BENDING HER TO THE BEAR’S WILL
The human thinks I’m stalking her. Maybe I am.
But I’m not the only one.
There’s something evil in these woods and it preys on single women. I’m not about to let the sexy scientist fall into its lair.
Even if that means holding her prisoner in my cabin. Keeping her where I can see her at all times. Bending her to my bear’s will.
Just until the storm passes. Until her research is finished. Then I’ll let her go.
I swear.
Caleb
Snow crunches under my boots. I
shake my head to clear the metallic scent of blood from my nose.
I’m going fucking nuts.
No, something evil lurks in these
woods. It drew me out of my cabin this afternoon, sent me hiking through the
brush.
It’s a prickle at the back of my
neck.
The imagined scent of blood in my
nostrils. I know the scent isn’t real because no matter how hard I look, I find
nothing.
No mauled bodies left torn at the
river’s edge. No screams of my mate and cub.
It could just be a figment of my
brain. From the trauma of their still unexplained death three years ago. From
spending too much time in bear form since then. I’m more beast than man these
days, and I know it shows.
I heard the wolves in Tucson mutter
about me when I was there for a fight last month.
That bear should’ve been put down after he lost his mate.
He’s going to hurt someone one of these days.
Leaving my winter hibernation to go
to Arizona and fight that grizzly was stupid. I should never have let the idiot
wolfpack talk me into it. I should be holed up in my cabin for the winter. But
they knew just how to poke the bear. They insinuated something dark about the
grizzly I was going to fight, and damn if it didn’t make me have to go sniff
the asshole myself.
Just in case he’s the bear who
killed my family.
He wasn’t.
But at least I came home with the
money from the fight. I was flat broke before it. I gave most of my earnings
from summer construction to one of my co-workers whose little boy needed
surgery, and the rest of it had dwindled. That’s the shit-can of taking winters
off.
So I roused myself. Drove to the
desert. Made enough money to keep me in blueberries and salmon for eight
months.
But now I can’t settle back in. I’m
out here letting my dick swing in the wind as I hike restlessly through the
forest.
Another woman’s gone missing.
That’s part of why I can’t rest.
There’s a serial killer, or
kidnapper loose up here.
I reach the main road sooner than I
expect. I walked three miles across my land without noticing. A blue Subaru
pulls around the bend. I don’t recognize it, which is strange.
I know most all the cars that come
and go over this road, at least during winter. I stare into the SUV as it
passes me and I give a low curse.
A single female. A sturdy redhead
with a don’t-fuck-with-me look on her face. Alone, with overnight gear in her
car.
Shit.
The prickles on the back of my neck
grow stronger.
I know where she’s going. She’s
headed to the University of New Mexico Research Station. It’s a small cabin ten
miles out on U.S. Forest road.
I wouldn’t give a shit except three
single females have disappeared from this forest in the last eight months.
Three.
And I consider this to be my fucking
forest. I’m the apex predator. No other creature—beast or human—should be
bringing down humans.
Especially females.
I’m not charming or chivalrous, and
I sure as hell have never been known as a gentleman, but protecting females is
hard-wired into me.
I skirt along the ridge, watching
her car. She pulls and parks at the only grocery / convenience store in our
tiny town.
Goddammit.
Looks like I’ll be spending the next
week playing bodyguard to the determined researcher. The one too stupid to know
not to come here in March. Alone.
Especially when there’s a serial
killer on the loose.
#
Miranda
I pull in at the roadside market in
Pecos to get supplies for the week.
I didn’t plan on coming up here
again until late spring, but my tree ring research couldn’t wait. I have a
paper to publish by June and to meet that deadline, I need the numbers now.
Dr.
Algore’s voice still rings in my head. “Another delay, and you lose funding.
Get the numbers, now.”
When I argued that it was March,
still winter in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the southernmost tip of the
Rockies, and—
“I don’t see your fellow researchers
asking for the same type of special treatment for their projects.”
My cheeks heat as he smirks at me.
Around the table my fellow researchers, all male, smirk with him. I don’t need
to look around to know they’re all laughing internally at me. They mirror
everything Dr. Algore says or does. They even wear what he wears—right down to
the fashion offensive plaid tie and brown Dockers.
“Fine,” I mutter, dropping my eyes
to my yellow folder. It’s a bright spot of color in a drab room, and I choose
it to give me a spark of joy in my otherwise weary day. But today it’s just
yellow, the color of cowards.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” Dr. Alogore
says to my blouse. I want to put my hand to my neckline, but stop myself in
time. I feel the gaze of all my male colleagues resting on my modest sweater
set. My grandma dresses less conservatively than I do, but I still get leers
like I’m in lingerie. The way these guys look at me, I feel like they’re
imagining me I’m naked. Maybe they are.
“If that’s all, let’s head out to
lunch. My treat,” the professor says. Everyone murmurs gratefully except me.
Dr. Algore prefers lunch joints where the women dance on tables.
I grab my folder and scurry into the
hall.
“Hey, Miranda,” one of my tall
colleagues separates himself from the Docker wearing pack and comes to breath
down my neck. I turn and get a face full of onion breath. He smiles like a
shark, his eyes on my chest. “I’ll come up and help you collect that data.”
“No thank you,” I mutter and pull my
cardigan closed. I’m not even baring cleavage. These guys are just creepers.
“Come on. I can help. It’s scary up
there in the mountains this time of year,” he says with false concern. “We go
up there together and I can help you grab everything in record time. You can buy me dinner afterwards, to thank
me.” His grin gets bigger. “I can help you with the findings, and we’ll split
the credit, half and half.”
And there it is. A blatant grab for
my research.
“Ugh, no thank you,” I hunch my
shoulders and hug the folder to my front. “What, you think you can swoop in at
the last minute and I’ll let you put
your name above mine on the paper?”
He shrugs. “Makes sense,
alphabetically…”
“No. I got this.” I duck my head and
walk as fast as my legs can carry me. No one is cheating me out of my research.
Not this time.
This paper could make the difference
between another shitty year as a postdoc in Dr. Algore’s lab and getting an
actual professor position somewhere. Anywhere. Of course, a professor position
still won’t guarantee me respect in my field. I’ve seen enough women in science
have their careers belittled on a daily basis to know I’ll be fighting for my
equal rights every step of the way. Probably until the day I retire.
I get out and grab my empty canvas
shopping bags to fill. Inside, I blink as my eyes adjust to the dimly lit,
somewhat depressing market. I’ve been here before, so I know what to expect,
but it still makes my skin crawl. Unswept concrete floors, ancient canned goods
with old-fashioned price tags. Like any convenience market near U.S. Forest, it
carries extremely overpriced gas station fare. Loaves of Wonder Bread for
almost five bucks, eight dollar jars of peanut butter.
I packed my own non-perishables in
Albuquerque, so I head to the refrigerator case to grab a jug of milk, some
eggs, bacon, and butter. That should be enough to get me by for the week.
I bring them up to the counter where
an ancient man is talking to a local. He ignores me for a solid two minutes
before he slowly drags the eggs toward the register while still gabbing away.
I clear my throat.
His companion, equally old, says
goodbye and shuffles out. The owner turns and eyes me speculatively. “What
brings you up here, young lady? Isn’t the right time of year for fishing or
hiking.”
“I’m headed to the research lab for
a few days,” I say politely. It’s the exact same conversation we had last time
I was here. Granted, that was six months ago, but still. I doubt they get a ton
of women camping or hiking alone.
“Oh right, right. University of New
Mexico, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He stops punching numbers into the
cash register and squints at me. “You be careful up there alone. You’ve heard
about the missing women?”
I push away the dread that ripples
through me. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Right?
“I’ve heard, yes. But I’ve got my
dog with me. And he’s very protective.”
That may or may not be true. I have
a furry German Shepherd / Australian Shepherd mix who loves to play fetch. But
he does have a ferocious-sounding bark.
“Well, you might have to protect
your dog. You do know we have a bear problem in this forest, don’t you?”
Right, the bear problem. He told me
about it the last time I was up here. As an ecologist, I rather dislike when
humans assume the animals are the problem. Wouldn’t our overpopulation and the
shrinkage of wildlife corridors be the actual problem?
When I was here this past summer, he
had leaned on the counter and squinted at me. “You be careful up here. There’s
a rabid bear roaming this wilderness. Tore a woman and her child to pieces a
few years back.”
“If he was rabid a few years ago,
he’d be dead by now, don’t you think?” I hated to use science and logic as a
weapon, but...please.
“Well, he may not be rabid, but he’s
definitely feral,” the old man had claimed.
I couldn’t help the scorn that
must’ve crept over my face. “Bears can’t be feral. We don’t keep them as pets.”
The man thumped my change down on
the counter and glared at me. “Crazy, then! There’s a crazy bear out there.
Uncanny-like. Enormous animal with eyes that glow yellow and a real desire to
destroy things. Same time that woman and her child got killed, the bear scored
every tree in a three mile radius with his claws.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard about your
bear,” I tell him now. “But you haven’t had any bear problems recently, right?”
“No, it’s been a few years. But
something was wrong with the animal, I’m telling you. You mind your dog, or
that bear might kill him just for sport—mark my words.” He points at the number
on the register. “Twenty-eight twenty-two.”
Yeah, like I said—overpriced.
I hand over my money and try to
quell the stirring in my stomach. “Okay, I’ll keep him close at all times.
Thanks for the warning.”
Despite the fact that I’d put my
reusable bags on the counter with the food, the guy has slid all my food into a
plastic bag.
I take it and dump the food into my
canvas sack and hand the bag back to him. “I don’t need this, thanks.”
As I head out the door, I hear him
call after me, “You be careful, you hear?”
“Yep, I will. Thank you!”
Inside my Subaru, Bear gives a happy
bark to see me return.
I open the door and toss the bag of
groceries on the passenger seat while Bear lunges forward and tries to kiss my
face from the back seat. “You ready to go to the cabin, boy?”
He chuffs and tries to lick some
more.
I angle my face away and give him a
quick head rub. “Go lie down,” I tell him.
He promptly hops over the back seat
into the trunk area, where I put his bed, and curls into it.
I smile into the rear view mirror.
“Good boy.”
Snowflakes hit my windshield as I
start to drive.
#
Caleb
It’s snowing. Hard.
All I can think about is the redhead
and whether she made it to her cabin safely.
The good thing about the snow is it
might deter the psycho who likes to prey on female hikers.
The bad thing is it makes the
determined researcher far more vulnerable. If she’s snowed in there, she’ll
have nowhere to run.
Stupid, headstrong female.
No, not stupid. She’s a scientist.
Probably extremely smart.
But I push back my grudging
admiration of sturdy, self-sufficient woman like her.
I consider the danger she might be
in. There’s something out there that stalks pretty young women.
Doubtful it’s the same fuck who
killed my family, but I’m after him, just the same. Because I know what it’s
like to have someone you love taken from you. And I won’t stand by and let that
tragedy fall others.
Not in my woods.
He must live somewhere close.
Trouble is, I know everyone in town. And I think my instincts would tell me if
there was someone off in Pecos. Plus, I would recognize the scent. You can’t
fool a bear’s nose. A bear’s sense of smell is 2100 times better than a
human’s. Seven times better than the best bloodhound. And I remember the smell
that mingled with blood and death on my family. It wasn’t bear. It wasn’t
human, either.
It wasn’t any kind of animal scent I
recognize.
And maybe this is a lead, maybe it’s
not, but I caught the scent of something similar in Tucson. Not the same—hell,
it if had been the same, the guy would be dead. But there were a couple guys at
the Fight Club. Some kind of shifters, but I couldn’t figure out what animal.
And that doesn’t make sense.
If I weren’t such an antisocial
hermit, I might have stayed and asked questions about it. But being around all
those shifters, being in the city—if you can call Tucson a city, and I do—made
me cranky as hell. All I wanted to do was get back on I-10 and drive away as
fast as I could.
I stand in my open doorway and stare
out at the snow falling. Looks like going back into hibernation isn’t going to
be an option. I have to go check on the human.
I’m not going to drive up to the
research cabin—that would only scare the shit out of her. She’d think I’m the psycho stalker. I’m sure she’s
been warned about the danger. It’s getting too cold to walk now, though. At
least in human form.
I could wait until morning and hike
over.
My bear rumbles.
Fuck.
Looks like we’re going for a
four-legged hike through the snow.
I strip out of my clothes and stow
them just inside the door. Outside, the snow stings my bare skin and the soles
of my feet as I shut the door in human form. Then I close my eyes and drop to
all fours, the bear always so close to the surface, ready to take over.
He runs.
He fucking loves to run.
If he had his way, I’d give up all
humanity. Roam these woods as bear. Forget all the pain, the tragedy. The life
hardly worth living.
I almost gave into him in the months
after Jen and Gretchen died. I wanted to. I hoped he’d swallow every last bit
of Caleb, leave me without the ability to go back.
But the wolves intervened. I don’t
know how they got word, but the Tucson pack showed up on their bikes, scaring
the snot out of the inhabitants of Pecos.
They hunted me as a pack. Cornered
me in a fight. They’re lucky I didn’t kill them all. The wolves kept me
cornered and Garrett Green, their alpha, took his human form and ordered me to
shift. He carried enough alpha command to make me do it.
They dragged me back to my cabin and
stayed with me until I was human again. Forced me back to human form every time
I tried to shift.
I guess they think I ought to be
grateful.
I’m not.
I hate the fuckers.
They brought me back into my pain.
Into a life I don’t want to lead.
And bears are generally solo
animals, but there is something about knowing an entire pack of shifters have
my back.
Because they could’ve just as easily
come up here and put me down.
They probably should have.
I lope through the snow, my bear
chuffing with pleasure at the snow on my snout, the taste of it on my tongue,
the crisp air cooling my furry ears.
The trip to the research cabin takes
no time at all with my giant bear stride.
I circle it twice, getting a sense
for the scents.
There’s animal—dog.
That’s good. I’m glad she’s not
entirely alone.
And the female’s scent.
It’s a pleasant tickle in my nose.
Like strawberries and vanilla ice cream, only not that sweet. I don’t expect to
enjoy it so much. It’s a human scent, after all. Not my thing.
The dog starts to bark when I get closer to
the cabin. Smart animal.
The alpha in my growls, like I want
to put him in his place, but he’s doing his job. Protecting his human as he
should.
I amble toward the back of the
cabin. I probably don’t need to stay more. I don’t detect any other scents
here. But something pulls me closer. Some idle curiosity about the fearless
female who thinks coming up here alone in a snowstorm with a killer on the
loose is a good plan.
I stand on my hind legs and put my
paws on the windowsill, peering in.
Fuck. Me.
The girl—scratch that, she’s all
woman, even though she’s young—has built too big a fire. I know it’s too big
because she’s stripped down to a soft pink tank top. A very small soft pink
tank top. One that strains to contain her large, lush breasts. A pretty tattoo
winds around her upper arm—green vines and a cobalt blue butterfly.
My bear growls.
She’s fucking beautiful. Human
females aren’t my type—not at all. But if they were, I’d pick her kind. She
looks like a Swiss milkmaid. A Viking princess. No, with that red hair, she’d
be Irish farmstock. She’s sturdy. Big-boned, well-padded. Full-bodied with wide
enough hips to carry a bear cub. Full strawberry lips. Smooth creamy white
skin.
She’s healthy as fuck.
With brains to boot.
She will make some human asshole a
very lucky man if she hasn’t already.
The dog, a furry black shepherd of
some kind goes nuts when I growl, baring his teeth and snarling toward the
window.
I should turn away, but I don’t. I
haven’t looked my fill, yet.
I’m still staring when the hot
scientist whirls and catches sight of me. Her eyes fly wide and she shrieks.
More of a yelp, really. Almost a battle cry. She lunges for her dog as if he
might be in imminent danger and grabs him by the collar.
“Bear, stay back.” She doesn’t take her eyes from me.
The command tickles something in me.
An inner smile. How cute that she thinks she can command a bear.
But then, she repeats, “Bear, no,” and I realize she’s talking
to the dog.
Hilarious.
USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR RENEE ROSE loves a dominant, dirty-talking alpha hero! She's sold over a half million copies of steamy romance with varying levels of kink. Her books have been featured in USA Today's Happily Ever After and Popsugar. Named Eroticon USA's Next Top Erotic Author in 2013, she has also won Spunky and Sassy's Favorite Sci-Fi and Anthology author, The Romance Reviews Best Historical Romance, and Spanking Romance Reviews' Best Sci-fi, Paranormal, Historical, Erotic, Ageplay and favorite couple and author. She's hit the USA Today list five times with various anthologies.
LEE SAVINO is a USA today bestselling author of smexy romance. Smexy, as in “smart and sexy.” She’s also a mom and a choco-holic. Visit www.leesavino.com to download a free book.
You can find her on Facebook in the Goddess Group (which you totally should join).
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