.”

She laughed and moved to the bed to start making it. He followed her there, even though he was dripping wet still. He took one end of the quilt and so did she. They lifted it up together and let it billow back down to the bed.

When it was perfect and tucked in, Jack looked up at her. He’d made a decision. He could be sour about her imminent departure or he could enjoy the hell out of her while she was here. He’d been around the block enough to know that nobody got what they really wanted in this world. Thea didn’t deserve to be punished for that.

“I want to spend the day with you,” Jack said. “The whole thing. My last day as a human man.”

Thea might have laughed at a different time, at his dramatics, but now she was serious. She nodded. She came around the bed toward him, stripping off that shirt she’d just pulled on. Next came her pants. She kept on her bra and underwear, because she’d learned just how much he enjoyed taking those off of her. She gripped his hand and led him into the bathroom. There was a big clawfoot tub, just like in the bathrooms downstairs, but this one had been updated recently enough to also have a tile shower stall with a glass door. Thea leaned in and turned it on, the steam curling up and out. The condensation in the air pebbled her skin and Thea shivered, but maybe that was from the way Jack was looking at her at that very moment.

When she turned, she’d thought she’d known exactly what she would see. Intensity in his eyes, desire for her, a half smile.

Not this time. This time there was something else there. When she thought about it later, she would wonder briefly about the fact that it was the day of his first shift. Because the look in his eyes was wild, instinctual, animalistic.

Thea’s breath sucked in, fast and unexpected, as he stalked up to her, his eyes on hers. He was naked in just a few seconds, his clothes piling on the floor and his cock already perked up and straining toward her. Jack’s hands went to the clasp of her bra, his eyes still on hers. It was stripped off her.

For her underwear, though, he finally dropped that stare and went down to his knees next to her. She shivered again under all that attention. Two fingers skated up the inside of her leg and she felt the pads of his fingertips, so gently, across where she needed him most.

“You’re already wet, sweetheart.” He still didn’t lift his eyes to her, intent as he was on that black triangle of fabric between her legs.

She didn’t say anything, just steadied herself with one palm against the tile wall next to her and one hand on his shoulder.

Finally his eyes flicked to hers again. “When did this happen, sweetheart?” he asked her, his fingers pressing between her legs again. “When did you get wet for me?”

She sucked in a breath, realizing that she hadn’t been breathing properly. She’d never met this side of him before and it was doing something to her. “I’m not sure,” she answered honestly. “It wasn’t one particular moment.”

“When I came in the room?” his voice dropped an octave.

She thought back, held his eyes, and nodded.

His gaze heated with pleasure at her answer. “That happen often?”

She nodded again. It was true. It was her body’s natural response to his closeness. That prowling, laughing heat of him, it called to her, reminded her what could happen when two people got naked and creative.

“You saying you always want me this bad?” His voice was still low, and instead of his fingers touching her over her underwear, this time it was his nose. He inhaled her, his eyes dilating.

“Yeah.” She made herself answer this time, her voice ragged and just a little shaky. “You always want me that bad?” She pointed her chin down at his cock, so hard it was standing up against his stomach, practically begging for her.

“If I haven’t made that clear by now,” he told her, “I must be doing something wrong.”

He hooked her panties to one side and buried his tongue inside her. Thea automatically went up to her toes. She’d have liked to have watched him work her with his tongue, but Jack had this superpower in which he pretty much blinded her the second he started going down on her. Ever since their first time together, Thea had given up the idea that this was just regular old sex. This wasn’t even fantastic sex. This was way, way more than that. Something in a whole other category. She didn’t have a word for what it was, but she gave up looking a gift horse in the mouth about a week ago. Now, she just let the man have free reign.

And he sure took it.

Jack sure loved these simple, black panties of hers. They suited her, but they were also extremely easy to rip at each hip. Which was what he did right then. They fell to the floor, and Jack picked them up immediately, wrapped them, wet and hot from her body, around himself. He grunted at the feel of her slickness against his bare skin.

He almost couldn’t take it. She was on the pill and they were both clean, they’d discussed it a few days ago, but habit ran deep for both of them. Neither of them had ever not used a condom before.

He had her trembling and gasping above him, steam from the shower curling around her like ethereal mist, tendrils of her hair sticking to sweaty skin. This couldn’t be it. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t be the last time he’d do this.

His body rejected the idea so hard that something within him snapped. He rose and stepped her back into the shower. The water was hot enough to make them both wince but it felt good, too. Like the world was burning down. And maybe it was, because this couldn’t be the last moment he’d make love to her. Jack refused to believe that tomorrow she might sling that backpack of hers over her back and be gone.

Stay. He wanted to say it so badly. Water sluiced over them, sheeting off his chin, pinking her skin. Stay.

But how could he say that to her? How? When he knew where her heart was. When she’d been clear all along. How could he ever ask her to change her life for him? He was a traveler, no consistency, no schedule, he could never ask her to do that.

Stay.

He swallowed down the word and felt a contact burn from clashing eyes with her. They were too blue, too intelligent. She’d know. She’d take one look at him and know that his world was crashing around him.

He took her by the shoulders and spun her around. Her hands automatically palmed the tile wall. Perfect. He brought his rough hands down from her shoulders and traced the perfect hourglass of her. He went back up and took two handfuls of her breasts; he felt her nipples spear his palms and he groaned into her hair, rubbing his cock against her slick skin. Stay.

He growled against the word he couldn’t say.

“I want you…” he said. To stay, he didn’t say. “Now.”

She widened her stance and let her head fall back on her shoulders, twisting her face to meet his lips. “Yes.”

He anchored his hands on her hips and tipped her ass up to him. His cock slid down the crack of her ass and the head kissed her wetness. They both hissed, their tongues tangling. Stay.             

Jack pulled up from the kiss and pressed a hand to her shoulders so that she leaned forward, her forehead against the tile wall. He slicked one palm up that gorgeous back of hers along the river of her spine.

And then he surged forward and buried himself inside her. Again, Thea went up on her toes. Her back arched and her head came up. He couldn’t help but plant his hands over top of hers on the wall. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to tangle fingers or just keep her there. And wasn’t that just the problem? Did he want to keep her or trap her?

He knew the answer immediately. With a blaze of clarity so sharp that it almost hurt. He didn’t want to trap Thea. To pin her to him. But he sure as hell wanted to pin himself to her.

He reared his hips back and then pushed into her again, his thoughts momentarily whited out by pleasure so acute the breath turned to fire in his lungs. It was clear now why it had felt so wrong to ask her to stay with him. Because it had been wrong.

He pumped into her again. His chest to her back, their fingers tangling against the cool tile. “I’ll come,” he told her and then realized exactly what that sounded like.

He shook his head and laughed until it crumbled into a groan of pleasure.

“What?” she asked over her shoulder.

“No, I don’t mean I’m coming. I mean I’ll come. To Montana. To your homestead.” He deserved the fucking Medal of Honor for getting all these words out while he was balls deep and raw inside Thea Redgrave.

“What?” she asked again and he saw that her eyes were hazy and dilated.

Abruptly, he pulled out of her, making her gasp and reach out for him. He didn’t wait. He picked her up in his arms and strode out of the shower and straight to the bed. Water sluiced off of them. Made puddles everywhere. He tossed her onto the bed like a suitcase. A different woman would have protested, been worried about getting the bed all wet.

Thea just rose defiantly to her knees and reached out for him, her fingers tangling in his hair.

He fell over her, pushing back inside her the first second he could. Jack pumped his hips and made the bed crack against the wall. She anchored her ankles together behind his back and moaned.

“I said,” he tried again, because he was going to get this right if it killed him, “I’m gonna come to Montana.” He dropped his head to her shoulder as he picked up his pace, extremely aware that he was bareback inside her. He slammed his eyes shut and shook his head. He panted words directly into her ear. The bed squeaked, moving inch by inch across the floor. “When all this is over. When we figured out what the hell it means to be a bear shifter, I’m gonna come to Montana.”

“I—” she cut herself off. “Okay.”

That was it? He was telling her that he was going to change his entire life for her and all he got was an ‘okay’?

He reared back. Actually. That might have been worth saying. Jack picked up one of her legs and tossed it over his shoulder, then planted his hands on her hips and held her still for the pump of his hips. He added a bit of twist in there that had them both groaning.

“That’s it?” he demanded of her, sweat and shower water dripping off his face. “I tell you I’m gonna change my entire life for you and all I get is an ‘okay’?”

“What?” she asked, her hands opening and closing on the sheets, her voice floating with her panted breaths. “What do you mean change your whole life? You just told me you were gonna come visit me.”

He shook his head. “Shit, goddamn, you feel so good. No! That’s not what I meant.” He leaned forward, taking her leg with his shoulder, opening her up even wider. They were nose to nose as he continued to pump into her. “I meant—shit, you’re so hot—that I’m gonna move there. And stay.” Finally he got to say that word. It felt so good he tried it again. “I’m gonna stay there. Stay. With you.”

She said nothing but her back arched up and her eyes went wide and unseeing. He felt her fingers scratch the hell out of his back and her hips workworkwork and then go ecstatically rigid. She fell in a heap back to the bed, gasping for breath, pushing hair out of her eyes. “What?” she asked for what felt like the hundredth time. “You want to come live in Montana?”

“Yes,” he answered, still pumping into her, starting to pick up his pace. “I want to be where you are. I don’t care where it is. You and me.” He groaned against the pleasure. “You and me.”

She was speechless, he could see it in her eyes. They were running fast, trying to catch up to the truth of what this really was between them. She didn’t know that there wasn’t anything to catch up to. As far as he was concerned, it had always been there. Between them, growing and stretching.

“Jack,” she whispered. “Jack.”

“You and me.”

That was right around the time he lost his mind. He worked up a rhythm. A thrust-thrust-stay where he pushed deeper and deeper. He paid no mind to the bed banging scratches across the wall, to the late morning light slanting in across them.

All that existed was Thea and him and the heat between their bodies. No. Fuck that. There was no between. They were one thing, grinding and grasping and gasping against each other.

“Jack!” This time she screamed it.

Her body went tight along with his and everything froze, time included. Pleasure rung their necks, stole their breaths, stilled their heartbeats. Jack felt as if he’d been dragged through a black hole, flattened into nothing in the only way that mattered. He exploded inside her and couldn’t stop trying to get closer. He worked and worked and worked his hips into her until there was simply no more oxygen left in the room.

He collapsed on top of her and nearly suffocated in her hair.

She laughed a little and gripped his hair in her fist, adjusted him so that his life wasn’t in danger anymore.

They usually preferred to stay tangled up and sweating for as long as possible after sex, but this time, Thea sat up. She shoved him off her, in an affectionate way, and then stood, hands on her hips at the end of the bed.

Her hair was tangled and wild on one side and still slick and dark with water on the other. Her skin was pink from the hot shower and her passion for him. Her freckles stood out in high contrast across her nose and cheeks, her chest rose and fell like she’d run a race. Jack decided that she looked like the first woman there ever was. Fierce and gorgeous and primal. If he hadn’t been in love with her before, well, he damn sure was now.

“Say it again,” she demanded, those clear blue eyes shimmering with the threat of some sort of woman-wrath. “If you really mean it, then don’t you dare say it to me during sex. If you mean it, say it again right now.”

She was bristling and spoiling for a fight, so Jack figured he might as well do the opposite. He stretched out on the bed and tucked one arm behind his head. “You know I meant it,” he said casually, in a voice he knew ran the risk of really pissing her off.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead ass.”

“You’re truly saying that when all this is over, you’re going to pack up your things, change your entire lifestyle, and come be a farmhand in Montana?”

She was gonna pull a muscle if she raised those eyebrows any higher. Jack couldn’t help himself. He leaned up and planted two fingers on her forehead, worked her eyebrows back down toward their natural home.

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

That one got her. She opened her mouth to argue some more, but then that bottom lip of hers just ended up getting caught between her teeth. She cocked her head to one side and paced from one end of the room to the other. “You really know how to take the wind out of my sails, cowboy.”

Jack cleared his throat and tried to ignore the hot air balloon that had just started sinking in his chest. She was gonna say no. Not only did she not want to stay here with him, she didn’t want him to come to her.

“If you’d waited about five more minutes I was gonna tell you that I’m not leaving.”

Jack considered himself an adaptable man. With a hell of a poker face. It took a lot to surprise him. But he knew he looked like a royal dope right about now. She could probably count his molars with how far open his mouth was. He scraped a hand over his face. “You’re serious.”

“Dead ass.” She smirked at him.

“You’re telling me,” he said slowly, “that you weren’t just packing?”

She shook her head.

“That,” he continued, “you’re not just waiting for the new moon to pass so that you can blow dodge as soon as you can?”

She shook her head again.

“But you’ll be free tomorrow,” Jack said slowly. “Martine said that whatever this bond is, you’ll be free of it tomorrow.”
“And tomorrow you’re going to be going through your first real day as a bear shifter, Jack. You think I’m gonna bid you adieu and good luck through that? Are you nuts? What the hell kind of girlfriend would I be?”

“Are you telling me that you’re my girlfriend?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. Her hands came up and laced over top of her head. “I always hated that word. Sounds dumb as hell. But yeah. It’s the best we have, so yeah. I’m your girlfriend.”

“And you’re telling me—” he started.

“And you’re telling me,” she parroted his slow, dawning comprehension, “that when all this is over, you’re gonna come live with me.”

He nodded.

“Sounds like we might have been telling each other the same thing, cowboy.”

“You and me,” he croaked, his throat suddenly dry.

“You and me,” she agreed.

He gripped her around the waist and wrestled her back down to the bed. “I’ve never had a girlfriend before.”

“I’ve never had a boyfriend before.” She blinked off into the distance. “I just never imagined that when I got one he’d be middle-aged.”

She screamed with laughter as his fingers dug into her ribs, tickling the hell out of her.