Outlaw of the Bears (Wild Ridge Bears Book 2) Page 2

  “Yeah. Martha. She never leaves my side.”

  “Smart girl,” he said. “But those guys were more dangerous than average. In fact, it’s not really safe for you to stay out here. They’ll be back. We need to get you someplace safe.”

  “Me? Safe? What about you? I’m serious. We need to get you checked out. I owe you that much for trying to save me. My car is just over the bridge. I’ll drive you.”

  He pushed himself off the wall. His step faltered, then he righted himself. As he stood over me, my knees felt weak. Not only was he the biggest guy I’d ever seen, but he was also the most drop dead gorgeous.

  “And how do you know I’m not just as dangerous as those three thugs we chased off?”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t. But you risked your life for me just now, even though it wasn’t necessary. Plus, like I said. Martha doesn’t leave my side.”

  He nodded and came toward me. One second, he was sure on his feet; the next, he swayed and put a hand on the wall to steady himself. “Slow down there, cowboy,” I said as I hooked my arm around his waist again. He was about as solid and thick around as a tree trunk. We took a step together and he managed to right himself.

  “Over the river,” he said. “That’s where your car is?”

  I nodded as we came out of the alley and looked both ways. Adrenaline coursed through me and I wanted to reach into my purse and get to Martha.

  “Good,” he said. “It’ll be harder for them to track … uh … the further away the better.”

  “Right.” We crossed the footbridge over Blackfoot River. I’d parked under a streetlamp in the park about a fifty yards away. I suppose that hadn’t been the most intelligent thing to do. But, it was broad daylight when I got into town. I hadn’t planned on staying here after dark. Time had just gotten away from me as I sipped my drink at the Bluelight Lounge. They’d hired me as a cocktail waitress just this evening, almost on sight. I’d never dreamed it would be so easy getting a job there. It meant everything was coming together. I’d get the answers and the closure I needed.

  “What’s your name?” my would-be knight in shining armor asked.

  I hesitated for a fraction of a second. Was it smarter to lie or tell the truth? After all, I didn’t know anything about this guy except that he took a knife to the gut trying to save me. I let out a breath. I supposed the truth was at least the minimum of what I owed him.

  “Anya,” I said. “Anya Parker.”

  “Anya.” My skin tingled at the sound of my name on his lips. “Anya.”

  We came to my car. His steps seemed surer as we stopped at the passenger side. I clicked open the lock and he leaned forward to open the door. Only the slightest wince crossed his face. He took his time sliding into the seat as I went around the other side.

  He had two hands on the dashboard and sweat broke out on his brow as I clicked my seatbelt and turned the key. “Are you sure you’re going to make it? Maybe I should just call 911.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure. I really just need someplace warm and quiet to crash.”

  I drove out of the parking lot and headed east.

  “I can take you home if you don’t live very far,” I said.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Tell me you don’t live in Blackfoot.”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I just had business here today. I live on the other side of the river. For now, anyway. I’m don’t plan on staying here longer than I need to.”

  “Good.” He cocked his head to the side and stared at me. The man had an unsettling way of looking at me as though he were about to eat me. I can’t deny it sent a thrill through me that I knew could lead to even more bad judgment.

  “Why good? Do you have something against Blackfoot?”

  “Other than the violent crime rate you mean?” He doubled over into another round of coughs that sent alarm bells ringing through me.

  I made another turn. “There’s an urgent care about a mile from where I’m staying.”

  “No doctors,” he said again, more forcefully this time.

  “Look. I think you’re in shock or something. You’ve lost an awful lot of blood. Why don’t you just let me make the decisions for a while until we get you looked at. I’d feel really bad if you died on me after all.”

  His nostrils flared as he leaned back into his seat. He put a protective arm over his torso and my heart lurched. This guy was in real pain and I felt slightly responsible. I knew better than to walk around downtown by myself at night. Even if it was in a little Podunk town like Blackfoot.

  “You need to keep moving. Get as far away from Blackfoot as you can.” His voice took on that deep, commanding tone that sent my blood humming. My instinct was to say yes to him, as absurd as that was. His words felt almost hypnotic.

  “Look at the road. We just crossed out of the city limits, okay, buddy?”

  He shook his head. “No. I mean go back to wherever you’re from. Those b … those guys are going to come back and try and finish what they started. I’m telling you. You need to trust me.”

  “Well, that means you’re not safe either.” My heart thundered almost in my throat. I believed him. I don’t know why, but I did. But the simple fact was, this guy needed medical care, and I meant to make sure he got it.

  “What did they want with me?” Maybe it was a stupid question to ask. Maybe I was in some form of shock too. He made a low, rumbling sound in the back of his throat that startled me enough to take my eyes off the road.

  He sat straighter in the seat but white-knuckled the dashboard. The air between us seemed charged. Despite his protests, I made a sharp left turn and pulled into the parking lot of the St. Luke’s Hospital just inside the Danforth, Indiana city limits.

  “I said, no hospitals.” He banged his fist against his thigh and turned toward me. “I’m fine. I told you it’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “You let the doctor be the judge of that, okay?”

  “Look, you don’t know me. You have no reason to trust me other than the fact I stuck my neck out for you. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But you need to believe me. You’re not safe here. Not in Blackfoot. Not in Danforth or wherever the hell this is. Those guys are going to come back.”

  “How do you know?” My fingers trembled as I turned off the car ignition.

  “The same way you knew it was safe to trust me enough to let me get into your car, Anya.”

  I blinked hard. “If you’d wanted to hurt me you’d have tried it by now. That is, if you were even physically capable. Now please, be reasonable and get yourself checked out. Even if the wound isn’t that deep, who knows what kind of germs that asshole had on that knife blade?”

  He gave me the sexiest smirk that sent my blood humming. “You plan on pulling Martha out again if I refuse?”

  I pulled my gun out of the side compartment of my purse and pointed it down while I smiled at him. The safety was still on, but he got the point just the same. “Maybe you shouldn’t tempt me.”

  “Smart girl,” he said and opened the passenger door. He walked around the front of the car and opened my door like a gentleman. He stood impossibly upright. Blood still caked the front of his tattered shirt.

  “Now will you promise to be a good boy and go get checked out?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving me a salute. I found it odd the gesture didn’t cause him pain as he lifted his arm. I must have given him a strange expression because his own face fell and he brought his arm in front of his chest again.

  I stepped out of the car and let my eyes travel up to meet his. “You never told me your name.”

  I stood between him and the streetlamp. His eyes glinted in the shadow I cast then darkened as he looked at me. “Cullen James,” he answered.

  Cullen. I repeated his name over in my head. I liked the sound of it. Too much. It sent a zing of heat straight down to my toes. I shook the stars out of my head and closed the car door. I would stay in this just long enough to get him
checked in with the ER nurses, then I’d leave. God, even the thought of that made my heart plummet. I wanted to stay with him and I couldn’t understand it.

  I tucked Martha into my back pocket and took a steeling breath as I pointed toward the red emergency room sign. I took a step forward, intending to give him my shoulder for support again. Sure, he looked tough, but he was hurting. He had to be. I don’t know what made me do it, but I stepped to the side, removing him from the shadows. What I saw next nearly drove me to my knees.

  His blood still stained the front of my shirt. His own white t-shirt was soaked red beneath his leather jacket. And yet, under the glare of the halogen streetlamp, those deep gashes I’d seen across his chest were all but gone. Only three jagged, silvery lines crossed his pecs and slashed down over his stomach.

  I put a hand out and touched him. He flinched as my fingers grazed the pink, puckered, freshly healed flesh. Cullen’s face dropped; his brown eyes glinted then darkened, turning almost black right in front of me. I took two staggering steps backward and lost my balance.

  “Anya, wait,” he said. He moved so fast, lunging forward in a blur to catch me under the elbows before I hit the pavement. People don’t move that fast, not in a blur like that.

  My knees still felt like rubber. I acted on instinct. I pulled Martha out of my back pocket and pointed it straight at him again.

  “What are you?” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like my own.

  Chapter Three

  Cullen

  Shit. I’d overplayed it. I could have chased her back to her car and left her there. Why had I insisted on driving off with her? I could have followed at a distance and she never would have known I was there. I could have kept her safe that way. But, I didn’t. None of the decisions I’d made since the instant I heard her voice and scented her made any damn sense if I were truly trying to not get hunted and mauled by other shifters before this fucking day ended.

  Now she’d seen. I’d let her see. I could pretend it was all just an accident, but I knew that wasn’t it. Some deeper part of me wanted her to question, wanted her to know. Only now as I stared down the barrel of her gun, I wondered if I didn’t just deserve to get shot already. I quickly dropped my hands from her elbows and took a step back.

  “I told you it wasn’t that bad,” I said, putting my hands up, palms out. “He grazed me, that’s all. I guess I just bleed a lot.”

  “Bleed a lot? Look at me. Look at you.”

  “You’ve been through a lot tonight. You’re upset. I’ll go in and get checked out if you want, but I’d really rather just make sure you get home safe. I wasn’t kidding about what I said. Those thugs could come back. Hell, they might be following us. I know how to lose them if they are. I’ll take you home.”

  Anya shook her head. One coppery curl fell over her eyes. The urge to reach out and twirl that curl between my fingers was strong. Hell, the urge just to touch her had clouded my judgment since the second I laid eyes on her. She had no idea the kind of danger she was in. Those bears would come back. If I picked up on what was different about her, they sure as hell had. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew in my soul it was the reason they went after her in the first place. Thank God they hadn’t wanted to risk drawing human attention to get to her. That might not always be true. But, short of flinging her over my shoulder and dragging her off to a bear den, I wasn’t sure how to protect her without scaring her half to death.

  “Do you trust me?” I said, hedging my bets that the very thing that put her in danger would also help her understand she needed me. Hell, I was afraid to even admit it even in my own mind. But every instinct in my body told me the truth of what she was. Anam Cara. A bear’s mate. The instant I said the words in my mind, my own bear flared to life inside of me.

  Mine!

  I shook him off. It was too dangerous to hope for. Even if it were true, I could offer her nothing. I had no lands anymore. No claim or name to protect her with. My clan had banished me for sins my father had committed.

  “Yes.” She gasped her answer and I slowly dropped my hands to the side. Her own body had to be at war with her mind. She felt something around me but probably didn’t understand it.

  “You live nearby?” I framed it as a question, but I already knew the answer. I’d touched her. I’d sat inches from her. Her scent was with me, simmering my blood. I could track her for miles if I wanted. Her house wasn’t far, less than a mile from here to the east. I closed my eyes and I could see it. She lived at the end of a residential road abutting the busiest street in Danforth.

  “Yes,” she answered. She kept her gun pointed straight at me. Just like the bears in the alley, it wouldn’t really help her against me either. Another bear could hurt me far more than a bullet could. She’d have to hit me straight through the heart or the brain, and that’s only if I didn’t have the speed to dodge it, which I did. With the way her fingers shook, she was in greater danger of accidently shooting her own foot. I took a tentative step forward and carefully closed my hand around hers. I lowered the gun and handed it back to her, barrel first.

  “Come on,” I said. “My tetanus shot can wait. You’re more shaken up than you realize. You sure you don’t want to go in there and get yourself checked out? He … they didn’t touch you, did they?”

  I knew they hadn’t, but right now I needed desperately to shift her focus off me. Her brain frantically tried to explain away what her eyes and heart told her. I shouldn’t be healed. Her thoughts searched for logic, and I’d just provided the easiest path. She was traumatized. She’d imagined the severity of my injuries. Nothing else would make sense.

  She’d been so strong. So brave. She’d stood up to three homicidal werebears without even so much as flinching. But now, my words and reality sank in. Her hands shook and she dropped the gun. I shot my hand out and caught it just before it hit the pavement. I didn’t give her a chance to protest but hooked an arm through hers and took her to the passenger side of the car. Her jaw still slack and her eyes wide, she got in and let me buckle her seatbelt.

  I came around to the other side, slid behind the wheel, and started the car. I went east on Webber Road and asked her for directions almost as an afterthought. My wounds she seemed ready to explain away. Best not to give her anything else incredible to process in one night.

  I pulled into the driveway of an L-shaped brick duplex with white shutters. She didn’t have to tell me her door was the one at the end of the long sidewalk. She also didn’t have to tell me the second unit was vacant. I could sense all of that as I opened her car door for her and walked her to the door.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning to face me as she pulled her key out of the small black purse she had slung across her chest. Color had come back into her cheeks. The tiny pulse in her temple beat slowly.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” I said. “Do me a favor and lock your doors tight tonight. Don’t go anywhere else.”

  She looked around and smoothed her curls away from her face. I drank in every detail of her. Her skin was smooth and pale beneath the motion sensor light. She had a smattering of ruddy freckles across her nose. Her trench coat opened at the collar and my eyes traveled down to the hollow of her throat. I imagined kissing her there and working my way down. Though she had her coat tightly sashed, I could see her small waist and ample rear end, just the way I liked it. I wanted to slip my hands through the gap where she’d missed a button and feel the solid weight of her breasts.

  Mine.

  The bear hovered just below the surface, and I found myself grateful for the murky shadows just outside the circle of her porch light. She would have seen my bear eyes widen. Standing this close to her, she would have detected they weren’t quite human.

  “I won’t,” she said, smiling. She paused for a fraction of a second as she slid the key into the lock and turned back to me. I think she might have been thinking whether to invite me in. I would have said yes, wanting nothing more than to be close to he
r. But while her night might be over, mine was just beginning.

  “Don’t go back to Blackfoot,” I said, trying to make my voice sound less ominous and failing.

  Anya cocked her head to the side and furrowed her delicate brow. “I’m going back to Blackfoot. I work there now. That’s what I was doing there. I filled out an application a few hours ago and I got a job at the Bluelight Lounge. I start tomorrow night.”

  She took a step back after she said it and her eyes widened. I think she regretted revealing that personal detail. My pulse thundered in my ears. I clenched my fists to my sides, feeling blood welling in my palms where I couldn’t retract my bear claws fast enough.

  “No!” My voice dropped an octave and goosebumps raised across her throat. Her skin flushed. I felt hairs bristle at the back of my neck. My bear commanded her and her body responded on a preternatural level her mind couldn’t process. If I needed any further confirmation of what she was, that was it. Anam Cara. I don’t know how I found the strength not to kiss her.

  “It’s just … what do you know about that place? It could be a rough crowd.”

  Anya shot me a smirk that made me want to draw her into my arms and nip her bottom lip. Standing out here with her was dangerous. The longer I did, the harder it became to control my baser instincts. The harder it was for her too, though she couldn’t possibly understand why.

  “I’m a big girl,” she answered. “And you’re off the hook, Cullen. Saving my life doesn’t mean you own it.”

  The hell it doesn’t. You’re mine. I gritted my teeth to keep the bear quiet.

  “Plus,” she said, stepping forward. “Working there is the entire reason I came out here all the way from Chicago. I’m looking for someone and I’m not leaving until I find her.” She planted her palm on my chest. Her eyes flashed with dark knowledge as her fingers grazed the flesh where the polar bear had gored me. If she lifted my shirt she’d see the raised marks that startled her in the hospital parking lot were all but gone now. I reached up and clasped her hand, pulling it gently but firmly away from me. Instinct took over and I leaned down and kissed her palm. Anya let out a little gasp and her lips formed a surprised “O”. She slid her hand out of mine and pressed her back against the doorframe.