Page 21 of Handcuffed to the Bear

She darted a quick glance up at his face to see if he was making fun of her. “Seriously, do I have to spell it out? I mean, look at me, Jack. I’m ... I’mfat. I don’t think firefighters want a short, pudgy girl on their crew.”

In everyday life, she dressed to downplay her lack of a figure, choosing clothing that flattered the better aspects of her body—her ample chest and wide hips. In her present situation, though, all those secrets were right out there for the world to see. There wasn’t any way he could miss her round belly, her heavy thighs, the little rolls over her hips. No wonder Jack didn’t seem distracted by running around naked in the woods with her.

“You’re also smart, resilient, and tough.” He smiled, and got a tiny, answering smile out of her. “I’m not just trying to build you up, Casey. You’ve kept it together better than a lot of guys I worked with, you haven’t flagged no matter how hard I’ve pushed the pace, and every time I tell you to do something, you do it cheerfully and well. There’s no one I’d rather be handcuffed to in the middle of nowhere.”

“Ditto,” she admitted in a small voice. “Jack?—”

She never got any further.

The only warning was a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye—tawny yellow, very different from the dark greens and grays of the forest. Casey started to turn, and Jack snapped into motion at the same time, swinging around and trying to shield her. She had a clear view of an enormous lion, seeming as big as a house from this vantage, springing onto them from the bank, and then they all went down into the water together.

CHAPTER7

Casey shifted instinctivelyas they went down into the creek, and suddenly Jack had a snarling, spitting lynx handcuffed to him as well as a lion on top of him. He started to shift himself as he hit the water, adrenaline and battle instinct combining to submerge his rational mind, but the searing pain in his wrist cleared the red haze from his brain and he threw all his willpower into fighting it back down.

The lion was a big male, heavily maned and solidly muscled. Jack tried to struggle out from under both of them. Thank God the creek wasn’t more than a foot or two deep, but drowning was still a danger with several hundred pounds of apex predator on top of him. Casey had her teeth latched onto the lion’s shoulder, and they thrashed around in a snarling whirl of fur. Jack was whipped around with them, like being caught in the middle of a dogfight—in which he was handcuffed to one of the dogs.

He’d managed to keep hold of his makeshift spear, but he didn’t have the leverage to use it properly. All he could do was wield it like a club to fend off the lion. Fortunately, most of the lion’s attention was on Casey, which gave Jack the opportunity to score a solid hit in the skull. The lion staggered back, dazed, and Casey lost her grip. Both cats’ coats, the lion’s tawny one and Casey’s brindled fur, were dark with water and splattered with blood. Jack swung the length of wood and cracked it across the lion’s face, making it fall back another few steps.

“Casey!” he yelled. “Shift back!” Her weight on the cuffs was holding him down on all fours. He couldn’t stand up while she was in her four-legged shape.

Casey shifted. Now he was on his hands and knees in the churning water with a naked, wild-eyed woman. The lion was still recovering, down on its haunches in the water, shaking its head to clear the daze.

“Now we run?” Casey gasped.

“Now we run!”

They ran, splashing through the water, sending up huge waves and cascades of spray. Behind them, the lion roared. The sound was terrifying up close, sending a primal surge of fear racing down Jack’s spine from the most primitive part of his hindbrain, the part that still thought it was a tiny rodent-shaped creature hiding from a world filled with predators.

Damn, he wished he could shift! His bear form would have outweighed the lion, and he had it outmatched in the claw department too. He probably couldn’t have handled the whole pride by himself, but he could have taken out this advance scout and improved their odds.

Instead, all he could do was run, hand in hand with Casey. There was no time to stop and find out if she was all right. For that matter, a searing pain across his ribs let him know that he wasn’t okay himself. But it wasn’t slowing him down, and that was all that mattered now.

They pounded through the water. Gravity helped; the creek was still flowing downhill, and they leaped and scrambled over boulders. No time to worry about rocks bruising and cutting up their bare feet. They couldn’t hope to outrun the lion, but they could put some distance between themselves and him, to hopefully ... well ... Jack didn’t know, but maybe he could come up with something if he could get a chance.

The sound of rushing water got suddenly louder, enough to be heard over the tremendous splashing they were making, and they stumbled into the confluence between their creek and another one. Coming down from the hills, the two creeks met in a V shape. Jack looked ahead and his heart sank. The beavers who had made his spear had been even busier here.

He and Casey were at the upper end of a series of beaver lakes, stair-stepping down the valley like terraces on an ancient field. Most of it was lost to the blue and green blur of distance, but he could tell at a glance that they couldn’t keep running through that. The water got too deep, and the bottom of the lakes would be nothing but mud.

The crack of a beaver tail echoed through the valley as one alarmed beaver, finally noticing the danger, alerting its buddies. Jack turned his head and caught a blurry glimpse of the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen—an enraged lion bounding down the creek after them. It was covering fifteen or twenty feet at a bound, throwing up a huge cloud of spray every time it landed.

“Jack!” Casey gasped.

“I know!”

He left the water and scrambled up the hillside, herding Casey in front of him as well as the handcuffs allowed him to do. The beavers had nearly deforested this patch of hillside. Aside from a few bigger trees, nothing remained but knee-high, pointy stumps, sticking up through the brush like a forest of sharpened pencil ends. Jack used them for support as he and Casey climbed, propelling himself from one to another.

“Jack,” Casey panted. “I—I can’t—I’m sorry?—”

“It’s okay.” He was impressed she’d been able to run as long as she had.

Casey doubled over, supporting herself on a stump while gasping for breath, and Jack interposed his body between her and the oncoming lion. The field of stumps had actually slowed it down somewhat; it couldn’t run through them as easily as the smaller humans could.

But the lion could shift, too. Jack squinted down the hill, cursing his myopia for the umpteenth time, as the big tawny blur collapsed into a smaller, vertical pinkish blur. From here Jack couldn’t make out anything except enough of a general impression of size and shape to know that it was a large blond-haired guy. Which could have been Roger or either of his brothers.

“You know you’re just delaying the inevitable, right?” the man shouted up the hill.

“Where are the rest of your pride?” Jack demanded.

---