Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) Read online

  “I said,” Crag roared again, louder than before. If he kept this up, my heart wasn’t going to be able to take it. “Who wants to see him HIT ME?”

  From somewhere unseen, Marlin piped up. “Give him a board, Crag. Maybe that’ll get the local yokels worked up.”

  “A board?” Crag said. “I can’t find one. What about...”

  He stomped, heavily, to a corner of the ring. Crag grabbed part of the ring post and bent the thing down, then snapped it off.

  The crowd went absolutely bananas.

  “How’s this, instead?” he asked, handing Leon the length of what appeared to be torn off fence post. “Here, take it, pipsqueak.”

  I could tell when he spoke that he wasn’t the sort to actually call someone names. I don’t know, it might sound stupid, but people have a way about them when they talk. If they’re used to insulting someone, it rolls off the tongue. With this guy, it was obviously theatrics. I’ll be damned if he didn’t get my blood pumping with it, though.

  “I...” Leon said. “You want me to hit you with this?”

  Crag just grinned. “Hard,” he finally said. “Real, real hard.”

  “Well, okay,” Leon said. He drew back and unleashed everything he had.

  Everything he had, turned out to not even be enough to make Crag flinch. He just stood there, smiling, as Leon hit him with the post. A little cut opened up, but the giant bear just kept smiling.

  And I couldn’t look away.

  Crag started laughing and shaking his head. Leon, staring up at the Goliath in front of him, started trembling so badly he dropped his weapon. “I... I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to... I mean, you told me, you said to hit you and—”

  The hand that went to rest on Leon’s shoulder seemed to go about halfway down his back. “I,” Crag said, taking a deep breath, “want you to LEAVE!”

  The bellow was so loud I felt it in my stomach. Leon, scurrying backward, got his foot caught up in something and tumbled, but Crag grabbed his arm before he hit the canvas. I swear I could hear Leon’s teeth chattering.

  “Don’t be scared, little man,” Crag said. “You got me, and all these people out here all warmed up. We’re ready for a fight now.” Ushering Leon through the gate on the cage, Crag turned to the crowd and grabbed the discarded microphone.

  “I said – we’re ready for a fight! Right?”

  The roar from the audience was apparently the right answer. “Good,” he said. Crag, like a king at court, turned in a slow circle, surveying the crowd. When he turned to where Henry and I sat, I was almost sure he looked straight at me. His dark, smoldering brown eyes, and the intricate tattoos around them, put a knot in my stomach.

  Through the first, second, third and fourth fights, I couldn’t stop thinking about that cocky grin, about those big scars across Crag’s chest.

  He captured my imagination with a handful of words, some showmanship, and a sweeping glance. He’d made me want him with nothing more than his presence in the same building. He just seemed so sure of himself, so comfortable in his own skin that I couldn’t stop my mind racing from unlikely fantasy to unlikely fantasy.

  By the time he came back, to fight it out for the whatever-it-was-called championship belt, I was just about ready to claw the greasy bench. I was so into this giant guy that I’d forgotten all about the oil slick on my skirt.

  When Crag came back out to the cage, he had his head down. Shaggy, brown hair hung in his face, and his muscles all flexed and relaxed with every breath. I just stared at him, completely unashamed.

  But as soon as the other poor bastard got in the ring, Crag came to life.

  I didn’t even listen to the announcer blather on about the other guy. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Crag, not even for a second. Every move he made, every time he twisted around and his back or chest or neck flexed, I grabbed Henry’s hand and gave her a squeeze. I have no idea how many times I asked her to look at him, but I’m sure it was plenty by the time the match was over.

  It was quick too.

  The other guy came in close, guarded his face and took a couple of swings.

  One of them caught Crag on the jaw. Even though it was definitely a good shot, he never broke his grin. The guy whacked him twice then tried to take him down.

  Two kicks to the back of the legs did absolutely nothing, although I did notice Crag wince a little when his opponent popped the side of his knee. A hundred feet away from the guy and I noticed a wince.

  For a minute, Crag just let the littler guy bounce all over the place. He didn’t bother blocking anything, just absorbed punch after punch. Then finally, maybe because he was bored, or maybe because he got hungry, he grabbed the guy mid jump kick.

  In one smooth motion, Crag threw him backward, casually, like he was throwing away a gum wrapper. The guy hit the side of the chain-link cage hard. He fell to the mat, rolled deftly to his feet and flew straight at Crag. The bear grabbed him out of the air, squeezed him for a second with his arms locked around the guy’s back.

  A second later, his opponent made a squeaking noise, like a scared rabbit, and then went limp. Crag dropped him to the ground, but did it with a certain amount of care.

  That was the second time I saw Crag wince.

  Was it his knee? I wondered. Or did he really just brain a guy and then feel bad about it?

  Crag’s unfortunate opponent slipped to the ground, and as Crag walked over and pinned him with one hand, I swear I saw him check the guy’s pulse.

  As soon as it was over, the whole crowd erupted again.

  “Hey!” someone grabbed my shoulder. It was Lex. “Hey, come on you two, let’s get out of here before the rest of the crowd. It’ll make it a hell of a lot easier to get around.”

  I looked at Henry, and then back at Lex. “Where are we going?” I asked him.

  “My place.” He looked really confused. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Henrietta set all this up.”

  I threw a sidelong glance at my sister from another mother. “I knew it!” I said.

  “You gonna say no?” she asked, as she grabbed her stuff.

  “I guess not,” I said. When I got up, my legs stuck to the bench. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” My thoughts were so far away that I didn’t even notice the sticky business, and I am not the sort of girl who ignores stuff like that very easily.

  That’s how it started. That’s how the night that changed my life forever began, with those six words. Six stupid, dumb, ridiculous words.

  Words that I’d never regret.

  -5-

  Violet

  “Where is he?” I asked Lex. “You keep saying he’s coming soon but it’s almost two and—”

  “Calm down,” he said. “You always were a twitchy thing.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said, looking down and feeling momentarily either shitty or defeated, it was hard to tell. That’s the thing about Lex. Even when we were dating, he never really meant to make me feel bad, but he did.

  I tapped my front teeth together in a nervous fidget.

  “Am I really that bad?” I asked him when Henry went into the kitchen for another drink. “I just get excited sometimes.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lex asked. “You’re the cutest thing in the world with your hand wringing, and the way you tuck your hair behind your ear. And I love how you stick your tongue out whenever you try something. Come on, Orange,” he said, as he put his arm around me. “Is something wrong?”

  I tucked a red curl behind my ear and caught myself halfway through the motion, laughing a little.

  Why do I always fall for men like Lex? The huge ones? Here I am a five-foot-nothing fox girl. I’ve got hips that jeans hug on, and a little belly that sometimes goes over the top of them. Why on earth do I always fall for the calendar hunk guys?

  “Something wrong?” Lex repeated, surprising me a little.

  I sighed. “Not really,” I said, shrugging. “I guess I just get kind of weird
and existential when it’s past two and I have to work the next day.”

  “Sorry you’re waiting so long, Orange.”

  There it was again. Orange. That’s what he always called me. My bright, semi-wild mane that looked about the same color as a carrot was the first thing Lex noticed about me. It’s hard to keep it under control, but sometimes I can manage if there’s not much humidity and I have an hour or so to get intimate with my flat iron.

  “You haven’t called me that in a while,” I said. “Between you and Henry I never know if I’m a crayon or a musical instrument.”

  Lex lifted the corner of his mouth in one of his easy, half-grinning smiles. “Of course it’s been awhile since I said that. We barely talk anymore,” he said. “Figured you weren’t all that interested in—”

  “Lex?” A voice – a real, big, booming one – interrupted. “You home?”

  Right after the voice rang out, came a banging sound of a huge fist pounding on a door.

  “Uh, Lex?” Henry asked, coming back from the kitchen. “You realize your cousin is assaulting your neighbor’s door, right?”

  “Oh shit,” Lex sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Which side?”

  “The white one with the spires, next door.”

  “Jamie’s place,” he said. “At least she’s usually up nights. God I hope he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

  In an almost comical panic, Lex rushed to the door when the pounding started again and shouted to his cousin. “Crag! Wrong house!”

  I heard Jamie – one of the town’s councilmembers and just about the sexiest were-bat imaginable – open her door and remark on the hunk of man looking at her. I couldn’t quite make out what she said, even with my fox hearing, but from the way she laughed, and how Crag paused at her doorstep, I imagined it must have been at least a little naughty.

  I really do need to get to know her better, I thought, she seems like fun.

  “Do I have to?” Crag said. “I mean...”

  “Now!” Lex shouted. “She’s joking, you moron!”

  Footsteps – heavy, heavy footsteps, the kind that shake entire houses – approached.

  When I finally saw him up close, I couldn’t help staring.

  “Wow,” Henry said, speechless.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, nodding dumbly at him. “He looks like he came straight off a paper towel package.”

  As it turned out, I was right about the whole Crag’s chest being too big for a shirt thing. He did have a red and green plaid flannel shirt on, but the first three buttons weren’t fastened. A leather collar with a faded pendant hung right in the dent at the base of his neck.

  He looked up and saw the two of them looking at him and his huge, brown eyes lit up. Those were incredible enough, but then I finally got a look at the intricate shapes and lines of the tattoos that framed him, and I could hardly breathe.

  “Well hello there,” he said, apparently forgetting Jamie instantly and pointing that considerable charm straight at Henry and me. “Lex didn’t tell me why I was coming here. But... now that I see, I suddenly wish I’d showed up sooner.”

  I cocked an eyebrow and gave Henry a sidelong glance.

  “So,” he said. “Which one is mine?”

  I grunted a laugh. “Yours?” I asked.

  How gross can you get? How overwhelmingly, almost drippingly macho can you be? But at the same time, I couldn’t help but smile, even though it made me a little irritated at myself. Something about him was just... well, larger than life, bigger than reality.

  I wondered if he was still playing a part, pretending to be something he wasn’t. Maybe it was his way of being nervous, like me with the fidgeting. At least, that’s what I told myself, because if that were true, then it was okay for me to fall for this guy.

  If he was just a prick? Not so much.

  “Relax, Crag,” Lex said. “You can shit-can the swagger act. This is Henry...etta, Henrietta and this is Violet.”

  Crag sort of stooped his shoulders to come inside the house, and turned sideways to help himself fit.

  “What’s that like?” I asked, as soon as he was standing in the living room. “I’ve always wondered. I mean, you’re so big you had to turn sideways to go through a door. What’s it like? And what kind of car do you drive? Is it hard to drive? Can you ride a bicycle?”

  Bear on a bicycle. I’m a doofus. But, at the same time that I was snickering at that, I was horrified at how I couldn’t shut myself up. It was like my nerves were all firing at once.

  “Uh...” Crag squinted as he regarded me. “It’s... well you get used to it, I mean. I—”

  I didn’t notice Henry pulling at my arm. That was her signal for me to shut up, which she uses a lot more than I’d like to imagine.

  “Viola,” she whispered out the side of her mouth. “Cool it.”

  “Pleasure,” she said, sticking her hand out to the giant. “I’ve never seen anything quite like what I saw tonight.”

  Crag smiled and nodded. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a... well, it’s just what I do.”

  “Put your hand out, Violet,” she said a second later.

  I did as I was told. My hand was sticking out, wobbling just a little, and as I stared at him, I thought I was going to hyperventilate. My chest got tight, and my breath hitched a little, but when he enveloped my hand in his giant paw, the four million questions I was going to blurt out just to fill the air disappeared from my brain. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came.

  My nose was filled with the scent of something like pine, and a little hint of spicy, leathery cologne. Normally, I’m not the kind of girl who gets excited about that sort of thing, but for some reason, this time it was really working on me. He had my knees shaking, my feet quaking in my ballet flats, and he’d barely even said anything to me yet.

  “Nice to meet you,” Crag said.

  Unbelievably, as I took another breath, it was like I was huffing morphine. Just his touch – the feeling of his hand on mine instantly calmed me down.

  “I thought you were gonna carry on like that forever,” Crag said, slowly taking his hand away.

  When I opened my mouth he grabbed my hand again. “Hold on just a second,” he said. “Give me a minute here. Now, if I let you go, do you promise not to talk until I answer all your questions? I’ll even try to be specific as to which one I’m answering instead of playing cute and just saying yes or no a bunch of times.”

  I nodded and shifted my eyes back and forth. Henry’s shoulders were shaking almost as hard as she was fighting to keep from laughing. She was turning a little purple, and her eyes were about to bug out. I couldn’t really see Lex, but I’m sure he was enjoying this just as much as Henry.

  When I thought I hadn’t nodded hard enough, I did it again. When he took longer than I was expecting to start talking again, I was just about to open my mouth. Crag raised an eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Okay,” he let his hand fall on my shoulder. “First of all. Nope, I’m not uncomfortable all the time. In fact, I kinda like the fact that I can push over trees.”

  I opened my mouth and he hushed me with a finger. At that point, I heard Lex and Henry both start laughing. “I’ve never seen anyone know how to take care of her quite like this,” she said with a giggle.

  “Okay, so, no I’m not uncomfortable all the time. I don’t know how to ride a bicycle, and I drive a Jetta.”

  I couldn’t hold back on that one.

  “Jetta?” I said, almost choking. “How... How do you fit? It’s just—”

  I’m super proud to say that when I get to laughing really hard, first I in-laugh, and then I snort. It’s really great, and every time I see my parents I thank them for giving me both of the worst kinds of laugh a person can possibly have.

  Crag hunched up and pantomimed turning a steering wheel with his fingers. His arms did move, he puckered his whole face like a cranky old woman, and made sure to squish his head back just enough to g
et at least one extra chin.

  I just about died. My reasonable out-laugh took a bad turn. First, I started honking, and then I was sucking air and honking. And then, of course, came the snorting.

  “It’s possible because I made it up,” Crag said, with a look of smug self-satisfaction on his face. “But now that I got you laughing I can probably answer the rest of them. I love a girl who laughs like that, by the way.”

  My cheeks burned. “Stop,” I said, even though I myself could not stop laughing, not just yet. “It isn’t my fault! I have bad genes!”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’m serious. In my business, you get used to lots of glad-handing people with fake grins, fake hair and fake laughs. When a person laughs both when they exhale and inhale, you know they’re the real deal.”

  As stupid as it sounds, I relaxed my shoulders a little. I took a deep breath through my nose and put my hand on the back of his to steady myself.

  His skin was warm. So warm that it was a little bit like touching a person after they just finished a round on the bench press. “Do you... trim your arm hair?” I asked him as my hand ran along his muscled forearm. “You don’t have very much for a bear.”

  That was the first time I saw his deep brown eyes sparkle. “All the time,” he said, never taking those burning eyes off me. “Clippers once a day. And you thought it was rough shaving your legs, huh?”

  Bashfully, I whispered, “I don’t do that as often as I should,” in Crag’s ear.

  He froze completely, like went absolutely rigid. He opened his mouth really wide, and let out one, single, bellowing “HA!”

  I’ve never heard anything like it. The one body-shaking laugh was followed by more, louder somehow, until the giant man with his hand on my shoulder was red in the face and doubled over. I just stood there, grinning, and looking back and forth like I’d just shot someone. When he finally came back to reality, Crag wiped the back of his hand across his face.

  “I really hope you’re the one he wanted me to meet,” he said. “I don’t think I could handle not having someone like you in my life.”

  “Someone like me in your life?” I asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”