Bear Naked (5 page)

I didn’t drink it. I waited for Leif to show.

And waited.

And waited. While I waited, I pulled out my small sewing kit and tightened the stitches on my sleeping bag. I’d hastily stitched it last night but found that even the smallest gaps let the frigid air in, so I was busy re-stitching it and tightening it.

Just as I was finishing my stitches, the wind shifted and I caught the scent of were-bear on the breeze. I dropped my sewing and lifted my head, just in time to see a large mass of brown moving in the snowy hills in the distance.

“Leif?” I called out.

No response.

“Leif? I made some coffee for you again. It tastes better today, I promise,” I called. Could he even understand me when he was shifted? I could understand English just fine when I was in my bear form, but I also hadn’t spent sixteen straight years in that form.

But to my relief, Leif appeared - human Leif - a few minutes later. He looked uncertain, lurking around the edges of the camp as if afraid to come closer. His eyes watched me warily, and they were the eyes of a feral predator once more, almost all humanity gone from them.

I patted the sleeping bag next to me in invitation. I spread it out like a picnic blanket and then put the thermos of chocolate-sweetened coffee down on the center of it, and unscrewed the lid so he could catch the smell. I’d had to dump nearly a full bar of chocolate to sweeten the drink properly, but the scent that wafted up was rich and thick.

He hesitated only a moment, and then moved to sit on the blanket, wrapping his hands around the thermos. He sipped it, then closed his eyes in pleasure. “Nikolina,” he groaned.

I was startled to hear my name said like that. I supposed that was his way of saying thank you, but it was…odd. Pleasing, but odd. “You’re welcome,” I told him, and then shifted to pull the blanket around his shoulders to protect him from the biting wind. It was bitterly cold despite the sunshine and I was wearing several layers of clothing. Seeing Leif naked like that made me concerned for frostbite, despite his were-bear nature. “Do you want something to eat?”

He studied my face for a long moment, and then nodded. “If you…if you have it to spare.”

“I do.” I’d brought plenty of protein bars with me. They weren’t exciting food, but they were compact and I was able to bring a lot of them. I unwrapped a chocolate-flavored one and offered it to him, since he seemed to have a sweet tooth.

Leif took it and ate it quickly, wolfing it down. It concerned me to see him scarf the food, and I wondered if it had more to do with starvation than a lack of manners. He said he didn’t like penguin, but there wasn’t much more on this island than penguins. Maybe that was why he was so lean. “Do you want another?”

At his nod, I gave him another and watched him eat. When he was done, he returned to sipping his coffee, his gaze on me.

I didn’t move. Simply watched him and smiled encouragingly.

After a long moment, he reached out and touched my cheek with one dirty finger, caressing me. “I’m sorry.”

About the scratch there? It was almost gone. “Don’t’ worry about it,” I told him. “It’s healing up. And you weren’t in your right mind.”

I knew what that was like. Going in heat was more than a little alarming, because my body was so…hungry for it. I feared what I’d be acting like in another two weeks or so when the heat truly hit me. As shifter females, we had a fairly long lead time up to our heat. I supposed it was so we could make the proper preparations, but it also meant there was a lot of time to worry and anticipate.

Leif’s fingers continued to caress the curve of my cheek, the pads cool and rough on my skin. His gaze seemed to darken with intensity. “Nikolina,” he whispered again.

I shivered at the way he said my name. It sounded so…intense. Emotional. “Can I show you something?” I asked him.

He nodded.

Even though it pained me to pull away from his gentle touch, I stood and moved to my tent, digging out the small wooden carving I’d brought with me. I sat back down next to him and held it out.

It was a small wooden carving of a female bear with a tutu on her waist, balancing on a ball.

He took it from me, and wonder flashed across his face. A smile broke out. “I remember this.”

My breath caught. “You do?”

“I do…” He thought for a long moment, and then looked at me. “I remember a girl with pigtails and a pink tutu. She was pouting because her cousins could shift into bear form and she couldn’t yet.”

I swallowed hard, my heart aching at the memory. “And you carved this figurine and gave it to me because you wanted me to feel better.”

“I remember,” he said with a nod. He glanced over at me, and his hand went to my hair, twisted into two long braids at the sides of my face. “It’s almost the same color as before.”

“Almost,” I said, smiling. “My family is born blonde and stays blonde.”

His long fingers moved across my face, and brushed at the gold ring in my nostril. “I don’t remember this, though.”

I laughed. “I went through a rebellious phase.”

“Why?”

I hesitated at that soft, blunt question, and then decided to answer it honestly. “My fiancée, Ramsey, was cast out of the bear clans until he apologized. He was fifteen. It didn’t look like he’d ever come back to marry me, so I decided I’d do what I wanted. I pierced my nose and dyed my hair black.”

He studied me for a moment longer, and his fingers continued to caress my face. “But your hair’s not black anymore.”

“It’s not,” I agreed. “It looked awful. But I liked the nose ring, so I kept it.”

“How long did it take for Ramsey to come back for you?”

The question hurt more than I thought it would. “He…he didn’t come back.” Tears pricked at my eyes, the ache of rejection still as painful now as it had been on the first day. “He mated a wolf-shifter.”

“Then he’s a fool,” Leif said simply. His fingers brushed at the tears that threatened to freeze to my lashes. “And he’s not worth your pain.”

“I know,” I told him. “But it’s a hard thing to forget.”

A wry smile curved his mouth. “I seem to be good at forgetting.”

I almost agreed with him, but held back. It seemed impolite to point out just how much he’d forgotten. I wanted to ask him what he remembered of why he’d run away, but it seemed he didn’t want to bring it up, and I was reluctant to be the one to approach the topic. “How are you feeling today?”

His hand dropped, and he picked up his mug again. Drank. Thought. Then he looked at me. “I’m troubled.”

“Troubled?”

He nodded. “I figure something bad must have happened for me to come so far away and hide.”

Oh. “It did,” I said softly.

“What was it?”

“You sure you want me to tell you?”

“I’m not sure at all,” he said. “But I also wonder why you’re here, after sixteen years.”

I’m going into heat and I need a were-bear mate and you’re the only one left that’s not sixty or related.
But the words lodged in my throat. “You can’t guess why I’ve come?”

He shook his head, his tangled hair flying. He looked like a wild man in that moment, so feral that I again questioned my sense in coming here. “I should know, though, shouldn’t I?” He tipped the thermos up and finished it, then offered it back to me. “Don’t tell me anything, actually. I want to see what comes back on its own.”

I nodded. “And if it doesn’t come back?”

“Then it might be a blessing,” Leif said. He stretched and got to his feet, and then gave me a shy smile before turning to leave once more.

I let him go, my thoughts muddy and confused. Part of me wanted to hold on to him, to have him stick around so we could keep talking…but Leif knew there was a problem. He knew me being here wasn’t normal, and needed to figure it out.

Because if he didn’t remember Katja’s death, it was going to come as a shock to him all over again….and I didn’t want to be the one to blurt it out.

I didn’t know what to do.

So I watched him go and said nothing.

He didn’t return that day, but the next morning, when I awoke, I found that a blocky, crude bear had been sculpted into the snow on one of the ridges near my camp.

Upon seeing it, I laughed and clapped my hands. So there was hope after all.

Chapter Three

Every day for the next week, Leif stopped by for breakfast. I sweetened his coffee with all of my chocolate and shared my protein bars with him. If I ran out of supplies, well, I’d just go home that much earlier. Each day that Leif showed up, he was a little more coherent, a little more alert, and stayed a little longer. I took out my sewing kit and let out the seams in some of my clothes, cobbling a few shirts together to give him a piecemeal top and a pair of (admittedly) ugly pants to wear. I made him a pair of booties out of pieces of my sleeping bag. I was tearing through my supplies, but that was okay, too. I felt like progress was being had, and anything I could do to turn Leif a bit more human, I was all for it.

Having him around camp was far more enjoyable than I’d expected. There was a shyness to Leif, but also an alpha rawness to his mannerisms. It was like he was deliberately being careful around me, conscious of the fact that he’d hurt me while mindless. Now, he seemed just as determined to treat me with kid gloves. Every morning, I’d wake up and find a new sculpture left in a snow drift nearby - a penguin, a reindeer, a mermaid…and the mermaid had looked like me, right down to my braids and nose-piercing. I’d laughed with delight at the sight of it. Leif was finding his artistry again, and in doing so, seemed to be finding himself.

It had been several days since I’d had the opportunity to bathe, though, and I was feeling grimy. I’d noticed little rings of dirt under Leif’s nail beds as well, and decided that both of us could use a bit of a cleaning. Of course, being that it was the Antarctic, it was difficult to get the urge to bathe when it was so chilly outside.

Still, I could do with a quick sponge bath, and I suspected that Leif would, too, if I threw it out there.

So the next morning, I woke up earlier than normal. I heated water on my fire and rushed it back to my tent, and then stripped down. I scrubbed myself with a wet cloth and a bar of soap, and then undid my braids, wet my hair, and washed it as well. It wasn’t the best bath I’d ever had, but I felt cleaner - and smelled cleaner - than I had in days. By the time Leif arrived for his morning coffee, I was re-braiding my wet hair.

He shifted before coming into camp, and as he did, I laid out his clothes that I’d made for him. We’d fallen into a bit of a pattern. I made coffee, Leif showed up, dressed, and we chatted for a bit before he left again.

As he dressed, I watched his nostrils flare, and he looked over at me, eyes narrowing. “What’s that smell?”

“Honeysuckle?” I smiled at him. “My soap is scented. You want to sniff?” I offered him one of my newly-cleaned braids.

To my surprise, he leaned in and smelled my throat, his face so close to my skin that I could feel his breath on me.

My body instantly reacted to his nearness. My nipples hardened, and my pulse sped up. A warm flush of desire covered me and I began to breathe harder. I suspected that if I touched myself between my legs, I’d be slick with need.

All of that from a simple sniff.

There was no question I was attracted to Leif. He was gorgeous. It wasn’t just that he was a were-bear and one of the few I could consider as a mate. It was his sleek, tanned build, the tight buttocks that I saw every morning, the gleam in his amused blue eyes…I just liked everything about him. I liked his artistic spirit, I liked his sensitive side, and I liked that he was regaining a sense of humor. I remembered having a crush on him when I was ten years old. That crush was returning, and returning hard.

“Smells good,” he said after a long moment. “I haven’t smelled flowers in a long time.”

“I still have some soap and water,” I said, hating the shiver in my voice that gave away my emotions. “You want to get clean, too?”

Leif held his hands out and grimaced. “I’m not good company like this, am I?”

“You are,” I said breathlessly. And when that sounded too intimate, I forced myself to give his arm a friendly pat. “Come on. Let’s go into my tent.”

I took the last of the heated water from the fire and headed into my small dome tent. We were both too tall to stand upright in it, so I sat down on my nest of blankets and patted next to me, indicating that he should do the same.

Leif sat down in front of me and folded his long legs, and then scooted forward. His knees touched mine, and I tried not to stare at his nakedness. He hadn’t put on his clothing yet, and when he crossed his legs, his entire body was exposed to me. Shifters weren’t supposed to be prudish about naked bodies. I’d seen everyone in the bear clan naked time and time again. Shifting just didn’t allow for modesty. But this was the man that I was planning on mating - he just didn’t know it yet. So every time his cock was exposed to my gaze, I got a little flustered. Maybe that would go away once my virginity did, but for now, it was still a problem.

As if he noticed my attention, his cock stirred and began to harden. Oh. I knew it was the proximity to me, and my oncoming heat. My scent filled the small tent, embarrassing me. Leif didn’t say anything, though. He was trying very hard to ignore any physical attraction to me, and I knew it was because our first meeting had gone so very badly.