Wild Mate: BBW Bear Shifter Romance (9 page)

Rebecca shook her head mutely,
numb with terror.

“
Now, shall I kill you,
to torture him?” Phin smiled, dragging the blade across her
cheek. “Or shall I kill him, to torture you? Ah, decisions
decisions...”

Levi checked the doors and the
windows again. Everything was locked. There was no way her scumbag
human ex-husband could get in. He glanced towards her bedroom door.
Rebecca should be asleep by now.

He stretched his tall frame
out on the couch and tried to get comfortable. He was punching an
old, dusty cushion into shape when he heard a scream from Rebecca's
room.

He jumped to his feet and was
in her room in a heartbeat.

Rebecca was clutching her
pillow and crying out in terror. “He...he was here! Here,
right here!” she blubbered.

“
What? Who?”

“
Phin! Phin was here!”
she shrieked.

Levi's eyes scanned every
corner of the room. He went to the window and checked it. It was
locked. He walked silently to the windowless bathroom and looked
around. There was no one hiding in there. Methodically,
soundlessly, he went through every corner of her room, checking all
the cupboards and drawers, and even under the bed. He found nothing.

Rebecca was still screaming
and babbling hysterically, “I saw him, Phin...he was here...he
had a knife. A knife!”

Levi approached her very
slowly and carefully as he would a wounded animal. “Rebecca,
calm down,” he said as gently as he could. “Shhh, it's
all right. You had a nightmare. That's all. No one is here. Phin
Lester isn't here. He couldn't have gotten into your room. Your
window is locked. There are no windows in your bathroom. And he
couldn't have walked through your bedroom door. Not without getting
past me. I would never let him get past. You know that.”

“
No! No! He was here!”
she screamed, tearing at her hair. “He...he pointed a knife at
me. At my throat! He's been watching me! He saw. He saw us,
Levi!”

Levi took a small step towards
her. “What do you mean?”

“
He saw us.” She
looked stricken. “He saw us...kissing, touching...he saw my
body...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He saw me
half naked...and...he saw...everything...” She was shaking her
head, her eyes growing wild with horror.

Levi shook his head. “He
couldn't have seen us. Even if he had a pair of binoculars...”

“
He saw everything!”
she screeched.

Levi frowned and checked the
house again. He sniffed through every corner, turned everything
upside down, but he found no hidden cameras. Going back to Rebecca's
room, he found her huddled at the far corner of the bed, hugging her
pillow and crying softly.

“
Rebecca.” He
sat down beside her but didn't touch her. “There are no
cameras, no recording devices hidden anywhere in your house. All the
doors and windows are securely locked. I checked. Nothing has been
tampered with. The blinds and curtains are drawn. There is no
way...”

“
You think...I'm lying?”
she whispered, trying to suppress a wrenching sob.

“
No, no, I don't...”

“
You don't believe me.”

“
Rebecca, it's just not
possible...”

“
Stop saying that!
Please, just stop! I. Saw. Him! And there was someone else,
something else in the room.” Her voice dropped to a dramatic,
almost demented whisper. She began to shake her head frantically.
“It wasn't a shadow. It was...”

“
Rebecca, look at me...”

She hiccuped and turned to
him, tears streaming down her face. “He was right here. In my
room. With a knife. Don't tell me that it's just a nightmare.
Because it's not! It's not,” she sobbed.

Levi nodded without speaking.
Rebecca's fear was real. Her tears were real. Something had scared
her badly.

“
I'll stay here with
you. I'll stay right here.” He pulled up a chair and sat down
beside the bed.

She closed her eyes and slid
down, pulling the covers over her head. “He'll come back,”
she whimpered. “He said he'll come back for me.”

Levi reached out and patted
her shoulder gingerly. “Go back to sleep, Rebecca.” He
bit his tongue before he could say,
And forget all about this
awful nightmare.

It wasn't a nightmare to her.

To victims of violence and
abuse, the pain and hurt they experienced in the past could still
torment them in the present.

Telling them to forget their
pain was undermining and belittling what they had gone through.

Some horrors could never be
forgotten.

Levi watched Rebecca's shaking
and shivering gradually subside. Her form remained curled up under
the sheets, and her sobs became ragged breaths. She finally cried
herself to sleep, her murmurs and frightened whispers fading into
silence.

Once he was sure she was
asleep, he surveyed the room again. There was just no way Phin could
have gotten in. That bastard would have to break the window. But
there was not even the slightest crack on the window pane.

He kept checking and
rechecking the doors and windows. Throughout the night, he paced
around her bed, occasionally whispering soothing words to her when
she cried out and tucking her arm back under the sheets when she
flung her arm out in agitation. The shadows began to recede as the
first rays of the morning sun filtered through the curtains.

Levi slumped into the chair
beside her bed. He had spent the whole night wearing down her
carpet. At least Rebecca had managed to catch a few hours of sleep,
fitful though her sleep had been.

As the sunlight hit her eyes,
Rebecca jerked up in bed and blinked. Her hair was plastered to her
face, and her skin was covered in a sheen of sweat. Climbing out of
bed, she staggered to the bathroom and was about to close the door
when Levi put his hand against the door.

“
I'm going to take a
shower,” she said, running her hand down her neck which was
sticky with sweat.

“
I'm coming in with
you.”

She opened her mouth, then
shut it. Without another word, she opened the door and stepped
aside.

Levi checked behind the door
and looked in the shower. He even peered into the toilet bowl, which
earned him a nervous giggle from her, but a giggle nonetheless.

“
All clear, ma'am,”
he announced.

“
Thank you, kind sir.”
She let out that high-pitched nervous giggle again. She went to the
door and waited for him to leave.

Instead of walking to the
door, Levi shrugged and went to put the toilet seat down. Then he
sat himself down on the toilet seat and tried to look comfortable.

“
Um, I'm going to take a
shower,” Rebecca said pointedly.

“
Yup. Go ahead.”

She blew out an exasperated
breath. “Aren't you going to wait outside?”

“
Nope.”

“
But...it's all clear.
You said so yourself.”

“
Yeah. But I'm not
letting you out of my sight. I'm not making that mistake again. I'm
not going to give that bastard a chance to come near you—again.”

Rebecca's lips parted. She
realized at once what Levi was saying. He had just told her that he
believed her, that he believed Phin had really been in her room and
it wasn't all just a nightmare.

“
T-thank you, Levi,”
she whispered.

He gave a small nod. “Go.
Take your shower. I'll be right here. I'll watch your back, but I
won't stare at you.” He frowned. “Does that make any
sense?”

She laughed and he could
almost feel the weight of the world lift from his chest. “Yes!
Yes, it does.”

She disrobed quickly and
stepped into the shower. Levi tried not to stare at her luscious,
curvaceous figure. The water came on, and he could feel himself
getting hard just sitting there, listening to her movements, knowing
that she was shampooing her silky soft hair, and applying soap all
over that delectable body.

He wished he was the one
soaping her, running his soapy hands over her heavy breasts and
sweet, generous hips and thighs.

He would take his time, make
sure she was nicely soaped up, and massage every lush inch of her...

The glass began to steam up.

He couldn't see her clearly
through the fogged glass but he could still hear her moving around,
the water pelting down her back and running through her hair.

The whole bathroom smelled of
her soap and shampoo, and of her. The scent was warm and inviting,
and he leaned back a little, inhaling the glorious scent of her
deeply.

If only he could wake up to
this scent every day, and fall asleep with her scent all over him
every night...

Levi blinked through the thick
steam rising from the shower. The glass was all fogged up, and the
entire bathroom was filled with dense, almost suffocating steam. He
could hear the water running, but the rhythm was different. It was
not the sound of water cascading down a warm, curvy body. It was the
sound of water hitting the cool, flat shower tiles.

He jerked to his feet.
“Rebecca!”

There was no answer.

“
Rebecca!”

Levi waved the steam and fog
away from his eyes, and skidded to the shower door. Despite the heat
from the shower, his blood felt like ice in his veins. He yanked the
shower door open, and stumbled into the scalding spray of water.

With a shout, he snapped the
water off and spun round the narrow cubicle. An overturned shampoo
bottle was bleeding out its contents in the corner, saturating the
muggy, hot air with its cloying strawberry scent.

The shower was empty.

Rebecca was gone.

Levi scrambled out of the
bathroom and checked the doors and windows. Everything was still
tightly secured and locked. No signs of a break in at all.

Levi raced to the bathroom
again, sniffing the air and watching the steam and mist slowly
dissipating. As the glass began to clear, he caught his own
distraught face in the mirror.

He closed his eyes briefly.
“It's not Phin,” he whispered, almost in disbelief.

The mist swirled before his
eyes, taunting him, opening his eyes and mind to the terrible truth.

“
No.”

Levi clenched his fists
painfully.

Mist.

How could he have missed it?

He had been keeping his eye
out for a human. He had just assumed that Phin Lester would be
coming after Rebecca on his own. He hadn't considered the
possibility that Phin might have aligned himself with some rogue
paranormals.

He put his fist through the
mirror, smashing his snarling reflection into smithereens.

Rebecca had woken up screaming
in the middle of the night. It hadn't been a nightmare. Phin had
been misted into her room. He hadn't come through any door or
window.

Levi let out a terrible roar.
His oversight had cost him dearly. It might even cost Rebecca her
life.

Rebecca had been misted away,
from under his very nose.

And a werebear's nose was very
powerful indeed.

There was only one reason why
he hadn't sensed or scented the vampire who had misted Rebecca away.

The vampire who had taken
Rebecca was a Master vampire.

Rebecca wheezed and sputtered
as the pressure tightened around her throat. Clawing desperately at
her own neck, she could only feel her nails digging into her skin.
No one was strangling her. Yet, she was being suffocated, slowly but
surely.

The mist in the shower had
become so dense she could hardly see her own hand. The mist had felt
strangely solid against her, wrapping around her like a shroud.

She had tried to call out to
Levi, but her voice wouldn't work. She couldn't even breathe.

What was happening?
And...where was she?

She tried to calm herself
down, get her heart rate to slow down. But first, she had to
breathe.

Rebecca finally managed to
suck in a lungful of air, and everything cleared in an instant. The
mist fell away from her as she gasped and gulped in mouthfuls of air.
The invisible fingers that she had felt around her neck slipped
away, and she staggered sideways.

When she finally righted
herself, she saw a naked bulb swinging overhead like a pendulum.
Left, right, left right...the movement was almost hypnotic.

The room was listing and
tilting, but she could see dark figures standing around.

“
Who are you?” she
hissed, shaking her head to clear her vision. “Where am I?”

“
Hello Rebecca.”