So was he. And how awful to relive it even in memory. Except that it hadn’t been so bad. Not with her holding him. Not with her hands on his body and her warmth cradling him. He ought to feel ashamed for burrowing into her embrace like a child needing a blanket. But he wasn’t ashamed. And he needed her solid strength right then. Not for him, but for the child he’d been who had watched it all and had been powerless to stop it.
“That’s why,” he finally choked out. “That’s why I don’t trust the bear.”
“But that wasn’t you.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.” Then she stepped back far enough for her to angle his face up toward hers. “It matters,” she repeated. “You aren’t bad. Your grizzly isn’t vicious.”
“You were here this morning, right? You saw?—”
“I saw you protecting your family. Yeah, all that blood freaked me out, but that wasn’t you.” Then she leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. He would have deepened it. He pulled her tight again to try to take her in the most human way possible, but she refused him. She held herself apart after one single kiss and she stared him in the eye.
“Enough,” she said the firmest voice he’d ever heard from her. “Let me talk to your bear. Now.”
How could he say no? He would give her everything. So with a swift, silent prayer that he could keep things under control, he stepped back from his brain. He pulled away from the rational, human side, and opened the door to his grizzly.
It was there, ready and waiting to be freed. He was too tried to shift bodies, but mentally, the switch was a simple choice. Carl stepped back. The grizzly pushed forward. And in a split second of mutual accord, they both swore that Becca would remain safe no matter what.
But the grizzly made no promise to stay civilized.
CHAPTER 17
Becca watched closely, so she saw the change, though physically it was subtle. The clearest shift came in his eyes, which went from green to a dark brown. Then his nose seemed to stretch a bit, his neck and shoulders might have thickened, and nothing at all changed with his mouth. At least not until she caressed his lips.
He licked her. A long twist of his tongue around her first two fingers, and her nipples tightened in reaction.
Okay, so his bear was lust-inducing. That wasn’t new. But the way he was looking at her was. Carl was right when he said the bear worshipped her. His eyes were fixed on her, steady in their absolute attention. There was no demand in his gaze, not that she could see. No thoughts either. Just pure…emotion?
She touched his face, stroking gently across his cheekbone. He turned into her caress, closing his eyes in appreciation but doing no more.
Carl had said that his bear was all action. He’d suggested that the creature might just take her to bed without thought or gentleness. But there was no forceful seduction here. Nothing beyond a quiet appreciation. And in that realization, all her fears faded away. Truthfully, she hadn’t even known she was afraid, but now the release of tension was like dropping a heavy blanket from her shoulders. She took a deep breath for the first time since he’d come home.
“I told you I was safe with you,” she said.
She’d barely gotten the words out when he changed. His eyes flickered and where before there was an unnamed focus of emotion, now she read yearning. He released a low moan of pain. The sound was heartbreaking and she immediately searched him for an injury.
“Is something wrong?”
She’d stepped closer to him and his arms wrapped tightly around her hips. He was still sitting, she standing, and he dropped his head against her chest, his breath shuddering in and out. She touched his hair, feeling coarse strands where before there had been only silky softness. Another manifestation of the bear, she supposed. But mostly what she felt was the way he held her, rumbling low and deep inside.
Carl had said the bear couldn’t communicate, but he was wrong. There was language here, just not the human kind. She made it her mission to understand. She had a guess, but she had to see if she was right. So she pulled back from him. It was hard, because he wasn’t going to let her go. But she insisted and eventually his arms eased. That gave her enough room to kneel down in front of him. And when their eyes were on a more even level, she touched his mouth. He licked her fingers again, but lightly. More of a hello than anything more.
“You have a mouth. You can talk. Tell me what you want.”
“Becca,” he said.
She smiled. “There you go. That’s a start. Now tell me why you’re so sad.”
He clutched at her again, but she didn’t let him reel her in. He was strong enough to override her wishes, but he didn’t. He just ducked his head, another low moan pouring out of him. And when she pulled his face back up to hers, there were tears in his eyes.
It slayed her to see him like this. Carl was the definition of large and powerful. To see his eyes wet with pain made her chest tighten unbearably. But she didn’t give in to the need to hold him. Not yet. He had to explain and eventually he pushed a word out.
“Alone.”
She frowned. Did he want her to leave? Of course not. Which meant… “You feel lonely, don’t you? Carl locks you tight inside, only letting you out to beat up on things.” Okay, so she might be feeding into this idea that he was two separate people, but identities got sectioned off all the time. Sometimes she thought of herself as a mother and nothing else. Other times, she was a baker and a small business owner. Different parts of herself functioning separately, but she still knew herself as one person. Carl, on the other hand, was taking this to an extreme. “But you’re part of him, aren’t you? And you need to be more than just a brute.”
“Need you.” He caressed her arm, squeezing it as if for emphasis.
