I stared at the water someone set down in front of me and tried to pull myself together. A bear had almost killed me.

Finn came into my view, sitting on the coffee table and ducking his head down until he caught my gaze. I blinked. Did he need something? In the time since I’d arrived, I’d been nothing but trouble to them.

“I’m always an incredible hassle to have around. This time I was on a path I didn’t intend to stray from. Sometimes, shiny objects distracted me, but when I got onto Goldie, I swore that I would work my hardest, do everything right, and then get my brother out of jail. Then I’d find a quiet terraformed planet somewhere where I could keep to myself and cause no trouble.”

Finn scrunched up his face, and across the room, Rylan made a bear noise I couldn’t decipher. He hadn’t shifted back yet. I wasn’t sure where Cole was, and Mark had left. I thought. Distantly, I’d been listening to things people said.

“You’re talking about the ship you were in when the wolves shot you? Goldie. That was her name. That’s right.” He took my hand in his. “You had a scare. That’s for sure. Did you see how his head sort of bobbed the wrong way? That was an indication of neurological trouble. The way Cole easily took him down and I killed him? That meant Easton was all but dead before I ever got there. Unfortunately, he could still have hurt you. Or worse.” A frown formed between his eyes. “Someone hurt him. Cole is determining whom. That’s why he wasn’t okay. He was already pretty much gone. The quiet Easton I grew up knowing would never have harmed you.”

I put my hand on his knee. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course.” He shook his head. “Why?”

“You had to kill him because I’m a weak human on a planet of very big bears.”

Finn leaned forward. “You’re my mate.”

“Was that supposed to explain why you’re, of course, okay? Killing is hard. Period.”

He took my hand in his. “Not when it comes to protecting what’s mine.” A growl across the room made him smile. “Ours.” He looked over my shoulder. “Go run it off until the bear leaves. Or shift back.”

Rylan made a noise that must have been a harrumph and walked toward the back door. He pushed on the handle, and it opened. Then he sort of slumped off into the woods. Finn rolled his eyes. “Two more years and he’ll shift when he wants to and not shift when he doesn’t.”

He got up and went to close the door.

I took a sip of the water. “Did you get what you wanted from Mark?”

Saying his name made me stop and think. Was his name really Mark? Was Finn really Finn? Our translator devices made us understand each other. What did they hear when I said Jessica? They were probably not Finn and Mark. They were something in their own language.

Finn sat back down. He looked tired. Why did I think that? I wasn’t sure. “The weather making you sleepy?”

He answered the first question instead of the second. “I did. He had some things to say. Just basically about the past. My father thinking that it would tear apart the fabric of our society. That there are minimal things that we have done to appease those people over the years and giving up the no human rule would push them too far. They’d attack until they killed themselves.” He shook his head. “I think I have a mate that I’m not going to hide or ask her to hide. They can get over themselves, or I’m fine with them fighting themselves to death.”

Well, he had already said he didn’t mind killing for me. It was such an odd thing to hear. I scooted forward on the couch until our knees touched. I wanted to touch him. It was just on a long list of things I couldn’t seem to bring myself to question.

“Maybe no one has to die. Maybe you could talk about it.”

He joined our hands together. “If such a thing were possible, it would be done. My only objective has been to continue to help us all thrive. We do. Commerce. Land. Balanced with our inherent need to just be left alone. For the most part, anyway. The Derbys are a problem and those like them. I’ve left them to their own distressing existences. To their own lives.” He raised his gaze to mine. “Maybe that was a mistake. I am not good at talking to people, like Cole. Even Rylan. . .”

I squeezed his knee. “I’m new. I can’t have a grasp of all of these things, but you’re dominant, yes? To them? Is it just age? Size?”

He smirked. “It’s many things. They’re incredible males. Either one of them could lead. But, yes, I am. Slightly. Miniscule amount and basically with their consent. We’ve never challenged each other.”

“Okay, then don’t overthink it. Assume they’d take it from you if you weren’t the best. Assume you haven’t done anything wrong. Go from there. What’s next? What would you tell someone to do in your position?”

His nostrils flared. “Protect what is yours. Make them change to suit what is. One quarter of our people never find their mates. They live their life without. . .” His voice trailed off. What word was he looking for? I knew Cole said they didn’t have sex. But I didn’t think that was the word he sought. “Without.” He sighed. “Maybe their mates are above.” He pointed toward the sky. “Distances away that can only be found on a spaceship.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Probably there wasn’t. So far, I’d been nothing but burdensome.

He shook his head. “You are right, Jessica. I am tired.”

“Well.” I took his hand. “I could tuck you in.”

“Could you stay? Just lie down with me. Never mind, too soon. I’m still riding the thinking you were dead thing. I felt your fear, I smelled it. I shifted. I don’t remember the last time it just happened like that. Then. . .I don’t know. I know I killed him. That’s it. And you were okay. That I knew.”

He was all over the place. I rose. “Come on. Sure, I’ll lie down.” Right then, my stomach growled. “Can you wait ten minutes?”

His smile was huge. “My turn to feed you.”

Feeding me apparently meant sitting on his lap with that porridge in front of me. I drew the line on letting him spoon it into my mouth.

“Females from here allow their men to feed them. It’s an honor.”

I sighed. “I’m sitting on your lap. That’s about as far as I can go in this. There has to be a line I don’t cross and still be able live with myself. Being fed when I am still capable of feeding myself? It’s too far.”

He leaned his head on my shoulder. “Okay. Feed yourself.”

I rolled my eyes. “I was going to whether you gave me permission to or not.”

“I know. That’s sort of amazing. Don’t stop doing that.”

There he was, acting like I needed permission to do what I was going to do. I was seeing a trend happening here. That was fine. He was warm. I shifted on his lap and suddenly became aware of something else—he was hard.

Heat traveled up my body all at once. My heart rate kicked up a notch. “Are you, ah, hungry?”

“I am not.” He stroked a hand down my back. “You eat. You’re still recovering. I actually don’t eat all that much. More like a big meal that lasts me a long time.”

I ate the rest of my porridge and set the bowl aside. “Thank you. That was delicious. I have to eat a lot. Three times a day. Sometimes snacks.”

“We haven’t fed you enough. That’s unacceptable that we’ve been negligent. It will get better.”

“I can feed myself.” Sometimes, I’d fed my brother and myself. My good mood fled. Calvin. In jail. I sighed. If I stayed here, his whole life was in that jail.

Finn stroked my back. “What distresses you?”

“My brother. I thought about him, and yeah.” I got off his lap, picked up my bowl, and went to the sink.

Finn rose. “Trust me. He is our clan. Arrangements will be made. He will not be in jail.”

“How?” I turned to face him, and his arms came around me.

“I have my ways,” he whispered in my ear. “Trust me.”

Cole came through the door then, yawning. “It wasn’t Bronson. It seems he didn’t lie. He wanted to check out the human, to quote him, and that’s all he was doing. His scent is not on the scene, and he mourns his clan mate. No, I smell Derby there. This was purposeful, and it couldn’t be because of Jessica. Too quick. They came before this. Probably stayed just enough away and waited until we were distracted.”

Rylan leaned in the doorway. “They need to sleep, the same as we do. Or don’t. I can resist it.”

Finn shook his head. “You can’t even control your shift yet.”

“No, that’s true. But my bear doesn’t need to sleep as much as I seem to as a human. Let me go bear. Let me find them. Let me end them. They attacked a bear on our land. That bear tried to hurt my mate.” His voice lowered. He’d just shifted back. He was going to do it again so soon?

Cole touched Rylan’s arm and looked at Finn. This was what leadership was. They would defer to him. They trusted him.

He nodded at Rylan. “If you say you can, you can. Be back by tomorrow night. You need to do something nice for our mate tomorrow night. Don’t stand her up.”

Rylan’s mouth fell open. “I would never disappoint her.”

“I know. So make sure your bear knows too. You’re back. Tomorrow night.”

Cole rubbed his eyes as Rylan ran out the door. “I’m going to sleep. Good luck, Rylan. You got this, brother. I will get you some clothes, Jessica, tomorrow. I promise.”

“You can put on one of my shirts.” Finn led me toward the stairs. “Trust me on your brother.”

I sighed. “I have a hard time trusting anyone.”

Thinking of that, if we were going upstairs to lie down, I had to tell him what I’d told Cole. “Finn,” I swallowed. “This is so uncomfortable. I can’t believe I’m having to say it twice, let alone once. I don’t like sex.”

I did, however, like sitting on his lap. I liked Cole’s bare chest. And I liked seeing Rylan hard. What was the matter with me?

Finn stopped moving. We were halfway up the stairs. “Well, that might be because you were doing it with the wrong people. Don’t worry. We can get to that. Despite your short lifespan, we’re not in a hurry. And I don’t know if either Cole or Rylan told you—whichever one you had this discussion with—but we really get turned on by your arousal as much as anything else. Believe me, I’m. . .aware of you in a way I’ve never been before. It’s. . .stimulating. But what will really get me off, I think that’s the way to put it, is when you want it. I’ll smell your arousal, and then I’ll know.”

I swallowed. “What if I never get that way?”

“Trust me.”

He was always saying that. It seemed the majority of his planet trusted him. So why couldn’t I? “What makes me nervous, Finn, is how fast this happened. Things that blow up quickly deflate that way too.”

His face fell for a second before he touched the side of my face. “This is forever. The second we scented you, you became as essential as air.”

It was quiet in his room. The ceiling fan whooshing slightly over our heads was the only sound. Finn wasn’t sleeping. He linked our fingers together. “Tell me what scared you last night. When Rylan came. I was in bear form. I can’t really remember if I heard or not.”

“Bad dreams. My brother. Things exploding. I’m sorry. I’m usually quiet. I learned to be in the orphanage.”

He sat up on his elbow. “I’m not understanding what you said. It’s not translating.”

“Orphanage?”

Finn shook his head, a piece of his brown hair falling in his eyes. I reached out to push it away. “A place where people who don’t have parents or anyone to take care of them are sent to live. In this case, it wasn’t a nice location. They used us for labor and hurt us all the time.”

He was so still and quiet I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “Let me see if I get this straight. When children don’t have homes or family to take them, they are brought somewhere to live and do labor?”

“In this particular case, yes.” I rolled away from him, already regretting bringing it up. “We were taken by the authorities when they arrested my uncle. When he finally bought his way out of jail, he came back for us. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Finn touched my shoulder, gently. “You say that, and yet your scent tells a different story.”

“What does it say?” I cut him off before he could answer. “It’s everything I can do not to start lashing out at you. I told Cole earlier, that’s my go-to response for nearly everything. That’s how I survive. Whatever is happening between us, it is fundamentally changing me. I couldn’t have stopped myself two days ago.”

Finn rolled over on his stomach and tugged me to him so I was on my side against him. “Nothing about you has fundamentally changed. Not a thing. Maybe you’re just. . .breathing for the first time ever. I hate that my love was in some. . .place. . .without family.”

“I had my brother. I took care of him.”

He growled, deep in his throat. “Someone should have taken care of you. Were you harmed?”

“Yes.” But I didn’t want to talk about it, not more than that. They were memories, buried so far inside of me that I never let them rise. The beatings. The tauntings. The starvation. I’d never been violated sexually, but that was just because I was lucky.

He didn’t push. Instead, he kept stroking his hand from the top of my head down my back. It was a relaxing feeling. “Here, that would never happen. If someone is killed or an entire clan dies, a neighbor or another clan takes them in. Even the Derbys, they would do this. It is how we are. No child would grow up without family. Our child would never be alone.”

I sucked in my breath. Our child? That was just another thing that should be making me run away and wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to see myself as a mother, but I didn’t want to flee because he’d said that aloud. “Humans have one mother, one father. Sometimes a step mother or father. But no clans. Who would take in our child? Let’s say I die having that child.”

This time it was his turn to suck in his breath. “That would not happen. Cole would not allow it.”

“This is hypothetical scenario time. Say I die. Who takes care of this child since you three will want to die too, right? That’s how it’ll work.”

He smoothed my hair again. “The child would go live with cousins of ours or some of our friends. The child would have more people to love it than you can possibly imagine. Lovely woman. Don’t worry. The fading isn’t all at once. It’s over time, and then the person just goes. That wouldn’t happen until the baby was secured.”

I liked that answer. “Okay.” I had to remember he was tired. “You need to sleep.”

“Yes, but I’m fine. I smell tiredness on you. It increases as you are with me. I wonder if you are somehow being affected by our need to rest during the cold.” He turned his head slightly. “Rylan wasn’t a baby. But we raised him these years, sort of. Brotherly raising. He is a strong bear, and soon he will be totally in control.”

I didn’t really understand. “You’ve said that before. Battle the bear.”

“From about age twenty until age one hundred, there is a rolling around between bear and man. It isn’t just one at that point. Rylan has to win. And he is. There are years where the man spends more time as a bear than a man.”

So it was like shifter puberty. Okay. I could understand that. “Got it. You start out like human babies, and the shifting comes at twenty?”

“You know it’s coming, but it still scares the heck out of you.” His smile was big, toothy. He yawned.

“Finn.” I brought his knuckles to my mouth. “Sleep.”

He nodded. “This is what I wanted. When I thought about what we didn’t have, what we might not have since so many of our people don’t, what I wanted was to have someone to talk to in the dark. Quiet conversation. Maybe about nothing important but that someone who would listen to me ramble, to not make sense when exhaustion came.”

I snorted. “I’m not exactly known for my great conversation skills.”

“I love how you talk.” He rolled onto his back. Finn was clearly having trouble settling. He was adorable, and I needed to kiss him more than anything else in the world. Right then.

I didn’t overthink it, I simply pressed my mouth to his, and my body came alive. My breasts ached, my nipples poking out painfully. He moaned against my mouth before he pulled back just slightly.

“Your scent.” He closed his eyes. “How it moves through me. I can’t. . .”

I kissed him again, and he soon tugged me even closer. Finn was harder than before. His mouth pressed to mine, again and again. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He kept starting and stopping before he found his rhythm, but, wow, I got lost in his enthusiasm.

I’d never felt like this. Kissing had been awkward the few times I’d done it, as though I was being judged on my skill level. Finn just seemed to want me, however it went. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and I held on.

My tongue pushed through his lips, and soon he got what I wanted from him. His own met mine. We moaned together. I wanted to be closer to him, so much closer.

I tugged at his shirt. I’d not wanted this hours before, and now I couldn’t have enough. Not nearly. Maybe not ever. This mating. I wouldn’t resist it. How could I? We were soon naked, and I hardly remembered getting that way. He pulled back, his gaze on my body.

“You’re so much more than I ever thought you could be. I don’t know how to tell you, mate. I don’t know how to make you see, make you understand.”

I breathed in slowly. “Finn, I can’t scent you, but I can feel you.” I put my hand over his heart. “I can feel it beat the same way you can feel mine.”

He nodded. Maybe we would finally understand each other. Sort of. He brought my palm to his mouth and kissed it. “I wish to bring you pleasure, my mate. I don’t know how, and I don’t want to be another reason you don’t wish to do this.”

Wow, I had really stressed him out. I hadn’t even considered the pressure what I told him must have brought.

“Kiss me. I want you, so much. Everywhere. I’m sorry if you’ve worried. I. . .”

His mouth took possession of mine, and his hands were all over my body. I loved every touch. I ran my hands over his chest, feeling his muscles, the definition, the way his pulse jumped beneath my fingertips.

The way it felt when his body came over mine. I spread my legs, feeling his hard cock close to it as he brushed against me. I dropped my hand, reaching for his cock, and stroking it. Once. Twice. It grew in my hand. He moaned.

“Such pleasure that you give me, mate. I had no idea. How have I done without you?”

I took his hand. Sometimes in the middle of the night, alone with no one to hear, I had touched myself. There were ways I could bring myself some pleasure. I ached for more, but it had done. Now, I showed him where I wanted to be touched, the spot that I liked. Before I’d lost interest in it altogether.

Finn quickly followed my unspoken direction. His breathing picked up. “Yes, show me. I want to know all of you.”

I was getting wet, and my hips arched off the bed. This had never happened to me before, not like it was now.

“Jessica,” his voice shook, “I want to be deep inside of you.”

I nodded, spreading my legs. “Please. Do it.” This had been the worst part of it the last time I’d done this. But everything about our encounter felt like I’d never done it before.

Finn nodded. He pushed inside of me. I stretched to fit him, and he waited, like he understood I needed a minute before I could proceed. I touched the side of his face, running my fingers over his whiskers. “Take me, please.”

“Oh but, Jessica, I think it is you who has me.”

He pressed deeper inside of me and then pulled out. Some things were natural. Finn had never done this before, but he certainly knew what he was doing. My body was on fire. Wanting, needing, oh yes, this was what I had been waiting for.

Over and over, we joined until I was panting, crying out, begging for more. I didn’t know what I needed exactly, but I knew it could only come from Finn. He had to give it to me. He pressed down between us, right where I had shown him. I exploded and seconds later so did Finn. He called out my name. I wasn’t sure if there wasn’t a little bit of growl in how he said it. I loved the sound. I closed my eyes. The pleasure was too much. All I could do was ride the wave.

I opened my eyes sometime later, snuggled against Finn. He held me tight against him. His eyes were closed, and he breathed deeply. Finn was clearly asleep. Out cold. The room was chilly and now that the amazing moments were over, I could feel it. I eased out of bed, not wanting to disturb him, and grabbed another blanket I saw draped over a chair. I wrapped both of us in it and snuggled back against his side.

Tomorrow, I would sort things out. I just had to sleep. I didn’t want to be cold anymore, not when there was so much warmth here to be found.