BEARedtoYouBBWShifterEroticRomanceARe (6 page)

Just to give him a little taste of what was to come, and to possibly gain the attention of a passerby, she rolled onto her back and started kicking the door with all her might. She didn’t expect it to come open. It was locked from the outside and she wasn’t strong enough to kick through sheet metal. But it did make a satisfying noise. If there was anyone nearby outside, they’d hear it.

When the van didn’t start up, she took that as her cue and really started kicking hard. Bang, bang, bang, bang! It was a beautiful thing.

Until the door flew open and she was flat on her back, hardly in a position to fight off a pissed-off kidnapper.

Then, quite suddenly, the wisdom of creating a ruckus was lost to her.

He literally pounced on her like a friggin’ cat doped up on catnip and pinned her down. Hands overhead. Legs to the steel floor. Upper body squashed to the point it was hard to breathe. She realized it was futile but the need for air inspired her to do as much squirming and fighting as she could.

Didn’t help at all. If anything, it made him hold her tighter.

“You are absolutely the craziest woman I have ever had the displeasure of meeting!” he spat.

“Fuck you too.”

Still holding her arms, he sat back, lifting his chest off hers. Evidently finding her not only crazy but hilarious, he dropped his head back and started laughing hysterically.

“Go ahead. Laugh. You won’t be for long,” she yelled.

His expression sobered, sort of. His lips were quivering. “Oh yes, you and what army are going to whoop my ass?”

“I don’t need an army to take you on, you egotistical piece of shit.”

Yeah, she realized those were big words coming from a woman who barely stood over five feet tall. But he’d pissed her off. And she had a tendency to run her mouth off when she was pissed.

Unfortunately, that particular habit rarely led to a good result. She could see this situation would probably be no different. He moved carefully, to keep her pinned down while reaching for a bit of rope lying next to the wheel well. Just great. He was going to tie her up.

“I shouldn’t have to do this, you know. You should be willing to come quietly. It’s for your own good, you deranged woman.” He stretched to reach the rope, but lo, it was beyond his reach.

Ha! He’d have to move to get it.

She gave him a sneer. “Looks like you have a problem.” She flinched when he lifted his arm to belt her.

God, he was a bigger psycho than she’d thought!

“Don’t!” she screamed, turning her head. She closed her eyes and tensed up, expecting to feel the pain any second…

Okay.

Any second now…

Any second…

Oh, thank God, he didn’t hit her.

She hazarded a glance his way. He was staring down at her with the reddest face she’d ever seen on a man. Looked like he was either suffering a serious case of constipation or had just swallowed some battery acid.

“You okay?” She jerked her hands, freeing them. Much to her surprise, he didn’t put up much of a fight. The second he flopped over beside her, she saw why.

There was a red stain on his back. Blood was seeping from a torn gash in his jacket.

What the hell? She looked outside the back of the van.

A bear was lumbering around the side of the vehicle.

A grizzly bear?

Tarik?

Has to be. Right?

“Tarik?”

The bear bobbed its head.

It was Tarik! Halleluiah!

“Tarik!” She shouldn’t be so happy to see him again, especially in his bear form. No, it wasn’t a good thing to be so giddy. She’d best be going around that way, away from him. Yes, far, far away.

But she had to thank him.

The bear turned and started running away from her.

“Oh hell!” She dashed after him but he moved a whole lot faster than she did. He paused near a crop of pines at the edge of the parking lot, about twenty yards away. He  turned toward her and began pacing back and forth, sniffing the air and snorting.

“Tarik?” she shouted.

God, if that wasn’t Tarik, she was in some deep shit.

The bear stopped pacing. It sat on its rump and tipped its head. Couldn’t say she’d ever seen a bear at the zoo do that.

No, that was Tarik all right. He’d saved her. How had he known she was in danger? How had he known where to find her? Was that other guy, Joe, really going to take her to a doctor or had something far worse been planned for her?

What the fuck was going on?

So many questions. The only one who had answers was unable to speak at the moment. Even though he was resting, he looked uneasy, confused. She wasn’t sure if she should approach him like before or not.

Fairly certain he wouldn’t hurt her like he had Joe, she decided to give it a try. But he didn’t let her get near. Whenever she took a step forward, he took two back.

“Tarik, I don’t understand.” This time when she walked toward him he didn’t back away. “What’s bothering you? What’s happening?” She stopped a few feet from him. He was so huge. A beautiful creature. The only place she’d been so close to a bear had been at the zoo. And at least four inches of plexi-glass had stood between her and the animal’s claws and teeth. Regardless, she wasn’t afraid. Not at all.

“Won’t you change back? Tell me what to do next? I’m so confused. What did that man want with me?”

He raised up on his hind legs, towering over her by nearly three feet. His hot breath huffed in her face.

The instinct to turn tail and run buzzed through her like a jolt of electricity but she remained still. Watching his face, she raised a hand and stroked the thick fur coating his stomach. “Tarik, please come back to me.”

She could feel his skin rippling under her hand, even through the thick fur. A moment later, he was a man again. A naked, shivering man. A man with sad puppy eyes.

“You need to leave here,” he whispered. “You need to leave now. They know your name.”

“Who’s
they
?”

“Omega.” His expression was an odd mix of emotions, too many to read clearly.

“This, your problem, has something to do with your work? They know what? That you’re changing into a bear?”

“Yes, they know. They did it to me.” He lifted her palm to his mouth and kissed it. “I can’t tell you more. I don’t know any more. Besides it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re safe. You need to go home, get away from here.”

“That’s not going to happen as long as the strike is still going on. The flights out of Anchorage have all been cancelled.”

“Where’s your truck?” He was starting to shiver harder. Although it was warm by Alaska’s standards, somewhere in the upper 50’s, it was still pretty chilly to be running around in one’s birthday suit.

“You’re cold. I can get something for you to wear in my hotel room.”

His fingers wrapped around her wrist as tight and unyielding as steel bands. He pulled her flush against him. She had more than a suspicion he hadn’t done that to block the chilly northerly wind. “No. You shouldn’t go back in there.”

She tipped her head up to look him in the eye. It wasn’t easy, but she managed to speak, “All of my stuff’s in there, including the keys to my rental.”

He grunted but released her. A bummer! “Fine. But I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t think Joe’s in any condition to get in our way. He looked pretty bad off. I think he’s still alive, but barely.”

Tarik’s expression darkened. “Yeah.” After a moment, he nodded. “Okay. Let’s go. But you must be careful.”

“I’ll go in through the main entrance and let you into the building through the side door. My room is only a few feet from the door. Hopefully no one’ll see you.” Her face warmed. “Not that you don’t look absolutely fabu—”

For the first time in too long, his lips curled into that naughty smile. “No need to explain. And speaking of looks,  you…you look damn good yourself. So good that I want to…” He took a step back. “No, I shouldn’t.”

A little quiver raced through her body. “Shouldn’t what?”

He gripped the back of her head with one hand, tangling his fingers in the hair at her nape. With a sharp yank, he dragged her against him. “This.” He slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her to boneless-ness.

She literally drooped against him, relying on his other arm to support her as she kissed him back. Their tongues stroked and mated. Their breaths mixed. She moaned. He growled. She wished they were back at the cabin, in front of the fireplace, naked. At least he was naked. That was a mighty fine start.

He broke the kiss much too soon. “Let’s go, before Omega sends someone else. I’m sure they know something’s happened to Joe by now.” He held her until she had her feet back under herself and her knees had regained their strength.

“Yeah.” Her head kind of floaty and light, her feet skipping along the surface of the asphalt parking lot, she walked back into the hotel. It wasn’t easy, considering she was still in space-mode from that amazing kiss, but she tried to pay attention to who was nearby as she went back to her room. The door was still slightly ajar, thankfully, since she hadn’t had the chance to grab her keycard before being thrown over Joe’s shoulders and hauled outside like a sack of trash.

It didn’t look like anyone else had been in the room. Everything was where she’d left it. She dashed out to the corridor, and after listening for a moment to make sure no one would be coming down the hallway in the next few seconds, opened the door leading to the parking lot to let Tarik inside.

She pointed at room 113 and he nodded, preceding her. She handed him a blanket—giving the guy something to cover up his very scrumptious body was becoming a tradition. He smiled a thanks and wrapped it toga style around his form.

He said nothing while she ran around, throwing her clothes, shoes and cosmetics into her luggage. She left the keycard on the table next to the door when they left. Tarik, being one hundred percent gentleman, carried her heavy suitcases to the door.

When they stepped outside, they both halted mid-stride. The big white van was gone. Joe was gone too.

“How?” she asked.

“Where’d you park?”

“Around back.”

“Wait here for a few seconds. I’ll make some kind of noise if someone’s waiting to ambush us.” Still carting her luggage, Tarik jogged to the end of the building and peered around the corner. Evidently he didn’t see anything because he dashed around the corner and out of her line of sight. Fearful she was being watched or followed, she looked back over her shoulder. No one was there. Her nerves jumpy, she broke into a full run after Tarik. As she rounded the corner, she saw he had already put her suitcases in the backseat and was sitting behind the steering wheel. His uncovered arm jutted from the open driver’s-side window. She handed him the keys then ran around the rear of the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.

While buckling her seatbelt, she turned to him. “Do you think Joe’s still alive?”

“Don’t know. Don’t want to know.” He shifted the vehicle into reverse and punched the gas, backing out of the parking spot, then jammed it into first and popped the clutch, setting the truck lurching forward, wheels squealing.

Hands on the dashboard, arms locked, she looked over her shoulder several times. Would a big white van pull out of some hidden parking spot somewhere?

Didn’t happen.

“Whose name is the cabin rented under?” Tarik asked as he pulled the truck out onto the two-lane road that headed north, out of Anchorage.

“Katie’s. Why?”

“Good. We’ll head back there. For now. Until I can figure out what our next move will be. It’s not likely they’ll find us, as long as we keep the truck hidden—”

“Uh. I’m no pro at this running from bad guys stuff, but I think that might be a bad move. They tried to kidnap me. So they know we were together.
Reallllly
together, if you get my drift.”

“Good point. Man, my mind is not working tonight. Think, think, think. We need somewhere safe. And some supplies. I think it might be worth it to swing by there and grab a few things. If we’re careful. They’re probably assuming that would be the last place we’d go now.”

“I hope you’re right.” A part of her put up a silent cheer at the thought of going back to the isolated cabin with Tarik. The other part, the one that was heartbreak-phobic didn’t care for the idea. Yes, she supposed that part was the one she should be listening to.

But it was so darn difficult! There were so many things going on there—men trying to kidnap her, a severe case of
like
melting her brain…how was she ever going to make an intelligent decision with those kinds of pressures piling on her shoulders? Sloping and weak, they lacked the required weight-bearing capacity. Normally they buckled under stresses a whole lot lighter than this.

The
like
thing was particularly weighty. Despite Tarik’s bizarre problem, or maybe because of it, she genuinely liked him. He was different from any man she’d ever met before. He was complicated. Intriguing. The kind of guy who had a lot going on under the surface. She had a feeling it would take her a long time to figure him out. A part of her wanted to take up that challenge, to discover all his secrets. His wants. His fears.

She spent the entire trip out to the cabin telling herself why that was such a bad idea even considering starting a relationship with Tarik. There was no way she’d ever live out in the boonies. If it took longer than ten minutes to reach the nearest mall, it was too rural.

Not to mention the cold!

Living in Michigan, she’d seen her share of snow. There were some years when the state didn’t dig its way out of the dreaded white stuff until the end of April. Spring was cold and soggy at best. Fall was a mixed bag of hot, humid weather and frigid cold. Her energy levels dipped in the winter when daylight was brief.

She needed sunlight. Living in a place where three months of the year it was dark was out of the question. No way.

Which made the possibility of a long-term thing with Tarik all but impossible. He lived in Alaska. He worked in Alaska. And she assumed there was no way he’d leave Alaska.