Bear with Me (Half-breed Shifter Series) (4 page)

As her nipples hardened under
his gaze, Rhea squeezed her hands tighter into fists until her nails drew blood
in her palms.

Her mother was saying
something and her father was responding, but she didn’t hear a word of their
conversation. She couldn’t take her eyes off Brick.

He lifted his gaze and all of
his desire flooded out his dark brown eyes. “
I still want to fuck you
,”
he mouthed to her.

Oh, God. Oh, God. She wanted
that, too.

Realizing she shouldn’t want
it, she should be numb to desire right now because of the serum, she bit her
lip. But her panties were so freaking wet, they were probably soaking through
her jeans and into the cloth of the chair under her.

She shot to her feet.

Her parents stopped talking
to gape at her. “Honey?” Riley asked, concern in her eyes. When she started to
stand up, Rhea waved her back down.

“I’m fine,” she managed to
say without strain, though she clenched her teeth hard as soon as she spoke
them. God, it was so strange to smile at her mother while feeling this horny.
“Just...need to use the restroom.” Unable to help herself, she shot Brick a
look.

He sat a little straighter,
his gaze seeming to ask,
want me to follow you
?

She widened her eyes telling
him,
no way
. Then she spun around and hurried to the basement.

Rhea had no idea what was
going on, but her injection obviously hadn’t worked. The serum was supposed to
keep her hormones under control for at least eight to twelve hours. And it
hadn’t even been thirty minutes.

Chapter Three

Brick wasn’t sure if he
should say something. But he knew. He knew without a doubt that Rhea’s
injection hadn’t worked. She was fucking aroused, so aroused that her
pheromones were making him aroused...while he sat next to her dad. Which was
not cool.

Except she hadn’t said
anything to her parents, so she obviously didn’t want them to know. Since she
was his best friend and he was more loyal to her than he was to Shaw or Riley,
he would keep her secret. But that didn’t stop him from worrying. If the
treatment wasn’t working, what did that mean for her and her mating heat?

His own libido had settled
down after she’d raced from the room. It seemed she had to be close enough to
him to stir his lust. But he knew the further into her heat she went, the
further out that pheromone would spread.

He tried to remain calm as
dinner with her parents continued. But conversation lulled as even Riley and
Shaw began to realize something was off. They couldn’t know what, though. Being
mated—and human—Shaw wouldn’t have smelled Rhea’s arousal. And being female,
neither had Riley. But...damn, it’d been almost ten minutes since she’d left
the table. Was she okay?

“So, heard any cool intel
from the Hunter world lately?” he asked Shaw, needing some kind of diversion to
distract him from Rhea and his worry.

Shaw merely grunted out a
response. “I don’t get the inner news any longer since they consider me retired
these days.”

Brick nodded, “Yeah, I bet—”
he stalled in the middle of his sentence as a stray waft of evergreen greeted
his senses.

Rhea
. His bear sighed in delight while his body went
rigid, his cock so hard he could’ve fucked an electrical outlet just then. Then
a wave of heat shot through him, telling him his woman was coming. Hard and
fast.

Jesus, she was getting
herself off.

He bucked back in his seat,
closing his eyes and gritting his teeth.

“Brick?” Riley asked in
concern, reaching for his arm. But his skin was too hot, when she touched him,
his hissed and yanked his hand away.

Then his fucking cock contracted
as if he was having a phantom orgasm right along with Rhea, except he didn’t
ejaculate. When he moaned, Riley and Shaw stood up in alarm.

“What the fuck is wrong with
you?” Shaw demanded.

“Rhea,” he panted out the
name, lobbing his head back and forth and using all the restraint he had not to
streak downstairs to her, where he knew she was pleasuring herself. “I
don’t...I don’t think her serum’s working.”

Riley pressed her hand to her
chest and shook her head. “But...you said you couldn’t sense her heat. Your
animal was too diluted to feel—”

“I lied,” he hissed, his brow
soaked with sweat. “I fucking feel it. I feel it
a lot
.”

“Shit.” Rage in his
expression, Shaw stormed from the room. But Brick didn’t like knowing he was
going to Rhea. It didn’t matter that he was her father and already mated,
therefore he couldn’t be affected by her pheromones, the guy had a dick. And
Brick didn’t want anyone’s dick anywhere near to her, especially right now.

A primal urge he couldn’t
deny rose in him, and he leapt after Shaw.

“Oh, hell,” Riley mumbled,
hurrying to follow them both.

When Shaw realized Brick was
right behind him, he shot the bear a hard look over his shoulder. “Brick, you
need to go home. Right now.”

“What the fuck ever.
Something’s wrong with her; I’m not leaving until she’s okay.”

Shaw’s jaw went hard, but he
didn’t respond. They all hurried down the stairs, only to hear Rhea moaning in
the kinky torture chamber.

Brick wanted to race forward,
but he knew the closer he got to her, the less he’d be able to restrain
himself. So, as her father did exactly what he wanted to do himself and hurried
into the back room, Brick paced the den.

“Oh, Jesus,” Shaw gasped.
“Riley!”

Rhea’s mother streaked into
the room, and Brick couldn’t help himself. He prowled to the doorway. Inside,
Rhea had chained herself to the wall. Her back arched off the bed as she
panted, and cried, and thrashed.

“It’s not working,” she
sobbed. “Nothing’s
working
.”

Brick bit his lip and blew
out a long breath, counting to ten in his head. When that didn’t calm his
raging hormones, he started to count to a hundred.

“I didn’t know it’d come on
so fast.” The tears in Rhea’s voice broke his heart. He wanted to go to her and
pull her into his arms, hold her and force the pain away. But if he went anywhere
near her right then, he’d rip off all her clothes and take her ten ways to
Monday.

God, he could already imagine
all the ways he could take her.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
Riley crooned while Shaw pulled up his cell phone and made call after call.
After a couple hushed conversations, Shaw cursed fluidly and threw his phone
against the wall, shattering it.

“What?” Riley demanded from
the bed where she sat with her daughter.

Brick didn’t dare budge from
the doorway where he’d propped his back solidly against the doorframe. But he
fisted his hands in fury, knowing the news would be bad.

“Fucking Hunters,” Shaw
announced. “They infiltrated a shifter lab and made a batch of serum
non-defective.”

Brick’s mouth fell open.
“Why...why would that
do
that?”

“Because they’re fucking
heartless,” Shaw swore. “They think they’ll be able to flush out more shifters
if they find women in the middle of the street writhing in sexual agony while a
bunch of horny males are drawn in to her scent.

“Christ.” Brick wished he
could eradicate the entire Hunter community. Why did some humans hate shifters
so much? Why had his own mother—

He shook his head and glanced
at Rhea. She’d been the only person to help him get over his mother’s
abandonment. And look at her now. She didn’t deserve this pain, this suffering.

Her eyes glowed as they met
his. “Brick,” she rasped. She needed him. But he knew she’d hate herself
afterward if he took her now. He couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—do that to her.

“You’re going to be okay,” he
said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

Shaw cursed again and marched
to Brick, grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the room. As he started them
for the stairs, he bit out, “I thought I told you to go home, bear.”

Brick’s laugh was bitter and
harsh. “I’m not leaving while she’s like that. She called me here for support,
and I will support her any way I have to.”

When Shaw opened his mouth,
Brick added, “You know you need me. There are going to be a fuckload of horny
males beating down your door any minute, wanting to get at her. I can help you
fight them off.”

The human still didn’t look
relieved by Brick’s offer. He merely muttered, “And who’s going to fight
you
off, keep
you
away from her?”

“I love Rhea.” All trace of
his usual immature, squirrelly self gone, Brick stared Shaw straight in the
eye. “I don’t care what it takes, I will not touch her while she goes through
her heat. I want her to want me for me, not because her body is making her
crave a cock.
Any
cock. You got that?”

He almost expected Rhea’s dad
to laugh in his face and tell him Rhea would never want him that way, but Shaw
nodded as if pleased by that answer. Then he sat a hand on Brick’s shoulder.
“What if it turns to life or death?”

Brick frowned, confused.
“What do you mean?”

Shaw paled and glanced away.
“Some females...their mating heats have been known to get so painful...if they
don’t take a male inside them before it passes, it kills them.”

Blacking out, Brick’s knees
buckled. Shaw grabbed his arm, keeping the bear upright. Brick shook his head
and cleared his vision, but he still felt rattled to the core. “If it gets that
bad, then I’ll do what’s needs done to keep her alive.” he just hoped to God
she could find it in her heart to forgive him afterward.

Glancing away before he gave
a small nod, Shaw spoke in a low voice. “Then I guess we’ll need you to stick
around for a while.”

Brick nodded too. He began to
turn away, but Shaw caught his shoulder again.

“And Brick,” the older man
murmured. “Between you and me, I wouldn’t want anyone else here for her except
you.”

When he released Brick and
strolled away, Brick’s mouth dropped open. He’d always though Shaw Griffin
hated his guts...with a burning passion. He’d thought Shaw would want anyone
and everyone here for Rhea before him.

A smile lit his face. “I knew
you loved me,” he called after the human.

Shaw lifted his middle finger
and flashed Brick the bird just as the doorbell rang.

“Shit,” they said in unison.

Horny males were already
starting to flock to the female inside experiencing her first mating heat.

“Ready to kick ass?” Shaw
asked as both men hurried to the front door.

“I was born that way.” Brick
popped his neck and shoulders and then his knuckles.

“If you have to go furry,
just try not to flash me your bare ass once you turn human again.”

Brick winked. “What? You
worried that seeing my naked sexiness would turn you gay?”

“God, you just don’t quit, do
you?”

“That’s what the ladies love
best about me. My stamina.”

Shaw rolled his eyes and
stopped at the front door before calling through the wood. “Whoever you are,
you might as well leave now. If anyone makes me open this door, they’re going
to have to eat the end of my shotgun. Hear me?”

“You don’t scare us, human,”
A male voice called back. “We know you got a female needing relief in there. We
just want to make her feel all better again.”

“Bastards,” Brick hissed
under his breath as he peeked out the curtain to see—shit—half a dozen
half-breeds planted on the front porch, looking more than eager to get inside.

“I’m going to secure the back
door,” he told Shaw, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the males stopped
trying the polite way to gain entrance, and they’d force their way inside. The
pheromones from a female’s mating heat did all sorts of crazy shit to males who
were normally very passive.

Trying to ignore how unhinged
his own hormones were growing, he held his breath as he passed the door to the
stairs and rushed into the kitchen just as some prick kicked open the back
door.

Knowing his woman—
Rhea
—had
just been put into direct danger, Brick roared out a sound of denial. His bear
ripped out of his skin before he even told it to.

Apparently, not even his
animal wanted anyone near her.

With a swipe of his massive
claws and snap of his mighty jaws, Brick didn’t even give the other shifter a
chance to change into his own animal. He died instantly.

“Holy...shit,” Shaw uttered
from behind him.

Brick spun around, snarling.
But he caught himself before attacking. Forgetting that Shaw had just told him
not to flash naked in front of him, he transformed back into his human skin so
he could yell, “Why the fuck did you abandon your post?”

“I heard the backdoor
breaking open.”

“Well, I got this. Get back
to the front of the house.”

Shaw merely lifted one
eyebrow at Brick’s guttural command. He opened his mouth to speak but Riley
rushed into the kitchen. “What’s...oh my Lord, is that man
dead
?”

“The teddy bear’s feeling a
little protective of our Rhea,” Shaw explained rather mildly.

Riley glanced in surprise at
Brick. He had never hurt a fly before today, but he didn’t feel a single qualm
about taking someone’s life just now. No one was going to get near Rhea.

Rhea’s mother spotted his
hard cock jutting from his body, a bead of cum welling from the tip, and her
eyes grew wide. “Whoa,” she said, spinning away.

He couldn’t summon the oomph
to care what he looked like. His blood was thrumming through his body, juicing
him up. If he couldn’t have Rhea, he wanted to keep killing people. His
testosterone was screaming at him to either fuck or fight, the dormant aggression
in him springing to life with a crazy, uncontrollable vengeance.

“We need to get this door
blocked off,” he told her parents, his muscles still tense with the need for
something strenuous, energy-draining, and either kinky-as-hell or violent and
bloody.

“Shit. Yeah, we do.” Shaw
rubbed his hand over his mouth and glanced around, his gaze latching onto the
refrigerator.

That was all the prompting
Brick needed. He picked up the hefty appliance and set it back down in front of
the gaping backdoor.

When he was done, he wiped
his hands off onto his thighs and turned around to see both Shaw and Riley
gawking with dropped jaws.