Bear My Love: BBW BWWM Paranormal Shapeshifter Werebear Mail-Order Bride Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 4) (7 page)

Keesha’s eyes went wide and when Battle nodded towards the door again, she scrambled in. She looked surprised and hurt and Battle knew he’d just lost a lot of ground with her. But having her be pissed at him was still far better than putting her in danger. He slammed the door shut behind her and ran around the truck, getting in as well. When he peeled out from the parking spot, dust and pebbles flying behind him, he could see the wolf walk out of the store in the rearview mirror. His pale blue gaze followed the truck until Battle rounded a corner.

“You wanna tell me what the hell that was about?” Keesha hissed.

He could almost see steam rising from the top of her head. He knew that the last thing he should do was try to boss her around like those bastards that had come and gone in her life before. Did it make things better that he had a good excuse?

“No. But I think I have to.”

Sorry, baby, but you were possibly about to get mangled by a wolf for payback. Did I tell you that I’m a convicted murderer? That’s gonna go over well.

Battle’s day had gone from great to fucking abysmal in about five minutes flat.

CHAPTER TEN

Keesha

Her arms had been crossed over her chest the entire drive back. She was livid, just out of her mind angry.

What did you expect, coming to see some lumberjack bear in the middle of the fucking forest? Of course he’s an ass. It comes with the vast fucking territory.

Keesha wasn’t completely sure whether she was furious at Battle or herself or both of them, but she was pissed. This was Jules, Veron and Blake all over again – teeming with rage, sitting in the bathroom, plotting doom upon the prickish men who ran her life. Except that now she was stuck in a beat-up truck with a man she’d fuck just as easily as she’d slap him. Maybe both at the same time?

She’d thought she’d got away from all of that, but lo and behold, she’d found another guy just like the others, willing to run her life and not take her opinion on it for anything. She could barely keep from baring her teeth, feeling more like the wild animal here than the werebear next to her.

“Well?” she pressed through gritted teeth.

He’d said he’d have to explain, but so far it hadn’t led to a single additional word being uttered. They’d been driving away from Shifter Grove for a good ten minutes now, taking an even more obscure route than they had before. It almost felt like Battle was running from something. But what? And why did she have to be stuck with him for the show?

“I’d like to get you to sa… I’d like to get you home, first,” Battle said, his expression growing even grimmer – if that was even possible.

“Were you about to say that you’d like to get me to safety? What the hell, Battle. I think you better start talking before there’s permanent damage here.”

Keesha’s voice broke a little and she mentally cursed herself for it. This big lug of a bear had already crawled under her skin and she wasn’t keen on extracting him. The way he’d acted at the store had come as a cold shower. He’d been so kind and open with her when it was just the two of them and then so massively controlling in Shifter Grove. She might have liked that in bed, but not when they were out! Keesha didn’t really get it and it seemed out of character for him.

What do you know about his character,
she thought glumly.

With a resounding sigh, Battle pulled into a narrow forest road and hit the gas even harder. The truck wobbled and shook as he made it plow across the makeshift road, leaving Keesha to hang on for dear life. He took another turn and reached a wide clearing in the woods, recently felled trees still stacked neatly in piles. Battle hit the breaks and Keesha lurched forward even with her seatbelt fastened, but Battle quickly grabbed her by the shoulder and broke her forward momentum.

He undid both of their seatbelts, Keesha looking on with confusion, but he didn’t get out of the truck. The huge, usually deathly calm man looked like he was dealing with war inside of him and wasn’t yet sure which side was going to win. When he looked at Keesha, his gray eyes were flooded with an emotion she couldn’t decipher. Pain? Guilt? Remorse? It chilled her and made a little tremble shudder through her.

Those gray eyes had flashed brown back in town, showing her the power of the bear she’d so far only seen as a cuddly way to get fish. It had been a swift and merciless reminder that she wasn’t dealing with just the man, but the beast as well. For a moment, it had cooled her rage and made her comply with Battle’s request to get the hell out of there, but she wasn’t swayed as easily anymore.

“What’s wrong, Battle?” she asked again, her voice getting smaller and more worried.

“It’s a long story.”

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” she said, smiling at her own pained joke.

Battle chuckled. “No, I guess you ain’t.”

He let his head fall back on the headrest with a thud, looking through the windshield at the empty plain around them. Tree stumps and yellowing grass were the only things keeping them company. They were all alone in the middle of nowhere and a rational voice in Keesha’s head reminded her again that she should be worried. But just like when she’d met him for the first time at the airport, she couldn’t muster any worry within her. This was Battle, after all, not some crazed psycho killer.

“My real name isn’t Battle. It’s Branson Hunt. I’m originally from Montana. And I’m a convicted murderer.”

Shit.

Well, there went the cuddly bear theory. Keesha’s stomach twisted and she felt bile crawl up her throat, but she pressed it down and just nodded blandly. Battle, or Branson, had the right idea – she turned to look outside as well, sparing herself from making eye contact with him. Against better judgment, her hand reached out for his and squeezed his big paw of a palm encouragingly. Might as well see this through.

“What happened?”

“It was ten years ago. I was twenty. I thought I was in love.”

“With Adriana?”

“Yes, with Adriana,” Battle said dully, closing his eyes.

A mask of pain contorted his features for a moment but then passed and was just as soon forgotten. His fingers traced the outline of the tattoo on his chest.

“She was a wolf. She was gorgeous and manipulative and my hormones kept washing over me, telling me that she was the one. Others warned me about her, but I wouldn’t listen. I kept it a secret that we were seeing each other. My bear knew she wasn’t the one, but that didn’t matter to me then. Her pack, the Longbrook wolves, lived close to my clan and there had always been bad blood between the two. Wolves and grizzlies don’t mix well, especially when confined to small spaces like Bitterroot.

But I was young and in love and thought that nothing mattered but her and I. So we snuck around and professed that we’d be together forever and all that good stuff. She had two brothers around my age, and a few younger ones as well, and her family was next in line to head the pack. I was the cousin of my clan’s Alpha. Not a power position, but I was going to make a decent Lieutenant one day. I should have seen it coming before I did, but I didn’t…”

A strangled silence fell between them for a few seconds, until Keesha squeezed his hand again. Those knots that had so easily formed in the pit of her stomach were undoing themselves, letting her breathe a little again. These weren’t the words of a maniac. He could barely spit the sentences out without choking on them. Whatever had happened, Keesha had a feeling it wasn’t all on him.

“Seen what coming?”

“She didn’t want me. She wanted my Alpha – dead. One night, when we’d been together for a while, she convinced me to sneak her into our clan lands. My house was just next to Ryder’s, my Alpha’s. I didn’t know it then, but her brothers followed us, taking the secret path that would get us past most of the lookouts and that only I knew. There hadn’t been any serious trouble between us and the wolves for years, but wolves in packs are treacherous creatures and we didn’t trust them. At least, the smarter ones didn’t.”

There was that bitterness again, that self-blame in his voice that made Keesha’s heart break for him.

“Anyway, I was just taking her into my house – I was living alone – when her brothers came up behind me and knocked me out with something. When I came to a few minutes later, I heard a struggle in the other house. I didn’t see anything but red. I understood what was going on and by the time I was back on my feet, I was seething with rage. Any sort of calm and rational thinking I might have once possessed floated away, replaced by this bleeding red fog. There she was, Adriana, my girlfriend, the love of my then-life, hanging onto my Alpha’s throat while her two brothers were trying to tear his stomach open.

I shifted so fast I don’t think I’ve ever moved quite as quickly. I remember grabbing her by the scruff of her traitorous little neck and slamming her into the wall. Ryder almost snapped the neck of one of the brothers, Argo. I grabbed the other one, Adam. I don’t think I realized I was squeezing down so hard until I heard his skull crack and saw the life go out of him.”

Battle fell quiet after that, the spark dimming in his eyes. Keesha was shaking like a leaf, partly out of anger towards the wolves and partly because she could imagine so clearly what Battle had been going through since that night. He’d been just a kid, betrayed by the girl he thought he loved, watching his Alpha be put in mortal danger.

“Adriana and Argo crashed through a window and got out of there before we could catch them. Fucking wolves. They’re always faster than we are. Usually, clan and pack issues are settled amongst shifters, but Adriana pushed until she got charges pressed against me. It looked like just another brawl gone bad. They took me away three days later and threw me in jail. I pleaded out and got a fifteen-year sentence. I got out in nine. Good behavior.”

He smiled wryly at that, shrugging his shoulders. All the things she knew and didn’t know about him were slowly coming together. Why he rarely talked about the past and preferred the future instead. Why he’d been moving around the whole time they’d been talking over SassyDate. It wasn’t because he was looking for a job. It was because he didn’t feel at home anywhere.

“Why haven’t you gone back home?” Keesha asked after a long silence, turning her body towards him.

Battle shook his head, smirking dryly. He looked so much older like that. She wondered what kind of a man she’d be dealing with if he hadn’t gone through everything he had. If prison hadn’t shaped his body and his mind, and if he hadn’t got betrayed by the woman he loved. Would she still be there now? Would Keesha have ever met him?

“Ryder keeps reaching out. He thinks it was his fault. I think we’re both just glad my mother didn’t live to see the day when her only son got thrown in the slammer. I can’t go back there. Not yet. It would feel like crossing into a bad dream, a nightmare I’d rather forget, but that doesn’t want to forget about me. I’ve been inching closer ever since I got out. Bitterroot isn’t far from here. But I don’t think the Longbrooks – at least some of them – have forgotten about me. I think they want me dead. For a while, I thought it was all in my head, but…”

A thought came to Keesha and she frowned.

“Is that why you acted so weirdly in the store? You… recognized someone?”

“Not so much as I recognized someone, but that he recognized me. I don’t know. There was a guy there and he was looking at you like…”

Battle’s face twisted in fury and if she hadn’t known him, she would have been scraping at the door, trying to break out and escape his teeming presence. Finally, for the first time after parking the car on the clearing, Battle looked at Keesha. His gray eyes were so wrought with emotion that Keesha thought she could easily drown in them. This big, scary beast of a man had been carrying this huge burden with him for so many years, trying to escape it, and now it was here to haunt him again.

Keesha leant forward and pecked him gently on the lips, lingering there for a moment longer. Her body remembered his hands on her, caressing her curves and pumping into her. Even though this was probably the worst possible time, she could have easily just straddled him out of relief and lust.

So he wasn’t like all the others after all…

“I can’t let anything happen to you, Keesha,” he murmured, slipping his hand behind her neck and pulling her to him so that their foreheads rested against one another. “I just can’t. I won’t. I might have overreacted. Hell, I don’t know. It might just have been some guy checking you out, but there was something familiar about him, something that tugged at me, telling me to fucking run. Or smash his face in, like my bear so helpfully suggested. I know it’s insane and I know it’s too early, but I have to protect you. If something happens to you, I’m going to die inside. I know it.”

The last words came out so confident and sure that they knocked Keesha back. Her hands wrapped around his neck in the cramped confines of the front seat of the truck and he pulled her on his lap, letting the seat slide back on the rails.

Yes, it was insane. Yes, it was too early. But a very vocal, very real part of her was telling her that if something happened to
him
, she couldn’t go on either. He might have been a fool for feeling so strongly about her, but what did that make her?

“What are we going to do now?” Keesha asked, burying her head in the crook of his neck.

With a sigh, Battle curled his arms around her tighter, making her feel warm and safe – like no wolf could get her, like nothing could destroy their little moment, the little world they’d created for themselves in the truck parked in the middle of nowhere.

“We’re going to figure this out. And we’re going to stay safe,” Battle said.

She could hear what he wasn’t saying, though… If staying safe meant killing another wolf, he’d do it – for her, at the very least.

What have you got yourself into, Keesha…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Battle