BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (114 page)

“I’ll run down and get it when he arrives,” Darren offered. Jenna nodded and slid out of his arms, pouring them each a glass of juice. She started up a conversation, talking about the weather and how hard it was for the old people when it got so cold. Anything that didn’t have to go too deep.

It was hard making small talk through the rest of the night, but somehow she managed and finally Darren left. He kissed her at the door and then pulled her against him in a hug.

“I’m glad you trust me enough to tell me about your life,” he said, and he sounded so sincere that if Jenna didn’t know what he really was, she would have believed those words. He was the perfect guy, she thought. But maybe that was because he was doing it on purpose so that he could get to her love and kill him.

It killed the romance a little. Jenna smiled sweetly.

“I’m so glad
you
trust
me
enough to believe me and not just think I’m crazy,” she said. She put her head against his chest and he leaned his chin on the top of her hair.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” he said. “I have a lot of work tomorrow, but maybe the day after.”

Jenna nodded. “I look forward to it,” she said. Darren smiled and finally turned away. Work? Right. He was going to hunt shifters – that was the work he was talking about. Jenna watched him walked down the stairs until he was gone before she closed the door and locked it. She was rid of him for now. Everything had worked out the way she’d wanted it to. Now she just needed to get back to Bruce and tell him what was going on.

Being with Bruce was hard, and Jenna knew that it wasn’t going to get easier. It had been a hell of a ride so far and if she wanted to fit into his life she had to get used to it. Darren had walked into her life and he’d seemed uncomplicated, easy-going and understanding. She’d liked him right away the same way she’d liked Bruce in the beginning.

Maybe Jenna was drawn to the preternatural world. The different between Bruce and Darren was that Bruce had been honest with her. Maybe he hadn’t shown her everything but he’d never lied and he’d never used her.

Darren had done all of that, and his connection with her was for one thing only, and that was his job. It had nothing to do with her.

Jenna could be upset with Bruce about what he was as much as she liked, but she realized one thing: No matter how different Bruce was, a human and a shifter, a man and a bear, he would always be the same person to her. She couldn’t say the same about Darren.

And she realized just how much she loved Bruce for who he was, no matter what the baggage was that came with it.

Chapter 3

Bruce felt Jenna in his head. The bond was stronger than it had ever been before. It was almost like now, when she knew about everything he was and everything he did and she accepted it, the bond was that much stronger.

This was how it was supposed to be.

It also meant that when she was with that Assassin and she was kissing him, Bruce could feel it. The first time it had happened it had nearly doubled him over and he’d struggled so hard to hold onto his human form it had been a physical ache. She’d told him she was going to go back there and try to fix things. She’d warned him that she couldn’t just disappeared.

But no matter how prepared Bruce had been for Jenna to be around the Assassin again, nothing could have prepared him for Jenna kissing the guy. He’d wanted to run to El Verano, find the guy and rip him limb from limb for touching his woman.

A bonded male was a terrible thing.

She’d kissed him more than once. Two or three times, although at that point Bruce had lost it and shifted into his bear. He’d run into the woods with a temper that he hadn’t had in years and ripped out trees, making a mess everywhere like a child throwing a temper a tantrum. He’d only been able to calm down a couple of hours after he knew that the Assassin had left and Jenna was alone.

The only thing that had saved him through it all was the knowledge lodged deep inside of him that it wasn’t what Jenna had wanted. His anger had been aimed only at the Assassin and not at Jenna, because he’d felt her disgust. He’d felt how much she hated it. He wasn’t angry with her at all.

When he was finally able to shift back to human form again he felt drained. His blood was still boiling under his skin and he lay on his back on the mulch, breathing hard like he’d just run very far and very hard. He had to hunt still, especially now, but he just had to get it together.

His ears picked up sound through the trees when it was almost too late. Whatever was coming already pushed through the shrubs closest to him when he pushed up and thought about fighting.

“It’s just me,” Dwayne said, stepping into a patch of moonlight that broke through the leaves so that Bruce could add truth to the words he was hearing. It was like the psychic knew Bruce was out of it.

“The human gets to you,” Dwayne said and sat down a few feet away from Bruce with his back against a tree. Bruce sat up and crossed his legs but he remained on the ground.

“Shifters mate differently than humans,” Bruce said, implying that Dwayne wouldn’t understand it because he was just a man after all, even if he could work with more than humans could. Dwayne shrugged. Bruce didn’t know if it was because he didn’t catch the implication or if he wasn’t going to respond.

“You have to be careful what you sacrifice for her,” Dwayne said. Bruce rolled his eyes and he made no move to hide it.

“You keep saying that,” he said. “Doesn’t it show that I’ve already made my choice? I’ve already chosen to sacrifice her for the Family if it comes down to it. The fact that she came back to me wasn’t because of me.”

Dwayne nodded slowly as if agreeing, but he had a far-off look in his eyes and Bruce had a feeling that this conversation wasn’t just for conversation’s sake. He’d already learned that Dwayne only came to speak to him when there was something specific to say. But Bruce wasn’t going to ask.

His head still swam. It felt like he was struggling to find which way was up, and the blood in his veins moved faster than it should have like the change was still too close. He had to get more control of himself if he wanted to change again in a while to go out hunting, and the night was going to draw to a close soon.

It felt like Bruce was running out of time, and it wasn’t just because of the night coming to an end. The Assassins were going to come. Full moon, Dwayne had said. No later than that, and that was two nights away.

If they were lucky the Family could get the Assassins to come to the power circle so they had an advantage of home ground. Tara could control their animals better, and they could draw power from the circle for the fight. Any other place, and nature was going to work against them. With the blanket of snow that lay over the mountain now and the ice that created deadly pockets of black ice when you didn’t expect it, a fight in the woods was going to be dangerous.

“We’re going to have to lead them to us,” Bruce said, thinking out loud. “If we can just get them to the plateau we’ll have an advantage. That cliff is dangerous, but it will be better than fighting in the trees. And it will be high enough so that the villagers won’t be thrown in. If it’s too close to the village…”

Bruce shuddered to think of what could happen if the fight took place too close to Williamsburg. If humans got in the way the Assassins wouldn’t take it into account. If humans got in between Assassins and Shifters they died.

“We won’t have to work too hard to lead them to the plateau,” Dwayne said after a moment of silence.

“Why?” Bruce asked. They had some insight to the future, at least, and anything would help. Dwayne looked at Bruce and his skin started crawling. The hair on his neck stood on end and an icy finger drew down his spine like the psychic was doing more than just feel what was in the air. Still, he waited for an answer.

“Jenna will show them where to go.”

Bruce felt a wave of goosebumps. “You’re not seeing that,” he said, narrowing his eyes. It didn’t make sense. The whole idea of her going back was so that she could lead them away.

Dwayne shrugged. “Maybe not, no. But I’m making a calculated guess. I’m basing it on what I
am
seeing.”

Bruce shook his head. He wasn’t willing to accept that Jenna was going to lead the enemy straight to them. Or maybe Dwayne had meant the Assassins ability to follow her pattern of knowledge.

“They’re just using her,” he said just to make sure that his point came across. Dwayne looked down at his hands. He usually looked so self-assured, confident about what he felt and what he knew. Now he just looked unsure of himself. But there was a constant fear in the air. It sat side-by-side with the potential to lose control that came with the full moon. This full moon was unlike the others. They didn’t only stand the chance to lose their humanity, but their lives.

“I don’t know what to make of her anymore,” Dwayne said softly. “I want to believe in her, for your sake. I know what you feel for her. I
feel
what you feel for her, and I can tell you now that love like that is unequaled. I haven’t felt anything like it before. But I see things, and I feel things, and it’s not adding up. And I’ve had too many visions and premonitions not to trust what I’m feeling.”

Dwayne looked up at Bruce and his eyes were pitch black, almost like the blackness was eating up the whites of his eyes until the whole of his eyes were black pits that went of forever. In them, Bruce felt like he could see eternity.

“What did you see?” he asked softly, and when he did he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. Dwayne didn’t often see things that were good, not the way he saw things that were bad, and when he was this spooked it was a bad sign. Besides, the feeling that came with him was ominous tonight. There was barely any light coming through the leaves and the darkness was almost alive and clawing at them.

Dwayne took a long time before he said anything. Finally, when he opened his mouth it wasn’t an answer yet.

“Do you know what it looks like when I get a vision?” he asked. Bruce shook his head no. He couldn’t imagine having to live with knowing bits of the future and having premonitions. It seemed bad enough that he had another body to deal with. He already had a curse.

“I see fragments. It doesn’t always make sense, just bits and pieces that I need to build my own puzzle with. When it finally happens I notice the parts that weren’t there to start off with, and then it makes sense. Sometimes that’s the only time it makes sense.” He took a deep breath. “This is the first time I got a vision that was so clear and I could understand what was happening. It was Jenna that I saw. And Tara.”

Bruce had a feeling of dread and he felt sick to his stomach. Suddenly he didn’t to know what Dwayne had seen. He didn’t want to hear it because if he did he couldn’t unhear it. Already Dwayne couldn’t unsee it, and Bruce suddenly wanted that more.

“Tara was one the ground, wounded enough that she was paralyzed. She was struggling to keep control herself – you know she gets.”

Bruce knew what it looked like. Tara losing it was not pretty.

“Jenna was over her and she had a sharp object, something she could kill her with. Her eyes were full of hatred and Tara was going to die.”

Dwayne stopped talking and sorry and hatred – probably the emotion from the vision – hung in the air. It had already happened in a way. But Bruce didn’t want to accept it. That wasn’t Jenna the way he knew her. She wasn’t going to hurt his Family. It wasn’t who she was.

“She might not be who you thought she was, after all,” Dwayne said like he knew what Bruce had been thinking. “Jenna might be someone completely different. She might be under the Assassin’s control so much we don’t recognize her now.”

Dwayne said
we
like he knew Jenna, too. But all he knew was what he saw in visions and what he felt from Bruce. He didn’t know her at all.

“You’re wrong,” Bruce said and got up so that he towered over Dwayne, creating a hierarchy where he was on top. “Jenna came back to warn us. She told me she was going to go back there to try help.”

“And what do you think is going to happen if she subjects herself to more control? You know how they are, Bruce. What if they already got a hold of her? Maybe when she’d come here she was trustworthy, but can you honestly say she still is?”

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut and tried to drive Dwayne’s damn logic out of his head. It was like the psychic hadn’t just spoken, but he’d gotten into his mind. It was horrible. Bruce shook his head like he could get rid of the thoughts Dwayne had planted.

“You’re wrong,” he said again, but that seed of doubt was planted. Suddenly he didn’t know. What if she came back and she wasn’t his anymore?  What if Jenna was one of the Assassins now, and she was really going to turn against them and kill Tara?  The problem with Dwayne’s premonitions was that in a way they’d already happened. Not in reality, but on some level, they must have if he picked up on them.

And that meant that it couldn’t be undone. Anything that was done now to change fate would only seal it.

“I have to get down to the village and warn them,” Bruce said, walking away from Dwayne. He didn’t want to look at him. He didn’t want to look at the man that had just ripped away his future, condemned the family and broken the image of his wife and his future.

“You can’t go and warn them,” Dwayne said just before Bruce disappeared into the trees. He stopped in his tracks and turned. He looked Dwayne right in the eye and it was the psychic’s turn to flinch. Whatever was in Bruce’s eyes was threatening and just as scary as Dwayne’s had been a while before.

“You know that that’s not what I’m going to do,” he said. If Dwayne wanted to see the future, then let him see this. “There are people down there that know more about what’s going on than they show.”

Dwayne nodded slowly. He did know. Bruce didn’t have to tell him. Bruce turned his back and walked away from him until he knew the psychic couldn’t see him anymore. If the man knew that there were people down there that knew more, he would also know what Bruce was going to say to them, and that he just wanted to keep his people safe. He wasn’t going to make excuses for saving the people he loved, no matter who they were.

When he thought of Jenna he felt a pang. He didn’t know, all of a sudden, and that made him angry. He didn’t want to doubt her. He didn’t want to do anything but love her and trust her. Dwayne had taken that away from him, and he hated the feeling of not being able to just accept her as a truth.

But he had other things to do first.

Bruce walked down through the trees until he reached the cabins on the outskirts of Williamsburg. His cabin was still not re-allocated, and all his stuff was still in it. It was almost like they’d expected him to come back, even though he and Jenna had both just disappeared. The other cabins were all taken, even Jenna’s old one, but they were all dark.

The lights in town were all out, save for one or two, but Bruce knew where he was going.

When he reached Murray’s place he knocked on the door. It was a soft knock, but a moment later he heard movement on the other side of the door, and then a bolt slid back and the door opened. Murray stood in front of him with a robe around his shoulders and the door only half open. Bruce could smell the gunpowder. Murray had a rifle or a shotgun behind that door.

“It’s very late for you to be calling,” Murray said and his voice was hostile.

“It’s very late for you to still be awake,” Bruce said. Murray narrowed his eyes, and after a moment, he stepped aside so that Bruce could walk in. The cabin businesslike and serious, like Murray. Bruce looked around, but he was aware of the man at his back and the weight of that gun in the room.

“Don’t think you can disappear for months on end and then arrive in the middle of the night and receive a welcoming committee,” Murray said. When Bruce turned there was indeed a shotgun leaning against the wall, easy for Murray to reach.