Page 18 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 18

Jack woke with a start, Casey’s name on his lips. She’d been there—or had it been a dream? It seemed so real. He could smell her, feel her, could almost taste her on his lips. And then he’d fallen into dreams again, dreams in which she was torn from him by Fallon and lost to him forever—and dreams in which he’d made her cry out in a thousand different ways, won a thousand kinds of pleasure from her glorious body, the body he’d seen on the island but had never been able to touch as lovers did ...

“Nope,” a dry voice said. “I’m not that small and cute. But I have food.”

Jack squinted. The lamp was on beside the bed, and even that dim light seemed a little too bright. Everything ached. He was starving.

“You must be out of it,” Avery’s blurry shape remarked. “I said the word ‘food’ and you’re still lying there.”

“Food,” Jack rasped, running his tongue over dry lips. “Food sounds great.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s the Jack Ross we all know and love.” Avery leaned forward. “I also picked up the stuff you wanted from your place, including your spare glasses. You didn’t mention it—all I remember is you mumbling something about pants—but I figured you’d want those too.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Jack hooked the frames over his ears and blinked at the world. Everything came into focus for the first time in days. He could see again. He’d never really appreciated 20/20 vision to quite this extent before.

“And there are some clothes in here,” Avery added, patting a duffle bag by his leg. “Assuming you’re still planning on making a break for it, which I’d like to go on record, again , as being against.”

“I heal better at home.” Jack reached for the paper bag on the bedside table, which smelled heavenly. “You know that. Unless I’m at death’s door, which I’m not, there’s nothing being in a hospital can do for me, and I can rest better when I’m not surrounded by strangers and getting woke up every hour to make sure I’m still breathing.”

“What you mean is, you like to crawl off into your den and lick your wounds,” Avery remarked. “I have the urge, too. Just as long as you don’t keel over from internal bleeding halfway out the door.”

“Not planning on it.”

“I don’t think most people plan on it, Jack.”

Jack opened the bag to find it full of burgers. “Ah, God,” he groaned in ecstasy. “Are these from that place?—”

“The one out in Ballard you like dragging me to? Yeah, that place. If you’re going to keep trying to get killed in the field, I may as well give you coronary heart disease to slow you down.”

Through a mouthful of bacon double cheeseburger, Jack asked, “Was Casey here?”

“I should’ve placed bets on how long it’d take you to ask about her this time. Yeah, she was, for just a little while. She’s resting now.”

“How is she?”

Avery sighed and folded his hands over his knee. “You know what? Go find out yourself. By talking to her. She won’t bite.”

“You’ve never turned into Susie Q. Matchmaker with any of the other girls I’ve dated.”

“I’ve never seen you get this tangled up about one before, either.” Avery toyed with the head of his cane. “Look, Jack, neither you nor I believe in that old superstition about shifters and mating at first sight. But any fool can see there’s something there this time.”

“Bonding under fire,” Jack mumbled indistinctly, unwrapping another burger.

“Doesn’t mean it can’t last,” Avery said, somewhat pointedly.

“She’s not a werewolf, man.”

“No, but she’s clearly hung up on you. If you walk away because it’s not working out between you, okay, that’s one thing. I wouldn’t get involved. But if you head for the hills like you always do at the first hint of commitment?—”

“Then it’s your God-given right as my best friend to turn me around and march me back into the line of fire?” Jack demanded, exasperated.

“Well, if you think of the girls you date as the enemy, Jack, then no wonder your love life is such a dismal wasteland.”

Jack was saved from answering by a tap at the door. “Up for company?” Steirs asked, leaning in.

“Can I put on pants first, Chief?”

“I don’t know, I think I prefer you this way,” the division chief said, folding her arms and lounging against the wall. “It means you can’t run away.”

“Which means you want a report.”

“Yeah, that’s part of my job, Ross.” She smiled then, her face relaxing into a warmth that most people rarely saw. “It’s good to have you back in one piece. More or less.”

Half an hour later, Jack felt slightly wrung out from the questions, but he’d also given a reasonably thorough account of his time on the island—at least the important details. He’d tried to talk up Casey’s heroism as much as possible.

“Did they apprehend the rest of the Fallons?” he asked, as Stiers shut off the recorder.

“They did,” Stiers said, “and that’s all I can say at this point, until I get a chance to debrief Eva and Mila properly. Now you can put your pants on.”

She went off to locate Willa, and Jack got dressed. Avery, having had some experience with this sort of thing, had picked up the loosest sweats in the condo; still, it took some time to work the clothing over his sore, bandaged limbs. He had to stop in the middle of the process to sit on the side of the bed and catch his breath.

“Yeah,” Avery said, “you’re doing great .”

“Make yourself useful and bring the car around, Jeeves.”

After Avery flipped him off and left, Jack clenched his teeth and leaned over to put his socks and shoes on. Everything between his hips and shoulders protested agonizingly at the bending and twisting.

It’s nothing a few days in bed won’t fix.

“I hear you’ve decided not to accept our hospitality,” Willa Lafitte said, breezing into his room. Stiers was nowhere to be seen, but Dr. Lafitte looked slightly mussed.

“You know I’ll recuperate better at home.”

“I know you think you will. Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m of the opinion that mental health is just as important to recovery as a person’s physical health, which in your case apparently means privacy. And I hope you didn’t just put those britches on, because I’m gonna need you to drop ‘em.”

After looking him over, she pronounced him good to go (“by Jack Ross standards, anyway”), with a laundry list of antibiotics and painkillers to take with him, and an even longer list of worrying symptoms to watch out for.

“I’ll stop by every once in a while to make sure he’s still breathing,” Avery said from the doorway. “Ready to roll?”

“I leave him in your capable hands, then.” Dr. Lafitte patted Jack’s shoulder, and left.

“I like this hospital,” Jack said, tottering to his feet. “No wheelchairs.”

He refused Avery’s offer of a shoulder to lean on, and slightly more facetious offer of the loan of his cane. Out in the hallway, Avery raised the cane and pointed to one of the doors. “That’s Casey’s room, by the way,” he said.

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Yeah, you aren’t being obvious about peeking into every open door we pass at all .”

Jack hesitated. Invisible strings pulled him toward Casey’s door. But, just as strongly, he didn’t want to see her for the first time with an audience.

“Look, I’ll run and pick up your stuff from the pharmacy, okay? Meet you downstairs.”

And Avery was off before Jack could say anything.

One thing about werewolves: they were acutely attuned to social nuance.

With Avery gone, Jack realized he could just go downstairs. He didn’t have to do this, unless he wanted to.

But he did want to.

Or—more than that. He needed to.

Casey’s door was partly open. Jack cautiously peeked in.

She was sleeping, her hair a dark corona around her small face. He limped over to the bed. This was his first opportunity to see her—really see her, without the slightly blurring around the edges that marred his uncorrected vision, even at close range.

She was everything he’d known she would be, and more. Her face was a perfect heart, the chin small and pointed, her skin a dark tan with olive undertones. Healing bruises, and a deep red stippling of wasp stings along the side of her face, could not mar that smooth perfection. Her thick, dark lashes grazed her cheek; her full lips were parted, as if to breathe a secret.

Jack brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. It was soft as velvet.

She turned into his touch, and her lips moved slightly. He thought they framed his name, but perhaps it was only wishful thinking.

And he knew then, with sudden brutal clarity, that he’d been a fool to come here. He had nothing to offer her, nothing except a scarred body and a dark past stained with blood and death. Better to sever their connection here, before either of them had an opportunity to get in deep enough to regret.

It would be a transitory pain for her, one that would be quickly forgotten. She’d move on with her life, embrace the new opportunities opening up in front of her.

Better a fast goodbye than a lifetime of sorrow.

He leaned down to brush her hair back from her forehead, and kissed it gently. “Goodbye, Casey,” he whispered.

Then he straightened quickly and limped out of the room before he could yield to the temptation drawing him back—the overwhelming urge to crawl into that bed with her and wrap his arms around her and never let go.