Bear My Baby (Shifter Squad Six 1) (8 page)

“You’re not kissing me yet,” she said, putting the glass behind her.

“That’s an oversight I can easily fix,” Connor said, nudging her chin upward as he dipped down to her level.

This time, there was no forcefulness in the kiss, only tenderness. Slowly and carefully, he explored her lips, his tongue tracing their delicate curves before dipping between them and continuing the languid, soft motions. Cassie purred, letting her flat palms run over his chest and stomach and then reach behind him, grabbing his ass with way more forcefulness than she would have expected from herself. Connor broke the kiss and grabbed her hands, prying them off.

“Nuh-uh, honey. You won’t rush me along. I have my plans with you and I won’t let you tamper with them,” he said, giving her that wry grin of his that could only spell trouble.

“Plans? What plans?” she asked, but her questioning was cut short when Connor quickly and efficiently threw her over his shoulder and strode out of the kitchen like he’d bagged himself a pot of gold.

She wanted to be mad at him, she really did. But for some reason, she was laughing her head off.

“The hell do you think you’re taking me?” she asked, kicking her legs through bursts of giggles.

“To the bedroom, obviously,” he said, striding down the hallway and trying one door after the next.

His hand had already locked around the knob leading to Monroe’s room when Cassie realized where he was heading.

“No! Not that one! The last one at the end!” she yelped, and mercifully he let go of the knob and turned to walk toward the door she’d called out.

He practically barged through the door and threw her down on her back on the bed from the doorway. Before she could draw a surprised breath, he was on her, kissing a trail down her neck and cleavage slowly, trapping her underneath him.

“So. This is where Miss Cassie Campton sleeps, hmm?” he said, pausing for a moment.

“You know my last name?” Cassie queried, surprised.

“I did my digging,” he noted casually, falling on his side next to her on her soft, but worn sheets.

“And what did you find? Any skeletons I should know about? Perhaps I stole someone’s lollipop in kindergarten and that’s why a bunch of men in black came to kill me?”

“Naw, I don’t know nothing about that,” Connor said, chuckling. “Though you do seem like a troublemaker, now that I think about it.”

“Oh yeah? How come?”

“Well, I saw your Facebook page. You were a wild thing in college, weren’t you?”

Connor ducked out of the path of the pillow she’d thrown at him and caught it mid-flight, flinging it back at her easily.

“Shooting the messenger, honey. That’s no way to treat your visitors.”

“And I bet you know all about how I should treat my guests, hmm?”

“I could make an educated guess,” Connor offered.

“Okay, so you know my name. And you’ve seen my social media which essentially means you know everything there is to know.” She could see he was about to say something, but she shushed him with a raised hand. “So I think that’s unfair. I don’t know anything about you, Connor.”

“What do you want to know?” he asked, settling in comfortably on her bed, sprawling out like he was going to stay there from now until the end of his patience.

“Is Connor your real name?” she asked, popping off the first thing in her long,
long
list of things she’d been dying to ask about the father of her baby boy.

It was right up there with “
Any family history of mental illness? What’s the rate of cancer in your bloodline? Can I expect my son to start turning into a bear cub at random times?
” You know, the little things.

The irony of it all was overwhelming. Sitting in her bedroom with the father of her child, trying to figure out if his name was actually his name and wondering how long it was going to take him to fess up that he was a werebear.

“It is. Connor McLaughlin,” he said.

“McLaughlin? Irish?”

“Scottish, actually. And you won’t be able to find me on Facebook.”

“Ah, an Instagram kind of guy, huh,” Cassie teased, getting a look from him that could have been amusement as well as a burning desire to fuck her senseless.

For some reason, she was pretty sure he was a decent multitasker. He could do both.

“Did you know I was going to be at that bar?” she asked tentatively, not sure if she wanted to know.

Ultimately, she had to know. If there was any danger, then this time it wouldn’t only affect her, but Monroe as well. And she doubted she’d have an army of buff shifter commandos at her disposal every time something went weird.

Connor shook his head and the bad boy cockiness left his expression, replaced by what she could only decipher as honest confusion. “No, I didn’t. I was there for no real reason when I saw you. I wasn’t going to let that fucker hurt you,” he said, his fist balling around the sheets.

Cassie put her hand on his, frowning. “Temper, temper.”

She would have been lying if she said that it wasn’t a turn-on, knowing that he was so immediately and violently affected by anything that happened to her. It made her wonder if things would have been different if she hadn’t been handed off to another team, if he’d stayed at her side the whole time. Maybe he’d be living there in San Fran with her, raising their baby boy together, loving each other…

A lump formed in Cassie’s throat, one she fought to swallow down.

“It’s a small world,” he said, shrugging. “I guess fate wanted me to come and find you tonight.”

Cassie giggled but he remained somber in his reaction, his inviting lips pushed together tightly. Cassie quieted, staring at him in wonder.

Did he mean it?

God, that man was messing with her head so bad. He cleared his throat and rolled back to stare at the ceiling, putting his hands under his head. His shirt rode up just enough to expose a part of that tight, tucked V she remembered too vividly. It was hard to concentrate around him.

“What else?”

“Why did you look me up?”

“I wanted to know who you were,” he said simply.

Butterflies battled for dominance at the pit of her stomach. So many questions, so little time.

***

Cassie was rudely awoken in the morning by the doorbell buzzing. At first, she rolled over from one side to the other, bumping her nose into Connor’s chest. Apparently he was holding onto her with both arms, as if he was worried that if he let go, she might sneak off on him in the middle of the night.

For a fleeting moment, she allowed herself to inhale his strong, musky scent. Apparently he’d taken off his shirt and goddamn if he didn’t look like a marble sculpture come to life on her bed. She was spending a second too long admiring at him when the annoying doorbell went off again. It dug through the folds of sleep clouding her brain and dawned on her with the sudden and unwelcome understanding that no one
ever
rang her doorbell.

Scooting out of the bed in a rush, she grabbed her dressing gown and threw it over her shoulders, hoping that it would hide the fact that she was still in last night’s dress. She practically ran down the corridor, hoping that whoever was at the door wouldn’t wake up Connor. While at the same time, a little voice was counting all of the people that could be on the other side of said door… and the count ended at two.

She pulled the door open and sure enough, there stood Amanda, Monroe on her hip and reaching his little hands out for her.

Shit.

“Mama!” he called, and instinctively she picked him out of Amanda’s hands.

“Morning, sleepyhead! I brought bagels and a baby! Adelaide told me you might have had some fun last night so I figured I would run over instead of having you do it! Sorry if I woke you up, I have a hair appointment in half an hour and I really,
really
need to make it. And Monroe missed his mommy, didn’t you big man?” she cooed, taking hold of one of Monroe’s hands while he was busy picking at the earrings Cassie was wearing.

“Thank you, Amanda,” she said flatly.

Cassie barely caught every second word that Amanda rattled off. Her mind worked frantically to figure out how she could possibly get Connor out of the house before he saw Monroe or heard Amanda talking. Right then, Amanda stopped her babbling and looked up, her big green eyes going wide as saucers and her mouth falling open a bit, staring at something behind Cassie.

“What is it, Amanda?” Cassie asked, but the familiar feeling of heat on the back of her neck hit her with full force.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Who’s this little guy?” Connor asked, Monroe letting go of her earring immediately and staring up at the tall hulk of a man with surprise.

Of course he was standing right behind her.
Of course.

Shit.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Connor

Connor yawned heavily, rolling off his back and kicking his feet over the side of the bed. His bare toes touched the cool wooden floor and he sprung up, rolling his shoulders back and trying to get blood circulating again. They’d been asleep for maybe an hour, if that. He was still mostly clothed and he wasn’t even sure if he felt bad about it.

What he’d figured would be a night of guiltless fucking had turned into hours and hours of conversation that neither one of them wanted to put a stop to. She was probably the first woman who’d ever done that to him—made him want to talk to her as badly as he wanted to fuck her.

He stretched as he padded out the bedroom door, hearing a happy, sing-songy voice chattering on about something at the front door. Connor was making a beeline for the bathroom when something caught his nose, making him stop dead in his tracks. He whiffed it in, letting it ruminate for a second. A deep frown cut his forehead and he spun on his heel, heading down the corridor.

Is that a…

Yup. In her arms—while Cassie was busy trying to make a blonde leave who looked an awful lot like the friend she’d been out with the night before—was a baby boy with the most familiar blue eyes. The same eyes that looked at him every morning in the mirror. Clear, blue, pale and full of something more than simple human curiosity. The eyes of a werebear. The eyes of a
McLaughlin
werebear.

He thought he’d stay standing in place, stunned, but his feet carried him forward. Before he knew it, he was smiling at the little boy and he was smiling back, reaching out his chubby hands for him. Connor plucked him out of Cassie’s hands easily, and without paying any heed to the blonde, took the boy and moved toward a side room that turned out to be the living room. He caught sight of Cassie staring at him blankly, a twist of worry making her lips curl in unease.

“Hey there, little man,” Connor said, grinning like a fool.

The moment he touched the baby, his heart swelled to twice its size, or so it felt like. A tingle ran through him and then retreated back, as if it was a wave that started and ended with the child in his arms. He had the same facial features as Connor did, there was no doubt of that. Same high cheekbones, same straight nose and same determined chin, even if it was hidden under the plushy cheeks of a healthy, happy baby boy at the moment.

And he was
strong
. Monroe grabbed Connor’s finger and there was real grip there, far more than a human baby would have. Not only that, but Connor could smell it on him. The whiff of primal energy, a hint of the animal still dormant within him. Without managing to take his eyes off the boy, Connor sunk into a wide-backed chair, settling Monroe on his knees.

“Thank you again, Amanda. Let me know if I can do anything for you,” he heard Cassie say.

“Jesus, Ellie! He’s
hot
. I mean,
GQ
hot. Like, hubba hubba Mr. Lifeguard hot!” Amanda squealed, not bothering to hide her excitement.

Connor was pretty sure he heard Amanda hugging Cassie, which he bet she didn’t appreciate one bit.

“He sure is. Bye now!” Cassie said, pushing the door closed and waving to Amanda.

A second later, she practically ran into the room, her face pale as hell. She looked from Connor to Monroe and then back again and he could see how worried she was. How frantic, even.

“I think we need to play twenty questions again, Cassie,” he said calmly, tickling the baby and making him giggle and wriggle in his hands.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of him. While Monroe had his eyes, he’d definitely gotten his mother’s hair and a slightly darker complexion. The fullness of his lips was also certainly from Cassie’s side. As far as Connor was concerned, the boy had gotten the best possible mix, looking like the perfect outcome of both himself and Cassie.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” she said, sinking onto the couch across from him.

“This way or at all?” he asked, not able to really keep the sharpness out of his tone completely.

She recoiled at that and he immediately kicked himself for it. Cassie stood up, her lips pressed in a tight, thin line, with anguish burning in her hazel eyes. The pit of his stomach iced over. Shit, that wasn’t how he wanted to start things off.

“I think you need to go now,” she said, coldly.

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay. You can understand I’m a little bit on edge right now, right? Sit down, Cassie. Let’s talk about this.”

She seemed to think about that for a moment but reluctantly agreed, sitting back down and resting her elbows on her knees. They dug into the soft, checkered fabric and he immediately wished she was in his lap too right now. The distance of a few feet between them felt like they were on the opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, yelling things across that the other one would never understand.

“What’s his name?” he asked, studying the lines of his face and the slightly protruding, proud arch of his Cupid’s bow.

Connor wanted to learn everything he could about the boy. Something inside of him told him that he didn’t have a second to lose. If losing Cassie had taught him anything, then it was that he always had to go for what he wanted. Even if it ripped his heart out every single time.