Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) (2 page)

“You work for a prick for this long, and he doesn’t even know your name. Guess that’s how you know he’s actually a prick.”

“Heading out the door right now
,” she sent back.
“Takes about fifteen minutes to get there.”

He never responded. Of course he didn’t, because he never did. She’d get a command, she’d respond, and that was it. And the funny part? She never
did
anything. There wasn’t a reason in the world she needed to get to the building early. She was going to sit there, like a toad on a log, alternating between staring at her computer and her phone, and counting the minutes. Around midnight, she’d take lunch, which she spent pretending she was going to exercise at the staff gym, but would instead spend staring out a window at the stars.

Absentmindedly, she scratched the birthmark that lay right about where shoulder and chest mixed. When she wore a sufficiently low-cut shirt, just the edge of it was visible. It was doing this lately – itching from time to time – which worried Claire somewhat, since it never had before. Or at least, she didn’t remember it. But as usual, she just shrugged it off and went back to thinking about, well, nothing.

The drive out to the building was long, winding, and mostly along long-deserted semi-rural streets. Out in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, she had absolutely nothing except her job, and a couple of friends she ate chicken wings and played Pub Quiz with every Thursday. Her parents were on the other side of the state, along with all her friends, and the two boyfriends she’d ever had.

As she clicked her blinker to signal a left turn, her headlights pierced the veil of thick blackness in front of her. Above, through the open moon roof on her CRV, she could see a billion stars, all placidly twinkling in the distance. If she had it all to do over again, Claire thought she maybe would go into astronomy instead.

But, she didn’t. The time for regrets – whatever they were about – was a luxury Claire didn’t have. There was too much nothing to do, too much idle sitting and wondering.

As she turned into the mostly-empty employee parking lot that stretched for what seemed like eternity, and checked in with Simon at the front door, Claire started to think about other things. Her mind wandered a lot, with so little to captivate it. She wondered what Simon’s life was like, she wondered what Eckert’s was like outside of work, or if he even had one. In a lot of ways, the rotund, crotchety old scientist brought back memories of professors who went through three marriages before they finally admitted to themselves that the only thing in the world they loved was work.

She didn’t want to be that person. She wanted other things – love, a family, and... for the damn birthmark to quit tingling.

Down the main hall, Claire plodded along with her feet clicking on the mirror-finish gray tile. So sterile, so clean and unassuming.

There it was again.

Sterile
.

She passed the elevator leading down to the underground labs – B3 for one – and as she did, the place on the front of her left shoulder thrummed with heat. For a second, she thought she was going crazy, and pulled down the collar of her shirt. “No way,” she said, slightly breathless.

It looked like, impossibly, the dark purple discoloration was... changing colors? Shimmering? “I gotta stop drinking before I come in here,” Claire said to disarm her fear. “When you start to see birthmarks changing color, it’s time to take a long, hard look at some of your life choices.”

With a sigh, and a decision to stop paying attention to her weird birthmark, even though it had started making her feel strange in places she hadn’t felt stirs since the last time she watched a Matthew McConaughey movie. That, in turn, made her giggle nervously.

“Either quit drinking, or get a boyfriend. Either one would solve this problem, I think,” she smiled, buzzing herself into the elevator that would take her up to level forty-two, where her office – of course, spotlessly clean, hopelessly sterile – waited for her to warm a chair and play Sudoku and waste her life copying bullshit off clipboards.

The only thing less likely than Claire not having her nightly Malbec was Claire finding someone. It wasn’t that she was an incurable sourpuss or anything like that. It was just the time, the effort, and mostly the energy.

“What I need,” she said to her empty office, “is some big, rugged, bear to just fall into my lap.” She took a breath, not entirely sure why she said ‘bear’, and exhaled slowly. “Yeah, right. Well, either way, a girl can always dream. No harm in that, huh?”

With one click of a button, her three-monitor array hummed to life, and with a series of six very practiced clicks on her mouse, she opened Netflix, opened her email account, and resumed her half-finished Sudoku from the night before.

“Yeah,” she said again. “A girl sure can dream.”

––––––––

“Y
ou have no idea how much I needed this,” Claire said, groaning as she finished her first beer of the night. “I’m so glad Eckert let me have the night off.”

The waiter interrupted her reverie – a slight guy with a mop of red hair, a bunch of freckles and a nametag that said “Shirley” on it. She eyed him askance when he came up to the table, and immediately he picked up on her confusion.

“Hazing,” he said. “I worked in the back for a few months, just got moved to the front of the house. So now I have to wear a nametag with a girl’s name on it for a week.”

“That’s pretty boring, as far as initiations go,” Andy, the single one of Claire’s non-GlasCorp acquaintances, said over the din of AC/DC and the clatter of plates, mugs and chicken bones. They’d met at a conference three years before, and happened to end up in the same town after graduating through some stroke of luck. “Although I guess it’d be sorta weird if you had to get jumped in to be a waiter.”

“Shirley” laughed. “Blood in, blood out,” he said, pushing out his lips in a snarl and shaking his ginger curls with laughter. “I’m actually Nick, but... yeah, Shirley for now. What can I get ya?”

“How long until quiz starts?” Alyssa, her lone coworker friend – this one a tall blonde with a close-cropped pixie cut that featured, this week, the colors pink, blue and orange, asked. “We need to know how fast he’s gotta drink so he can be warmed up.”

“Oh, should get kicking here in about twenty minutes. Our normal announcer is sick, or drunk, or God knows what, so that’s why we’re running behind.”

Nachos, beer, and an irresponsible number of chicken wings ordered, the three settled in for a few hours of pleasant bullshitting and welcome relaxation.

And then Andy said
the words
.

“You gotta find somebody, Claire.”

He had four beers in him by that point, so it wasn’t really his fault. And anyway, it was an innocuous enough thing to say, but if Claire knew exactly what “hackles” were, any mention of her ‘needing’ a mate was sure to get them up, whatever they were.

She stared at him for a moment, and then simply asked, “Why?”

Andy shrugged. “You just seem, I dunno,” he paused, both to consider his words for a moment and also to have another swig. His breath was starting to take on a little bit of a twinge. “Kinda pent up? I guess that’s the right word I’m looking for.”

Pursing her lips, Claire regarded him at length before deciding he didn’t actually mean anything by it, and probably thought he was actually trying to help. That’s the sort of guy Andy was – lovably clueless, never really malicious even when it seemed like it. She went with a scoff of laughter instead of an angry glare.

“Well then, what would you have me do? Whip up some magical creature who is fine with someone who they’ll never be in the same bed with since she works graveyards at a building with so many security guards you can’t even smuggle in a pizza?”

Andy was nodding, which meant he was thinking about his response. He always nodded when he thought, and when he drank, the nodding lasted a lot longer. “What’s the other building?” he finally asked.

“Area-51? Los Alamos?” Alyssa added, clearly getting a little bored of the conversation as she picked at another piece of deliciously fried chicken carcass. “Roswell?”

“Roswell’s a town,” Andy said, letting a vaguely smug grin spread across his face. “And those other two are bases, not buildings.”

“Right, anyway,” Claire urged him back on topic. “Where am I supposed to find a man? Listen, it’s not like I don’t
want
one, it’s that I have no clue in the world where to get one.”

“Ginger curls keeps looking at you,” Andy pronounced, a little louder than he probably meant to speak. “Seems like a nice guy.”

A Nice Guy. Yeah, just what I need. Someone to hang out and play Monopoly with on the weekends.
She laughed, but no one else knew why. “I’m not so sure about that. I’m thinking I need someone maybe with a little more... I dunno, edge?”

Alyssa snorted at that, hitting the end of her nose with a chicken wing, which left a shameful red mark on the tip. Claire elected not to respond, possibly for a tiny taste of revenge at being the butt of a joke.

“What’s so funny?”

“Edge?” Alyssa asked, still chortling slightly. “You, Claire Redmon, want an edgy, dangerous, macho, alpha male type? What the hell would you do with him?”

Claire let her mind get away from the table, from the restaurant, from this almost-nothing town in Pennsylvania for just a second, and slip back to college. “Oh,” she said, with a wistful tone of nostalgia marking her voice. “Maybe let him tie me up, whip me a little. I like it when they twist the wrist bonds enough to hurt some, and then they choke me right as I—actually you know what? I’m probably boring you.”

Andy, however, was sitting up, noticeably closer to the edge of the table, and Nick – “Ginger Curls” – seemed to be extremely absorbed in picking up the half-empty glasses from the next table over. Turning her blue-almost-violet eyes in the waiter’s direction, Claire let her thoughts get away for another second. “You know, though, he might be into that after all. It’s always the quiet ones that’re the most willing to tie you down and spank you hard enough to get your ass all tingly and red.”

Poor Nick’s entire head had suddenly turned as red as the tips of his ears, and Andy seemed like he was about to jump
on
the table, if she kept going. His overly dramatic excitement meant that Claire was
definitely
going to keep going. That little dab of sauce on the end of Alyssa’s nose was pretty good revenge, but nothing – but nothing – beat unfortunate, ill-timed boners for sweet revenge.

“Maybe I will ask him out. What do you think, Aly? Do you think he’s the sort to get excited about a tight corset, a lot of pinching? Maybe some handcuffs?”

Nick had officially stopped bothering to shuffle glasses around, and was just staring, open-mouthed at Claire as she spoke. Andy had begun to sweat – not enough to be gross, just enough to be funny.

No hard-ons yet,
she thought, shooting a quick glance at the waiter’s trousers.

“I dunno,” Alyssa was playing along by now, loving the torment. “Maybe he’d like those, oh what do you call them? Those things,” she started pointing to her nipples, pretending like she couldn’t remember. Absentmindedly, she brushed at her chest. “Oh! Nipple clamps. You know, the little alligator things where they clamp them on and—”

“Uh... buh, do you guys need anything?” Nick finally
had
to come the rest of the way to the table. He was blushing so furiously that he was just about as red as Rudolf’s the reindeer’s nose. Or, Claire thought,
Uncle
Rudolph’s nose, for that matter. “I, uh, more appe-drinks?”

Claire gave him a quick check. He was bending forward at the waist to make his pants flare out a little.
Mission accomplished
. “Appe-drinks? Is that like a martini made out of buffalo sauce?”

He was shaking his head.

Andy, for his part, stood up very quickly, knocking a half-full beer mug, and two cups of ice onto the table. The liquid pooled, and then dumped straight on his lap.

Mission two, accomplished. I even made one of them wet his pants. Bonus!

“Uh,” Andy sputtered. “I... napkin?”

Nick stuck a hand out, offering a handful of straws to his partner in being dumbfounded. “I... what?”

“You said appe-drinks,” Claire started, before Alyssa stopped her.

“Ten more wings. And, uh, leave your phone number so she can call you later.”

Shaking his head, the mortified waiter did as he was told, and even had a little bit of a grin when he departed to put in the chicken order.

“What the hell was that?” Claire asked, as soon as the two girls were alone.

“Honey, anyone who can put up with that much abuse and then just laugh it off? You gotta at least give a guy like that a chance.”

Claire sat back, pushing the front legs of her chair off the ground. “He is kinda cute, too, huh?”

Alyssa nodded. “And you really don’t ever know. He
may
be into all that kinky shit you were going on and on about.”

It was Claire’s turn to snort.

As the night wound on and finally down, the only thing on Claire’s mind was how much she needed the break.

And, how much she hoped Nick really
did
turn out to be at least a little bit crazy.

*

W
hen Claire rolled out of bed about half past ten the next morning, her whole body tingled with a strange sensation that reminded her of a static shock.

“This... isn’t good,” she said to Cleo, who had somehow been courteous enough to not start barking until Claire was out of bed. “Am I going to have a seizure or something?”

It took until she had brushed her teeth, checked her email, and turned on the coffee pot before she realized that no, she was not having a seizure – that buzzing feeling? Energy. She hadn’t been
rested
in so long she had completely forgotten what it felt like to wake up after a half decent night of sleep.