Silver Bullet Bear (Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Agency Book 3) (11 page)

Josh knew that Jared was no idiot. He might not know what Josh was talking about, but it was clear he was referring to what Hannah had told him.

“Tough question,” Jared repeated, “but easy answer.”

“Wha—?” Josh said in surprise. “How so?”

Jared smiled. “Do what you believe to be the right thing. Not what they tell you,” he said with a wave around them to indicate the world at large. “But the right thing,” he said, poking a gentle finger at Josh’s heart. “The right thing,” he repeated, then turned to go.

“Hey,” Josh called.

Jared turned halfway, giving him a questioning look.

“Thanks.”

“For what?” Jared said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t ask me what it was all about. Thank you for that.”

Jared smiled and nodded. “Make sure you’re back tomorrow. We need to know who these new people are.”

Josh nodded. He would. But for now, he had somewhere else to be.

Climbing into his truck, he visualized the quickest route through the city to Hannah’s hotel.

Hannah

She sat in a chair, the wet clothing still stuck to her skin as she stared blankly out the window.

Chad hadn’t skimped on their hotel rooms this time around, and now Hannah was taking full advantage of that fact. The long, rectangular room had a full wall of windows at the far end, overlooking the downtown core. Bright lights and colorful neon signs blazed, driving back the shadows of the rain and darkness, proclaiming their goods for anyone to see.

Girls!

Two-For-One Pizza Special!

Oil-Change Deal on Now!

Bottle Service—Call for Details!

Then there were the numerous signs that had nothing but logos on them. Fast food joints, convenience stores, at least half a dozen various clubs that had nothing but their name in lights. Even at this late hour, there was still enough light shining through the rain to allow her to see easily, despite the lights in her apartment being off.

“What am I doing?” she said softly, looking out at the landscape from the plush chair she had dragged over from its spot by the television.

The last person she and her brother had revealed their secret to had been Valen Kedyn, a gryphon shifter from Genesis Valley, who had discovered them while he too had been on the run. It had been a partnership born of desperation on both their parts.

That had been a year ago now, and it had been a decade before that. Opening up to people was quite literally a life-threatening experience. Though the battle earlier that night had been won by the wolves, it could easily have gone the other way as well. One blow from Josh’s bear would have changed the entire outcome. Her wolf form was strong and durable, but the raw power contained within a bear dwarfed anything she might come up with.

Chad had gone to his room immediately upon arrival, leaving Hannah alone with her thoughts. That troubled her a little, though she wasn’t devoting as much time to it as she should. Josh was dominating her mind, her thoughts, and of course, her heart. Their relationship had to be one of the rockiest, most screwed-up things that she had ever been a part of. There was no denying it.

Just as there was no denying the fact that through it all she had still managed to develop feelings of affection for him. Which complicated pretty much everything. A part of her wished that he hadn’t been so damn likeable, but deep down Hannah knew that there was something special about him. Even if it was just his ability to sit still and listen to her explain something that went against the grain of everything he knew. Many people wouldn’t have given her the time of day to speak.

Hell, many people don’t. I know that from firsthand experience. The world pretends to be open-minded, until it affects them directly. Then you see a person’s true colors.

Hannah had seen Josh’s true colors tonight. She didn’t know how the mixing of them would go, but she couldn’t get over the intelligence behind his eyes, and the way he not only listened to what she had said, but had
thought
about it. Had made his own conclusions without needing her to spell it all out.

True, he had tried to kill her and Chad when her brother stupidly decided to reveal himself. Hannah still needed to yell at him for that. The more she thought about it, however, the more she remembered the way he had looked at her, all animal and no humanity. Hannah was convinced that Josh must have been overwhelmed by the ingrained response from his animal, and had briefly lost control. Thinking back to the other day at breakfast, when Josh had brushed his hand against hers and she had lost control herself, Hannah couldn’t help but forgive him.

The question that plagued her now was would Josh be able and willing to overcome a lifetime of knowledge to accept the truth she had shown him. Just how flexible was he? Listening to her was one thing, but accepting and truly
believing
her was something else entirely. Very few people in her life had been able to do that.

On the bright side, that meant Hannah was used to the crushing blow when someone she had hoped would be her friend had turned against her and hunted her down or reported her to others. The other thing she needed to factor in was that he might use that against her. If he pretended to accept her, Hannah knew full well that Josh might be able to use her feelings from that against her, lulling her into a false sense of security.

Josh would never do that. He’s a good person. If he doesn’t believe you, he’s going to tell you. Then he will kill you.

The door rattled on its hinges under the force of a fist as someone knocked firmly at it.

Hannah jumped in the air, scrambling to catch herself as she knocked the chair over in her haste. Straightening, she pushed the sides of her pants down.
I should have changed.

“Chad?” she called, wondering if he was ready to talk at last, to explain why he had been acting so distant with her all day.

Three more knocks. Whoever it was hadn’t heard her.

She crept toward the door and pulled her eye up to the hole.

It was Josh.

Hannah jerked back as if stung, eyes darting around the room.

Shit shit shit! What do I do? Is he here to kill me?

“I’m not here to hurt you.” His voice carried through the door with a calmness completely at odds with how she felt.

“That’s what they all say,” she replied.

Josh’s snort was loud enough to be audible. “I don’t think I would let this door stop me if that were the case,” he told her.

Hannah considered that point for a moment. It was a very good point. The door itself might be metal, but the flimsy lock wouldn’t hold up to a determined blow from the huge shifter.

“Fuck,” she said, the single word said aloud somehow amplifying its meaning to her.

Closing her eyes and throwing out a wordless prayer, she slid back the deadbolt and twisted the handle. There was a brief hesitation, then she pulled the door open, screwing her eyes shut and bracing for a blow.

Nothing came.

“I told you, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, sounding rather amused.

Hannah opened one eye, focusing on him for a moment, then she opened both of them.

“You look like shit,” she said bluntly.

Josh’s white shirt was ripped and stained with blood, exposing much of his hard muscle to her eye, forcing a slight quiver through her lips, before Hannah bit down on her bottom one to try and stop them from betraying her. His jeans were much the same, and all of it been doused liberally in water. Despite the drive to the hotel, it still held more than enough dampness to force the material to adhere to his skin. To her eyes it just amplified his muscles even more. She could make out each thick bulge on his arms, the massive pecs that covered his entire chest, and the delicious, drool-worthy ripples of his abdomen.

Focus, woman. Just because he looks like a model straight out of a magazine doesn’t mean your life still isn’t on the line. Think with your brain, and not the thing between your legs.

“Thank you,” he replied. “I got beat up.”

“Oh you did, did you?”

Josh nodded. “Yeah, there were like twenty of them. Coming from every direction. I fought off probably half of them, but there were still at least fifteen or twenty left after that.” He shrugged. “One versus forty just isn’t fair.”

Hannah smiled as the number of his foes kept climbing. “And you did nothing to deserve it, right?”

“Of course not. I’m innocent,” he said, flashing her a grin that made her legs waver.

Then his expression sobered. “You know, when I was younger, living in foster home after foster home, whenever I was lucky enough to go to school, the other kids made fun of me. Even the ones that came from homes that were barely better than what I had.”

Her expression stiffened as he began to talk, the smile fading the longer he went on.

“As you’re well aware, at that age, I wasn’t a shifter. I didn’t even know I was. Nobody had known my parents.” He grimaced. “I was the literal poster child for a basket baby, dumped on the steps of an orphanage and abandoned by my parents.” The big man shook his head. “Anyway, like I said, the other kids wouldn’t play with me simply because I didn’t have a family. That was it, the single reason. That apparently made me different from them, even the ones who had drug-addict mothers and criminal fathers. At least they
had
parents. It never really made any sense to me of course. I knew I was normal enough. But they refused to believe me. So I stopped trying to play with them one day.”

Hannah was nodding along, understanding the point he was making, but also intrigued by the details of his younger years.

“When I stopped trying, they mostly stopped bugging me. It was an uneasy truce, but I knew that if I ever went back, it would start up all over again. I couldn’t go to the younger grades, you see, because they told them the same thing. And of course the older boys knew that everyone beneath them was to be treated like they didn’t exit. So there I was, trapped in a circle of ostracism.”

His eyes bored into her then as he continued to speak, letting them tell her the story as much as his words did.

“But the next year, there was a new boy. He didn’t have a family either. He would play with me, and suddenly we were having fun. The others tried to show us they were better than we were, but the two of us didn’t care. For that entire year we played together, showing the other kids that we were the same as they were, even if we didn’t have their concept of families.” Josh looked up for a moment, his eyes distant as some memory or another played through his mind.

“What happened after that?” she asked quietly.

“The next year the boys stopped teasing us, and we could all play together.”

Hannah nodded, understanding. All it had taken was one person to give him a chance, to show him that he could be normal like the rest of them. That’s all people wanted, was reassurance that she could be normal like the rest of them. That she wasn’t crazy.

“So why are you telling me this?” she asked.

There was a brief sliver of hesitation, but not enough to matter. Then Josh spoke. “I was wondering if you wanted to play with me?” he asked.

Hannah grinned. “Is that an offer?” she said mischievously, her grin turning almost delightfully evil.

Josh shrugged. “I suppose it is, yes. Though,” his voice lightened to match her tone, “I hope it’s okay that I’m not really little.”

“Oh, it’s very okay,” she replied, feeling her cheeks heat at the blatant sexual references passing between them.

She looked up at him in wonder for a moment, the surprise of his acceptance of her still sinking in. She was having a hard time believing it.

This is too good to be true. How did I get so lucky?

“Can I come in?” Josh said after a moment, his face twisting into a lopsided grin that sent the butterflies in her stomach on a wild rollercoaster ride.

“Oh, of course,” she said, pushing the door fully open and turning to head back inside, her hair swishing around down the back of her neck as she did.

It was only when the door thudded oddly did she realize that he hadn’t followed her into the darkened room.

Fearing that perhaps she had made a mistake, Hannah slowly turned back to look at him.

“Josh?” she asked nervously.

He was standing still in the doorway, staring at her in abject shock, unresponsive to her call.

“Josh?” she said again, moving slowly back toward him.

“I’ve seen this before,” he said in surprise.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Turn around,” he said as she neared him, standing in the little hallway that led from the door into her room.

Hannah frowned, but did as he asked. His tone wasn’t aggressive or demanding, but filled instead with wonder. As she spun, the decorative wallpaper design flashed by her eyes, the columns printed onto the material giving the little hallway the feeling of being an old arched corridor.

“Holy shit,” he whispered softly behind her.

“What is it?” she asked, feeling her hair settle down her back once more.

“It’s you,” he said.

“Josh, I don’t understand.”

The big man laughed, a happy, burbling sound, and then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, the powerful limbs pulling her tight to him. She hissed in delightful surprise as she found herself pressed against his hard body.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It was just a dream.”

He refused to explain any more. Hannah thought about objecting until his searing-hot lips burned her neck, almost making her cry out in surprise at the touch. Her hands came up to wrap around the thick muscles of his forearms, her nails digging slightly into his skin as he continued to nibble at her neck, weakening the muscles in her legs until they felt like jelly.

“Josh, I—”

“Shh,” he said, turning her around and lifting her from the floor until her head was above his.

Now it was Hannah’s turn. She lowered herself to him, head tilting naturally to the side as she pressed her lips against his. Her hands slid up his body until she could grasp the sides of his head, pulling him tight to her as they locked themselves together, finally exploring the depths of the relationship that they had kept to themselves until that moment.