Kodiak's Claim (8 page)

It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they did, she got to admire an alien landscape of snow, the surface marred in spots by snowmobile tracks. A distant light on the garage didn’t do much to illuminate the yard, the crescent moon with its wan glow off the snow doing more for visibility. Between the two sources, she had enough light to notice movement coming from the front of the house, a lumbering motion that made its way to the porch steps. Given the proximity, she had no problem recognizing the massive freaking bear that plodded up them. And she meant massive!

Oh my freaking god.

Slowly, holding her breath, she backed away from the window lest the beast spot her and decide a layer of glass wasn’t an impediment to a fresh midnight snack. The problem was, backing away meant losing her line of sight on the bear. But she was safe.
I’m in the house. The bear is outside. It can’t get to me here.

Unless it decided to come in.

Her eyes widened and threatened to pop out of her head as she noted the handle to the outside door turning. At that point rationality fled, and she frantically tried to recall what her dad said to do if ever confronted by a bear.

Play dead?
She doubted she could fake that, not with fear making her tremble.

Make noise?
With what? Somehow shrill screaming didn’t seem like the right approach. But what if she found something noisy to bang and scare it off?

The counter behind her was pristine, but above it, on a suspended rack, hung pots and pans. A plan formed. She’d grab two and smash them together in a symphony of noise frightening the bear—who in some Darwinian feat had learned to operate doors—and hopefully bring someone with a gun running.

She managed to only unhook one large frying pan when the door creaked open—and this was just another good reason to always have the habit of locking them, city living or not. A swirling gust of snow blew in.

Shutting her eyes, snowflakes coated her lashes and when she opened them, she couldn’t make out much detail-wise about the large shape that loomed in the doorway. Didn’t matter. Her father didn’t raise a coward, and she wasn’t about to become a midnight snack without a fight. She let out a battle cry and swung.

Thwack
!

“Ow!”

That didn’t sound like a bear.
Oops.

Tammy backed away as the lights flicked on in the kitchen. She blinked in the sudden glare, and the crystals on her lashes melted leaving her with perfect—and unfortunate—vision. Uh-oh. She blinked some more. Licked her lips. Wet her panties. And not in fear, even if a bear of a man glowered down at her, his irritation over the lump forming on his cheekbone probably the cause.

‘Are you seriously accosting me in my home, again?”

“I thought you were a bear,” she explained feebly with a wave to the window. “I saw one on the porch, and then something opened the door. I reacted to defend myself.”

“With a frying pan?”

She shrugged. “I had to think fast.”

“You hit me.” He sounded so incredulous.

Welcome to the club. She was becoming well acquainted with the feeling since arriving in Alaska. “Yeah, I did smack you, but I’d say the more pressing point right now is why you’re coming in from minus freaking a gazillion outside wearing nothing but the hair on your chest.” An impressive chest, mind you, but still, a completely naked one that matched his naked bottom half—
oh my.

Imagining Reid without clothes was one thing, the reality, another. Her vivid imagination certainly did not do him justice. He was way more impressive in the naked flesh. But why was he bare-assed?

He glanced down at himself as if just now noting his nude state. “I lost my clothes.”

“Lost them? How?”

“Well, more like ditched them because they were dirty. Real dirty,” he said more loudly before shutting the door and cutting off the stream of cold air swirling around them.

She took a moment to absorb his absurd reply. “Dirty? Really? With what?” What made a man insane enough to strip in this weather?
Did he stain them with blood?
Had she misjudged him after all? Was he a psycho? Her grip on the frying pan tightened.

He noticed, and a single dark brow arched. “Planning to attempt and concuss me again? If you want me flat on my back so bad, you could just ask. But do me a favor, if you plan to ravish me, make sure you use a condom.”

“Ravish you? I’m wondering if I should call the cops and have them test you for DNA remains. Exactly how filthy could your clothes supposedly be for you to prefer walking naked in freeze-your-parts-off weather to the house?”

“First off, it’s not that cold, which you can see by all my parts being accounted for.”

One certain part was definitely not affected by the extreme cold it was subjected to, given how it currently sat at half-mast.

She averted her gaze, but not in time.

A sardonic glint lit his gaze. “My grandmother always did say we had some polar bear in our line.”

She ignored his joke. “Where are your clothes?”

“Why?”

“I want to see them.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s my job to not believe anyone but to investigate impartially.”

“And what do my clothes have to do with your investigation?”

“Establishing your ability to tell the truth.”

A smile curved his lips. “This from the woman standing in my kitchen wearing fuzzy bunny slippers, wielding a vicious frying pan because she thought a bear was trying to come in the house.”

“I know what I saw.” Or thought she had. She really had to wonder if she’d hallucinated it because Reid definitely wasn’t acting like a naked man who’d confronted a bear on his porch. Had she imagined it? Or was he trying to divert her from her suspicions? “My nighttime attire and self-defense at least are understandable. You, however, with your nakedness, are not.”

“You want proof? Very well. But may I dress before we head back to the garage where I left my stuff?”

“What, is it too cold to walk back?”

“I try to restrict my polar runs to once a day lest certain parts shrivel to the point of no return.”

She highly doubted that would happen given its size, but his bare skin was definitely distracting—oh and arousing to the point she wanted to clobber him again just so he’d collapse on the ground and she could give him mouth to mouth to resuscitate him. Wait, that was for drowning victims, not concussion ones. Who cared? He needed clothes so she could concentrate on something other than sex.

Besides, he couldn’t very well tamper with anything while dressing, so keeping the frying pan between them, she nodded, and followed him—admiring his bare, flexing cheeks the entire way—as he went to the second floor and entered the door across from her own.

It wasn’t long before he emerged in a tracksuit that covered all his bits. How unfortunate.

“Shall we go establish my honesty?” he asked.

She motioned him ahead, wishing she had something more deadly than a frying pan, say like a gun.
As if I could bring myself to shoot him.
But what about the bear she’d seen outside?

“Where did the bear go?” she asked. “You must have seen it as you were coming in. It was on the porch.”

“Are you still insisting on that? Do you even hear how that sounds? A bear on the porch.” He snorted. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

“The same way I imagined a naked man in the kitchen? No. I know what I saw. There was a bear outside.”

“If you say so. Maybe it heard or smelled me coming and took off. The porch does wrap around the house you know.”

Again with a plausible explanation that didn’t quite ring true.
Yet why would he lie? It wasn’t as if he stood to gain from hiding the presence of a wild animal from her.

Unless his plan is to lead me outside and feed me to it!

She really needed to stop channeling her mother’s paranoia.

In silence she swapped her warm slippers for boots and slid her coat on over her robe. He didn’t bother with any outerwear, his only concession to the weather a pair of boots.

He swung the kitchen’s side door open and led the way to the garage. The cold bit right though her robe and jammies, and she tucked her hands up her sleeves and her face into the collar of her jacket. Reid, a true Alaskan man, didn’t seem bothered as he strode to the garage door. She still clung to the pan in one hand, and her eyes darted nervously from side to side as she followed, seeking in the shadows the beast she’d spotted earlier. They made it without incident, and she stepped into the chilly, but at least bluster-free, space.

Reid walked over to his snowmobile and pointed to the pile of clothes beside it, clothes that reeked of gasoline.

“I told you they were dirty,” he said, smirking in triumph. “I sprang a leak in a line and got some fuel on myself as I fixed it. My grandmother would have killed me if I brought these in the house and stank the place up. So, I left them out here for disposal and did a polar streak across the yard.”

He’s lying.
Where that certainty came from, she couldn’t have said. But she knew it. Sensed it, even though he had the proof of his words lying on the floor, the same clothes she’d seen him wearing earlier that day. She nudged them with her toes but, other than the reek of volatile fumes, saw no suspicious red or brown stains.

“Satisfied now?”

“I guess.”

“My turn then for questions. What were you doing up? Were you spying on me? For that matter, how do I know you are who you say you are? How do I know you’re not part of a conspiracy to take down my company, in cahoots with whoever is stealing my trucks?”

Finding herself on the other end of the interrogation and suspicious stick sucked. Tammy sputtered. “Me, a spy? I’m with the insurance company. You can call and check with them.”

“I did, and they verified
someone
was coming,” he corrected. “But, for all I know, the real Tamara Roberts was killed, and you’ve taken her place.”

“That’s absurd.”

“No more absurd than thinking I would steal my own trucks and make my employees disappear.”

“I have to investigate all the possibilities.”

“As do I.” For some reason, his words sent a shiver through her, especially since he said them with an intent look.

“You can check me out. I have nothing to hide. I am exactly what you see.” A thirty-something, plump, flannel-wearing woman who’d hit an innocent man in the face with a frying pan. Was it any wonder he seemed annoyed with her?

“I know what you show on the outside, yes, but I’m curious about other things.”

“Like?” she asked in a bare whisper as he closed the gap between them.

“Such as how you taste.”

He didn’t give her any more warning than that before his hands spanned her waist and he hoisted her high enough to slant his lips across hers. Any other time, she might have wondered how he hefted her with such ease, but with just a touch, she lost all ability to think. A tingle swept her at the first press of their mouths, an expert embrace where he caressed her lips with his own, explored and teased.

Finally she understood the phrase, ‘electrifying kiss’. With every nibble and suck from Reid’s mouth, her body sizzled, her blood boiled, and her heart pounded. Her mouth opened at the insistent probe of his tongue, begging for entry and then sinuously twining with her own, drawing a rumble from him, a sexy vibrating sound that caused her to shiver.

So intent was she on the pleasurable sensation his embraced evoke that her whole body loosened, including her grip on the frying pan, which hit the floor with a clang.

Startled, Tammy’s eyes opened, and they both paused, lips touching, eyes meeting, her brown gaze caught by his ardent one.

What am I doing?

The spell was broken, and she didn’t have to say a word or struggle for him to set her on her feet and step away.

“I think you should go back to bed,” he said in a raspy voice.

She simply nodded as she spun on her heel. As if chased by a wild animal—also known as her lust—she raced out of the garage for the house. She didn’t check the shadows for bears, but she did glance once over her shoulder before entering the warm haven of the kitchen. Silhouetted in the garage door, Reid stared after her, big and intimidating—and oh so tempting.

The man was dangerous on so many levels. She couldn’t help but shudder, not in trepidation. Oh no, she didn’t fear Reid, even if logic said she should. Nope, it seemed Tammy still hadn’t learned her lesson about men because, damn it all, despite all the reasons to stay away, she desired him.

A good thing Reid’s beta, Brody, followed him home the previous night. An even better thing Brody had lagged behind as they went to enter the house. The last thing Reid expected was to be met by a pan-wielding human, one who took his nudity as evidence of nefarious deeds.

If she only knew.

At least Brody was a quick thinker. He’d quickly summed up the situation and taken care of the ‘evidence’. Reid wasn’t sure what to expect when he entered the garage. He knew someone had taken his garments and sled back to the house while he investigated the scene of the shooting. Dousing them with gas proved a stroke of genius on Brody’s part.

But poor Tammy. A part of him hated lying, especially since he could see in her eyes she didn’t quite believe his fabricated answers. With good reason. Reid had secrets. Lots of them, just not of the type she suspected.

Oh, by the way, I’m a Kodiak bear.

And speaking of suspected, while he’d anticipated enjoying a kiss with the woman, he’d definitely not expected the fire that erupted in every one of his nerve endings. One touch. One taste. He was lost, lost in pleasure and need.

If not for the timely interruption, he would have taken her, right there, in the garage, to hell with the consequences. But of even more concern was the ridiculous urge he had to mark her.

Make her ours.

Even now his bear still insisted on it. It wanted him to march into that house, sling her over a shoulder, throw her on a bed, and strip those ridiculously cute pajamas from her curvy frame. It wanted to lick every inch of her body, bathing her in his scent before chomping on her wrist, leaving a mating scar of a bracelet that would proclaim to all she belonged to him.
Mine.