Blake, Her Bad Bear: A Paranormal Bad Boy Romance (3 page)

“Well, you didn’t hear from me, but since Damian decided to push up posies, the gang’s in some purgatorial waters, if you get my drift,” he nudged her elbow roughly, but she flexed her brows again until he sighed. “What I mean is, leadership ain’t assured. Might be a power struggle. ‘Course, it comes down to that, you can expect somethin’ like a civil war to crop up. And you know how these biker chaps get when they have too much to drink. Hell, I’m staying indoors for the long term.”

“It wouldn’t come to that, would it?” she said, raising her voice.
Get to the point, old man,
she wanted to berate, but held her faux look of disbelief.

The owner shrugged and sat back down again and she took it as a cue that he had tired of the conversation, or at the very least wasn’t going to jeopardize himself by letting out more than he already had, and Lily puffed her cheeks and headed back toward the stairs.

“Jus’ be careful, if you decide to head there,” she heard him say as she clambered up to her room.

CHAPTER TWO

The wake, as Gavin had predicted, was already well under way by time he arrived. The rain had started to pick up just as he parked among the other legions of bikes, and now it was a full onslaught against the windows, churning down the empty streets. But very little could drown out the raucous that had overtaken Jack’s. Alcohol seemed to flow with abundance, and everywhere he looked, he saw members of the Ursa Major or friends and acquaintances of Damian carousing merrily, their faces blushed and bleary-eyed. The old jukebox in the back of the pub, usually neglected due to the fact that all the songs were fifty years old and dated, had been rejuvenated, and no one seemed to care that all it played was the likes of Leonard Cohen and Elvis Presley.

Even Spicer, wearing his iconic pencil thin beard, seemed to have gotten in with the drinking, and he was eagerly serving drinks as fast as he could. Damian, still in his leather jacket, sat in the back, huddled in against a corner next to a window where he could watch the others—he had no great interest in drinking himself into a stupor tonight, even if his own proclivity for alcohol was legendary. He was still nervous. Across the room, he caught sight of Melissa again. She was well plastered, and already slurring her speech as she huddled over a glass of rum and Coke, her eyes taking on that sleepy look of someone suffering jet lag.
She’s earned it
, he thought.

Although there had been no great love between him and Melissa over the years, he had always respected her. As the wife of a gang leader, she lived up to the role, was hard when she needed to be, and like the credo of the Ursa Majors, loyal to a fault. Beside her, Connor was still acting as her chaperone, but Blake noticed immediately that he wasn’t drinking. Rather, with his mottled nose and rectilinear face, he seemed to be doing exactly what Blake was doing: watching the others. Blake lowered his eyes when he saw Connor cast a slow careful glance across the bar in his direction, and buried his face into the half-empty Moscow Mule at his elbow, trying to feign his own drunkenness, even as he felt the younger man stare him down.

I should be easier on him
, Blake thought. He’d lost his father, of course. But then, that was one of the reasons that the former Beta had decided to forgo his drinking exploits tonight. He needed to think. There were rumors surrounding Damian’s death that hadn’t been legitimized yet, but it would only be a matter of time before they came to light among the rest of the gang—as the Beta, Blake had been given special knowledge into the events, along with Melissa and Connor.

Damian’s death hadn’t been an accident.

The official report was that he had drowned in the rushing torrential river that ran parallel to Beaver Creek, and where the town had gotten its name from. The late spring melt could turn it into a gurgling whip of whitewater, and everyone knew the rage of that kind of water. Damian’s body had been found downstream, caught on a tree that had fallen across the creek, and it would have been an open and shut case had Melissa not inquired about having an autopsy.

Even Blake had to admit that the circumstances were suspicious—for one, Damian knew how dangerous the creek could be, and no one could give any account of why he might’ve been near it. Secondly, even if he had fallen in, he was a demon of a man, one of the best swimmers among them, and that was in his human form. Had he turned into a bear when he had fallen, as unexpected stress could trigger a transformation, he should have had no problem escaping the water.

The autopsy had prevailed, revealing that Damian hadn’t died in the water, but had most likely been deposited in the creek after being strangled. Blake closed his eyes as his hands tightened around the glass in his hand and he forced himself to unclench his fingers to keep from shattering it in his palm.
But who would have gone so far as to murder Damian?
He could think of half a dozen enemies that the old brute had, but none of them had the guts to go through with something like this.

On top of that, his death couldn’t have come at a worse time—with the frailties and internal weaknesses of the gang, tempers and allegiances were as fickle as the light of a candle. He grumbled again and looked up just in time to see Gavin moving towards him. The novitiate’s suit was open, his black tie was slack, and the spiky hair had been mussed into several different opposing angles.

“You made it!” he exclaimed, almost falling down before he could sit down, and Blake raised his own glass and clinked it against Gavin’s beer bottle, so hard he almost shattered both. “How about this, huh? I think Damian would be proud, I think he would have liked this. This is how funerals should be, eh, not all gloomy, but celebratory!”

“Looks like everyone made it,” Blake said.

“Hell yes.” Gavin took another sip. “Why are you sitting in the corner here?”

“Just thinking. Don’t feel much like partying,” he said, and wished Gavin would disappear—over the shoulder of his junior, he caught Connor’s stare again, just in his periphery. It made Blake shiver, and he tried to focus on Gavin instead. “Better take it easy, kid. You’re going to lay yourself out before the partying even gets started.”

“I’m fine,” Gavin said, a bit irritated, but it was just the alcohol. “I’m just… I’m just thinking, you know, you’re probably goin’ to be the Alpha now, hey?”

Blake stiffened. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, least of all with Gavin. He tried to shrug it off and took another sip of his Mule only to find he’d emptied it. “Who knows?” he said, shrugging.

“But, I mean, you’re the Beta right?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I don’t see the problem. I mean, you should be celebrating, too! Here let me get you another,” he offered, his handsome features beaming as he picked up Blake’s cup and headed toward the bar. Blake watched him go and rubbed the back of his ear.

Well, at least I have one crazy novitiate on my side,
he thought, wondering how much of a difference that would really make in the long run. His attention drifted again, but this time something in the crowd stood out, and he focused in on a new face he had never seen before. In fact, there were many eyes on her—she had on cargo pants and a long navy blue sweater, and her hair was dark as charcoal and seemed to catch the light and diffract it.

He perked up and leaned to the right, trying to get a better glimpse of her. A tourist, maybe. Although why anyone would choose Beaver Creek as a tourist destination was beyond him—probably just passing through. But there was something compelling about her, nonetheless. She had taken up a stool at the front of the bar and slunk down over a beer, but among the crowd of bikers and black leather, she was an anomaly.

Beautiful, yes. As she turned and said something to the man beside her, Blake saw how round her face was, almost a perfect sphere under that precise, razor-delineated bowl cut. The faintest traces of some Asian descent showed against her bone structure, Chinese or Japanese maybe, second generation, like Gavin—enough to blur the distinction. Her eyes were narrow but evenly spaced, and she had a pair of laser cut rimless glasses that made her look more menacing than she probably was. A killer librarian sort of vibe.

But she was smiling, and that made up for it. He watched her for several more minutes, but over the laughter and Elvis Presley medleys it was impossible to make out exactly what she was saying. He was so absorbed in watching her that he almost didn’t notice Gavin return and plop another Moscow Mule in front of him, spilling it over the rim and onto his hand.

“Whatcha’ looking at?” he said, following his elder’s gaze.

Blake cleared his throat. “Just a newcomer, at the bar there,” he gestured toward the stool, and Gavin winked at him. “Someone should have told her that there was a biker wake going on here. She looks like she’s fitting in pretty well though.”

“Damn, beauty ain’t she?”

“She is,” he concurred solemnly.

“Wonder where she came from.”

“Why don’t you go ask her?” Blake asked, hoping it would get rid of him.

Gavin shook his head. “Nah, I’d get turned down flat, you know how girls are around me.” And then he winked again, a grossly lecherous movement of his eyes that made Blake want to punch him, if only to sober him up a bit. “Why don’t
you
, bud? You got that classy look, chicks dig that.”

There was some truth to that, but Blake would never admit to it. His reputation often preceded him when it came to women, and he was famous for his forays. Women found themselves exhausted by his lovemaking, and he took pride in the fact that he could get any woman he wanted, if he put his mind to it. It had become such a staple fact of his existence, that he felt he could pick and choose at this point—it gave him some smug self-satisfaction to differentiate himself from the other horny  men, like Gavin, who had to bite and claw for a chance at romance.

“Fuck you,” he merely murmured.

“What? You got
it
, man—you know what I mean,” Gavin winked a third time.

Blake growled. “I know what you mean, but fuck you all the same, let it die,” he grumbled, and then looked back toward the bar. The mysterious woman was now surrounded by several men. He recognized one of them, a heavyset ogre with a red curly beard named, ironically, Ogre, as a particular womanizer.

The woman was strong, he had to give her credit. Twice Ogre tried to put his hand on her and she brushed him off assertively each time, leveling a kind but wary look at him that said
touch me again and I’ll bust your balls
. But the wake had indoctrinated the entire gang with too much booze, and Ogre wasn’t getting the hint. Blake growled again, seeing it all play out in his mind’s eye—once a bear-shifter had something in mind, it was hard enough to try and divert his or her attention from it.

Add a social lubricant like beer to the mix, and a member of the Ursa Majors could turn into a nightmare. Blake knew from experience just how out of control his little band could get, if only because on more than one occasion he had been the one that needed to be reined in.
But I’m dry as a rattlesnake right now
, he thought. Two more men loomed in over the woman, lusty looks clouding their eyes.

“Shit,” he said, standing up.

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “What’s up, boss?”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

The smell of liquor was heavy in the air, a reek that would saturate itself into the ceiling and floor for weeks. It was a smell he was familiar with, something that spoke to a primal instinct, and Blake pushed his way none too gently through the crowd.

“C’mon, baby, all we’re asking for is a kiss,” one of the men said.

“We ain’t even telling you
where
you gotta kiss,” Ogre boomed, much to the laughter and jeers of his compatriots. The woman was still huddled over her beer, still had on a brave face, but Blake could tell from her body language—the stiffness in her arms, the way her smile was only half there—that she was regretting barging into Jack’s.

“I got a place just down the road, y’know. A lot quieter,” a third man said.

The woman sniffed. “That’s kind, but I like it here just fine,” she said, trying to make her voice louder. In another place, another time—among anyone
other
than bear-shifters—it would have been enough to cringe back even the most forward of men. But this was Beaver Creek. And these were Ursa Majors.

“I’m getting sick of this cold shoulder business,” Ogre muttered miserably, and reached out to grab her arm. She let out a tiny gasp of surprise and horror as his meaty fist encircled her bicep and he pulled her toward him. “Let’s quit the games. I think we both know what we want here.”

She was tiny beside him, and the merest flinch of his arm caused her to be wrested out of her chair. Now there was terror in her eyes, and Blake’s fist tightened as he made his way to Ogre and put a firm hand on the man’s shoulder.

“That’ll be enough, Ogre,” he warned.

Ogre turned, his eyes beady with rage, until he realized who it was that had admonished him. The Beta of the gang was not someone trivial, and he knew it—but he was still drunk and hyped up, and instead of letting go of the woman, he merely eyed Blake squarely.

“Nothing going on here. Just turn around, Blake, enjoy the party,” he said casually, his huge lipless mouth twisting in a perverse caricature of wriggling caterpillars. Blake could smell the heat of his breath, the awful reek of it.

“Why don’t we go and enjoy it together?” Blake offered, and made eye contact with the woman. She seemed to register that he was trying to help her, but it did little to assuage her fear.

“I ain’t got no quarrel with you.” He grimaced. “But you’re sticking your nose where it don’t belong. Leave me alone, Blake. This ain’t got nothing to do with you. Just me and the woman having a friendly chat, so take a hike. I don’t want to fight you.”

“You’re not exactly demonstrating the best Beaver Creek has to offer,” Blake said, his hand clasping Ogre’s shoulder more tightly. “Why don’t we let the nice lady go and have another drink?”

“You fucking patronizing me, now?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Blake said, eyeing him dangerously.

The other men at the bar seemed to anticipate something, and all stood back as Ogre faced down the second-in-command. Finally, he let go of the woman and she gasped and rubbed her arm. No doubt there’d be bruises there in the morning.
But if that’s the worst of it, she can thank her lucky stars
, Blake thought, focusing solely on the lumbering giant in front of him. Ogre had at least fifty pounds on him, but the guy was slow and cumbersome.