Page 24 of Bear With Me
I cup his face with one hand. “This isn’t too bad, is it?” Then I gasp as I realize I can sense him in this form. I see myself crouched by the tree from his point of view. I hear him thinkingKeep her safeand I remember the gentle way he held me in his arms.
“You have no idea,” he growls. “I can smell you like this. It’s driving me crazy touching you right now.”
“Do you want me to move?” I start to get out of his lap, but his grip tightens around me.
“No!” he barks out. “I don’t know if it’s safe out there yet. Let’s give it a few minutes.”
“Okay, we’ll wait.” I rest my head on his chest and take a calming breath. “There’s something I should probably tell you, too. Something about me.”
“If it’s about your grandfather, I—”
I put a hand on his cheek and look into his eyes. “No, my grandmother explained. It’s not that, it’s something else.”
“What is it?” His hand runs up and down my back, soothing me, even though I bet he doesn’t realize it.
“My family…apparently we all have these…gifts.” I don’t look at him as I speak. “After my parents died in the car accident, I started to be able to sense…things. If I touch something, I can get these visions of things that happened around it in the past or if someone touched it recently, I know their thoughts and things like that. And…”
“Go on,” he says.
“Well it’s one of the things that drew me to you in the first place,” I confess. “I haven’t been handling it very well and the night of the party, I was overwhelmed by everything. If I touch someone, you see, I can understand what they’re thinking or sometimes I get memories from their past.” I swallow thickly before continuing and the hand at my back doesn’t stop its gentle strokes. “The first time you touched me, I didn’t want the gift anymore. I hated it. Then, it didn’t work on you. I didn’t know what you were thinking. It was like I was free from this curse. It was so nice to be with you without being bombarded by your thoughts.”
“So that’s why you were interested in me?” he asks, his voice low.
“No! God no. I likedyou. I like that you seem so big and bad, but you have this other soft side that I think no one else gets to see. I like that your first instinct is always to protect me. I like what we started and I don’t want to give that up. My grandmother told me that you should never let people you care about walk away, so this is me. Not letting you walk away.”
“I need to touch you now. Just,” his breathing gets rougher, “just tell me if it’s too much. I’ll stop. I can stop.”
I use the hand on his cheek to guide his face down to mine. He buries his lips in my throat, the hair tickling the soft skin there. As soon as his lips touch my throat the world around us melts away. He nuzzles, moving his body over mine until I’m flat on my back with him above me.
His thick forearm cushions my head from the rough ground and I forget the rest. I try to keep my eyes open, try to learn this foreign side of him, but he nips my skin and my eyes grow weary of focusing on the darkness around us. When he pulls away I peer up at him and find that the fur covering his face has receded and his eyes are back to the soft amber hue.
“Hey,” I whisper, smiling up at him.
I expect him to say something sweet, like he did the night of our date. Instead he frowns at me and says, “If you ever do anything as crazy as going out during a tornado warning again, I will personally beat your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
He leans back on his haunches and winces. I remember the blood on my shirt and get to my feet. “We need to get you somewhere we can look at that wound. Your house is nearby. Do you think you can make it?”
“I’m fine. Let’s just hope it’s still there.” Declan helps me to my feet, pausing to press a soft, sweet kiss to my lips that leaves me breathless once again.
“You aren’t mad about me not telling you about my gift are you?”
“As long as you’re not mad about having to date a man who occasionally likes to run around like a bear, then no.”
My heart soars as he leads me up the stairs. The door is blocked by some debris on the other side, but Declan demonstrates another trait that goes along with his ability to shift into a bear: super strength. He braces his feet on the step and heaves with bulging arms. After two or three pushes that leave my jaw on the floor, he manages to dislodge what turns out to be a huge trunk from where it lay on top of the door.
He helps me out of the stairwell and sets me down on the ground. The old building is essentially nonexistent. Remnants of the wood and furniture lay around us in a dump. Like it was a child’s block tower that had gotten knocked over. There are no roofs, no walls. Everything has been ripped apart and strewn in every direction across the clearing.
“C’mon,” Declan says, lifting me up into his arms.
“Whoa. I would comment on whether or not you could carry me, but I just saw you move a tree the size of a small country.”
He grins, but I can tell he’s in pain.
“Are you sure it won’t bother your arm?” I ask.
“Sully, I’ll be fine. I just want to get you home where I know you’re safe.”