Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6) Page 2

  Nostrils flaring, he grunted and leaned his so close she could feel his breath tickling her collarbone. “You’re fertile, and you’re mine.”

  Definitely desperate, the bear in her said.

  Drea stepped back and stared at him, waiting for the a-ha or the just kidding that always followed one of the Ursu brothers’ rude jokes, but none came.

  His breathing had gone thready and ragged, and pupils had fully dilated. That wasn’t a command response. That was hormones.

  “Me?” she whispered.

  “You’re mine.”

  “But that can’t be possible.”

  She gave her head another shake. She wasn’t cut out to be any Bear’s mate. She wasn’t suitable for a bear who could be alpha of any clan he happened upon, and that included Peter Ursu. That would have been just too fantastical in her opinion. He was a dream come to life. A man well suited for a Shrew, not a receptionist who started at the sound of toilets being flushed.

  He closed his eyes, rolled his shoulders back, and stretched his neck by leaning his head to one side then the other. “The bear in me,” he said low, “doesn’t think that’s up for debate.”

  Her inner bear was silent on the matter, but she usually was silent at all the worst times. The bear was supposed to lend her courage and make her instincts keener, but the bear didn’t care. Drea getting kidnapped and given to a circus hadn’t prompted the bear to act. Being physically assaulted time and time again by Gene and his lieutenants hadn’t piqued her, either, except to make her suggest that Drea was at fault for everything before she went silent again.

  Drea pulled in a bracing breath and shifted her weight. “I’m not sure what I can do for you.”

  He opened his eyes and furrowed his brow. For a long while, he didn’t say anything, just stared.

  She couldn’t hold his intense gaze. She looked down at her feet instead and wondered where her shoes were.

  “Eat.” He grabbed a stack of papers from the table and made his way to the sofa.

  He sat and stared over the back of the couch at her until she unwrapped and brought the sandwich to her mouth.

  Then he looked down at the papers he’d picked up from the seat and sorted through them.

  Drea chewed and watched, not entirely certain how to react. She couldn’t be his mate, and he had to know that. That had to be why he was holding himself back.

  When he got past the season, his pull toward her would go away. She was sure of that.

  He could do so much better. If Drea were his only Bear option, he would have been better off with a woman who wasn’t a Bear at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Peter could smell Andrea’s fright, her confusion.

  Andrea’s adrenaline surged and crashed again and again, and yet she didn’t scream or run.

  Her brother frequently voiced his concern about how slow to enrage she was. He worried that one day, her passiveness was going to get her killed. Peter thought there was a strong possibility of that, too.

  He’d also thought that perhaps Andrea didn’t have to be Bryan’s worry anymore. She could become Peter’s.

  But no one wanted her to be Peter’s. “She’s too young,” his sister Tamara had said.

  “She’s too timid,” Bryan had said.

  The rest of Andrea’s coworkers at Shrew & Company were mum on the subject, though Peter knew they all had an opinion. They’d said that he was a shark, and that Andrea was a guppy. They kept saying he wanted to devour her, yet that wasn’t the case at all.

  He was a nomad—an alpha without a group to lead and with no particular drive to find one to settle into. He didn’t need a group to tend. Just one person.

  He’d been doing his best to stay away from her for a year, but the bear in him wanted what the bear wanted. The beast was tired of waiting, so he’d taken matters into his own paws, so to speak.

  In spite of his human consciousness being in charge of his body most of the time, Peter was powerless against the beast’s compulsions to take her—to hide her until everyone promised to back off. To hide her until she said yes.

  “She’s not going to say yes,” he muttered to himself and resumed his chore of sorting through background checks of Gene’s newest lieutenants. His inner bear might have been being a horny asshole at the moment, but Peter still had work to do.

  The folks back in North Carolina had already figured out that he’d vanished with Andrea. They’d been calling his phone nonstop. He’d turned it off, and both of hers, too. He’d planned on letting her check in with them later so they’d know she was okay as soon as he was certain of that himself.

  He’d be calm as long as she didn’t get too close. He couldn’t ignore her fertile scent, but as long as he didn’t have to look at her sweet face, he might be able to push his urges aside and find some leads.

  She walked right past him to the window with her sandwich and looked outside.

  He threw his head back against the sofa and groaned.

  “Is this your apartment?” she asked.

  He grunted and pinched the bridge of his nose. “One of them.”

  “You and Soren have apartments all over the place, right?”

  “Occupational hazard.” Peter and his brother often had to follow the money, as far as jobs were concerned. They’d gotten used to living on the road during the years they spent following their father around. They’d assisted their father, Joseph, in his dealings with shapeshifter and other supernatural groups. Having places to stay in the cities where they frequently had jobs made good sense for them.

  But Baltimore wasn’t one of those places. Soren didn’t know about Peter’s Baltimore apartment. They didn’t work in the city. There were too many supernatural weirdoes in the local police force, and therefore too many chances to get subverted.

  Peter opened his eyes in time to watch Andrea bending to peer at the windowsill.

  “Haven’t been here in a while?” she asked. “All of the surfaces are so dusty.”

  “Probably a year or more. I’m sorry. What I did was necessary.”

  “Bringing me here?”

  He grunted again.

  “Why?”

  “The bear doesn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “Oh.” She turned her sandwich over and tucked a piece of escaping tomato back in.

  Eat it all. You’re skin and bones.

  She’d been a little heavier the first time he’d seen her. Not by much, but in a year, she’d lost everything that was spare.

  “And how long does your bear think I’ll be here?” she asked in her usual halting, timid way.

  Peter ground his teeth and swallowed the growl that had started building in his chest. He tamped down the word the bear was trying to speak—“Forever”—and said instead, “I don’t know. I hope to be able to take you home soon.”

  “Oh,” she repeated. She turned to the window and took a dainty bite of the sandwich.

  Barely eats.

  That made the man part of him want to growl, too, but that was just Andrea. She never had much of an appetite, and Peter couldn’t help to have noticed.

  When they were all around the same table—Bryan’s Bears with Tamara and the rest of Shrews, everyone ate heartily except for Andrea. No matter what was in front of her and no matter who’d placed the order, she’d pick at her food.

  “She doesn’t eat,” he’d snapped one day at Tamara.

  Tamara had rolled her eyes and told him to “Take it down a notch,” whatever that was supposed to mean. “She grazes,” Tamara had said.

  “Bears don’t graze. She starves,” Peter had returned. “Look at her.”

  All Tamara could do was sigh, but she had to see what Peter did—the hollows under Andrea’s eyes, the skin pulled tight over her high cheekbones—so much more evident now that she’d cropped all that decadent black hair down to an inch.

  “Why did you cut your hair?” His voice came out sounding accusatory, and he hadn’t even meant to ask the question alou
d at all.

  Her free hand went self-consciously to her hair, and she turned her back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just am.”

  “You’re not rude. It’s just that I’ve had this haircut for a while, and no one’s asked. They’ve noticed, I know, but they never ask why I changed the style. I thought I’d managed to escape the question.”

  “I liked it long.”

  “So did my parents.”

  Making a mess of this. He forced out a breath and rooted around in his head for something softer to say. He could probably come up with a few things in Romanian or German, or maybe even Russian, but as far as he knew, she didn’t speak those languages. English would have to do. “I don’t mean I only like your hair that way,” he started. “Simply that I was used to your longer hair. I like the short style as well.”

  Even if the severe cut makes telling how unhealthy you are so much easier.

  “I got my hair cut because… He—Gene—used to pull it.” She’d made the confession so quietly that even with his supernatural sense of hearing, the words had to run through his mental processor a couple of times before they made sense.

  He put down the background check sheets and started to stand—stopping himself just before he did.

  He still couldn’t get too close, no matter how badly he wanted to. She’d breached his space, and while he wasn’t going to run, the best course of action for both of them at the moment was for him to stay back. He doubted he could keep his hands off of her if he were near.

  “Pretty much every time he saw me,” she said in a rush of words, “he’d grab it. Didn’t matter what kind of style I wore. He always had his hands in my hair. I think he did it not only because he wanted me to hurt, but because he knew I didn’t like him getting so close.”

  Going to kill him.

  Peter clamped his teeth together to keep from saying the words aloud. His wasn’t an especially unique sentiment among the Shrews or any of the Ridge Bears, but they’d agreed they’d try to capture Gene alive. They had to handle him outside of the legal system, but they wanted to be fair and level about his punishment.

  If Peter ended up being the one to capture him, he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to be careful. Peter had killed men for far less than Gene had done. In his opinion, the bastard should have been killed ages ago, along with anyone in his entourage who couldn’t see what a shit stain he was.

  “I kept my hair long in my adult years,” Andrea said, “simply because of familiarity. You don’t see very many Native American women with really short hair, right?”

  “I generally don’t pay attention to what groups do, only individuals.”

  With her back still turned, she nodded. “I couldn’t look at myself anymore,” she whispered. “Or keep styling my hair every day. Every tug from my comb or brush reminded me of how he’d yank out clumps. My head would hurt so bad. My scalp would bleed sometimes.”

  Going to grab him by his hair and rip it from his scalp until he squeals.

  Peter didn’t know if that was the bear in him talking or if that was the more human part of his consciousness that was usually slightly more temperate about violence. For the first time in days, though, both halves of him were in perfect, synchronous accord.

  He was going to kill that little freak. No matter what he had to do to succeed, he was going to get to Gene first and make sure that he never laid a finger on another woman.

  Andrea turned, clutching her sandwich against her belly. Her brow furrowed again. “Are you okay?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re growling.”

  Peter cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter. “I could keep asking you to forgive me, but instead, I’ll ask for a blanket acceptance of me not being myself right now. I will try to be civilized, but that’s hard for me.”

  “You’re doing okay.”

  “Think so?”

  She shrugged. “I’m used to Bryan, I guess. He’s snarly on the best of days.”

  “You should take some cues from him.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning get mad at some things and not feel bad that you did. Anger is expected. You can yell and fight back against me for taking you. You don’t need to be pleasant for my sake. I may be out of sorts at the moment, but I am still more or less able to use logic. You’re afraid of me, so fight back.”

  “I’m…not afraid of you.”

  The twitch of her cheek and suddenly rapid blinks told him otherwise.

  He grunted long and low. “You’re lying. I’m holding you here against your will. I can smell your fear.”

  “Would that make you feel better? Me yelling at you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said in that whisper-soft way. “I can’t. I’m not afraid of you. I’ve never been afraid of you or Soren. I was relieved when I saw that I was with you.”

  As much as that statement made Peter’s inner bear want to stand up and strut, her confession also reaffirmed the rumor that Andrea wasn’t a typical Bear. She didn’t have a shifter’s aggressive fire in her. She wasn’t going to behave the way he was used to, so he had to make her—at least in situations pertaining to him. He didn’t want to push her to accept him when too often her life was devoid of choice.

  “You’re afraid, Andrea. You can admit that, and I won’t be angry.”

  “I’m not lying.” She’d very nearly raised her voice, so that meant she was serious.

  He pushed up a brow.

  “I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid period. I’m always afraid. The fear ebbs and flows. The anxiety is always there. I don’t get a respite. Panicking all the time means I don’t react to things the way I’m supposed to anymore. I can’t tell half the time if I’m actually safe. I don’t feel safe unless—”

  Whatever she was going to complete that sentence with, she let fall off.

  Though Peter desperately wanted to hear the conclusion, he wasn’t in a good position to push her to complete the thought. He’d already been far too aggressive and taken too many liberties. He could keep blaming his behavior on his inner bear, but the man part of him had to take some responsibility as well. He just wanted her. She was soft and pretty and sweet—too sweet. Like the rest of the Ridge Bears, she cared about people long past the point she should have given up on them. She deserved better than him, but he wanted to keep her anyway.

  She sat gingerly on the cushion at the opposite end of the sofa and set her sandwich down beside her.

  “You need to finish that,” he said.

  Some small muscle in her cheek twitched as she picked the sandwich up.

  “It’s not that much, Andrea.”

  “It is to eat all at once.”

  “I would have been finished already.”

  “You probably chew sticks of gum larger than this.” She took a bite and chewed, ploddingly, staring at the brick wall outside the window.

  Of all the places she could have found to sit, she’d sat so close to him. His self-restraint was already shot to hell, and with her scent compounding and concentrating more and more by the moment, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from touching her. Not unless he left. He wasn’t going to leave. That was out of the question. For one thing, the neighborhood wasn’t the safest for a woman who couldn’t fight, and for another, the bear in him didn’t want to let her out of his sight.

  Ever.

  Grin and bear it, motherfucker.

  He drew in a long, calming breath, and raked a hand through his tangled hair. “Do you need a drink?”

  “I’ll get some water in a bit.”

  “Stay. I’ll get you a cup.” He started to stand but her reach was too quick. Her fingers were around his wrist, and then they weren’t. She’d pulled her hand away as if his skin was hot enough to scald or sharp enough to cut.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For grabbing you. I don’t usua
lly… I have better manners than that.”

  She’s got to be kidding me.

  He studied her face looking for signs of jest, but she wore her usual wide-eyed anticipatory mien. Andrea wasn’t generally the sort of woman who’d make jokes, anyway. He should have known better.

  “You can touch me all you want,” he said.

  She could have kicked or hit him for all he cared. He would have deserved the treatment for what he was putting her through.

  If she had any opinion about his open-ended invitation, he couldn’t tell, given her lack of response. She just bit into her sandwich again and pulled one of her legs beneath her bottom.

  “I hope Bryan knows I’m okay. He always overreacts.”

  Peter leaned back against the sofa cushion and stared at the side of her face, bewildered. Andrea hadn’t moved her lips or made a sound, so that could only mean she was transmitting her thoughts on every available telepathic frequency. A bit of telepathy wasn’t unusual between born-Bears in a group, but he’d never heard Andrea chime into a group discussion before. He’d assumed she was simply immune to the affliction. Obviously not.

  How much has she overheard?

  “I can’t eat all this.” She sighed and set the sandwich atop her lap.

  Peter was less sure she’d overheard anything at all or that she even knew he could hear her. He figured he’d better test the theory.

  “Put the rest in the refrigerator if you can’t finish.”

  She jumped to her feet and took a big step away from the sofa, wide-eyed and trembling.

  He shook his head and let out a ragged breath. “You have no clue, do you?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything I haven’t always done. What you heard was just one born-Bear connecting to another.”

  “But I can’t do that.”

  He turned his hands over and grunted. “Obviously, you can.”

  “I don’t hear anyone else in my head usually.”

  Interesting.

  “Do it again,” she said.

  “What would you like for me to tell you?”