“So that was you?”
He snorted. “Hell no. That was Carl or Tonya. Even back then, they were the leaders of our group. But, yeah, I helped enforce it. Julie, you aren’t a shifter. No one could have guessed that you would be here now.”
It made sense. It did, but logic didn’t hold sway over her feelings. “Do you know how outcast I felt?”
“Do you know how outcast we feel? You’ve got the whole wide world at your feet. Julie, you can go anywhere, be anything.”
“So can?—”
“We can’t,” he interrupted. “It’s a…a salmon thing even though we’re grizzlies. Just like a salmon returns home to spawn, we have to come back to Gladwin throughout our lives. But even if that weren’t true, all shifters need a wild place to run. We can’t live in big cities. It makes us insane.” He touched her chin pulling her around to face him. “Imagine being a teenager and knowing that you can’t leave small-town Michigan. That all those big possibilities aren’t there for you. You can’t be a pilot—what if you shift on a plane? You can’t live where big business opportunities exist. You certainly can’t go into the military and risk exposing your secret that way. All those little things that you take for granted are triply hard for us because we have to keep our wild nature under control. We have to balance the animal with the human, and that doesn’t always work.”
“All of life is a balancing act.”
“Yeah, we figure that out with maturity. We’re talking teenagers here.” His fingers caressed her hair. “Yes, we were mean to you. I admit it. But that’s because we were so damned jealous of you, we couldn’t stand it.” He took a breath. “Even me, and believe me, I wanted you from the first moment I saw the book you’d painted on your big toe with polish.”
She blinked. She’d forgotten about that. Hell, without friends to hang around with, she’d had plenty of time to decorate her nails.
“You had big eyes and a sharp mind. You wanted to learn everything about the world then, including us?—”
“I just wanted some friends.”
“And you were going to figure us out. You were going to hear about the magic. And so we excluded you.” He took a breath. “I made sure you weren’t around us as a group, but I still knew all about you. I still watched where you went and what you did.”
She bit her lip, thinking about the times he’d just shown up when she was sitting by a stream reading. Or when she was out for a walk by herself. He’d show up and be nice. More than nice, he’d been sexy and funny, and she’d thought maybe she was finally starting to fit in. But then the next night, she’d hear about another party she hadn’t been invited to. Another hangout at the stream that he’d never mentioned.
“You ran so hot and cold. I hated you even as…”
“Even as I wanted you with every breath in my body.”
She couldn’t believe it. He had yearned for her? He had wanted her? “I felt like you kept toying with me. Being wonderful just to throw me away.” Lord, even now she couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice.
He leaned in and their foreheads touched. Their breath mingled while his other hand slipped to caress the length of her jaw. “Push/pull,” he breathed. “Animal/man. Want/can’t have.” He cupped her face and lifted her lips to his. But he didn’t touch them. He didn’t take the kiss she so desperately wanted. “That’s my life, Julie. And I’m losing the battle.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, there has to be an answer.”
He shook his head. “I’ve tried.”
She could hear the defeat in his voice. The soul-deep weariness of the struggle. It was the sound of a man giving up. Of one who was going to settle for what little he’d received and try to be content. But Julie wasn’t wired that way. Maybe because she hadn’t fought this fight her whole life. But she’d just learned that the world was a thousand times bigger than she’d believed a day ago. God only knew what she’d discover tomorrow. And she’d be damned if she let him give up like this. Not when she’d just entered the fight.
“No,” she said softly. And when he pulled back, she took hold of his shoulders and drew him forward. “No,” she repeated, and then she took his mouth with hers. Forget waiting for him to kiss her. Forget letting this shifter insanity decide how she was going to feel. She’d let the magic exclude her as a teen because she hadn’t known better. Well, now she knew. Now she was on board and making changes.
She slammed her mouth against his, and when he gasped in reaction, she thrust her tongue into his mouth. It didn’t take him long to react. She’d barely discovered this new bold side of herself when he wrapped his arms around her and drew her flush against him, arching her for his possession.
Thrust, parry, push, pull. Their tongues danced together, and when they finally pulled apart to breathe, her heart was hammering and her legs were liquid.
Well, she thought in a distant part of her mind, apparently she could still be attracted to a man who was part bear. She’d wondered, though it had been a quiet question buried beneath the general WTF of discovering magic. Now she knew that the attraction, at least, was just the same as before. Stronger, even, because now the questions were answered, the inconsistencies made clear.
“Julie,” he said, her name a hoarse rasp.
She waited to hear if there was more. Did he have a question for her? Something he wanted to tell her? But the silence stretched on, and when she dared look at him, she saw the desperation in his eyes. The need and…
The defeat. He wanted her but knew that it was only temporary. It was the wish of a dying man. And it thoroughly pissed her off.
“No,” she said, her voice firming with sudden conviction. “No, no, no, no, no!”
He backed away, and it took her a moment to realize he thought she was denying him. So she gripped his arm and held him to her. He could break away at any moment, of course. She felt like she had two fingers on a tiny patch of fur on a bear. But she held on with everything she had.
“You are not giving up. You are not slinking off like some whipped dog to die.”
