Bear With Me: Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (6 page)

“Jamie! Hi,” he said unnecessarily. “I thought I would, uh, catch us some fish and cook you breakfast.”

Jamie looked down. “With no clothes on?”

“…Yes?”

Jamie held up her hands. “Okay. Cool.” She paused for a moment. “I guess that’s no weirder than me waking up and thinking that all of last night was just some weird, condor-induced erotic dream.”

“I didn’t mean to run off. I thought I’d get back before you woke up.” He felt a twinge of regret at not being back at camp with Jamie when she woke up, but Jamie didn’t seem worried or upset.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jamie said, grinning. “I’m willing to put up with a few minutes of thinking,
Am I going nuts?
if it means someone else cooking me breakfast.”

It’s because she knew where you were
, his bear suggested smugly.
She knew you wouldn’t leave her
.

Is that even possible?
Mark wondered. He knew that shifters could sense some things through the mate-bond—their mate’s emotions, sometimes, or their location. His parents had used it to irritating effect when Mark and his siblings were young.

If Jamie was his mate—and Mark was now more than sure that she was—maybe she would begin to notice some of those abilities. She would always have a vague idea of where he was. How he was feeling.

And she would know that being around her mate meant feeling safe, and protected, and loved, more than she could have imagined.

Mark swum back across to the bank and grabbed the other fish. He reached out to grab his pile of clothing, too, but Jamie got there first. She snatched them up from under his hands and stepped back out of his reach, grinning. Then she took a closer look at his face, and her grin faltered.

“Wait—you took your bandage off?”

Too late, Mark put a hand to his cheekbone. He’d peeled the bandage off before shifting without a thought because, well, one of the benefits of being a shifter was really, really fast healing.

“Uh, it feels fine…”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going to send you off up the mountains bleeding from the side of your face. When we get back to the camp I’ll—”

Jamie pulled Mark’s hand away from his face and frowned.

He bit back a groan as she touched his face, her fingertips soft and gentle against his skin. Her frown grew deeper as she saw there was only a tiny scab instead of the torn skin she’d dressed the night before. She might have expected the river to have cleaned any blood off the wound, but she would have still expected the wound to actually be there.

“Wow,” Jamie said softly. “I guess it looked a lot worse than it actually was, huh? There’s hardly a mark here.”

“Head injuries bleed a lot,” Mark said, which wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t a proper explanation, either.

“Hmm.” Jamie slid her finger down his cheek. “Well, that’s good for me. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork we have to fill out when our animals get into scraps with people,” she joked. But there was still a hint of confusion in her voice.

This is it
. Time to tell her why he healed so fast—and the rest of it. Shifters. Mates.

Mark opened his mouth, and then a tiny worm of sense wriggled to the front of his brain.

You’re seriously going to tell her now? Here, in the middle of the wilderness with no one else around, you’re going to tell her you’re a magical were-bear and she’s fated to be with you forever? How do you think that’s going to go over?

He groaned and shook his head. Suddenly, his entire plan seemed incredibly poorly thought out.

I need to think about this more
, he thought.

Aloud, he said weakly, “I guess I just heal fast.”

“I’m glad.” Jamie’s finger drifted lower, down his jawline. Then she shook herself. “So … Breakfast?”

“Breakfast.” Mark hoisted the two fish, and held out a hand for his clothes. Jamie smirked and made no attempt to hand back his clothes.

“I’ll look after these,” she said, smiling innocently. “Go on ahead back to camp—I’ll follow you.”

*

Mark licked the last buttery scraps of fish from his fingers.

“That was delicious,” Jamie said, eyeing up the pan to see if there was any left. “Aw, all gone. Maybe I should strip you and send you out to the river again,” she said teasingly, a wicked glint in her eye.

Mark stretched out in front of her. “Oh, what gratitude for all my hard work. Maybe you should provide the second course.”

“What would you prefer? Granola bars
a la mode
? Or—
ohh
… Right.”

Mark caught hold of Jamie’s hand and kissed it. Then he pulled her hand closer, and kissed her wrist. Then her lower arm, and her elbow. Soon she was lying down, her warm body a sensual weight on his.

He kissed her slowly, savoring the smell of her body, the taste of her lips, the soft noises she made as their bodies pressed together. Nothing mattered except the touch of her skin on his; the rest of the world disappeared.

Then her weight shifted. She eased her body off his, and sat up next to him, her knees pulled up against her chest. She looked down at him with a concentrated expression on her face.

“Is everything okay?” Mark asked quickly, worried.

“Not that this isn’t fun, but … I feel like there’s something I’m missing. I’m sure of it.”

Mark gulped. This was it. Explanations time.

He hadn’t wanted to spring the whole shifter thing on her out here in the mountains. But she’d clearly noticed something was up. How could she not?

Mike took a deep breath. What was he going to say? How could he explain this in a way that didn’t come off like he was a total lunatic? This wasn’t like Tom and Kes; Tom might be from a clan of shifters, but he was as human as they come, so no awkward conversations about mate bonds needed.

No need to try and figure out how to explain about shifters, and mates, without making her think she was trapped in the woods with a delusional psychopath.

“Um,” he began, racking his brain for a way to explain what he was without coming off like a total lunatic. “The thing is—”

“The birds!” Jamie shot upright. “What time is it? Oh, crap…”

She flung herself across to the tent and began rummaging, muttering to herself.

“Take notes—same time every day—how could I have forgotten? Ugh, Chris is never going to let me work solo again…”

She stood up and turned back to Mark. She was clutching an armful of ropes, and had the strap of a camera bag clamped between her teeth.

“Uh oo ongo ee?”

Mark stood up and gently took the camera. “Say again?”

“Do you want to come and have a look? I’ve got to take some recordings—ugh, I’m already late—but if you promise not to make too much noise, there’s no reason you can’t come too.” She smiled. “You don’t want your only impression of the condors to be of murderous night-time attack-birds, right? Public outreach is an important part of conservation. We want to make sure people know that a bird trying to gouge your eye out is a mark of, uh, friendship.”

“I’d love to come,” said Mark honestly. Jamie’s face lit up when she was talking about the birds, and he wanted to know more about the work that made her so happy. “But what’s the hurry?”

Jamie groaned. “These birds have only just established their nest, so it will help the center’s work if I take regular records of their activities. You know, to make sure everything’s going as it should, and give us some info to work from in future if stuff goes wrong—here, give me that,” she added, and Mark hooked the camera strap over her shoulder.

“Let me take those, then,” Mark offered, pointing at the ropes.

“Here you go—and, I’m meant to take the recordings same time each day so they’re consistent. Except this morning, I guess I was … Distracted…”

She paused. “Speaking of distracting…”

Somehow, in the exchange of gear, Mark and Jamie had become tangled. The ropes and camera strap—and, Mark now saw, a variety of carabiners and other harness straps—had become twisted together as they had passed between the two.

“Ugh, okay. Let’s try…”

Mark could feel Jamie’s breath on his collarbone as she stepped closer to him.

He tugged half-heartedly on a carabiner that had got stuck on the camera gear.

She raised a hand to untwist the ropes from the climbing harness, and missed, gripping Mark’s shirt instead.

“I’ll just—”

Mark abruptly stopped talking as Jamie stood up on her tip-toes and kissed him. He fell into the kiss, savoring the feel and taste of her lips. She tottered against him and he wrapped his arms around her. With one hand around her waist and the other under the taut curve of her behind he lifted her against himself.

Jamie moaned with need, the sound humming against his mouth. Her hands snaked up his chest and over his shoulders, under the collar of his shirt.

“Oh—dammit!”

Jamie planted her hands on Mark’s shoulders and firmly pushed off. She landed, stumbled, batted his hands away as he tried to steady her, and fought her way out of the tangle of climbing gear.

There was a pause. She was standing barely five feet away from Mark, and the air between them was almost crackling with tension. Mark thought that if he reached out to her, he’d feel sparks on his fingers.

Jamie’s eyes were shining bright, the color of her irises almost totally eclipsed by her pupils. Her lips were slightly parted, still red from their kiss. She leaned forward…

And then snapped back.

“No! Oh, this is
ridiculous!
” she cried out. “Okay. Right. You just—take this—” She unwound the last of the twisted rope connecting her to Mark and gingerly held it out, careful not to brush his skin, “—and let’s go and see the stupid birds. Otherwise I might never get there.”

She hurried away before Mark could reply.

* * *

JAMIE

It was a short walk to the condor lookout. Jamie kept telling herself that.

Just a short walk.

And then...

Jamie rubbed her forehead. And then, he had to
leave
. It had been bad enough having his face in her mind for the last, distracting her from her work. Having his real face—and body—here at camp with her? If this morning was any example, she’d never get any work done again.

How had he ended up here, anyway? Of all the random coincidences…

“Here we are,” she said as they reached the stand of old-growth trees overlooking the river.

The pines were clumped together at the edge of a steep, crumbling bank, almost a cliff, which gave a beautiful view down the valley. Directly below, the bank flattened out as it neared the river.

The condor nest on the cliffs opposite wasn’t visible from where they were standing. A combination of the river’s winding path and clusters of brush and branches hid it from view.

Neck craning, Mark stepped out to the edge of the bank and looked out at the river. Jamie dumped her armful of gear and joined him.

“That must be where they got you last night.” Jamie pointed. Some of the river-stones below were scuffed up, as though someone had slipped and fallen.

“Guess so,” said Mark, following her gaze. He looked further around, as though trying to orient what he remembered of his evening hiking with this daylight scene. “And look at that…”

An old, dead tree, which must have fallen down the bank from around where they were standing now, lay at the edge of the disturbed stones.

“Is that what you hit your head on? Ouch.”

Mark shrugged. “I guess I got off easy. That could have been messy.”

Again, Jamie caught that glimpse of some secret emotion on his face for just a second. The whole thing was clearly still worrying him in some way. She reached out to put her arm around him—and stopped. She could just imagine where that would end up. Distraction central.

“Come on,” she said. “Want to see what I’ve spent the last five years doing?”

Mark stared down the steep, crumbling bank at their feet. Doubt showed on his face.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to go down to the river further upstream?” he asked.

Jamie laughed. “Exactly how close do you think we’re going to get to the nest? I would’ve thought your adventure yesterday taught you how dangerous that can be.”

“Then how—”

Jamie pointed up, her smile growing wider. “Hope you’re not afraid of heights.”

“Not a chance. I’ll have you know I’m as good at climbing as I am at fishing,” Mark boasted with a grin that sent Jamie’s mind straight back to the swimming hole up the river.

A vision of his body, glistening wet, water streaming down his chest and thighs, filled her mind. She licked her lips and forced her imagination into shutdown.

“I’d recommend leaving your clothes on for this one. The bark’s pretty rough.”

She reached out to take the climbing gear off Mark, and tapped his cheek just next to the small scab that was the only sign that he’d hurt himself the day before.