Bloodrunner Bear (Harper's Mountains Book 2) (15 page)

“I need to get up there and change those lightbulbs,” Aaron said, squinting down the street from Dante’s to her lit-up Alana’s Coffee & Sweets sign. Half the letters were out, and the C was flickering on its last legs. Right now it read,
Alan’s Cof & Swet
. Appealing.

“How are you going to reach it?” Alana asked, setting down the empty wine glass. The table had been cleared half an hour ago, but she and Aaron had just been enjoying the night. It was cold out on the front patio, but the manager had turned on the giant heater right behind her so she was plenty comfortable.

Aaron’s gaze turned thoughtful. “I bet Chief would let me use one of the big ladders.

She swatted his arm. “Quit looking at it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s an ugly sign. That’s my baby.”

“It’s a hideous baby.”

“Neat freak,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know, I had all these plans for the café.”

“Oh yeah? Paint me a picture.”

“Imagine this,” she said in a theatrical voice. “Out front, a handcrafted wooden sign stained a rich walnut color. New windows without BB gun holes that have been patched with putty.”

Aaron chuckled and nodded. “I like it already. What else?”

“I wanted wood floors. Not the new ones, but the refurbished old, scuffed-up kind. I wanted chandeliers, proper wainscoting, and designer paint. Better tables, nicer mugs, and eventually I wanted to upgrade my oven to a double so I could get my baking done faster. And I always wanted to get Wi-Fi set up so people could work in there.”

“It sounds awesome. What’s stopping you?”

“Money. You’ve been in there. The place isn’t exactly hopping. Even during the busiest months, I barely cover the cost of running the place and my bills. I drained my savings to start up the business, and there just isn’t money left over for the big stuff.”

Aaron frowned, and then his troubled gaze was back on her sign again. Ready to move away from her failures with the café, she asked carefully, “Do you want to see a picture of me as a baby?”

As if Aaron could tell how big a deal this was to her, he pulled her legs onto his lap under the table and gave her one of her favorite smiles. The one where his lips curved up higher on one side. “Yeah. I really do.”

Nervously, she flipped through the pictures on her phone to one Dad had sent her and Lissa a couple months ago when he was going through old boxes of pictures. The caption read,
my beautiful baby girls
.

Sometimes she forgot how bad her cleft lip and palate had been, so when the picture had come through in the message, she’d sat there shocked for several minutes before she was able to respond back to him.

There it was. Alana zoomed in to crop out the crib she and Lissa had been lying in. Lissa was looking up with her big, beautiful eyes, lips formed in a sweet coo, and Alana had a big grin on her face as if Dad was playing peek-a-boo over the side of the crib.

Her smile was wrecked, her lip split all the way up through the left side of her nose, and part of her palate was missing.

With a steadying breath, Alana handed Aaron the phone over the small table. He stroked her calf gently as he pulled the phone to him. She didn’t want to see his face when he saw her deformity for the first time, but for some reason, she couldn’t look away.

The smile dipped from his lips for just an instant but didn’t leave his eyes. He zoomed in farther, probably on her, and murmured, “Alana, you have the same smile. You’re so fucking cute.”

“Don’t say that. It took a lot of money to make my smile different.”

When Aaron poked the screen a few times, Alana frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Sending this to myself. I’ll get my mom to send me some baby pics of me so I can give them to you.”

“Y-you want to keep that?”

“Hell yeah, babe.” He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind with that question. “Nothing about your journey here turns me off. I love your lips, scar and all. Let me ask you something.” He leaned back in the chair and pushed her phone away. “Do you think you would be the woman you are today if you weren’t born with the cleft lip and palate?”

Well, that shocked her into silence. She hadn’t ever thought about that before. Would she be this self-assured, or proud of herself for getting through what she had? Would she know she was this resilient if she hadn’t been teased and overcome it? “No, I don’t think I would be who I am.”

Aaron angled his face and his smile was back, genuine and proud. “Well, I
love
the woman you are. I’m sorry for what it must have cost you when you were a kid, but I don’t think we would be here now if you hadn’t pushed through it. That scar on your lip means I got a shot to keep you. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

Alana blew out a shaking breath and blinked back the moisture that was rimming her eyes. She would not ruin this beautiful moment with mascara streaks and relieved sobbing. No one in her life had been able to help her love her scar, but Aaron just had with a few sentences.

He looked so handsome here in the soft strands of outdoor lights that wrapped the pergola above them. His hair was pushed back on top, his eyes so blue and honest, his smile lines bracketing his sensual lips. He hadn’t shaved this morning or yesterday, and the gold stubble on his chiseled jaw made her fingertips itch to touch it. He wore a charcoal gray and black striped sweater with a V in the neck that gave her a peek at the defined line between his pecs and a hint of the tattoo that curved along his collarbone. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, exposing more ink, and his long legs were clad in dark jeans. He’d admitted when he picked her up tonight he had dressed up for her, and she loved that. This right here felt like the most important date of her life, and now his words had erupted her stomach with a fluttering sensation.

Alana pulled Aaron’s paperclip from deep within her pocket and spun it slowly in her fingertips. “I know what this means,” she whispered. “Harper told me about you giving a paperclip to your dad when you first met him, and about how he kept it. She told me you kept this one all this time.” She swallowed hard. “And then you gave it to me.”

Aaron’s hand on her legs had gone still under the table as she’d spoken, and he looked uncertain, but he needn’t be.

“You have this amazing ability to pick your people at first sight,” she said thickly. “You did it with your dad, and then you did it with me. And I just wanted to say I love you back.” That last part tumbled from her lips quickly so she wouldn’t change her mind and chicken out.

Aaron froze, and his blue eyes morphed to that unsettling muddy gold color that seemed to glow unnaturally. There he was—Bear. He should be here listening to her declaration too.

“I love both of you,” she said on a breath.

Slowly, Aaron leaned forward and plucked the paperclip from her fingertips. He settled his hands under the table in his lap where she couldn’t see and stared at the trinket with such a thoughtful look in his blazing eyes.

Aaron adjusted his weight and pulled something out of his own pocket. It was a small tube of something. Hesitating only a moment, he handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked, fingering the tiny treasure that had been warmed in his pocket.

“That’s the burn cream you gave me the first time I met you.”

Her face went slack with realization, and she dragged her gaze back to the medicine in her palm. Her voice quaked when she asked, “You kept it?”

Aaron nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was fidgeting with the paperclip. And when he finally gave her his bright-eyed gaze, his face was full of some emotion she didn’t understand. He lowered her legs out of his lap and onto the ground, and for a moment, Alana was scared she’d angered him. She was scared he was pushing her away again.

But instead, Aaron pulled her chair closer, leaned forward, kissed her lips, and then pulled away with a gentle smacking sound. Something cold touched her fingertip, and she looked down. It was the paperclip, smoothed out and re-shaped to wrap around and around in a perfect circle. Aaron had slid it up to the first knuckle on her ring finger.

“Oh, my gosh,” she whispered.

“Alana, I don’t have the ring you deserve right now, but I’ll get it. You told me earlier that when I was ready, I would ask you to marry me, and it was so damn hard not to drop to my knee right then and there. I know what I want. I knew what I wanted the second I saw you, and with every moment I spend with you, my body…my heart…my soul tethers to you more tightly. You were right about the meaning behind this paperclip. I love you
so much
.” Aaron slid off the edge of his chair and lowered to one knee.

Alana’s shoulders shook with emotion as she held her hand over her mouth to keep her sobbing inside.

“Alana Warren, you are the most beautiful, tender-hearted, funny, patient, forgiving, strongest woman I’ve ever met. And I’d be honored…
honored
…if you would be my wife. Will you marry me?”

Her emphatic nod dislodged the moisture in her eyes so that tears streamed down her face as she croaked out her answer, “Yes.”

Aaron’s smile was instant, relieved. He pushed the paperclip ring onto her finger, then pulled her to him and hugged her tight as though he never wanted to let go.

A few couples sitting at tables around them began clapping and whistling. Alana laughed and held him. Feeling overwhelmed with emotion, she stared up at the strands of lights, mirroring the stars in the dark sky above. She’d forgotten they weren’t alone here because Aaron had that uncanny ability to make her feel like they were the only ones in the world.

Or perhaps it was more.

Perhaps it was that Aaron made her feel like the only one in
his
world.

Alana clenched her left hand to feel the texture of his paperclip on her finger. She’d waited her whole life for Aaron, waited her whole life for this moment, and he’d gone and made it so beautiful.

No matter what came now, they would face life together. She wasn’t alone anymore.

Now and always, she would remember this as the night when her life truly began.

Alana sipped her glass of red wine and settled it back onto the uneven floorboards of 1010. She wrapped the blanket Aaron had draped around her shoulders tightly around herself and stretched her leg out across the open doorframe she leaned against. This had become her favorite part of the evenings when Aaron wasn’t on shift at the firehouse.

Over the past two weeks, November had drifted into December, and the second snow of the season was here. It wasn’t common to have the frosty stuff on the ground in these parts, but it sure painted a pretty picture.

She’d always hated the snow and ice down in Bryson City where life would grind to a halt, but up here in Harper’s Mountains, she’d never seen the woods so beautiful.

The rhythmic
chop, chop
of Aaron’s ax cutting through firewood on the chopping block relaxed her. She was bundled up to her chin, but Aaron was out in front of the cabin working in nothing more than a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, as if the cold weather didn’t bother him at all. Would she be immune to cold someday when she was Turned into a bear?

Alana rested her cheek against the doorframe as she watched him shove off a split log and settle another one on the block. His cheeks were red from the chill or the exertion, she didn’t know, but when he cast her a glance, as he so often did on nights when they were just content to be like this, his eyes were steady and blue, and Bear was nowhere near the surface.

Bear had been easier for Aaron to manage lately. She spun the paperclip ring around and around her finger out of habit. Something about Aaron’s proposal had made his animal more manageable. He still wouldn’t risk Changing around her and only did it when she was working at the coffee shop, but someday they would get there. Someday he would completely trust himself around her.

Outside the golden halo of porch light, a giant snowy owl and a black raven flew by low to the ground. Their powerful beating wings kicked up the snow in little tornadoes as they passed.

Aaron looked up at them, nodded his chin in greeting, and Alana waved. The boys were probably in for the night since it was late and the storm was supposed to get worse.

Alana would’ve loved a snow day inside with her mate, but he was on shift tomorrow first thing. Aaron loved his job and was passionate about it, but he’d recently started telling her how much the hard stuff affected him, affected Bear. Now she prayed every time he left their bed for a shift at the firehouse with his gear bag in hand that today he wouldn’t lose anyone. That he and the fire crew would get to whatever crisis fast enough to help.

She could always tell the shifts that had been hard because he would come into her coffee shop the morning after work with ghosts in his eyes. He wouldn’t talk, and she didn’t need him to. He would take her back to the office and just hold her for a while until the soft snarl in his chest faded to nothing.

At least he wasn’t shouldering this alone anymore. At least she could offer some reprieve.

So much had happened in the last two weeks. Aaron had met Lissa and Dad, and Alana had video-chatted twice with Aaron’s parents, Cody and Rory, and even his two younger sisters who still lived in Breckenridge with the Breck Crew. Rory had cried a lot when Alana showed them the paperclip ring. She wasn’t in a rush to replace it with a big sparkly one. This one meant so much to her.

She’d kept the lease on her coffee shop, but not on her apartment. She’d made the repairs from Aric’s attack and moved her stuff up to 1010. Why? Because nights didn’t feel right if she wasn’t with Aaron. Even when he was on a shift and couldn’t sleep beside her, 1010 still felt strangely like home. Maybe it was her growing friendship with Harper and the boys, or maybe it was the call of these mountains that had etched themselves so thoroughly into her heart. Maybe it was the little black and white mouse that ducked in and out of view that kept her loneliness at bay. Or maybe Weston was right, and there was something magical about this place. She believed in that stuff now, fate, all of it. What else could explain making it to this moment, filled with infinite happiness, watching Aaron Keller, the boy she’d adored in her youth and loved today, chop wood for the fire that would keep her warm all night?

She’d thought moments like these hadn’t been meant for someone like her, but she’d been wrong. She’d just had to stop looking to find it.

Aaron gathered split logs into his arms and strode up the stairs, dusted the snow off on the welcome mat before he stepped over her. She smiled up at him, then at the boot prints in the snow that led directly to her. The clatter of the logs being dumped next to the fireplace in the bedroom sounded, so she drank down the last couple sips of her wine. She knew what was coming next.

Aaron came back to her, hesitated over her with a tender expression on his face, then dipped and picked her up like she weighed nothing. He nudged the front door closed with his boot, carried her into the bedroom, and then settled her onto the bed, blanket and all.

Propping the pillow under her cheek, she watched as he made the fire in the small stone hearth. And when it was crackling and glowing and the first wave of warmth washed over her skin, she asked the same thing she did every day like this. “Are you happy?”

“You already know the answer to that,” he murmured in that deep timbre of his.

“I like to hear you say it.”

Aaron locked his arms on either side of her shoulders on the bed, trapped her in his gaze. “I’ve never been so happy.” The mattress creaked as he leaned down and kissed the answering grin from her lips.

Alana slid her hands down his stomach and hooked her fingers in the waist of his jeans. His skin was warm under her touch, but it wasn’t enough. Slowly, she pulled his shirt over his head, let it slip from her fingers onto the floor, then admired his body as it tensed with the soft breaths he took. His hair was mussed from taking off his shirt, so she ran her fingers through it to mess it up more. She loved when he looked disheveled.

Aaron grabbed her wrist, kissed it, then slid his palm up her hand and linked their fingers. He kissed her knuckles gently and asked, “How did I get so lucky?”

She didn’t know the answer, but she knew how he felt. As she stared at their linked hands, his skin shades paler than hers, she felt like the lucky one, too. She’d never known what to expect in the man she would finally settle down with, but Aaron had turned out to be her perfect match.

He released her and pulled the blanket off, then her shirt and pajama pants hit the ground, too. He was gentle and took his time, kissing her skin that he had exposed while she melted slowly into a puddle of wanting. His teeth grazed her neck where the bite mark from Aric had healed to faint scars. Writhing against him, she let off a needy sound and rolled her hips up at him seductively.
Take me.

Aaron’s lips collided with hers, and a snarl rattled up his throat as he ground his hips against hers. He worked his biting kisses down her throat and then drew her nipple into his mouth. He sucked hard enough until she could feel his teeth, so she hissed and grabbed his hair. That only seemed to spur him on, though, because his fingers dug deeply into her hip.

Since he’d almost bitten her, Aaron had bedded her gently, but this was different. This was him letting her glimpse his animal side. This was rutting dominance and passion and uncontrollable desire, and she loved every fucking second of it. The rip of his zipper rivaled the growl that rattled his chest, and Alana spread her legs wider, inviting him closer.

She thought he would take her deep and hard, but he cupped her sex and slid his finger into her instead. “I like how wet you always get for me,” he murmured, and when she looked up again, his eyes were blazing a bright glittering gold.

“Bear,” she whispered.

Another snarl, louder this time, and Aaron pulled his hand away and pushed his long, thick shaft into her.

Arching back helplessly, clutching the sheets in her clenched fists, Alana cried out at the pang of ecstasy that pumped through her body just with that one thrust. And then he was in it if the feral sound in his throat was anything to go by, completely lost to the grinding of their bodies. She’d never witnessed him wild like this. Never felt him rough like this, but it meant he was letting her really see him. Really letting her in.

He leaned down, clamped his teeth on her neck, and then released her.
Yes, yes, yes!
The grin he flashed her when he pulled away was nothing shy of wicked, the tease.

He slammed into her, harder now, his stomach flexing every time he filled her. His arm locked behind her back, he pushed in deeper, hit her clit perfectly at the peak of every roll of his hips.

“Fuck, Aaron, yes! Harder!”

Aaron gritted his teeth and pulled out of her, spun her on the bed so fast it stole her breath.
Never give me your back
. Oh, she was about to get herself bitten by her mate, but for the life of her, she couldn’t conjure a single, solitary fuck. He grabbed her ass and pulled her backward. He shoved his palm against the small of her back, making her arch for him, and then he gripped her hair as he pushed his swollen cock inside her. Alana gasped out a helpless sound as he pulled back and pounded into her again. Her arms shook with how good her body felt right now. With the force of him bucking, she fell forward onto her elbows, spread her knees wider, and groaned as he pushed deeper. His arm wrapped around her middle, gripping her breast as he picked up his pace, harder and faster. Pressure, pressure, so much pressure. It was building too fast, too blindingly hot in her middle as he filled her over and over again. As the first throbbing sensation of her orgasm exploded through her, Aaron’s chest rested onto her back. Clamping his teeth onto her shoulder blade, Aaron froze, his dick swelling and pulsing inside of her as jets of hot seed flooded into her.

Aaron drew out and pushed in again, every muscle in his body tense against her. Again and again, he throbbed inside of her until she rocked with him numbly, completely high on release.

Her mate left her skin unbroken, then rested his forehead on her back as he exhaled a long, shaking breath. His body twitched against her once more before he pulled her over with him and hugged her back to his chest. His kisses gentled, right over the place he’d thought about biting her. And oh, she knew he’d considered it. He’d tempted himself with it, but he’d been strong enough to resist.

She turned in his arms, completely exhausted and sated, and pressed against him. Her breasts were so soft in contrast with his rock-hard body. And when she looked up at him, his eyes were still as gold as fire, but he wore a slight smile.

She could almost feel his pride—could almost feel the relief wafting from his skin.

“Good Bear,” she whispered.

Aaron turned slightly, and the glow of the fire behind him reflected off a mark she’d never noticed before. There was a dark patch in the shape of a strawberry on his neck. She’d thought she had memorized everything about his body, but it was on the side Aric had ripped up when the Bloodrunners had killed the Queen of the Asheville Coven. Naturally, because it looked painful and made her hate the vampires, Alana’s gaze just skipped right over the scarring there so she’d missed this little treasure.

With a frown, she sat up and traced the outer edge of the mark. “What is that?”

Aaron propped his cheek on his arm and rolled his eyes closed as though her petting felt good. “It’s a birthmark. All the men in my family have them.” He grew quiet for a while, just content to let her trace the darker skin, but finally he murmured, “That was how my dad knew I was his the first time he saw me.”

“Do you remember the first time you met him?”

His lips twitched into a pained line, then softened. “Yeah. I was five, and I know memories that old are supposed to fade, but I still remember it like it was a few minutes ago. It’s one of my brightest memories. I started Changing when I was one, and I was a brawler. Raised by just my mom, who was human at the time and had no clue my dad was a shifter. She didn’t even know they existed until I turned into a little bear cub. I didn’t have any control at all. I still remember how it was. I would fight the Change, and when I did, it would slow it down. I would just cry and cry as my bones broke one by one, and when I got my canines in, my mom had to protect herself from me. She had to put me in a cage when I had to Change.”

“Oh, my gosh, Aaron.”

He made a dismissive ticking sound, then opened his bright gold eyes. “She did the best she could. I hurt her really bad once. Clawed her down her entire forearm, and I remember watching her cry and bleed, but I was still on the attack. Bear was a monster from birth. Or maybe the human in me was too weak, I don’t know. My mom took me to Breckenridge to meet my dad and beg his help because I was getting too big, too out of control, and she hated caging me. It made me worse. Made me wild. Made me feel crazy for days afterward. I remember my dad turned white as a sheet when he saw my birthmark. Just…no blood in his face, eyes changing to a color just like mine. It was as if my bear recognized him. I didn’t know what it meant, but I felt…relief. I wasn’t alone anymore.”

“Did he work with you?”

“Yeah. He took me out in the woods and watched over me. It was the first time I could remember Changing outside of the cage, so I just went crazy. Running everywhere, sniffing everything. The woods were kind of like the biggest playground you can ever imagine. And he kept me out of trouble. When he brought me to my mom, I attacked her. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t control it, but my dad swatted me hard. Showed me it hurt when I used my claws on skin. Reminded me of who she was, and it changed a lot for me after that.”