Saving Her Bear: A Second Chances Romance (8 page)

“Tell me you came,” he said.

Catherine chuckled, her fingers still curled into the tendrils of his hair. “You couldn’t tell?”

He lifted his head to look at her. “Yeah, but was it a good one?”

She laughed, reaching down to touch his hips. “It was a good one.”

John made a subtle gesture, pretending to punch the air in quiet celebration. She laughed again.

John slumped down beside her, taking her face in his hands. “I want you to be mine, Catherine.”

His words were so intense, it almost frightened her. No man had ever looked at her the way John did, never kissed her or made her laugh like John did. This must be too good to be true.

“I thought you just claimed me,” she said, smirking at him.

“You have no idea,” he said, grinning. “But I mean it. I want you. I don’t want some passing thing. I want you to be mine.”

Catherine swallowed. He’d gone from a ravenous beast, to this stern lover, declaring his desires as though he meant to plan the next six lifetimes. “How do you know you want me?”

He touched her face. “I’ve always wanted you to be mine.”

“Then why didn’t you make me yours last time?”

“Because I had to know you meant it. That if you were going to be mine, you’d be mine always.”

Catherine gasped. How could he ask something so powerful? How could he declare this kind of devotion so confidently when other men couldn’t even agree to second dates without drama? Was he really that sure?

Finally, as he watched every inch of her face, she took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes. I want to be yours.”

John smiled and kissed her. Then he rose from the ground, hoisting her onto her feet. She stood there naked from the waist down, her torso barely covered now by a torn red t-shirt. He scanned the forest floor, searching for her shorts, and handed them to her, returning to the chivalrous creature he was when the sun was up. He stood there, rubbing his thighs as he complained of sore muscles.

She glared at him. “Don’t complain to me about sore.”

She made a point of letting him see her dust off her backside before she pulled on her shorts.

“Oh is that so?”

The waistband of the jean shorts grazed against the scrapes on her hips and she hissed. John furrowed his brow and she showed him her battle wounds.

“Sweetheart, I wish you’d told me. I would have stopped or -”

“I didn’t want you to stop. I enjoyed every second of it.”

John grinned from ear to ear, reaching for her. He pulled her in, nuzzling his nose and cheek against the top of her head, then kissing her and squeezing his arms around her. She felt contained, like a pocket sized little treasure, precious in his arms. He turned his attention to his own zipper and repositioned himself as he did up his fly. They began their trek back toward the road, John slipping out of his hooded sweatshirt, handing it to her.

“You’re gonna get some looks when you roll back in to the Calhoun house.”

Catherine gave him a skeptical look. “Why’s that?”

John made a grand flourish of pulling a couple dead leaves from her hair. She reached up, feeling the brush and dirt caked there and began to laugh.

“Damn. Bennett’s gonna have a field day.”

“He really is.”

Catherine shimmied inside his baggy sweatshirt, breathing in the scent of him as she zipped it up. “So, uh – will it always be like that?”

John raised an eyebrow. “Not unless you want it to be.”

She smiled. “I think I might enjoy cozy sex from time to time. Going forward. If I really am ‘yours,’ as you said.”

“Oh, you are,” he said, grabbing her ass and giving it a good squeeze.

She felt warm, settled almost, like she knew his company was a constant. Unlike other men, John Fenn didn’t feel like a wavering thing.

“Nice touch on the stick dolls, by the way. You were planning this, I take it?”

“What do you mean?” He asked.

Catherine scanned the branches around them until she found what she was looking for. She smacked the doll, watching it swing there from a long piece of twine.

John shook his head. “Oh Jesus, that’s fucking creepy.”

“Cut it out, I know it was you.”

John stared at her, eyes wide and brows up. “I swear to you on my family name, not me. Are there more of them?”

Catherine pointed out another two or three in the more distant trees, and John grabbed her around the shoulders, pulling her away from them as though they might bite. “Don’t touch em. You might catch the hermits.”

Catherine laughed as she turned back toward the truck, ready to trudge through the underbrush. The smell caught her so suddenly, she almost gagged.

“Catherine,” John said. It was barely a whisper. “Don’t move, baby.”

She froze, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of dread. Her eyes instantly welled with tears. She recognized the smell. It wasn’t something she would easily forget.

Catherine stared toward the tree line, holding still as she listened for John to give her further instruction. She couldn’t see the threat, couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but she felt it nonetheless. A moment later, she heard it – a deep chested grunt, followed by the sound of the creature sniffing at something. Suddenly the woods came to life with sound as some massive shape moved through the brush, careening toward her with purpose. She turned in time to make out the massive black shape, barreling toward her from behind a nearby boulder. She screamed, backing away.

“No! No! No! Hey now! Get!” John hollered, lunging to her, and throwing her onto the ground behind him. The bear slowed before him, but did not recoil. John stood much as he had the night before, leaning toward the beast, as though challenging it.

“Go bear! Go!”

How could this happen again? She thought. Twice in as many nights. She’d lived in Maine, seen bears many times, but never this close – never from anywhere but the safety of a window in a house with four walls. She watched the bear jerk toward John, growling angrily, and she began to pray.

Please don’t hurt him, she thought. Please, don’t hurt him after I just found him again. Please.

The bear roared, mouth open and dripping saliva. She scrambled away a few more feet.

“Catherine! Don’t move!”

She was panting, bordering on an asthma attack, the stench of the bear overwhelming her from this close.

“Go bear!” John yelled one more time.

The beast turned from him and charged toward her, coming to loom like death over her. John was on her instantly, yanking her to her feet and out of its way.

The bear took two more steps toward them, as John pressed her behind a tree. “No matter what happens, Catie, don’t run! Do you hear me? Don’t run!”

“What?!”

With that, John surged toward the bear, smacking it in the face to draw it away from her. The bear turned for him as he backed deeper into the woods.

“John! What are you doing? Stop it!” The terror was giving way to helplessness, and she was openly sobbing as the bear swatted at John.

John pulled off his shirt, flapping the light fabric into the bear’s face as the bear followed him further away from her. “God damn it, I don’t know him, Catie. I don’t -”

“What do you mean you don’t know him? Stop it, John! Please! You’re making him mad!”

The bear seemed to glance back at her. “I don’t have a choice. Close your eyes, baby.”

Catherine couldn’t close her eyes if her life depended on it. She searched the ground at her feet, found a good sized rock and lobbed it at the bear’s haunches. She instantly regretted the decision as the bear turned, roaring in her direction with hungry intent.

John lunged toward the animal, his pale chest the only thing clear in the darkness as the bear barreled at her. Catherine fell back, her backside slamming into a boulder as she landed. The pain was unspeakable, but she braced for the attack, her hands splayed before her as the bear came at her.

The massive black shape toppled onto its side as something even bigger tackled it, bringing it down with a thunderous crack as they slammed into a young birch tree. Catherine screamed to see something that huge appear before her – like from nothing, taking up the space where John had been. Yet, this something wasn’t John. His pale form was gone, and here stood a massive, eight foot tall, brown bear.

“John! John?!”

Dear god, where is he? He must be hurt! Please God, don’t let him be hurt!

Catherine tried to move away, but the muscles in her backside were atrophied from her injury. She lay there helpless, watching the massive brown bear slam its front paws into the chest of her attacker. The black bear roared up at his opponent, rewarded for his efforts by the brown bear clamping his jaws around the black bear’s throat. The sound it made was pathetic, whimpering in a plea for mercy. The brown bear released its hold, and the black bear scampered up and away, its wide caboose teetering from side to side.

Catherine listened as the black bear retreated crashing through the brush. She lay there, helpless and alone, staring up at a beast twice the size of the first, waiting for it to turn and claim its meal. John was already gone, certainly lying hurt somewhere in the dark, and she was alone, her body half broken beneath her. She gathered up all her strength, clenching her jaw as she shifted on the ground. If she was going down, she was going down fighting.

The brown bear watched her as she rose to her feet, propping herself against a nearby tree.

“Alright, you son of a bitch. Let’s do this,” she said, straightening, her left ass cheek screaming in protest.

The bear snorted, shaking his head as though to shoo a fly. Then he hoisted himself up onto his hind legs, towering over everything. She snatched up a large stick from the ground, wielding it like a baseball bat. The bear just watched her, its rumbling breaths coming in calm bursts.

She took a step back, poking the stick in its direction. “John?” She hissed into the wilderness, praying she might hear him call.

The bear shifted on its hind legs, and slumped down, then as Catherine watched, it seemed to shrink into itself, as though cowering from something. Yet, it wasn’t cowering, it was growing smaller, the dark fur giving way to the pale smoothness of skin. Catherine backed away several steps, mumbling to herself. This wasn’t real. What she was seeing was impossible.

“No, no. No!” She yelled at the sight, as though she could argue it out of being. Yet there on the forest floor where the massive brown bear had been was a brown haired man, his face as familiar as her own name.

She tripped over a tangle of branches, catching herself against a tree trunk. John moved toward her, arms out to catch her, his body naked now, bleeding from a long scrape across his shoulder.

“Don’t come fucking near me!” She screamed, swinging the stick in his direction.

“I’m sorry, Catie. I’m so sorry you had to see that. I meant to tell – I wanted to tell you years ago.”

“Back off! Back the fuck off!”

She threw the stick at him, stumbling away, unwilling to take her eyes off him, as though doing so would invite the bear back.

“I’m not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I didn’t have a choi -”

“You were a fucking bear!”

He displayed his hands out before him, moving toward her cautiously. “But I’m not now.”

The impossible screamed in her mind as logic and reason fought desperately to deny what she’d just seen. Yet, there was no means of denial. She’d just watched the impossible happen.

“You were a bear,” she said, and dropped.

CHAPTER FOUR

John’s voice was gentle, shifting in distance from as close as a whisper in her ear, to the sound of someone calling from across the harbor. She tried to call back to the sound, but no sound would come.

“Catie, can you hear me, sweetheart?”

Catherine opened her eyes and found herself lying beneath the open beams of a lodge ceiling. She swallowed, her throat painfully dry and hoarse. She reached for her throat, and quickly remembered why she’d been screaming. Catherine jerked across the bed, nearly toppling off the far end as John reached for her, frowning.

“You’re safe, honey. You’re safe.”

Catherine sat up in the queen sized bed, glancing around the room. This place was foreign; wooden plank walls and high windows facing the harbor, misty in the early morning.

“Where am I?”

John turned to the bedside table, lifting up a steaming mug of something to hand to her. “You’re in my bedroom.”

Catherine glanced around again. This wasn’t the bedroom she remembered from John’s childhood home.

He seemed to read her expression. “This is my house.”

“You have a house?”

Catherine leaned toward him, cautiously, glancing into the mug to decipher its contents. It looked like tea. It smelled like tea. She trusted it about as much as she trusted a snake oil salesman.

He chuckled softly. “I do. It was Great Uncle Greg’s, but when he passed without any kids, it went to me.”

Catherine swallowed, taking the mug from him, but still wary to drink from it, despite the ache in her throat. She glanced at him, clad in a Bruins T-shirt and ratty old jeans. He looked as aimless as she was, but here he was a homeowner, and the last job she’d held down was as a masked lunatic with a fake knife at the Cougar Mountain Haunted Hayride. Not exactly a career that affords a person property taxes – on Oceanside property.

“It’s chamomile. It has a metric fuck ton of honey in it, too. Thought it might help your nerves.”

Her nerves? Why would she need help with her nerves? Oh, that’s right, your newly declared boyfriend is a god damn bear.

Catherine nearly choked on the sweet tea as the memory came flooding back to her. She coughed, only further agitating her throat.

“I should go. Bennett will be wondering where his truck it,” she said, shifting under the covers. The pressure on her backside reminded her of her injury. She could only imagine the size of the bruise she must be sporting.

“Please don’t go. I talked to Bennett. He picked up his truck last night.”

You bastard, she thought. How am I going to get home now?