Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) Page 2

  “I wasn’t really trying to embarrass him. Okay, all right, fine, maybe just a little.”

  -Claire

  “You have no idea how much I needed this,” Claire said, groaning as she finished her first beer of the night. “I’m so glad Eckert let me have the night off.”

  The waiter interrupted her reverie – a slight guy with a mop of red hair, a bunch of freckles and a nametag that said “Shirley” on it. She eyed him askance when he came up to the table, and immediately he picked up on her confusion.

  “Hazing,” he said. “I worked in the back for a few months, just got moved to the front of the house. So now I have to wear a nametag with a girl’s name on it for a week.”

  “That’s pretty boring, as far as initiations go,” Andy, the single one of Claire’s non-GlasCorp acquaintances, said over the din of AC/DC and the clatter of plates, mugs and chicken bones. They’d met at a conference three years before, and happened to end up in the same town after graduating through some stroke of luck. “Although I guess it’d be sorta weird if you had to get jumped in to be a waiter.”

  “Shirley” laughed. “Blood in, blood out,” he said, pushing out his lips in a snarl and shaking his ginger curls with laughter. “I’m actually Nick, but... yeah, Shirley for now. What can I get ya?”

  “How long until quiz starts?” Alyssa, her lone coworker friend – this one a tall blonde with a close-cropped pixie cut that featured, this week, the colors pink, blue and orange, asked. “We need to know how fast he’s gotta drink so he can be warmed up.”

  “Oh, should get kicking here in about twenty minutes. Our normal announcer is sick, or drunk, or God knows what, so that’s why we’re running behind.”

  Nachos, beer, and an irresponsible number of chicken wings ordered, the three settled in for a few hours of pleasant bullshitting and welcome relaxation.

  And then Andy said the words.

  “You gotta find somebody, Claire.”

  He had four beers in him by that point, so it wasn’t really his fault. And anyway, it was an innocuous enough thing to say, but if Claire knew exactly what “hackles” were, any mention of her ‘needing’ a mate was sure to get them up, whatever they were.

  She stared at him for a moment, and then simply asked, “Why?”

  Andy shrugged. “You just seem, I dunno,” he paused, both to consider his words for a moment and also to have another swig. His breath was starting to take on a little bit of a twinge. “Kinda pent up? I guess that’s the right word I’m looking for.”

  Pursing her lips, Claire regarded him at length before deciding he didn’t actually mean anything by it, and probably thought he was actually trying to help. That’s the sort of guy Andy was – lovably clueless, never really malicious even when it seemed like it. She went with a scoff of laughter instead of an angry glare.

  “Well then, what would you have me do? Whip up some magical creature who is fine with someone who they’ll never be in the same bed with since she works graveyards at a building with so many security guards you can’t even smuggle in a pizza?”

  Andy was nodding, which meant he was thinking about his response. He always nodded when he thought, and when he drank, the nodding lasted a lot longer. “What’s the other building?” he finally asked.

  “Area-51? Los Alamos?” Alyssa added, clearly getting a little bored of the conversation as she picked at another piece of deliciously fried chicken carcass. “Roswell?”

  “Roswell’s a town,” Andy said, letting a vaguely smug grin spread across his face. “And those other two are bases, not buildings.”

  “Right, anyway,” Claire urged him back on topic. “Where am I supposed to find a man? Listen, it’s not like I don’t want one, it’s that I have no clue in the world where to get one.”

  “Ginger curls keeps looking at you,” Andy pronounced, a little louder than he probably meant to speak. “Seems like a nice guy.”

  A Nice Guy. Yeah, just what I need. Someone to hang out and play Monopoly with on the weekends. She laughed, but no one else knew why. “I’m not so sure about that. I’m thinking I need someone maybe with a little more... I dunno, edge?”

  Alyssa snorted at that, hitting the end of her nose with a chicken wing, which left a shameful red mark on the tip. Claire elected not to respond, possibly for a tiny taste of revenge at being the butt of a joke.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Edge?” Alyssa asked, still chortling slightly. “You, Claire Redmon, want an edgy, dangerous, macho, alpha male type? What the hell would you do with him?”

  Claire let her mind get away from the table, from the restaurant, from this almost-nothing town in Pennsylvania for just a second, and slip back to college. “Oh,” she said, with a wistful tone of nostalgia marking her voice. “Maybe let him tie me up, whip me a little. I like it when they twist the wrist bonds enough to hurt some, and then they choke me right as I—actually you know what? I’m probably boring you.”

  Andy, however, was sitting up, noticeably closer to the edge of the table, and Nick – “Ginger Curls” – seemed to be extremely absorbed in picking up the half-empty glasses from the next table over. Turning her blue-almost-violet eyes in the waiter’s direction, Claire let her thoughts get away for another second. “You know, though, he might be into that after all. It’s always the quiet ones that’re the most willing to tie you down and spank you hard enough to get your ass all tingly and red.”

  Poor Nick’s entire head had suddenly turned as red as the tips of his ears, and Andy seemed like he was about to jump on the table, if she kept going. His overly dramatic excitement meant that Claire was definitely going to keep going. That little dab of sauce on the end of Alyssa’s nose was pretty good revenge, but nothing – but nothing – beat unfortunate, ill-timed boners for sweet revenge.

  “Maybe I will ask him out. What do you think, Aly? Do you think he’s the sort to get excited about a tight corset, a lot of pinching? Maybe some handcuffs?”

  Nick had officially stopped bothering to shuffle glasses around, and was just staring, open-mouthed at Claire as she spoke. Andy had begun to sweat – not enough to be gross, just enough to be funny.

  No hard-ons yet, she thought, shooting a quick glance at the waiter’s trousers.

  “I dunno,” Alyssa was playing along by now, loving the torment. “Maybe he’d like those, oh what do you call them? Those things,” she started pointing to her nipples, pretending like she couldn’t remember. Absentmindedly, she brushed at her chest. “Oh! Nipple clamps. You know, the little alligator things where they clamp them on and—”

  “Uh... buh, do you guys need anything?” Nick finally had to come the rest of the way to the table. He was blushing so furiously that he was just about as red as Rudolf’s the reindeer’s nose. Or, Claire thought, Uncle Rudolph’s nose, for that matter. “I, uh, more appe-drinks?”

  Claire gave him a quick check. He was bending forward at the waist to make his pants flare out a little. Mission accomplished. “Appe-drinks? Is that like a martini made out of buffalo sauce?”

  He was shaking his head.

  Andy, for his part, stood up very quickly, knocking a half-full beer mug, and two cups of ice onto the table. The liquid pooled, and then dumped straight on his lap.

  Mission two, accomplished. I even made one of them wet his pants. Bonus!

  “Uh,” Andy sputtered. “I... napkin?”

  Nick stuck a hand out, offering a handful of straws to his partner in being dumbfounded. “I... what?”

  “You said appe-drinks,” Claire started, before Alyssa stopped her.

  “Ten more wings. And, uh, leave your phone number so she can call you later.”

  Shaking his head, the mortified waiter did as he was told, and even had a little bit of a grin when he departed to put in the chicken order.

  “What the hell was that?” Claire asked, as soon as the two girls were alone.

  “Honey, anyone who can put up with that much abuse and then just laugh it off? You
gotta at least give a guy like that a chance.”

  Claire sat back, pushing the front legs of her chair off the ground. “He is kinda cute, too, huh?”

  Alyssa nodded. “And you really don’t ever know. He may be into all that kinky shit you were going on and on about.”

  It was Claire’s turn to snort.

  As the night wound on and finally down, the only thing on Claire’s mind was how much she needed the break.

  And, how much she hoped Nick really did turn out to be at least a little bit crazy.

  *

  When Claire rolled out of bed about half past ten the next morning, her whole body tingled with a strange sensation that reminded her of a static shock.

  “This... isn’t good,” she said to Cleo, who had somehow been courteous enough to not start barking until Claire was out of bed. “Am I going to have a seizure or something?”

  It took until she had brushed her teeth, checked her email, and turned on the coffee pot before she realized that no, she was not having a seizure – that buzzing feeling? Energy. She hadn’t been rested in so long she had completely forgotten what it felt like to wake up after a half decent night of sleep.

  When it hit though, it hit her like a Mack truck right in the chest. “Shit,” she said, slightly breathless. “I have got to figure out some way for Eckert to let me stop working graveyards.”

  That’s when she realized she hadn’t so much as thought about work since she called in the night before. Aside from being honest-to-God rested, not thinking about work? That was probably the second rarest thing in the world.

  Cleo flopped over on the ground, pawing at the air and writhing back and forth until her distracted master finally took the hint and crouched in front of her jowly friend, scratching here and there, up and down her chest. When her fingernails got to the white fur on Cleo’s belly, the massive pit-bull started drooling a little, and chuffing happily, which was so wonderfully relaxing that for a moment, she’d almost totally forgot that in about ten hours, she’d be going straight back to GlasCorp.

  That’s life, I guess. One escape at a time. Living for the trips, surviving for the next chance at being happy, even when it always seems like there’s no path through the darkness.

  “That’s, uh, profoundly dark,” she said to herself as she got up off the floor, and her left knee popped. “Not so sure why I have to be so angsty about working. Not like I do anything anyway.”

  When it came down to it that is what she was so angsty about. There was no reason for her to exist, no point to her being there. Why the hell did some hot-shot researcher need to keep her under his thumb? Why was she – a Yale educated scientist – wandering around copying shit off of clipboards? She had credentials, she had legitimacy, and she was just squandering it all by sitting around and playing Sudoku for eight hours a night.

  Twelve hours a night, more recently.

  And for what? A paycheck? The numb sense that she had financial security?

  If Eckert got fired, she’d be out the door too. She knew that, though she preferred not to dwell too heavily on that part of the wonderful world of experimental research. And then there was the fact that she had not a clue what the guy was working on. She didn’t even know what was in the labs she made rounds to and from, endlessly, as sure as night was dark and day was light.

  The tingling began again, this time it was that same odd sensation from before, back at GlasCorp, when her birthmark had started up with the itching and tingling. She couldn’t place it, couldn’t explain it, and more than anything, she just really didn’t want to be thinking about anything right then.

  So, she did the best thing she possibly could to distract herself: try to work up the courage to actually call that waiter for a date.

  The whole thing made her feel so ridiculous, the entire show she put on, the torture she’d admittedly really enjoyed laying on her pal and the waiter, she felt a little stupid afterward. Then again, Alyssa had been right. The guy did stick around, and even laughed at himself a little. That kind of thing was rare enough to warrant at least a call. And if it ended up going somewhere?

  Hell, Andy might be an idiot, but he was right about the part where she really did need someone to at least give her some distraction.

  “’Lo?” someone with a huskier voice than Claire remembered, picked up. He cleared his throat away from the phone.

  “Hey, uh... Nick?”

  He cleared his throat again. “Oh, yeah, Nick. That’s me. Who—” then he caught himself. “Claire!”

  That was more excitement than I expected. Then again, I can’t blame the dude after the show I put on last night. I’d probably been the highlight of his night with the nipple clamp thing.

  “Nipple clamps!”

  Great.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad that’s what you remembered.” Claire laughed softly since, honestly, she couldn’t blame him. “Listen, are you—”

  “We’re going out,” he said. “No way in the world I’m missing out on a date with someone that made me laugh that hard. And no, it isn’t just because of the nipple clamp thing. You made my damn night.”

  “Well,” Claire was still laughing, but at least he took it the right way. Before she could say anything else, he cut her off again.

  “So when? Tonight? Tomorrow? Monday?”

  “Let’s call it Monday, but the week after next. I’m not gonna be able to get out of work until then. And Nick?”

  “Next Monday it is. What’s up?”

  “Thanks for remembering me.”

  He laughed. “How the hell could I not? See ya then. Text me your address?”

  That felt better than she thought it was going to feel. She forgot how incredible it was when someone remembered her – but better than that? She forgot how good it felt for someone to want her.

  This is going to be a hellishly long week, Claire thought, as she sent her address to Nick. But at least this time, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A ginger light that turns red when he gets a hard-on.

  Smiling, she hooked Cleo up for a walk, and could hardly believe it when seven-thirty rolled around that night, and she had not once worried, fretted, or even though about killing Eckert.

  Nothing at all could come from her date with Nick, and just that short relief he’d given her from the tension of life was worth a million bucks.

  Worth a million at least.

  -3-

  “Rumbling and explosions are usually not what I expect when I walk into work.”

  -Claire

  It had been a long, exceeding boring, week at GlasCorp.

  Claire showed up dutifully every day, right at the scheduled time, and proceeded to do absolutely nothing until the next morning. Her birthmark kept tingling – oddly, more intensely each time she made her rounds down the elevator to lab B-3, which was strange but for once, Claire actually had a list of things to accomplish before the night was over.

  Of course, she wasn’t actually doing any of them. Old habits die hard, and all that. So, she was perched at her desk on level 42, with her feet curled up underneath her in the chair, reading through some weird self-published conspiracy book she picked up for a buck twenty at the most recent “get this shit out of here, please” clearance sale at the Stanton public library. This one was a long, rambling account of some time travel experiment that supposedly happened in Montauk, New York, and also involved some kind of demons? She didn’t know, but damn if it wasn’t fascinating.

  “Claire Redmon,” the voice droned over the PA before going slightly fuzzy. “Claire Redmon, please report to lab B-3. Claire Redmon to laboratory B-3. Dr. Eckert needs your help in lab B-3.”

  “Jesus,” Claire sighed, throwing the old, crackly-covered paperback she was reading onto her desk. It was after hours – four hours after hours, to be exact – and she was getting pretty sick of Eckert, with his egg-shaped head that always seemed to sprout droplets of sweat, keeping her up all night for seemingly no reason.

  She’
d come in, she’d walk around locked up laboratories, none of which she could enter, and copied down whatever was on the clipboards on the doors. It was awful, it was boring, but what the hell.

  It’s a job, she thought. A job I can do, and not think. A job I can walk straight into, sit around, get paid, and walk straight out of without taking one single shred of it home. Not like I have much to do outside of this place except worry about work, but... what the hell. Someday I’ll get all ambitious again and go out to change the world of science. Or... maybe not.

  She sighed again as the voice on the PA called her again. She’d never actually met the person to whom the voice belonged, but it seemed to her that it didn’t matter very much. No one at GlasCorp had ever much paid attention to her. Then again, no one at GlasCorp headquarters – the seat of power for the country’s most wealthy pharmaceutical company – seemed to pay much attention to anyone else.

  She began the long, slow, tedious trek to lab B-3.

  The walk took about fourteen minutes, all told, including elevator and security check time. It took about eighteen if she stopped off at the food machine, which she was planning to do on this trip.

  “I’m always one for a Honey Bun,” she said, in a strangely zen-like, meditative way as she strolled past lab H-10. These labs she could enter, and often did, to talk to the cute scientist named Beale. They’d go back and forth, he’d make some vaguely lewd joke, she’d pretend to be embarrassed, and then he’d go back to work and she’d go back to reading one of the many, many conspiracy theorist paperbacks she whiled away her free hours collecting. “Always up for a...”

  She trailed off as something in H-3 screeched rather loudly. These were mouse labs, and nothing particularly strange happened in any of them. Cognitive experiments mostly – think mice running around in mazes for food prizes – certainly nothing that caused screeching like that.

  Claire skidded to a halt, imagining all kinds of horrific things playing out in front of her as she went to her tiptoes and peered through the reinforced window, crisscrossed with a wire grid. She squinted, adjusted her glasses, and peered deep into the darkened office.