Page 66 of Choose the Bears

Big, crazy strong, protective, obsessive…

I was up and out of my seat without thought. Breakfast was left uneaten because I had other needs that had to be met. Leaving the books in the room had me feeling antsy. I couldn’t help but feel someone might sneak in and steal them, damage them again, even though logically this wasn’t true. I closed the door firmly, then walked down the hall, searching for the room with the computer monitors. I was drawn closer by the humming sounds of many computers working at once, stopping when I reached the doorway to stare into the darkness. Multiple artificial lights told me what was making the noise, that and a flickering screen sent strange shadows across his face.

“Lucas?” I asked.

He pulled away from the monitor as if stung, quickly exiting out of what he was looking at. That furtiveness had me smiling, temporarily forgetting what I came here for.

“Imogen!”

He blinked and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“What’re you doing?” I moved closer, grinning, thinking I’d caught him doing something a little naughty, but all the amusement left my body when I saw his screen. Thumbnails for videos littered the desktop and each one made clear that I would not like their contents. Women screaming, women frozen writhing in pain. Panicked women, crying women… “No…” I stepped backwards, realising now that I was right and I was wrong. Part of me was convinced that he and his friends were hiding something, but I thought…

What did I think?

That he was a shifter? The idea turned to acid, burning through my brain. What a fucking ridiculous idea. People talked about it all the time, that so many of those employed to help women and children turned out to be abusers themselves.

“Is that what you’re into?” My voice was the sound of breaking glass. “This is why you ‘help’ women?” I glanced at thescreen, my brain screaming for me to look away, but instead I darted forward, grabbing his mouse from between slack fingers before clicking on the closest video.

“No… no… no!”

Her scream was cut off abruptly as Lucas stabbed a finger down on the space bar.

“Jesus, Imogen.” He shook his head, the bright lights turning his glasses into a reflective mask. “I’m not in here jerking off to this shit. This is evidence.”

I couldn’t hear it. All of a sudden everyone in this entire place was suspect. I’d been here before, hadn’t I? Trusting people that I shouldn’t have. Was that what was happening right now? “This is…” Lucas didn’t want to tell me, but he did anyway and that’s what I needed to convince me. “This is a copy of Phil Jackson’s laptop. I took a copy of it when we broke into his place. I don’t want to look at a single one of these disgusting fucking files. I…”

His obvious disgust was a mirror of my own, and I needed that. Someone to say what I thought, but everyone around me didn’t. That this was wrong, bad, vile. I liked to think of myself as sex positive, but there was nothing positive about hurting someone in a non-consensual way. “I’m trying to find out which ones are shit he downloaded from the internet and which ones…”

I didn’t want him to finish that sentence, and yet I needed him to with every breath.

“Which ones he created himself.”

Fuck.

Chapter 35

Lucas

I hated the stink of Imogen’s fear, her pain. It was like burnt tyres and singed feathers all at the same time. It filled my nose, telling me, telling the bear, that I needed to do something, anything to make her feel better right fucking now, and I was so preoccupied by that I missed this. My mate sliding between me and my computer, then settling down on my lap. My arms went around her on automatic, my instincts kicking in, but the feel of her body against mine drove everything out of my head. The shit, the pain, the fucking terrible torrent of abuse in every image. The relief I felt when it was all pushed out of my mind, right as her hand moved.

“Imogen—!”

She grabbed the mouse before I could stop her, but when my hand covered hers, she shook her head.

“I’m not watching them.” She was putting on a brave front, the waver in her voice making that clear. “I’m not. I don’t know how you do.”

“Most of the time I don’t,” I admitted, resisting the urge to press my forehead into her back. Her scent would be strongerthere, and as it began to sweeten again, I took long, slow breaths of it in. “We outsource it to stringently vetted teams, but even that will change. I’m working on a program that can pull metadata, identify people in the film and cross match them with public records, social media platforms. Then I…”

I sucked in a breath, then another, hating that I was showing a moment of weakness in front of the one woman I wanted to impress. I never would’ve brought this to her attention. I didn’t want Imogen feeling uncomfortable, but it was more than that.

I was her man, and I wanted to provide for her, make her feel safe without her even knowing. I wanted her to be able to take that shit for granted.

“You hate this.” I felt her shift, then looked up to see her staring down at me. “You really hate this.”

There was something almost accusatory about her tone.

“Hate’s too weak a word for it.” I shook my head sharply, realising I had no hope of pretending I had it all together. “Some of its bullshit. Actors work together to… pretend that they’re raping the female performer. It’s all consensual, but…”

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