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  “That’s right,” she sounded very self-satisfied.

  She meant well, and she was right about her knowledge of bears. My mother and father were highly respected experts on the subject of grizzly bears. No doubt she knew everything there was to know. But knowing about bears and having the emotions and feelings and drives of a bear weren’t the same thing. Regardless, it wasn’t a conversation worth having again.

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll remember,” I said instead, trying to placate her.

  “Good. We should be there in about a month.”

  “I’m not even sure I’ll still be here in a month.”

  My plan hadn’t changed. I still wanted to seduce Vy, to show him how I felt about him, to see if I could treat him so well he’d feel the same way about me. And I was willing to swallow my pride and park in front of his house night after night, waiting for him to listen. But I also knew that being rejected over and over again, being ignored, being shunned by a person I wanted to have under me, wanting me, respecting me…. I knew my emotions, my temper, my anger, would eventually break through no matter how often I meditated or how deeply I breathed. I would leave town, leave Vy, before I let that happen.

  Expression not repression sounded good, but in real life, expression was vicious and bloody and deadly. Repression was safe.

  “You’ll be there,” my mother said confidently. “Your man’s there, right? Or are you taking him with you?”

  “He’s not my man, Mom,” I said sadly.

  “Well, then,” she huffed, “go on and get him. We’ll only be able to stay a couple of days, and I want to make sure I meet the person you’ll be spending your life with.”

  She only listened to about 20 percent of what I said. And it was the 20 percent she wanted to hear, even if it meant rearranging the words and their order.

  “Call me when you’re about a day’s drive out, and I’ll tell you where I am,” I said because it was easier than arguing and also because I had a feeling I’d need my parents’ help if my agitation level continued to rise.

  “We will.” It was quiet, so I thought maybe we got disconnected, but then she spoke again. “And Robert?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your father and I don’t just know about bears. We know you, honey. We know you, and we’re proud of you.”

  Everything I was, everything I ever hoped to be, was because of them.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “We love you too.”

  Nine

  Vy

  IT WAS late afternoon when I tapped on the window and watched as Robert jolted in the driver’s seat. He had either nodded off, since he’d spent the night in front of my place and it wasn’t conducive to REM sleep, or he was lost in thought. Either way, I felt bad that I’d startled him. It was really good to see him, and he looked adorable all wide-eyed with his lips parted. I waved and watched the smile bloom slowly on his face.

  Making the international sign for him to roll down the window, I waited as it was slowly lowered.

  His eyes softened as he gazed at me.

  Taking a step back, steeling myself to do what was right, I forced a smile. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” he said gently.

  I tipped my head at the large coffee in his cup holder. “Needed a little pick-me-up?”

  “I did, yeah.”

  I shoved my hands down into my jeans to make sure I wouldn’t touch him. “I wanted to apologize.”

  His gaze searched mine, and as he sat there, all quiet strength, heat running off him, it was all I could do not to inhale him so his scent would fill my nostrils. It would be agony not to touch him, but I was stronger than my carnal need. I was the kuar, after all.

  I cleared my throat. “Just because I thought one thing doesn’t give me the right to treat you like I did.”

  As he got out of the car, I stepped back to give him room. When he took a step forward, I took one back.

  “Vy?”

  “I’m the leader of my ket,” I reminded him. “And as such, I should basically be the welcome wagon for all shifters in this town, coming through or staying, who are not part of my flock. I should have been a friend first, and I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  “Vy, there’s nothing to—”

  “I was an ass,” I interrupted him. “Just because we’re not gonna be what I thought doesn’t give me the right to ignore you when you’re sitting in my driveway. Friends don’t treat each other like that.”

  “I don’t want to be your—”

  “Lou and Carlo are having drinks and dinner out with a few friends tonight, and I’d love for you and my dickhead friend to have a do-over if you’d be up for that.”

  “I’d actually like to talk to you alone. Maybe we could have dinner––just us?”

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing to talk about. I was hurt and mad and everything else, and it was bullshit that just because of what I wanted I took it all out on you. I acted like a spoiled child and—there’s no excuse.”

  He moved forward, but again I backpedaled.

  “I can’t even touch you?”

  I grinned, raking my fingers through my hair. “You gotta give me a little more time, yeah? What I wanted and what I can have—I’m still working that out.”

  His breath caught. “Vy, can’t we just—”

  I stopped him again. “So, you wanna come?”

  He seemed lost.

  “Tonight? You wanna meet me and my friends tonight?”

  He was quiet a moment, apparently considering things. “I… sure. Yeah.”

  “Great,” I said, exhaling sharply, as I turned away from him and walked the few feet to the motorcycle. “So seven at Gold Digger, okay? It’s out on Route 10.”

  “I’ll be there at—What is that?”

  “This is a 2006 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R,” I explained proudly as I turned the engine over. “Nice, huh?”

  He looked confused. “Where’s your truck?”

  I shrugged. “I have to get my riding in before winter; it’s already getting really cold at night. Between the elevation and fall, I—”

  “A motorcycle?”

  I squinted at him. “Yeah. Why?”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “Only if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “Okay,” he said slowly. “But where’s your helmet?”

  “I don’t need a helmet,” I scoffed, leaning over, putting my right foot back on the rest.

  He stepped in front of me. “Yeah, you do. This isn’t a touring bike, Vy; it’s basically a modified racing bike.”

  I chuckled. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. You should get a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Ultra Classic or something like that.”

  “Well, when I make my first million, I’ll keep that in mind,” I teased him. “But it’s not the bike, it’s the rider, like I said, and my first name is safety.”

  “I wish that was true,” he said solemnly.

  I waggled my eyebrows at him before I rolled forward. “Look out—I don’t wanna get dust on you.”

  “Vy.”

  “I’ll see you tonight,” I said before I gunned the engine and flew away from the front of the Coffee Depot, owned by the Millers. I threw up gravel and a dust cloud of dirt as I ricocheted out into the street.

  A lot of horns blew at me before I hit the edge of town doing eighty. The wind on my face felt great, and I forgot for a second that I wasn’t flying. I heard a siren, and when I looked around, I saw Deputy Zach Westerman behind me. Gunning it, I left him behind me when the bike hit a hundred and fifty. I would hear about it from Lou, I was sure, but no one was allowed to give me any more crap. I was letting my mate go; I couldn’t be expected to give up anything else for a good long time.

  GOLD DIGGER was a schizophrenic club because it was one of those places with peanut shells on the floor, pool tables on the opposite side from the dance floor, but instead of country music blaring from the massive speakers mounted o
n every wall, there was pop, R&B, and even the occasional track of house music. It was loud, it was sweaty, and well drinks were only three dollars, with beer being a dollar. To say it was a rowdy, drunken meat market was a horrendous understatement.

  What I liked about the club was that there was no way in the world anyone could carry on any kind of conversation over the throbbing, pounding music. It drowned out everything. So even though I could get my fix and see Robert, I wouldn’t be tempted to talk to him. He wouldn’t have been able to hear me anyway. But when seven came and went followed by seven thirty and then eight, and there was still no Robert, I figured I’d been stood up. So even though we were done, at least I had extended the olive branch. There was closure and dignity in that.

  I wasn’t much of a dancer, so I was playing pool with some of the guys from Carlo’s company. Firemen were like candy for women, and men, so our table was continually bustling with visitors. Unfortunately there were also several men cruising me, which didn’t normally happen. I blamed Robert. My usual mask of frosty indifference had been thawed by the big man, and guys who didn’t, as a rule, notice me, suddenly were.

  Even worse than the hands that slid over my back, traced a bicep, and even groped my ass were the loud drunken assholes who kept bumping me. How was I supposed to line up a shot if I kept getting jostled?

  The tenth time it happened I’d had enough, and whirling around, found myself face to chest with a guy almost as tall as Robert. “What the fuck?” I snarled at him despite his larger size.

  “You take so long to take a fuckin’ shot, man,” he barked in reply. “It’s pool, yo. Not goddamn chess.”

  “Back the fuck up,” I ordered him.

  He smiled and then shoved me, or tried to. The fact that I didn’t move was as surprising as me twirling the cue and driving it down hard into the toe of his left cowboy boot.

  “You little fuck!”

  I didn’t give him another shot at me. Instead, I picked him up and flung him down over the top of the pool table. It was on at that point. There was shouting and yelling, I caught a fist in the eye and then one on my jaw even as I landed many on whoever got close. I felt hands all over me, pulling, shoving, and then I heard a glass shatter.

  “Vy!” Lou screamed.

  Shit.

  She was scared. I heard it in her voice.

  Hurled into an exposed brick wall, I was momentarily winded as the sharp material dug into my back through my Henley.

  “Get them both the fuck out of here!” one of the bouncers yelled.

  I was grabbed by two guys, and I twisted and fought even as I was carried out the back door and thrown out onto the gravel-and-dirt parking lot. I hit hard, my chest and knees taking the brunt of the tumble.

  “Get off him!”

  Sitting up, I spat out blood before Lou collapsed onto the ground beside me, hands on my face, Carlo beside her, his face stricken, like someone had hit him.

  “You’re bleeding,” she croaked, her breath faltering. “Jesus Christ, Vy!”

  Yanking free of her hold, pushing Carlo away from me, I drew my knees up and buried my face in my folded arms. “Go back inside,” I ground out miserably.

  “Vy, you—”

  “Go!” I yelled. I rolled to my feet and jogged away from them, around the side of the building to the front. I felt like an ass, but couldn’t do anything about it. I wanted to be alone. Thinking I could be out was a mistake.

  “Vy?”

  Of course. Now he showed up. Fucking perfect.

  “Vy!” he called sharply.

  Not stopping, I got to my bike and threw my leg over it, key in the ignition.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Robert said crossly, hand on my chin, holding tight, tipping my head up so he could see my face. “Oh God. You got hit again?”

  “The last time was by werewolves,” I snapped at him. “This was just regular guys. This hurts a lot less.”

  “Well, then, that makes it all better, doesn’t it?”

  I yanked free, my hair falling across my eyes, mad and hurt, suddenly chilled in the cold night air, my own sweat making me shiver now that I was outside the humid, cramped club.

  “Stop,” he ordered, stepping close so I could feel the heat that was all him. He put his hands on my face, tenderly lifting my gaze to his. “Little bird, who hit you?” he whispered.

  Though I should have been offended at the ridiculous endearment he insisted on using, the sweetness in his tone and pain in his eyes when he said it almost undid me. Desire punched me in the gut, his scent screamed safety and home and warmth, and I wanted everything he was, all of him, desperately.

  “Lemme go,” I slurred, my nose clogged with blood as my vision blurred.

  “Your shirt is—Vy did somebody cut you with something?”

  “A beer bottle, I think,” I muttered, yanking free and then turning on the engine.

  “Oh hell no,” Robert warned, closing his big hand around my wrist. “You’ve been drinking, you’re bleeding, your eyes are all glassy and—No, Vy, I’m not going to let you get on this bike and kill yourself.”

  “Like you care,” I grumbled, trying to free my wrist from his grip even as I knew I sounded like a petulant child.

  “The hell I don’t,” he snapped, using his strength as he never had before to physically move me, manhandle me off the bike, and set me on my feet.

  I craved the power in the man, wanted all of it unleashed on me, and so standing there with his hands on me I whimpered low in the back of my throat.

  He clutched me tight, closing his hands on my arms. “What is all this? You have a death wish all of a sudden? Since when do you drink every night?”

  I struggled, but he had me.

  “Did you wear all this for me?” he asked, running his gaze down my body. “Could these jeans be any tighter?”

  No, they could not. The vintage black denim clung to me like a second skin, and the gray knit Henley stuck to my chest and abdomen. I had wanted him to see what he was giving up, hoping he’d notice and care.

  “I see you, Vy. I do,” he assured me his voice like honey. “You’re beautiful, and all I want to do is hold you and take care of you.”

  But it wasn’t enough. I wanted all of him. I wanted to be his home.

  “I’m not drunk,” I said, easing free, moving slowly. “I’m not. Ask anyone. I had two drinks hours ago, and with my metabolism… I’m fine, really. I can ride.”

  “No.” Robert took a step toward me. “I saw you; you drive this thing like a maniac. Drunk driving is not the issue, driving at all is. This bike weighs nothing, and you’re going way too fast. Shifter or not, Vy, you hit the pavement at a hundred miles an hour and you’re dead.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t roll the bike.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” I told him. I climbed back onto the motorcycle, turned the engine over, revved it, and then flew out of the parking lot. I nearly went down when the back wheel slid in the gravel and I went into a skid on the road before correcting and shooting forward into the inky darkness. No way could I stay; I wasn’t ready to be near him. I needed to put distance between myself and the man I was crazy about.

  NORMALLY I was more observant, but since I wasn’t paying attention, Wednesday afternoon I fell through the second floor of the Windsor house—we were demolishing it—to the first. The drop would have killed me if I were human, so it was lucky my crew was all hawks, or there would have been questions. As it was, they were concerned. I’d come to work the morning after the bar fight already looking like hell, and having debris rain down on me didn’t help matters. I looked like I’d been blown up.

  “I’m fine,” I grumbled and snarled at anyone that got too close.

  “You have to be careful, Kuar. Even for a shifter, that’s dangerous.”

  I dismissed them all with a wave.

  Lou wasn’t speaking to me and neither was Carlo, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to take some Vico
din and collapse in bed. Robert wasn’t on my sidewalk that night, so I figured I’d scared him off. I hoped he’d at least say good-bye before he blew town.

  I forgot to eat before I stumbled to my couch and passed out, so the next day, Thursday, I felt worse, which accounted for me taking a header off the scaffolding at the Leman residence. We were taking off a roof and putting on a new one. Landing in a pine tree was more painful than it sounded, and I got ripped to shreds.

  Friday wasn’t any better. In the morning I carried fifty-pound bags of roofing material up and down a ladder all morning, and after lunch there was an altercation with one of my guys and the husband of a married woman he was screwing on the side. The husband wasn’t a hawk and neither was the wife, but even when the situation had nothing to do with my ket, I still put on my kuar hat and worked toward conflict resolution. But when it got heated, since I was tired and raw, I threatened to call the sheriff if he didn’t get off my jobsite.

  It never occurred to me that the husband would find me later that afternoon, when I was alone in the construction trailer on my next jobsite, and try to brain me with a baseball bat. The fact that he wasn’t alone when he showed up, had in fact brought three other men with him, had simply blown my mind. Who did that? It was like a bad B movie.

  The beating didn’t last long; my guys had come by with the normal Friday-night six-pack and run them off. But I was looking a lot like Edward Norton at the end of Fight Club, so I skipped the drinking and headed home. Since there was absolutely nothing in my refrigerator and no one at home to either take care of me or cook for me, I stopped at Kitty Bryant’s diner to get something to go.

  “Holy shit.”

  I couldn’t actually see Robert in the shadows outside the brightly lit restaurant, but I could hear him.

  When he was suddenly in front of me, hands on both sides of my neck, I shivered hard in the night air that was dipping rather quickly into the low forties.

  “Don’t you just love October?” I asked wistfully. “The air smells smoky, and the colors, and the blankets you get to snuggle under.”