Saved By Her Bear by Felicity Heaton
Chapter 16
The last two days had been something close to heaven. Passing the hours in the lodge with only Skye for company had him as near to happy as he had ever been. They had fallen into an easy rhythm, worked well together without having to communicate, as if they really had been made for each other. The only negative in a sea of positives was the shadow hanging over them.
He wanted to believe Karl wouldn’t find this place, that the human had given up in the storm and turned back or had frozen to death. Which would be nice. Not so much the turning back part as the freezing to death part. He wasn’t a fool though. He had given Karl a clear direction to head in and if the male had any survival instincts, he would have turned back to the small cabin and used it as a bunker to wait out the storm. As soon as it passed, the male and his lackeys would head out, striking north towards the glacier. It was visible from a ledge in the forest just a few hundred feet from the cabin.
Karl would know exactly where to come to find him and Skye.
Part of Knox was banking on that.
While he liked the idea of Karl giving up and leaving, he liked the idea of the male coming after him even more. He wanted to be sure the humans wouldn’t return and that Cameo and Skye, would be safe from them, and that meant dealing with them.
“Do you think it’s blowing over?” Skye looked back at him from the door of the lodge, where she had been for the last ten minutes, nursing a cup of coffee that had to be cold by now.
He abandoned his work of attempting to make a passable breakfast for the second day running and went to her. He meant to stop at the end of the island to lean against the thick wooden post there, but he couldn’t stop himself from closing the distance between them down to nothing.
She smiled when he stepped up behind her and slid his arms around her, locking them over the front of her dark green woollen sweater, and even leaned back into him. A little sigh escaped her.
A sigh that echoed within him too, wanting out.
This was bliss.
If he could stay here with her and carry on like this, cut off from the world and pretending it didn’t exist, that they didn’t have responsibilities and a life waiting for them out there, he would be happy.
If he could continue burying his head in the snow and pretending that he would never have to come clean about what he was, then he would definitely be happy, but just like how Karl was a shadow hanging over them, that was a shadow hanging over him.
His only hope was that he could deal with Karl without an incident occurring that would give away what he was and then get Skye to Cameo. It was a solid plan, one he might have set in motion yesterday when a break in the storm had allowed him to get a decent signal on the two-way radio.
While Skye had been busy dealing with dinner, he had used the radio to contact Saint. He had been worried that Karl and his men weren’t going to come up to the lodge and might end up there instead and had wanted to warn them. Once his alpha had been briefed on the fact there were three men remaining and all were armed and where he had left them, he had asked how things were at Black Ridge.
Knox had learned that Maverick and Rune had indeed returned to the Ridge, which was a comfort, until he thought about the fact that both bears wanted to come up to the lodge. Knox had talked them down, mostly because he worried about them meeting Skye. He hadn’t told his alpha about her, wasn’t really sure how to break it to him. Saint hadn’t exactly taken it well when Lowe had brought Cameo, another human, to Black Ridge.
Bringing Skye there was liable to cause a ruckus with his alpha, but Knox needed her there.
He had the feeling that Maverick and Rune were going to ignore his warning to stay away from the lodge and come here, and he would be forced to deal with introducing her to his pride sooner than he wanted.
So, Knox had asked Saint to put Lowe on the line and clear everyone else out.
Apparently, Lowe had been hovering around Saint, twitchy and eager to get his turn on the radio, irritating their alpha. Saint had been all too happy to hand the mic over to Knox’s twin.
Lowe had assured him the other bears were gone and had then gone on to tell him that Cameo was fine and his injuries were healing, which was a relief. Cameo had taken the fact Lowe was a bear shifter well, and that had given Knox hope that Skye might be the same, even when he knew there was a higher chance that his female would freak out and run. It was rare for a shifter to reveal what they were to a human and not get that reaction. It took a powerful sort of love, a deep and true sort, for a human in a relationship with a shifter to overcome what they were and accept it and the fact there were many different people in this world.
Archangel managed to fill their ranks quite nicely with the ones who discovered their lover was a shifter or a vampire or a fae and didn’t take it well.
So Knox had decided to up his chances of Skye being the sort of female who could accept her male turned into a bear and lived longer than a human.
He had asked Lowe to speak with Cameo and convince her to talk to Skye when he got her to Black Ridge. If Cameo was the one who told her, maybe Skye would be able to take it all in without surrendering to the urge to run, or join a hunter organisation to eradicate his kind from the face of the planet.
It turned out Cameo had been there with Lowe and she had been quick to steal the mic from his brother and agree to help him.
Lowe had wanted to ask him a million questions about Skye and whether she was the reason for his two-year drought, and Knox had been quick to end the transmission.
Knox stared out at the storm, watching the snow falling, dancing in the breeze to flutter slowly to the ground. Skye was right. The storm was abating. The wind had dropped completely and visibility was improving.
“It’s clearing up.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek when he sensed that didn’t please her. It worried her. He held her a little closer. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Skye.”
She turned in his arms and looked up at him, her dark eyes soft, warm with affection that soothed his nerves and boosted his confidence that once she knew what he was, she wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t.
“What about you?” she whispered, her brow furrowing, and stroked her free hand down his chest, over his black-and-blue checked fleece shirt. “I have this horrible feeling something bad is going to happen to you.”
He captured her hips and pulled her to him. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me either.”
Words he meant but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe.
She sighed and broke away from him, set her coffee down on the counter of the kitchen island and crossed the wooden floorboards to the window beyond the couch. She stood with her back to him, gazing out towards the glacier. She had been uneasy all morning, ever since they had finally rolled out of bed to see that the wind had dropped.
She wrapped her arms around herself, her fingers tugging at the fine material of her dark green sweater.
Knox tried not to stare at her nape, just as he had tried not to stare at it every second of every hour they had been at the lodge. The sight of it tormented him, had his bear side agitated and restless, filling him with a need to close the distance between them and feel her pressed against him. The feel of her soft body against his was enough to assuage his primal instincts as her male, took the edge off so he could resist his growing need to sink his fangs into that sweet, smooth skin to claim her as his mate and bind them together.
Skye hadn’t helped by deciding to twist her hair into a knot this morning after she had freshened up.
Some part of him felt as if fate was testing him, seeing how far it could push him before he snapped. Fuck fate. He wasn’t a slave to it. He was master of his body, not his instincts. He wouldn’t surrender to the urges running through him, no matter how strong they grew. He would keep on resisting them until she was so in love with him that she couldn’t leave him, even when she discovered he was a bear shifter.
And then he would keep on resisting the urge to bite her until she was ready, no matter how long that took.
He wanted to do things right, to be the sort of male she deserved, one who was worthy of her affection.
Even when part of him knew there would come a point where he wouldn’t be able to resist the need to mate with her. He would snap. At some point, the urge would become too great, too pressing, and he would be too weak to resist it.
He ran his hand down his face. Prayed to the gods that she was ready to be his mate when that happened, because he didn’t want to mess this all up, even when deep in his heart he knew he would. He had already messed up once with her. It would be all too easy to mess things up again and ruin this chance he had with her.
“You’re thinking hard.” She had turned to face him, her rich brown eyes soft with concern, laced with a hint of curiosity. Her rosy lips slowly curved into a teasing, almost wicked smile. “Thinking about me?”
She was fishing, and he was already hooked, was a goner where she was concerned. All she had to do was reel him in and promise to keep him rather than toss him back into the river, and he would stay by her side forever.
Would love her forever.
“Yeah.” He scratched his nape, really tried not to think about how she would press her nails into it when they were making love, how she always gravitated to that spot. Did she notice how drawn to it she was? He pushed away from the door and rounded the island, sighed as he sank back against it. “Much as I love it here… alone with you… I think we should head back down the valley to town.”
Because he wanted her safe, a long way from Karl and his men, far away when he tracked down the bastards and killed them. He didn’t want her to see what he was going to do, even when he knew she was well aware of his plan to kill them and she didn’t seem shocked or appalled by it.
She glanced over her shoulder at the window. The weather was clearing fast now and he could make out the mountain in the distance and parts of the glacier. The snow had stopped.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head and looked back at him, worry in her beguiling eyes now, fear that drew him to her. “What if Karl and the others have found this place and they’re just biding their time… out there… waiting for us to emerge?”
If that was the case, he wanted her away from that damned window.
He crossed the room to her and pulled her away from it, into his arms, trying to act casual even when his heart was racing and his senses were stretching in all directions, hunting for a sign of life.
Knox turned with her and started backing her towards the kitchen, got distracted as her gaze collided with his, holding him fast. He wanted to growl whenever she looked at him like that, as if she was hungry for him, starving for her male to satisfy her. He swore he could feel how badly she needed him as his primal instincts fired, had him aching with a need to pleasure her, to give her what she wanted from him.
He groaned and dipped his head, captured her lips as he backed her against the island and planted his hands against the granite on either side of her hips, caging her with his body. She tasted like coffee, sweet and addictive, and he loved how she arched into his body as she feverishly sought more from him, attempting to steal control of the kiss.
He gripped her hips and tugged her hard against him, showing her who was in control, mastering her in a heartbeat. His pulse went wild as she surrendered to him on a husky moan, as she melted in his arms and pressed her hands to his chest. Gods, how this female owned him. All of him. She mastered him by submitting to him, made him a slave to her as she opened to him, as her tongue brushed his and her soft curves pressed against the hard planes of his body. If ever a female had been made for him, it was Skye.
Knox kissed her harder, deeper, aching for more of her as his body hummed with a need of her, with the first ripples of pleasure that swept through him that were a promise of more, of another intense moment with her that would leave him breathless again, reeling and even deeper in love with her.
He lifted her onto the counter, eager to take her on it just as he had the first night they had been here.
His senses sparked.
He stiffened as he detected movement outside.
The window behind him, where Skye had been standing only a minute ago, shattered, and she shrieked as the bullet tore through the wooden post at the end of the island to his right.
Missing him by less than an inch.
