Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (2 page)

With a shake of her head she said all at once that she couldn’t believe she was actually dirty thinking in the middle of an art show, and that she wanted Erik more than anything, yoga pants or no.

Actually
, she thought,
no anything would be good right about now
.

“And so,” Erik took a big breath, unconsciously flexing his shoulders, “the next time you find yourself wanting to go buy a Picasso or a Renoir, instead take that thirty bucks or whatever, and donate it here to support fine local artists like Lily.”

The room grew quiet and someone leaned over the podium, whispering to Erik.

“It’s not... Oh! Sorry,” he said with one of his panty-dropping grins. “Lilah, I mean. Well anyway, I’m about done rattling the cup. Let’s go get some drinks!”

A roar of approval went through the crowd.

In the background though, someone was yelling Erik’s name.

“Alpha! Alpha!”

The voice was tiny, almost imperceptible over the din of people wanting to go get free Heineken, box wine, and Li’l Smokies cooked in something resembling grape jelly soup.

“Alpha Danniken!” cried the unknown shifter. “There’s something else!”

Erik was turning away from the podium, making sure his hand fell in front of his semi-exposed gear. When the voice cried out again, he wrinkled his forehead, trying to decide if that was actually someone yelling for him, or if he was hearing things.

Enough of the room had emptied into the banquet hall for the voice to get above the crowd noise. “Alpha Danniken! There’s something you
must
address!”

“Hunh?” Erik grunted, turning back to the face the dwindling audience instead of making bedroom eyes at his mate. “Is somebody yelling for me?”

The crowd parted further until standing in the middle of the room like Moses in the middle of an industrial carpet Red Sea, was a small, roundish woman who couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall, and came complete with fairly thick glasses, and a pair of buckteeth that could – and probably did from time to time – chew through trees.

“Yes?” Erik asked. “You are?”

“Celia Maynard,” she said with a short, terse, tight voice that seemed a little more aggressive than necessary. “I’m here on behalf of the forest.”

“Er,” Erik caught himself and staved off a laugh. “Is this like a Lorax thing?”

Izzy watched him, and was a little surprised and slightly excited that he’d correctly referenced Dr. Seuss.

“I don’t know what that is,” Celia’s voice was strained, and she swatted her hand in the air like she was trying to catch a fly. “But I assume you’re trying to be cute. You’re always cute, aren’t you? That’s your game, isn’t it? Act cute and ignore everything important going on around you?”

Erik shrugged her off with an easy gesture. “Not usually,” he said. “But if you don’t need anything, I’ll be going. There’s Heineken and—”

“The forest is dying!” she wailed. “Trees falling down, controlled burns not being done, rivers overflowing their banks! I know you want to turn this forest, turn this town, into some kind of suburban paradise. Well, I’m gonna
show
you a flood!”

“Listen, uh, Celia did you say? Listen, I don’t know what you’re getting at here, but if there are grievances against the city government you’d like to file, there’s a chain of command for that.” Erik began counting the steps on his fingers. “First you need to see Duggan, he’s the city manager. You can yell at him all you like,” Erik said with a mischievous grin, “or you can just sign up to have a turn at the docket next time the council is sitting. And then you show up, list off all the reasons you’re angry, and if any of them make any sense, then we’ll—”

“NO!” she screeched. “That is
not
acceptable!”

Erik, obviously taken aback, looked over at Izzy, who motioned for him to calm down and get control of himself before he did something stupid. “Erik...” she whispered, moving to the side of the podium and taking the huge wolf’s arm. “Come on, Erik. Remember why we’re here, it’s for the art and for that day care that’s getting some of the donations, and for the exhibit. We aren’t, turns out, here to fight with townspeople. Not this time.”

“Don’t
you
drag him away!” Celia hissed. “He’s going to listen to me this time. He ignored fourteen letters, six petitions – all with the required number of signatures to be read in front of the council, by the way – and
three
phone calls!”

Erik was shaking his head, and by now the cocktail crowd was coming back out to see what the fuss was about.

“Listen,” he said, raising his hands defensively. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I might look lazy and carefree, but I take my job seriously. If I’d seen any of that stuff come across my desk, I would have paid attention to it. Especially if it had the requisite number of signatures. There’s got to be some kind of misunderstanding.”

He seemed genuinely confused, but the woman was just getting more and more ramped up the longer she ranted. “Conspiracy!” she shouted. “There’s a conspiracy to ruin the forest! I bet the alpha is in bed with an oil company, or some kind of industrial farm! Conspiracy!”

She was so mad that little collections of spittle gathered in the corners of her mouth. “You won’t win this time, Erik Danniken! The forest, nature, it isn’t going to allow this to continue! Mark my words. Every day that goes by without a solution is another day this town is closer to dying! Mark my words, Danniken! You won’t be so smug when—”

“You said that twice,” Erik cut in. “Mark my words, you said that twice. And anyway, I don’t know what your deal is, if you’re drunk or mad about getting outbid on a painting, but you need to take a few deep breaths and do a warrior pose or two.”

She lunged, like she was going to take his eyes out if she got anywhere near him, but just as his eyes went yellow, a pair of extremely large hands caught her from behind.

“Problem?” It was Rex Lee, mate to the artist of the hour. Behind him stood Atlas, and three or four other confused, but slightly irritated Jamesburg citizens.

“No problem at all,” Celia said, shooting Rex a nasty look, and then sneering at Erik. “No problem at all. I was just giving Mr. Danniken the courtesy of warning him that something was about to happen to his city, that’s all.”

Erik quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing further.

As abruptly as the bizarre rant started, the tiny woman with the square teeth yanked her arm away from Rex, and stormed out into the night, disappearing into the woods around the museum.

“That was... special.” Erik turned to Izzy, a hand casually resting on her shoulder.

Izzy nodded. “But you know what?” she asked. “All that flashing your eyes did, and how you kept clenching your jaw? I think maybe... well, maybe those yoga pants were a good idea after all.”

The room had emptied out again and the two of them stood alone in the lecture hall. She let her hand fall down to the front of Erik’s stretchy pants and for once, it was Izzy doing the flagrant teasing.

“Do you think we could find a broom closet somewhere?” she asked, stroking him and loving the way his heat burned her palm. “Or... no, that’s too crazy.”

“What is?” Erik asked. He was already tugging at his tank top. “Nothing’s too crazy. You want me to throw you across that table right there?” he pointed his head toward a fold-out card table that had about sixty unused punch cups perched precariously on top. “And don’t say anything you don’t mean because you know that I am
awful
at reading between the lines.”

Izzy blushed deeply, giggling and thinking that maybe this
was
the time just to go totally crazy. “This isn’t gonna take long,” she whispered into his ear before she kissed Erik’s neck. “It’s pretty dark outside, huh? Think anyone would notice the alpha going missing for five or ten minutes?”

Erik pushed the fallen brown curls out of Izzy’s face and stared at her for a second. “Will they notice I’m gone? Yeah, maybe. Will they care? Who knows. Do I give a shit?”

“Not for a second,” she finished, grinning in a way that gave his heart a little hit of arrhythmia.

He grabbed her hand, and kissed her so hard, so suddenly, that her head was forced backward. When he finally stopped, Izzy studied his face, breathless for a moment.

“Jamesburg,” Erik said with one of his easy smiles. “Gotta love it.”

––––––––

“W
hat’re you readin’ for?” Mitch Samuelsson slapped the book that Orion was poring over out of his hand, knocking the heavy volume to the ground with a thick
thump
. “The hell does a bear like you need with a book, anyway?”

Orion narrowed his pale brown eyes. Cocky to the point of comedy, pointlessly smug and so obnoxious about women that Orion wanted to deck him every time they went to a bar, Mitch was the self-proclaimed leader of the Dirty Devils. The Devils were an outlaw motorcycle club that spent at least as much time selling themselves out to various criminals, drug dealers, and politicians as protection as they did on anything to do with motorcycles.

As thugs, the Devils were unmatched. How could you possibly get more dangerous than a gang of biker bears with nothing to lose and nowhere to turn? Blood in, blood out, and more often than not, blood was all the Devils thought about.

And Orion
hated
it.

With a snap, he grabbed hold of Mitch’s studded leather jacket with the torn off sleeves – he hated torn off sleeves, especially when they ruined a perfectly good piece of leather – and just glared.

“What’re you gonna do, college boy? You gonna try to fight me? Try it, ass stick. Me and the rest of the Devils will stomp your grungy ass into the dirt. I wanted to for as long as I can remember. I
own
you, boy. You don’t got a choice in the world. You either do what I tell you to do, or I’ll mount your damn paws on a spike.”

He hated Mitch, hated the Devils, torn up sleeves, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but what he really, really hated? Mitch calling him college boy.

Orion’s slow breathing became an unconscious growl. He tightened his fists so that Mitch’s jacket squeaked as it rubbed together. Then, he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he released his grip.

“That’s right, college boy,” Mitch said. “Yeah, that’s about what I expected. Now clean up my boots. All six pairs. And make sure they’re shiny enough that I can see panties under a skirt in ‘em. If I run into somebody wearing a skirt, I mean.”

Mitch shuffled a handful of stuttering, scuffling steps before he turned back around. “I got a job for you later, college boy.”

Rage seethed through Orion’s veins, making his face go hot and then cold. He clenched his fist in time with the pounding of his heart in his ears. “What job?” he growled.

“Just some shit-heel traitor we found, needs takin’ care of.”

“You sure he actually did what you’re saying he did? Remember last time you tried to get me to do your dirty work and it turned out you were just trying to get me to kill the guy who stole one of your old ladies?” A grim smile spread across Orion’s tattooed face. “You remember that, don’t you, Mitch?”

The way the bigger bear said ‘Mitch’ dripped with contempt. A spider web of scars, from one of Mitch’s rages, covered one of Orion’s cheeks.

“Keep mouthing and I’ll cut off an ear.”

Orion answered with a grin. “You could try,” he said. “You’d need a half dozen Devils to hold me down, but you could try.”

Mitch turned his head to the side and spat onto the ground. “You ain’t worth it, college boy. You ain’t worth shit.”

Every muscle in Orion’s body was tense and hard. His tendons taut and ready to explode the second he decided. One split second would be all he needed. But he just couldn’t do it. Exhaling, Orion let his shoulders slacken. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, all right. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mitch finally turned his back to Orion and shuffled away, slightly dragging the one of his feet that didn’t work quite right. It’d been that way for as long as Orion remembered, and his memory went back a
long
way.

The other thing he remembered? The way Mitch spent most of his life telling him how useless he was, how he wasn’t worth shit, as he put it so often. It used to get to him, when Mitch said things like that, but lately? Orion had started to see things a little clearer as he rounded the curve that went past age thirty and realized he wasn’t the worthless one.

The Devils, they were the worthless ones. The only family he’d ever had, and they were ruthless, relentless and completely worthless.

But the most worthless of them all? His dad. The dad who never did much more than slap him, beat him, and sleep around on his mom. The dad that gave him the scar on his face and tried to make him kill.

Oh yeah, and his dad?

Mitch.

*

W
ith boots grudgingly cleaned and his two textbooks packed and hidden, Orion stepped out of the stiff, canvas tent and into the makeshift camp that the Devils set up about sixty miles out from Jamesburg. It was a wild place with no real rules, no real law.

There couldn’t be one, not really.

Jamesburg’s hyena police couldn’t patrol all the woods, and even though they’d been looking for the Devils – and for Mitch – for the better part of twenty years, they never really caught up with the gang. It would be like Elliot Ness trying to find alcohol in a city that was nothing but an endless string of speakeasies.

Except in Jamesburg, Elliot Ness was a hyena, Al Capone was a bear with a patchy gray beard and eye tattoos that marked him as a member of the Samuelsson clan. And the endless string of speakeasies was a vast expanse of forest. And it is
damn
hard to find bears in a forest if they don’t want to be found.

“Come over here, college boy,” Mitch said, chiding his cub. “Here.”

He plopped a lead pipe into Orion’s hand. The metal was heavy and satisfying to hold, the rough, cold surface scraping against the calluses on his palm. The feel of lead against his hand was familiar. So many times he’d held one of these, so much guilt he held onto now for the things he’d done. This time though? There weren’t going to be any regrets.