“Do it,” she whispered.
Jenner’s teeth sank into her shoulder just as her orgasm throbbed through her. It was quick, and she gasped out at the pain, but the pleasure in her middle was greater. It was bigger, spreading through her as she pulsed hard around his swollen cock. Jenner bucked into her again and went rigid against her back, yelling out her name, and then he pressed his forehead against her hair.
His seed flooded her in hot jets, filling her until it streamed down her thighs as he slid erratically into her.
Jenner’s breath was ragged against her hair, but his hands had turned soft, brushing up and down her ribs as his pace slowed and eventually stopped. In a whisper against her ear, he said, “I don’t like you out here where you can get hurt. If anything happened to you… Lena, you’re important to me. I feel…”
Lena lifted his hand from her breast and kissed his palm. “Me, too.”
Jenner let off a long sigh and ran a light touch over the sore spot on her shoulder. “Maybe you won’t scar. I didn’t go deep.”
“What does it mean?”
Jenner swallowed audibly. “It means you’re mine.”
She smiled off into the dark woods. “Then I hope it scars.”
Jenner slid out of her and turned her slowly in his arms, then did something he’d never done before. He hugged her. Just wrapped her up in his strong arms and rocked them slowly back and forth. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you to a cabin I know about,” he murmured. “You’ll sleep in a proper bed, and I’ll take better care of you.”
“But—”
“Woman, I know this is what you signed up for, and I know you can sleep rough. You’re the toughest person I’ve ever met. It’s me. I have this need to put you somewhere safe for a night and give my instincts a rest, okay?”
She nodded, her cheek pressed against his warm chest. “All right.”
“Titus is a roamer. I think we are out of his way, but tomorrow will be different. I’ll take you to another spot a couple of young bears have been hanging out at.” Jenner’s lips pressed against the top of her head, lingered there. “We’ll get you all the pictures you want, but we have to do it differently than this. I can’t protect you like I need to out here. A rifle is no match for bears like Titus, Lena. He’ll have you half-devoured before he feels any pain.”
“Maybe he was just after those other bears. Maybe one of them was in heat or something.”
Jenner shook his head and huffed a humorless laugh. Easing back, he lifted her palm to the half-healed red slash marks she’d nursed the first night she’d met him. She winced at how much it must still hurt him.
“Lena, Titus is a man-eater. We’ve had three hikers go missing in the last few weeks, and I’d bet everything I own if you opened up that bruin’s guts, you’d find them. He has a taste for people. I had plans on coming out here and putting him down, but I can’t with you here.”
“Because I don’t want you to shoot the bears? If he’s a man-eater, I understand the necessity.”
“A rifle won’t be the end of him.”
“Then what will?”
“Me.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Jenner looked sick as he rolled his eyes closed and sighed. “I need to tell you something. I need to but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He opened those dark eyes, the ones that looked so out of place on his face. His voice dipped to almost nothing. “Because you’ll run.”
Up on her tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. She understood his want to hide the darkest parts of himself. She’d been hiding for years. “I won’t run, Jenner. I promise. Just tell me. Say it and let me in.”
His heartbeat was pounding against her.
“Please, Jenner.”
He hugged her tighter to him and whispered, “I’m a bear.”
Lena pursed her lips and stared at the moon through the tree branches over Jenner’s shoulder. Whatever she’d expected him to admit to her, that was not it. “Like a bear of a man?”
“No, I mean I’m a bear. Shifter. I’m both. A man and a bear. Shit.”
“Soooo…you’re saying you can turn into a bear. Like Titus. Furry with teeth and claws.”
“Yes.”
Lena pushed off him and stood at an arm’s length distance because she couldn’t hug him while he was saying such ridiculous nonsense. “You’re telling me you are a werebear.”
“No, a bear shifter.”
She blinked slowly and pursed her lips. Okay, sure that explained why he would be so growly, and maybe it even explained his changing eye color. And now his ridiculously heightened sense of smell was making more sense. “You bit me.”
“You told me to.”
“Am I a bear shifter now, too? Like with a werewolf? You bit me and now I’m a bear? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“What? No. Biting doesn’t Turn a person into a shifter. At least that doesn’t work for bears and werewolves. Other shifters have different abilities.”