Briar on Bruins' Peak (Bruins' Peak Bears Book 7) Page 4

  Chapter 6

  The bear lay in the dense thicket with his chin resting on his paws. His head swung up when the girl appeared coming up the path. He narrowed his eyes at her, but didn't move.

  Briar slowed her pace. She locked her eyes on the bear. “I came back. I had to see you again. It looks like you've been waiting there for me to come back.” She set her basket under the tree and straightened up. “I brought you some more food, and I brought you some medicine for your leg, too.”

  She plucked a bundle out of her basket, unwrapped it, and tossed the meat down in front of him. He sniffed it, and without taking his eyes off her, he picked it up and swallowed it.

  She stood still and watched him. “You've been out here alone too long. You need contact with other Bruins. You need someone touching you and bringing you back around people, but if you keep your distance, that will never happen.”

  She unwrapped another bundle, but she didn't throw it down to him. She squatted in the path and held it out on her upturned palm. “Come on out here and get it. You know I won't hurt you. I'm here to help you.”

  He didn't move.

  Briar waited. Then she pursed her lips and tossed him the meat. She stood up and straightened her skirt. “I won't shift again. If you don't want to be with me like this, as a woman, I better leave you alone. I care enough to try to help you, but you have to meet me halfway. You have to shift so I can talk to you and work on your leg. You have to want me to help you. If you don't, I'm leaving and I won't come back.”

  He still didn't move. His black eyes searched her face.

  Briar let the long moments tick by. Then she sighed. Her voice cracked when she spoke. “All right. I guess that's your answer. I thought there might be something between us, but I guess I was wrong. If you want to be a bear, you can be. I won't give up my life and my family for you.”

  She started to turn away, but at the last second, she turned back. She took the same small container out of her basket and held it out. “Why don’t you let me put some of this on your leg? It will make it feel better.”

  She took a step closer. He raised the hair along his neck, but he didn’t growl or move away. He let her draw close. She squatted down in front of him, and he flared his nostrils to catch her scent.

  Oh, that blessed scent! He would do anything to get it. He would tolerate anything. He would even tolerate her moving around to his side and rubbing the stinging ointment into the weeping scar running from his hip down to the knee joint.

  She moved her finger in slow, gentle swirls over the angry red skin. “This looks nasty. It’s a lot nastier than I expected. It’s seriously infected, and it needs a lot more work to get it healing. It could be a while before you can use your leg right.”

  He rested his chin on his paws. The salve sent a prickly tingle through the wound. He couldn’t call it pleasant, but she was right. It did feel better. Maybe her touch did it. He couldn’t tell.

  Briar inched closer. She shifted the ointment jar to her left hand and compressed the abscess with her thumb. The bubble popped under the pressure, and a trickle of hot, foul-smelling puss broke the surface and spurted onto the ground.

  The bear jerked at the sudden pain. He snarled at her and jumped away. He came to a standstill some paces away and glared at her.

  She held up her hands. “All right. I won’t bother you anymore. I can see you don’t want me around.” She screwed the lid on the container and tossed it in her basket. “I can see you’re too far gone. You don’t want to come back, and you never will. I was stupid to think I could get through to you. I’ll go now. Thanks for letting me try. See ya later.”

  She picked up the basket to walk away. The bear didn’t understand much of what she said. Her voice spoke to a part of him lying long dormant, a part he would just as soon forget. When he saw her getting ready to walk away, he understood only one thing. She would walk out of these woods and she wouldn’t come back. She was finished visiting him.

  He didn’t know how to stop her leaving. Before he knew what happened, a vibration bubbled out of his deep chest. It flowed over the ground to touch her. “Thanks.”

  Briar whipped around fast. Riskin looked around and shrugged. “Thanks, Briar.”

  She stared at him in stunned surprise. “Riskin?”

  He could only shrug. That name meant nothing to him.

  All of a sudden, something strange happened to her face. It split in half, and the most glorious warming sunshine he ever saw burst out of it to surround him with its heavenly light. He never saw anything like it. He basked in that most sacred glow. Her teeth shone through her lips, and her eyes sparkled.

  She rushed over and grabbed his hands. Were those hands? Where were his paws? He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. He only understood that blinding sunshine pouring out of her face to bathe him clean of all his rage and pain.

  “Riskin!” she breathed. “You’re back! Oh, I’m so relieved. You don’t know how much it hurt to have to turn my back on you just now. Promise me you won’t do that again.”

  He couldn’t look at her anymore. He looked down at her fingers holding his hands. How could those white things be part of his body? “I can’t promise you that. I don’t really understand how I did it in the first place.”

  She drew him down next to her on the soft moss. “You’ve been a bear so long you must have forgotten how to shift. A few more shifts, and you’ll remember.”

  He took a close look at her all over. “You look different this way.”

  Briar laughed. That sound tickled his ear. How long had he gone without hearing someone laugh? His mind wouldn’t register the sound. He only recognized her shining face. She was happy, happier than he’d seen anyone in a long time. “I’m sure a lot of things will seem different to you. You’re not just seeing them with different eyes. You’re understanding them with a different brain. You’re thinking about them as a man instead of a bear.”

  “Show me how you shift. Show me how you look as a bear.”

  “Not just yet.” She picked up her basket. “Let me work on your leg some more. I want to make you well so you can walk and run.”

  He moved closer to her. “I don’t want you working on my leg. It hurts, and I want to look at you like this. I want to understand you like this.”

  A beautiful pink flush covered her cheeks. She lowered her eyes and turned away so a wisp of hair fell over her face. A flash of mighty fury exploded through Riskin’s heart. He wanted to kill and main and tear. The next minute, his brain understood. That sensation was a powerful attractive force pulling him toward Briar.

  He wanted her. He wanted to touch her and take her and consume her. The bear wanted that female with whom he hunted and explored the woods. The she-bear wasn’t here. Briar was here. The bear wanted his female, and Riskin wanted Briar. He wanted her not as a bear, but as a man wants a woman. He wanted to be a man taking her as a woman.

  She plucked the ointment jar out of the basket and twisted off the lid. She held out her ointment-covered finger and pointed to his leg. “Let me see it.”

  He didn’t move when she slid around to look at his leg. She found the gash and milked the rotten puss from the abscess again. This time, he gritted his teeth and sat still while she worked over him.

  The pain subsided and she started with the salve. Riskin looked the other way so he wouldn’t see her face hovering inches away from him. Her presences and her glowing beautiful happiness drove him out of his mind. He would never be able to sit still if he looked at her.

  He couldn’t escape the sensation of her soft, gentle hands working over his leg. She squeezed his knee without meaning to. Then she cupped his thigh in one hand to move his leg sideways so she could massage up around his hip.

  Her fingers lit his skin on fire. He never had to worry before about anything getting near his skin. His fur protected him. Now nothing protected him from the heady closeness of her skin touching his leg.

  He winced and turned a
way. He pulled out of her hands so she wouldn’t notice the swelling between his legs. She frowned. She thought the gash hurt too much.

  She put the salve away. “That’s enough for today. We don’t want to do too much at once, but it should start to feel better now.”

  He mumbled down at the ground. “Thanks.”

  She sat down next to him, and that heavenly glow returned to her cheeks. Her lily-white hand covered his in comfortable companionship. “What’s it been like, out here by yourself all these months?”

  “It’s nice. It’s quiet. I like it out here.”

  “Do you ever think about going home?”

  He stared at her, not understanding. “No.”

  “Why didn’t you go home when you…I mean, when you first got hurt?”

  He frowned. “I can’t really remember when I got hurt. It’s all sort of confused and mixed-up.”

  “You got in a fight. You got into an Alpha challenge with another Bruin—Mattox Farrell. Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah. I remember that.”

  “You had to run away from Mackenzie Homestead. You were hurt and bleeding. You could have gone home to your family, and they would have patched you up. Instead you stayed in the woods.”

  He nodded. It all started coming back. He fought it. He didn’t want it coming back. “I like it better in the woods.”

  “I guess you don’t really want to think about that. I just thought you would be more comfortable recovering at home. Maybe you could go there now. I know your mother is anxious to see you again. She told me she was worried about you.”

  He gazed off into the woods. “I can’t go back there. I don’t want to be around anybody. You’re different.”

  “How am I different? I’m a person, just like them.”

  “I want to be around you. The bear wants you—at least, the bear wants the she-bear. That’s what I mean.”

  “And what about you? Would you want to be around me if I wasn’t a she-bear?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t.”

  Briar’s head shot up. Her eyes widened, and she searched his face.

  Riskin fidgeted. “What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong? Maybe you don’t want to be around me that way.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just…what you said just now. You said you wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t want to be around me. That’s such a Bruin thing to say. I didn’t think your Bruin self would come back so fast, but it’s there. It’s right below the surface. Now that you shifted into a man, it will start to come back faster.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by my Bruin self.”

  “You’ll understand soon.”

  He slid his hand out from under hers. “You probably want to go home. You don’t want to stay out here with me.”

  She gazed up into his face. Her face gleamed with inner light. He couldn’t stop staring into her clear, bright eyes. “I want to stay out here with you. I don’t want to go home.”

  His face moved closer to hers. “You do?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been thinking about you ever since we saw you at the swimming hole. I’ve been thinking how I could meet you and help you.”

  His face fell. “Oh. I understand. You want to fix me up and put me back together. I get it.”

  She snatched his hand and pressed it between hers. “I don’t mean that. I wanted to get near you, to understand you and maybe talk to you if I could get you to shift. I haven’t been able to think about anything else, and then, after we went walking together, I thought….”

  A burst of energy seized Riskin by the short hairs. He jumped up. He paced back and forth with both hands flying. “I know. You don’t have to explain it to me. Anyway, you should probably get home. Your family will be wondering where you are.”

  The light went out in Briar’s face. “Oh. All right. It’s getting late, anyway.”

  She gathered up her basket. The longer he watched her getting ready to leave, the more he regretted suggesting it. He didn’t know how to talk to her so she would understand. He wanted her to stay, but he didn’t want her to stay. He wanted her to see him as a man, but he didn’t want to be a man.

  The bear called him back to safety and silence. No one could hurt him as a bear. When he looked at Briar, an ancient hurt from the darkest reaches of history warned him to stay away.

  The longer he remained a man, the closer that hurt came to releasing its festering stain on his life. He had to get back to being a bear. That’s the only way he could get rid of it so it didn’t kill him.

  Briar got her goods together and brushed the dust off her skirt. “I guess I’ll see you later. Take care of yourself.”

  “Hey, Briar.”

  She looked up at him with those incredible, vulnerable eyes. Those eyes spoke volumes to his heart and soul. “Yes?”

  “I’ll see you again, won’t I? You’ll come back soon, won’t you—to work on my leg, I mean?

  Her face broke open into that life-giving smile of hers. “Of course. I’ll see you back here again tomorrow at the same time. How about that?”

  Something happened to his face, his head, his whole being. It hurt worse than anything he ever experienced, even when he first left the Mackenzies. At the same time, some kind of joy too strong to comprehend pierced his tough hide and flowed toward her.

  His cheeks hurt, and his lips stretched over his teeth. He was smiling! He actually smiled at her. “Yeah, that would be great. I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

  She bounced away down the path. “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  He watched her out of sight. He stood rooted to the spot long after she disappeared. The pain got all mixed up with the joy exploding out of his heart, and he remembered.

  Lyric.

  Lyric hurt him. Lyric hurt him a lot worse than Mattox did. Mattox left Riskin bleeding and barely able to walk, but Riskin carried a much deeper and life-destroying pain away from Mackenzie Homestead.

  Lyric.

  She stabbed him in the guts and twisted the knife while she laughed in his face. She threw ten years of love and support and hardship in his face like so much trash. She ground her heel into all his hopes and dreams. She left him penniless and devastated in every possible way, and she rode off into the wild blue yonder with somebody else.

  In a fraction of a second, Riskin spun on his heel and shifted. The bear wiped his mind clean of all thoughts, good and bad, but the bear couldn’t wipe Lyric out of his past. He never gave Lyric a second thought in a year in the woods. Now, he couldn’t stop thinking about he,r even as a bear.

  He had to get Lyric out of his mind. He had to wipe out the damage she did to his life. He trotted some paces away, but the memory tormented him so much he raised the hair on his neck and growled at the danger it posed to him. What could he do? How could he protect himself from this?

  That scent, that healing scent caught his nose. He whirled around the other way and raced back to the tree. He snuffled along the ground until he found the spot Briar sat next to him. He thrust his nose into the moss and inhaled a lungful of that scent.

  Ah, that was so much better. That scent and nothing else eased the pain. It left him clean and new and unscarred for the first time since he could remember.

  Chapter 7

  Briar skipped through the forest on feet as light as feathers. She swung her basket and smiled from ear to ear up at the sky. She did it! She got through to Riskin! She got him to shift!

  Her stomach fluttered with excited butterflies at the way he looked when she turned around and saw him standing there the first time. Sure, his sandy hair needed cutting and tumbled over his face. His old flannel shirt and filthy jeans hung off him in tatters. No one could expect anything less. Mattox must have cut him up pretty bad, and Riskin hadn't changed his clothes in a year.

  Still, the light of intelligence and connection shone through. Nothing could rob him of that. His green eyes met hers like he knew her all his life. So
me cosmic force worked her hands of their own free will so she couldn't stop herself from touching him.

  Did he feel it, too? Did she excite him as much as he excited her? What did it all mean? She couldn't remember feeling this happy even before the Dunlap wedding disaster. She couldn't wait to tell her family.

  She skipped so fast she almost broke into a run. She had to get hold of herself. She had to keep calm and not let her emotions run away with her. Even so, she couldn't stop making a million plans. If he let her come this close now, she could have his leg cured in no time. She could borrow some clean clothes from Silas and...

  She burst through the front door in search of the first person to whom she could break the news. She spotted May at the kitchen counter. “Guess what, May? I did it! I got through to Riskin Dodd. I gave him some food and I got him to shift into a man and I worked on his leg and it's pretty bad so I'm gonna meet him again tomorrow and I put some witch hazel salve on it and got some of the infection drained and…”

  May stood stock still. She stared straight in front of her and didn't say anything. Briar broke off. This wasn't the reception she expected. She opened her mouth to ask May what was wrong when a creeping sensation prickled down her neck. She turned around to see what May was looking at.

  There was Silas standing in the door. He glared at Briar, his face as black as thunder. He heard every word she just said.

  Briar fidgeted. The room hung heavy with the storm about to break. In the end, she had no choice but to turn around and face her brother. “Listen, Silas, I know what you're going to say, bu…”

  “You know what I'm going to say because I already said. I told you not to go near Riskin Dodd. I told you twice and even ordered you to keep away from him. This is the second time you deliberately threw my orders back in my face.”

  Briar took a step toward him. “Yeah, but…”

  “You think since I'm not your Alpha I don't have any right to tell you what to do. You might be right about that, but there's a very simple solution to that problem. I'm going to get Pop. He'll tell you the same thing, and you won't be able to defy him.”