Target: BillionBear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (16 page)

“More,” she moaned. And then, enchantingly contradictory, “Now.”

His plan for her had gone up in smoke, but there was later: in her bedroom, bent over her table, against the wall, on her couch, and on that cliff overlooking the sea. Experiments of every kind, laughter and heat, a lifetime’s worth of loving lying in a shining road ahead.

But this moment, she wanted
Now
.

He freed her hands so he could stroke her hips and thighs as he moved them apart. He loved the way her fingers fisted the sheets into rumples as he kissed the top of her mound, and then, widening her thighs to their fullest extent, paused to admire how beautiful she was before using lips, tongue, and teeth to bring her to writhing, helpless heights—and when he tasted the sweet, salty juices around her clit and sucked hard, sent her spiraling over the edge.

He kissed her opening softly as she throbbed downward again, and then she sighed and reached out to him. He slid into her, reveling in the way she tipped her hips to bring him all the way home.

She slid her hands down his back—even now, she was careful of his wounds, her sensitive touch barely brushing where it hurt, but skimming over unwounded his flesh with her fingers wide, as if she gained pleasure simply by touch—then her palms clenched on his buns as she pulled him against her.

He began to jackhammer into her with a strength he hadn’t though he had left in him. She moaned with each stroke, closing her legs around him until he thrust one last time, and she clenched one last time, and they joined together in an endless freefall of bliss.

* * *

“We should rejoin the world,” he said presently—for the second time.

And Kesley said—for the second time—“Okay.”

She didn’t move, except to tighten her grip, their arms and legs still tangled.

Outside a bird sang, and somewhere else in the hotel, the parrot squawked.

Kesley sighed. “This time we really need to get going.”

He smothered a laugh. “You first.”

She lifted her head, and fixed him with a stare. “Then we’ll be here for a week.”

“Okay by me.” And he promptly collapsed back on the pillow.

But duty was strong, and she slowly untangled her legs from his.

“I hope they aren’t waiting for us,” he said, for the first time thinking beyond the locked door.

“Oh, my sister will be the first in line,” Kesley predicted.

Jameson listened to the lilt of laughter deepening her voice, and a thought occurred to him. “They probably know what we’re doing.”

“Are you kidding? If Kenz is still lurking around there, she’ll be running a betting pool on how many times we came.”

“I have to admit I can’t quite figure out your sister.”

“Kenz is a cat.”

“Say no more! One of my cousins is a cat. Was she one of the cats at the fight?”

“Yep, the one stuck to a guy’s face. Dad was there, too. I think you’ll like him—if you like cats. He clawed up one of the creeps trying to sneak up on you from behind to shoot you in the back. And my uncle was also there—he was the bloodhound attached to that shaved-head guy’s leg.”

Jameson sat up, extended a hand, and they helped each other get off the bed. As they took a quick shower together and then helped each other dress, he marveled at the generosity of these people who had no idea who he was. To them, he was just Kesley’s mate. No one knew he was a billionaire. Even overseas, as head of the Danbridge Rescue Charity, he’d had to navigate around the smooth-talking, smiling sharks who pretended to give a damn about those genuinely in need in order to talk their way into “helping” if they were rewarded suitably with “administrative costs.”

Beth had sent most of those sharks.
We’ve got your number now, Charlie and I
, he thought, and a flair of grim pleasure went through him at the thought of her trading her Versace for prison orange. As far as he was concerned, it couldn’t be soon enough.

When he and Kesley got out to the lobby, sure enough, McKenzi and a small group of either cousins or friends had all found urgent reasons to come sneaking back in. They looked up as one, and gave Jameson and Kesley knowing grins.

But he ignored them when he glanced through the new window and recognized Abe Rosen coming up the sidewalk, looking tired and stressed. The group then saw him, and faded back as Abe walked in.

His expression eased slightly when he saw Jameson. “There you are. The state police are all over the scene. Some of those guys are yapping about the man who turned into a bear. And the state guys want me to bring you over to press charges, but what they really want is to hammer you with questions.”

Jameson said to the exhausted-looking deputy, “Bear? What bear?”

Relief smoothed Abe’s forehead. “And the fight? The animals?”

“All I saw was a bunch of boozed-up, doped-out bikers going after each other while they hallucinated. Though maybe some pets ran through, scared by the gunfire.”

Abe grinned tiredly. “Then we’d better get it over with. They’re collecting over at the barn that we use as a headquarters. Sheriff Odom is commanding from a chaise longue because of his broken knees. Oh, and I’m to tell you that the Crockery is sending over hot sandwiches and coffee,” he added.

Kesley reached for Jameson’s hand, but Abe waved her back. “Remember, none of you were there. It’ll look suspicious if you turn up, especially if any of those assholes catch sight of you and point you out as the naked woman. Right now you’re a delusion.”

Kesley’s lips thinned, but she nodded. “Take my phone,” she said, pressing it into Jameson’s hand. “When you’re ready to be picked up, call me on McKenzi’s cell. She’s number one in my Favorites.”

Jameson accepted the phone, which was warm from her body. He hated leaving her—hated having to move. He wanted nothing more than to curl up with Kesley and sleep for a week, but he and Abe crossed the short distance to the Upson Downs sheriff’s office, which really was a barn located behind a row of shops whose buildings had to date back a hundred years.

As he walked, all the questions he had shut out came streaming back.

A slew of black police vehicles were parked all over, and uniformed people had crowded into the barn, where the bikers were being tended by a brusque but efficient doctor. The rest sat on the ground in rows under the guns of uniforms who looked ready to fire if the bastards so much as twitched wrong. Jameson, in passing by, recognized two of the bikers who’d attacked him at the hotel the previous morning.

Dull eyes watched him pass into a smaller back room, with a scattering of battered but comfortable furniture. Here, Sheriff Odom held court, watching the state police with narrow attention. The welcome smell of Reuben sandwiches met Jameson’s nose, as well as coffee: he decided that much as he hated the bitterness, he would forego dumping honey into it. He wasn’t going to do anything that might make people think of bears.

At the far end of the barn, Marlo sat on a couch next to a skinny kid who had to be the other hostage. They both held steaming cups in their hands. Marlo looked considerably disheveled, her eyes wide with shock.

A grizzled guy who was obviously the state guys’ chief interrogator waved Jameson over.

It was time to shift the focus away from the motel fight to the bigger question, and Jameson knew exactly how to do that. He raised his voice and stated, “I’m Jameson Worth Dandridge III, and these guys were hired to murder me.”

And suppressed a smile as all hell broke loose.

* * *

It was way past midnight, and felt like a thousand years later, when he and Marlo and the kid were released at last.

The kid was promptly swept away by his parents. Marlo and Jameson were driven back to the Primrose by Abe, who left them with, “Call if you need anything.”

The Primrose had been restored more or less to normalcy. On the surface everything seemed everyday, but Jameson could feel discreet attention from Julia Bashir, and the few people gathered in the lobby. Even the parrot was quiet, its head jerking from side to side as it watched them cross to the balcony walkway. With his restored sense of his bear self, Jameson strongly suspected that the parrot was a fellow-shifter, and as such, the perfect alert system for the hotel.

Marlo unlocked her door, and Jameson said, “I need to talk to you.”

“Can it wait?”

“No.”

She sighed, and waved Jameson in to follow her. As she sank into the armchair, he said, “Were you in the plot with Beth Cannon?”

He’d begun to suspect the answer, and saw it in her shocked expression. “Plot?”

“She was trying to kill me,” he said deliberately. “What do you know about that?”

Marlo reared back. “Nothing! I would
never
compromise my professional career by being party to something like
that!
” Her face blanched as if she were about to be ill, then mottled red suffused her cheeks. “I wondered why she suddenly appeared back in my life. I believed her story about appreciating my gifts with therapy, and how wonderful my project was, though she used to make fun of it during our college days.” Her gaze shifted away.

“How long have you known her?” Jameson asked, watching her closely.

Marlo grimaced as if she had a pounding headache. “I met her my first year of pre-med in college. We both switched majors—I hated the labs—and she said from the beginning that nursing was the best way to find rich old men ripe for the plucking.”

Jameson said, “And?”

“I’d begun studying genetics, because I swear to God, when I was a kid, I saw this woman on the beach turn into a crane. And fly away. My parents put me in therapy, which I discovered I liked, though it never shook my conviction.”

Jameson said nothing.

Marlo sighed. “And you don’t believe me, either. I’m used to that.”

She looked so tired and worn out that he sympathized, and was almost tempted to tell her to keep looking.

She said in a low voice, “In subsequent years, as I surfed Usenet—that was before Google—I kept seeing references to what some call meta humans, but there are other names. Shape-shifters, and yes, I know it’s mostly myth, don’t waste your breath. But I saw what I saw.”

Jameson said, “Go on.”

“So I found intriguing hints. Always secondhand. I couldn’t stick the labs in med school, so I made a sideways transfer to therapy, while she focused on geriatric nursing. But I never lost sight of my hope of finding meta humans.”

She rubbed her eyes. “But you wanted to talk about Beth—and I just realized she set me up, too! Going to interview people at that motel had been her idea!”

“Wrap us all up at once, no witnesses. Real convenient,” Jameson said. “Go on.”

“We were both in apartments by senior year, and somewhere along the line she went from being the ElizaBeth Schultz I’d had as a roommate to Beth Cannon, who adopted a Boston accent, shopped in New York, and read high society news. She dropped me like a hot rock, me and my weird obsession, as she called it. I lost track of her after graduation and internships, except for occasional lunches. I began working for Tranquil Breezes five years ago.”

“It’s a place to house rich patients who have mental problems,” he said.

“Yes. And they also do some experimental work in rehab. That’s what attracted me—that and the pay is good.”

“And so she contacted you?”

“Yes. Said she had a patient with severe mental as well as physical trauma. She paid a lot to set you up with the false name—she said your brother had tried to kill you.”

“That was a lie.”

Marlo spread her hands. “She also said that the old man—excuse me, your father, but she always called him ‘the old man’—had let slip some words about men who became bears, that I realize now had to be total lies, meant to get me on board. See, I’d seen several Internet references to meta human sightings in this area.”

“Aren’t those rumors always third hand?” he asked, without the slightest vestige of a qualm.

“Yes, mostly, but these were so very specific. And yet with all my digging the past few days, I never found a vestige of a first-hand source. Everyone seems to think I’m talking about hippies, or cults, or just want to know what I’ve been smoking.”

She rubbed her eyes again. “A big scam, in other words,” she said bitterly. “But why do these rumors persist?” She seemed to rouse a little. “If I could just find
evidence
, and get a couple of them into a lab—there are two doctors at Tranquil Breezes who would do anything to get their hands on human alternatives, as they call them, for genome tests—I wouldn’t have to marry a fortune. I’d
make
one, studying their DNA and publishing in the medical world.”

“Sounds like something from the SyFy Channel,” Jameson said.

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes had widened with greed. “Think of the possibilities for gene therapies, especially for the wealthy, who would pay anything for super-powered genetics. And even if they couldn’t make that work, there’s always the fallback of the media. Not that I’d waste proof of alternative humans on NPR, I’d take it straight to the networks for top dollar. I’d never have to work again, and without having to play footsie with geriatric husbands.” She made a disgusted face.