“I don’t hurt kids.”
“I’m glad. I’d have had to hurt you if you did.”
“I thought so,” Walker said.
In the next instant, he struck. Rebecca had been drawing a breath to continue the banter, but she let out the breath with an oomph as she fell.
Walker had grabbed her leg—silken skin over firm muscle—and jerked, reaching up to pin her when she came down.
Rebecca landed on his chest, a hundred sixty pounds or so of woman, her br**sts soft against the harder planes of his chest.
She had great reflexes. Walker had started a roll to put her beneath him, where he’d wrap her hands in the loose tape, but he couldn’t move her.
Rebecca had him pinned; his back was solid against the rug, Rebecca’s hold on his shoulders perfect. Her smile didn’t waver. “Not a bad attempt.”
“Had to try,” Walker said.
Rebecca came closer, her breath warm on his face. “You know what, Walker? I’m a Shifter woman in my fertile years. You know what that makes me?” She lowered herself closer still. “Horny. Very, very horny.”
And helping her take care of that wouldn’t be bad. Not bad at all. Walker’s thumping heart and hardening c**k would have told him that even if his brain didn’t. She was a lush, female armful, very tempting.
Any man but Walker would have taken her up on the offer and let her bang him right here, surrendering to the beauty of her. But Walker never mixed sex with his missions. Sex was for celebration, for taking his ease afterward, for loving. He wanted to be in a position where he could let down his guard and enjoy himself. Stopping a mission for sex was appallingly stupid. It took only a little self-control to stay focused.
Rebecca might have good reflexes, and she might be the hottest thing he’d seen in a long, long time, but she wasn’t a trained fighter. Not trained in fighting dirty.
Walker heaved himself up, and heaved fast. One lightning move and he had her off him, sliding her across the floor, out of his way. Walker rolled to his knees, then levered himself to his feet, reaching for the tape on his legs.
Rebecca landed hard, with enough impact for her to hit the bottom of the stairs, smacking her head on the post. Walker hadn’t meant for that to happen, but it would slow her enough for him to get his legs free and himself out the window. Shifters could hunt him down faster than he could run away, but Walker knew how to hot-wire a car in ten seconds flat.
“Oh.” Rebecca pushed her hair from her face. “Now.”
Walker jerked at the tape until it came unstuck from his black fatigue pants, wishing they hadn’t taken his knife. They’d wound a huge wad of tape around him, and he fought to pull it free.
Rebecca slid her shirt off over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra, but Walker didn’t let himself look, not fully. What he saw from the corner of his eye was pretty good though.
Rebecca shoved down her shorts and then her panties more rapidly than Walker could unwind the tape. Her bare body came into view, curved, gorgeous, mouthwatering.
“Damn it,” she said. “I did not want to go bear in front of you.”
The last words degenerated into one long growl as Rebecca’s body expanded and changed, growing fur and claws longer than any knife Walker ever carried. She shifted and grew, the growls becoming louder, until finally Walker saw exactly what kind of bear she was.
Kodiak.
Ordinary Kodiak bears were gigantic. A Shifter Kodiak, even a female, was at least twice that size. No wonder all the furniture in here was pushed against the walls.
Walker got himself free of the tape. He made it one step toward the open window before a giant bear paw brought him down. Rebecca’s mouth opened to show her horrifyingly large teeth before she flipped him onto his back and held him there the most effective way she could—lying down on him.
She let him breathe, at least. Her large body kept him as well-pinned as she had in her human form, except now she was warmer and heavier, and had a lot more fur.
Rebecca nuzzled his face with her large bear nose, her dark eyes filled with amusement. She raised her head and huffed a little, and Walker swore she was laughing.
* * *
When Tiger woke again, the afternoon was waning, long blocks of light slanting through the windows. He’d learned that in this season—summer—the light lingered for a long time, so it could be eight in the evening already.
The first sensation he had was one of rightness. His body felt much better, the horrific pain gone. His headache had receded, leaving only a slight pounding to remind him of the previous hurt.
The second was stunned wonder. Much of the rightness he felt came from the fact that Carly was lying next to him, curled up under the sheet, her head on a pillow.
Tiger’s bed was large, the biggest in the house. He was as bulky as Liam, though he shared height with Ronan, a Kodiak bear Shifter. Kim had gotten Tiger a bigger bed because when Tiger had first arrived, he’d been restless at night, rolling from side to side. Hard to find comfort on the small mattress that had been Connor’s when his previous sleeping pallet had been the metal floor of a cage. After he’d fallen out of the smaller bed a few times, Kim had brought home the larger one.
Carly had plenty of room in the bed. The fan played near the window. It, combined with the cooling breeze from all four open windows, had made Carly pull the sheet over herself. One thigh, covered with a couple of inches of the canvas-cloth shorts she’d put on at Ethan’s, poked out from beneath the sheet.
Her makeup was smeared from the accident and sleep, her hair was messed from its careful French braid. Beautiful. Tiger would explain that Carly didn’t need the face paint and her hair tucked away for her to be pretty.
But she was unhurt. Tiger scented that from her, saw it in her unbroken skin. She’d been bruised and afraid, but not hurt. He let himself believe in the Goddess long enough to be thankful.
Before the crash, Carly had been teaching Tiger about kissing. When the subject had first come up, Liam had told Tiger that Liam hadn’t known how to kiss either. Kim had taught him. He’d implied that not knowing how to kiss wasn’t a problem for Shifters, and that was when Connor had said Tiger would learn when the time came.
Tiger brushed a wisp of hair from Carly’s cheek. He knew he needed to make his way to Ronan’s and question Walker. He needed to know why Walker had been sent to watch Carly, and why a man dressed in the same kind of black fatigues had shot Tiger in the back more than a dozen times.
But the house was quiet, the street outside quiet as well. Shifters would be inside eating their nightly meal, talking to their mates and cubs, mothers and fathers, sharing time with family. Later, the more nocturnal ones would be out with neighbors, playing with cubs in the long stretch of green behind the houses, or leaving Shiftertown to go to the bar Liam managed or one of the clubs in town that allowed Shifters.