Bodyguard

The noise exploded into the room like a sonic boom, vibrating papers on the desk and rattling the Victorian prints on the walls in their prim and proper frames.

The bear rose on his hind legs again and kept rising, ten feet--twelve--fifteen, his bulk hunching to fit under the low ceiling. At the same time, his immense body started to shrink. The bear's face contorted, muzzle shortening, as did, thank God, his teeth.

In about thirty seconds the bear was gone, and a man stood in its place. The man was just as massive as the bear--at least seven feet tall, with chocolate brown hair buzzed short, eyes as dark as the bear's, an almost square face with a once-broken nose, and a chin and jaw dark with five o'clock shadow.

His arm bore a bloody gash where the bullet had whipped by it, but his body was muscle on top of muscle on top of muscle, not an ounce of fat that Elizabeth could see. And Elizabeth saw it all, because the man was stark naked. Except for the Collar, which had shrunk to fit his human neck, the bear-man wore not a stitch.

He wiped his streaming eyes. "Shit, woman," he said in a voice that brought down a trickle of ceiling tile dust to whiten his hair. "That itches."

Chapter Two

Elizabeth Chapman's red-streaked hair was mussed and her blue eyes were filled with fear as she faced Ronan, but she kept her hand firmly on the pepper spray.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Ronan. At your service." Ronan raised his hand in a mock salute, and blood from the bullet wound pattered to her pretty carpet. "Why'd you hit me with the pepper spray?"

Said pepper spray didn't move. "Why'd you keep coming at me, looking like you wanted to kill me?"

"I didn't. I was fighting my Collar, trying to keep it from going off. Hurts like a bitch when it does." He put out his hand and lowered the pepper spray without taking it away from her. "Now I know what stops it. Pepper spray." He shook his head again. "Shit."

"Sorry," Elizabeth said, not sounding very sorry.

"Don't worry, sweetheart. I only go after bad guys." Ronan gazed with contempt at the human stretched out on the rose-patterned rug, which now contained extra red blotches from Ronan's wound. Unconscious, the robber looked very young.

Elizabeth snatched tissues from a box on her desk and handed them to Ronan. "He shot you. You need a hospital."

Ronan took the tissues and started wiping the blood from his arm. "Grazed me, and hospitals don't know what to do with Shifters. You gonna call the cops before he wakes up?"

Elizabeth stared at the cell phone in her hand as though surprised to find it there, then she turned around and punched in the three numbers.

Ronan lifted the pistol from the floor and held it between his thumb and forefinger. He hated guns. Any projectile weapon, in fact. He guided Elizabeth out of the office as she started babbling to the 9-1-1 operator, then he set the pistol on the nearest counter and started looking for his clothes.

He found the jeans he'd tossed into the corner and pulled these back on, but his shirt, which had shredded with his swift change, was a total loss. He rummaged the nearby racks and pulled out the biggest T-shirt he could find, a bright red one with Red-Hot Lover: Handle with Care printed on the front.

Elizabeth still had her cell phone to her ear. "You all right?" she asked Ronan, her gaze going to the wound.

Ronan shrugged. "Will be."

"Here. They don't want me to hang up."

Elizabeth handed him the open phone, snatched some paper towels and a first aid kit from behind the counter, and gently dabbed residual blood from his triceps. Ronan liked the brush of her slim fingers as she fixed a gauze bandage over the wound, the smell of her hair under his nose. Strawberries and honey. Bears like honey.

"Thanks," he rumbled.

"What were you doing in here, anyway?" Elizabeth asked as she closed the first-aid kit.

"Shopping. This is a store. I needed to buy a birthday present."

"This late?" It was going on midnight.

"Only time I had free." He growled into the cell phone. "Hey, will you guys be here any time soon? This lady needs to go home."

As though in answer, red and blue lights flashed outside, and the shop soon filled with police and paramedics. They made their way into the back office and found the inert robber, and the paramedics bundled him up and carried him out.

One of the police--a woman with black hair pulled into a hard bun and a take-no-shit stare--handed the kid's pistol and shoulder bag full of Elizabeth's money to her colleague and stayed behind to ask questions. Elizabeth described what had happened, and the female cop eyed Ronan in suspicion.

"Name," she said to him.

"Ronan."

"Ronan what?"

"Just Ronan. Bears don't have surnames."

The police officer had a smooth face and cold, black eyes. "You're a Shifter," she said.

"No kidding." Ronan glanced at Elizabeth, whose lips were too bloodless. "Can you let her go home? She's pretty shaken up."

"After she gives me her statement. You too, Shifter. In fact, I want you coming in with us."

She put away her little notebook and took out a pair of cuffs. They were big cuffs, and Ronan saw the markings that told him they had Fae magic in them, fashioned to contain Shifters.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked, wide-eyed. "Ronan didn't rob me. He helped me."

"He's a Shifter," the woman said. "He hit a human, and the human's going to the hospital. That's assault, and for Shifters a capital crime. I have to arrest him." Rules are rules, her flat eyes seemed to say.