Bear My Baby (Shifter Squad Six 1) (6 page)

It had been a whole month before he cracked after he gave her over to the other team. They’d had sex so many times that the exertion of back-to-back missions seemed like nothing compared to the Olympics of fucking they’d put on in the little cabin. He couldn’t get enough of her and she seemed to share the sentiment. And it hadn’t been just her body that tasted like the sweetest nectar, but all of her. The way she moved, the sound of her voice, her witty little barbs, trying to get under his skin. It drove him wild with need. But then dawn rose and she was ripped from his life, destined to be forgotten like any other mission.

He couldn’t forget about her. Not then, not now, not ever.

So he’d tried to go on like nothing happened. Focus on the work, focus on what mattered. Keeping his squad safe and their marks alive. But he didn’t feel it anymore. When before, adrenaline coursing through his veins had felt like sacred lifeblood he couldn’t stop chasing, now it felt like something to get him through the mission. His blood boiled in his chest as he tore through one sleazy drug dealer or unlucky mob boss after the next, yes, but his heart wasn’t in it.

All Connor could think about was her. And so it had happened that he’d barged into his superior’s office one day after a particularly gruesome mission in Guatemala and demanded to know where she was.

Colonel Hemingway had looked at him like he’d been swallowing too many ‘shrooms up in that jungle and it had rotted away what little sense he might have had. There was a flat-out denial and that was that. The identities of their marks were kept under extreme lock and key. Connor knew that the colonel probably didn’t even know where she was sent off to, or if she was even alive anymore.

Sometimes, they were like the damn postal carriers, delivering a package from one place to another in relatively okay condition. And this time he couldn’t deal with it.

Connor flew off the handle. He got reckless, destructive. After he beat some guy who could barely put up a fight into an oddly shaped mass of bloody goo in the middle of Siberia, he’d been placed on leave. He’d only just gotten back on active rotation and now here he was again, feeling that carefully gathered self-control fraying and disappearing around him like strands of silk.

It had happened before. Evita. That was the reason he wasn’t in the Navy anymore. Surprisingly enough, one’s superiors don’t condone behavior when a Navy SEALends up plowing through half the enemy contingent with a switchblade and a whole lot of anger. Or in bearform, as he’d finished up. He’d almost died from the wounds he got and after being tossed a Purple Heart, he was given an honorary discharge. It had taken a long-ass time for him to be able to function again.

Fuck, Cassie was beautiful.

Going up to talk to her could mean he’d lose the job, the squad, everything that kept him sane. But only if someone found out…

He licked over his lips. He wouldn’t lose her again. Not like this.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cassie

“Isn’t this great, Ellie?!” Adelaide yelled over the music, flashing her perfect row of brilliant white teeth.

She was sipping on a Cosmopolitan while Cassie had settled on a glass of Glenlivet in the spirit of treating herself. She could at least enjoy one thing about the night, right?

Frankly, she was exhausted. Every ten minutes, she’d check her phone, half-hoping and half-worrying that Amanda had dropped her a text or a call about how Monroe had staged some sort of a jail break and was now nowhere to be found. He had a habit of doing that. That kid could climb over anything, ever since he could hold onto something. Which had happened far earlier than it should have.

Cassie knew why that was, of course. She wasn’t stupid. If the five-month pregnancy hadn’t been tip enough, then the fact that he had the fullest head of hair any nurse had ever seen on a baby and he was holding his head up a few days after being born was painting her a very obvious picture. One that she had been surprisingly good about ignoring.

It was bad enough that she had fucked a guy on the one and only time she had met him, but the fact that he’d gotten her pregnant with a werebear baby through her birth control just added that last drop that sent her fully into purposeful denial.

Another check of her phone revealed that nothing had happened that would warrant excusing herself early, and she tucked it back into the little Zara purse she’d bought online. Something hot burned her neck and she looked around herself, feeling like someone was watching her again. But this time, it wasn’t the cold, ominous feeling she was used to getting, but something very different. Maybe even a little bit familiar? She shook the thought off with a sigh.

“It sure is. When are we leaving?” Cassie asked, trying to drop the second question as casually as possible.

Adelaide rolled her eyes and groaned, draping one of her long arms over Cassie’s shoulders and leaning into her in a conspiring fashion.

“We are leaving when you pick a guy and you fuck him,” she said confidently, grinning like she’d come up with the best plan in the world.

Cassie’s mouth dropped open and she felt blood rushing to her cheeks as Adelaide announced her glorious plan. In a second, she was blushing like a schoolgirl hearing the word “fuck” for the first time.

“Stop kidding around, Addy,” she said, poking at Adelaide’s side. “I’m a mother now. I can’t go around doing stupid stuff like that.”

“I think the lady doth protest too much,” Adelaide announced with a flourish, her eyes already scanning the likely victims.

She threw around a couple of smiles and winks and before Cassie knew it, there was a growing flock of men around them and Adelaide was busy introducing her to all of them. Cassie hadn’t heard that many cringeworthy pick-up lines since she was a sophomore in college. She had to admit, though, it did make her laugh and she definitely needed that.

Easing herself into conversation with a guy who looked like he had far too many teeth and his shirt was cut a bit too low, Cassie let the heat of the whiskey warm her. It took the sting off the feeling of being watched, replacing one inviting warmth with another. Dodging a round of “so what is it that you do” like a pro, Cassie found herself floating further from Adelaide and her crew, being shown toward some seats by the guy with the horse teeth. He was named Bob or Jake or something else completely forgettable.

For a passing moment, she thought that maybe, just
maybe
, she could actually enjoy herself. But the second she sat down, Jake was sitting right next to her, so close that there wasn’t room to let a penny drop between them. She shifted to the right a bit but he covered the space immediately, grinning like a starving cat staring down a songbird.

Even the heat of the whiskey couldn’t make this bullshit go away.

“Hey, I think I should be getting back to my friend,” Cassie said, giving a short smile and moving to stand up.

Before she could lift herself off the cushions, his hand was on her wrist, tugging her back violently. Cassie caught herself yelping and spilling some of the whiskey, but before she could give the creep a piece of her mind, a flurry of raw violence blazed past her. Jake was hanging from the wall, his legs dangling uselessly below him, hands clutching at Connor’s sleeves.

“Fucking hell, man! Let me down,” he whined, trying to kick Connor.

With a snarl, Connor moved one hand from Jake’s shirt to his neck, squeezing down like a vise. Cassie stared in equal parts abject horror and excitement.

Is it really him?

The possibility that her eyes were playing tricks on her and that she had had one too many glasses of whiskey seemed like an equally believable possibility. When Jake’s face started getting white and blue and no one had come to peel Connor off of the guy, hidden in a secluded corner as they were, Cassie regained her wits. She jumped up and weaseled herself between Connor and Jake, shoving her finger into his chest.

“Let him the fuck down, Connor. He’s not worth it,” she hissed.

“You sure you don’t want me to pop his head like a balloon? Because I’m mighty inclined to do that right now,” Connor growled, his eyes staying sternly on Jake, filled with the kind of loathing that should take decades of mistreatment to gather against a particular person.

Apparently it only took one wrong move to unleash the full power of the werebear SEAL. If she wasn’t so worried about Connor actually killing the guy, she might have felt flattered. Jake made a gargling noise that might have been the last half-breath of oxygen leaking out of his lungs.

“Hey, Rambo. Eyes down here,” Cassie called, waving her hand in front of Connor’s face.

He snapped his brilliant blue eyes down, ripe with emotion as they were, and she was again taken aback by how much they looked like Monroe’s. He’d be a spitting image of his daddy one day. Though hopefully without his penchant for beating up anything he didn’t approve of.

“That’s better,” Cassie said calmly, struggling against the current that wanted to drag her safely into the depths of his eyes. “Put him down. He’s just a creep. He didn’t do anything to me.”

Connor hesitated for a moment but Jake’s hands were falling limp at his sides now. With a sigh, Connor motioned Cassie to get out of the way and then gently let the man slide to the ground. As soon as Connor let go of him, his knuckles white with exertion, Jake crumpled to a ball, coughing and wheezing.

“You fucking psycho,” he wheezed, eyes red and popping out of his head.

He’d definitely blown a few blood vessels. By the looks of how Connor was rolling and unrolling his fists, the guy was lucky to have gotten off that easily.

“At your service,” Connor snapped back, his face a mask of anger.

As soon as he looked at Cassie it fell though. The rage left his eyes and his jaw relaxed. In a flash, that cocky bad boy she’d fallen for like an addict for crack was back, grinning and completely at ease. Or, well, not completely at ease. Cassie could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself ramrod straight, like he couldn’t trust himself to really let go around her.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing here? Should I be running for the back exit again?” Cassie asked, putting as much snark into her voice as she could.

One low chuckle from him wiped that all away. Connor looked at her like the only thing he really wanted to do was to bend her over the bar and fuck her while every single person in the joint watched them. Frankly, Cassie wasn’t sure she could have resisted him had he put that up as an option.

“No. This time, the only one you need to be running from is me, honey,” he said, stressing that slight drawl he had that would make her knees buckle underneath her so easily.

“Yeah? Is that an official suggestion?” she asked, the corners of her mouth turning up in a smirk.

She couldn’t help it. He did that to her. Made her feel confident, like she could ask for anything and actually receive it. Like she could jump off a building and fly. But at the same time, klaxons were going off in her head. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to trust, was he? That smirk left her lips and a healthy scowl returned in its place.

“Just a friendly warning,” he said, putting a hand on her elbow and leading her deeper into the back of the club.

He sounded far too serious saying that.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, getting massive flashbacks from the last time he’d been cryptic with her.

“Somewhere where we can talk,” he said, looking straight ahead and maneuvering her through the comings and goings of the people around them.

Connor led her to the fluorescent-lit back corridors of the club that led out to the second exit, mostly abandoned. He stopped and turned, effectively pinning her in a corner where all she could see was ghostly blue light and the way it lapped at Connor’s perfect features. The ones she had been imagining every night when she was alone with her thoughts. Yeah, she’d definitely remembered a few things wrong. Like for example, she hadn’t remembered that mole that made a small dot on his right earlobe, or the almost chiseled straightness of his nose.

He still took her breath away. Even when she was supposed to hate his guts. It was… enraging.

“What do you want to tell me?” Cassie asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

She felt defenseless before him. Hell, knowing him—though she obviously didn’t—he was probably enjoying that. But the cocky grin was gone and the man who stared back at Cassie was not the self-certain, prick of a man who had fucked her on every piece of furniture that little cabin had had. It was the man who she’d seen staring after her when she was escorted into the back of an armored Humvee and sent off to another undisclosed location.

A man who was haunted by a loss he had already lived through and was going to go through again. It made all the sass dry in her throat.

CHAPTER NINE

Connor

He started to say something, but the words died on his tongue before he could ever get them out.
I missed you.
Too melodramatic. It was one night. A fucking good night, yes, but he had no reason to think that she was in half as deep as he was. And again, he wasn’t even supposed to be engaging with her, but when he saw that creep put his hand on her, he couldn’t stop himself.

It was like his legs carried him across the club of their own volition, completely bypassing the troublesome route between muscles and brain. And by the time he knew what he was doing, he could already feel the guy going limp in his hands, struggling to keep hold of his lucidity. If she hadn’t stopped him, Connor might as well have killed the fucker.

And he wouldn’t have regretted it for a moment.

“How have you been?” he finally asked, cringing at how lame that sounded.

“Hiding away in San Francisco. Using a new name. Not seeing my parents. Uprooting my whole life for a reason no one’s even bothered to explain to me. You know, I’ve been
so
good,” she snarked, and fuck if it didn’t make him want to kiss that mouth of hers.