I fiddled with my phone as the familiar sound of water slapping on tile droned in my ears, I couldn’t wipe my smile off my face. I scrolled through my texts from Jon, and still smirking, even as my memories supplied me with the thoughts that went into my cautious conversations about his mate.
How could I even begin to comprehend what was between them? Even worse, I had inserted my opinion where I now knew it didn’t belong. My concern for my best friend had blinded me to the fact that his wasn’t a normal relationship, and guilt seeped into my chest.
If I felt this way as a human, how must he feel?
“Paul - are you coming in or not, because I’m almost done …” McKayla’s drawling, suggestive tease caused my ears to twitch, but I only shook my head despite the fact that she couldn’t see me. She was a sex-fiend, and that alone was incredibly attractive.
But, there was another part of her I wanted to explore, and her glorious tits covered in soap weren’t included.
“I already told you I’m not, Babe.” My smirk widened at her audible whining from beyond the bathroom door, and I kept my gaze on my phone as I typed out a text to Jon. The short sentence was simple, but I hoped it got my point across because I wasn’t going to repeat myself.
Paul: I apologize for being skeptical of Lucy.
Tapping the ‘Send’ button, I had enough time to inhale deeply before Jon sent an equally simple text. His reply was only two words, but a horrible weight lifted off my chest, and I straightened my back and rolled my shoulders.
Jon: I accept.
“What are you doing saying ‘No’ to this, huh?” My eyes whipped up, and my pupils narrowed into fine points as McKayla gestured to her own, naked, body. She’d dried off, but small droplets of water dripped from her long hair to slip between her breasts. For a long moment, I did nothing but appreciate what she was showing me, and she sauntered towards the bed with a deep sway to her gait and a naughty smile tilting her swollen lips.
“I want you to shift. I want to meet your bear - properly.” My request sent McKayla’s brows up in surprise; her sultry display temporarily frozen, with one knee on the edge of the mattress. The sight pulled a chuckle from me, and I crawled over to her to lay flat on my back. “I mean, it’s not fair that you get all the attention, right?”
“Uh – okay - I mean, yeah … totally fair …” Sputtering slightly, McKayla took several steps back, and I watched from the wrong side up as her expression morphed into tender affection. Her shift was quick, but I’d watched Jon so many times that I knew what to expect.
McKayla’s bear was beautiful in a majestic, proud kind of way, and her shaggy, light brown coat shimmered with health. The floor creaked in protest against her weight, but I stayed still as she watched me through intelligent, large eyes. All she had to do to reach me was lean forward, and her groan reverberated underneath the carpet and up the bed frame.
The beast was big, but I knew that she wasn’t massive by any means; McKayla was average-sized, and there was nothing wrong with that. Grinning wide as she nosed the crown of my head, I reached up to slide my fingers up into her jowls.
“There she is.” I murmured as the creature shuffled closer, I closed my eyes and held my breath as she nuzzled my face forcefully. “Yeah … who’s my girl, huh?”
A gruff grunt answered my question, and I huffed a laugh before McKayla’s beast turned to offer her side. The whole situation should’ve brought me to tears of laughter, as I rolled up and sat on my knees; this huge creature in this tiny apartment, and I was borderline sexually attracted to her.
Which was fucked up in its own way.
“You like that?” Combing my fingers through her coarse, thick fur, I only laughed when she grumbled and leaned into me. The bed buckled under her weight, and I smiled fondly when she started rubbing against it while I caressed her back.
Our time together only lasted about five minutes, but it was more than enough for me. Reluctance shone in McKayla’s beast’s eyes before she retreated, and her human took her place. Smiling goofily at her, I didn’t protest when McKayla sidled up to me to place a sweet kiss on my lips. The contact wasn’t sexually charged at all, and I cupped her cheek to thumb the contours there, before we broke apart.
“That was nice of you, Paul. You have no idea how many times I’ve heard about humans that aren’t comfortable with their mate’s beast… it’s asinine.” I pulled McKayla onto the bed with me and held her to my side as memories bombarded my mind’s eye. Pursing my lips together tightly, I tried to beat down the disdain that was building in my chest, before speaking up.
“Actually, I do kind of have an idea. I remember when Jon met his first ever potential mate - she was a human. We were … what, like, eighteen? Fresh out of high school and still not in college … Anyway, they dated for months and he thought she was the one. She was great, but, it all fell apart when he told her; showed her, what he was. I was there for moral support, but it just went to shit so fast I couldn’t do anything to help. She didn’t even try to deny what she saw, but she was just so shocked - you know the deal. So, a week goes by, and she’s somewhat over it - she wants to try. The thing was, she never even wanted to know when Jon shifted. She didn’t want to do anything outdoorsy with him. It lasted a month or so before he just broke it off. It took him a long, long time to date again, and then he ended up with this bitch shifter Claire - that’s a whole other mess.”
A soft hum followed my story, and I blew out a hot breath; that whole incident still pissed me off. Both with that girl whose name I couldn’t even remember anymore, and with Claire. In hindsight, Lucy wasn’t so bad. At least she was too insecure to leave him, but that thought only left a bitter taste on my tongue.
“I never put much into potential mates. A couple of times, a male would try to come at me, but I got my ass out of that quick. There are so many stories of potential mates with ‘good’ bonds working out, but there are so many more where they don’t. Bears do have ‘the one’; it’s just harder to find them.” I replied with a hum of my own, and stared at the ceiling through dazed eyes. “And Jon and his family didn’t mind you knowing?”
“Nah -” I answered immediately, cracking a smile as my childhood surfaced in my mind’s eye. “My mom was always busy working to support us, and my brother was being a pissy troublemaker. Jon and I lived next to each other, so we were friends since we got home from the hospital. Our mothers were friends, too, even though I don’t think my mom knows. It was never really a secret, per say, since I started realizing something was off when we were, like, nine years old … but no one really came out and said anything specific until after I witnessed Jon shifting for the first time.”
“That must’ve been scary.” McKayla’s observation caused me to nod, and her damp hair tickled my chin. This morning, the events and the conversation had both given me a light, airy feeling that permeated my entire being. Now, I had someone to talk to about all of this stuff - these things I couldn’t bring up with Jon because it involved him.
“Terrifying - yeah. I had nightmares for months. Jon made these horrible sounds that I just wasn’t equipped to handle, at the time. The easier it became for him to shift, the better I got, though. His mom once made a joke that we’d be mates if one of us was a woman.”
McKayla gave me a genuine laugh at that, and I cracked a smile at the scene as it played in my head. Jon and I had been in our early twenties at the time, and it made us both uncomfortable. I never went so far as to say our friendship suffered from that joke, but it took a while to get back to the way we were.
Safe to say, I didn’t want Jon anywhere near me and vice versa.
“That happens to bear shifter cubs, sort - mostly females. Bears, like all shifters, will go through the process during puberty - you know. Since bears are usually born in succession, the younger ones visually experience what’s going to happen to them and really start to freak out on a subconscious level. It’s worse in females, but common in males, too. After a while, when they see things getting easier, they start to feel more comfortable that the pain won’t last long. I bet that’s what happened to Lucy, and it only compounded the things she was going through with her parents - which also are pretty common, unfortunately.” The informational rant was filled with a mix of things I knew and didn’t know, and I exhaled slowly as I processed it all. I didn’t even bother to contemplate how she knew about Lucy’s past, focusing instead on the more pertinent information.
“You know …” Speaking up slowly, I squeezed McKayla to my side gently and kept my gaze on the ceiling. “Sometimes, I look around and wonder why I have this life. Why I have this family that can do things I can’t do, and why I wish so badly that I could. Ever since I got back from Alaska, I’ve had it worse, and I don’t know why. It’s been a thing for years, but I always brushed it off.”
My deepest, most depressing thoughts - the wish I’d wished since I was a teenager - came out in a soft whisper. I knew there was no way to turn a human into a shifter, but damn if I didn’t want that. McKayla snuggled into my side, her palm resting firmly against my steadily-beating heart, and I covered her hand with mine.
There was nothing she could say, I knew, to make any of it better, though.