Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(16)

“Because it wasn’t like that! I’m not waiting to have sex on purpose, you *. I just haven’t found anyone I wanted to be intimate with since Adam died!” A pathetic sob clawed its way up her throat, and mortified, she grabbed her camera, tripod still attached, and half-jogged toward where the horses were tied. She had to get away from him—as far away as possible before she melted down completely—because nothing was more unacceptable in her life right now than crying in front of Jenner Ice-Heart Silver.

Gunner snorted and stomped his foot as she approached, but she didn’t care. He was about to get snuggled because she needed that. She wrapped her arms around his neck and ignored that he bopped her in the back with a well-placed head toss. She cried against his coat until it was damp and his neck was spotted with dark spots, almost black against the rest of his dark coloring.

“What are you doing?” Jenner asked quietly from behind her.

Feeling puny, Lena muttered, “Nothing you would understand.”

Jenner sighed. “Gunner’s trying to bite you.”

With a growl, she released the horse from her affection and stumbled toward the packhorse who looked utterly comatose. She was almost offended that the old horse hadn’t bothered to wake up for her sob-fest. The silence as she packed her camera lens and tripod was only punctuated with her sniffles as she studiously ignored the grumpy Sasquatch she could feel watching her. “I need a minute.” Stupid voice as it trembled.

She stomped off into the trees, and when she was good and alone, she slid her back down the rough bark of a pine and drew her knees to her chest. How dare he? No one had affected her so completely or made her feel so pitiful in all her life. She wasn’t a ten, but she surely wasn’t a two, and Jenner had looked at her like she was disgusting. All because she was a virgin? Yeah, she got it. Twenty-six was old to not have been with a man, but it wasn’t like she’d planned this.

When she looked up and rested her head against the tree, Jenner was standing there, hands on his hips, looking utterly uncomfortable.

“What part of ‘I need a minute’ was confusing to you?”

His shirt was still MIA, and his abs flexed and chest lifted as he inhaled deeply. “Who is Adam?”

“None of your f*cking business. Go away.”

Jenner’s throat moved as he swallowed hard, but he definitely didn’t go away. Instead, he sat beside her, leaned up on her tree of shame and brought yet another round of heat flooding into her cheeks.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have kissed you and lost control. I had this plan to keep it professional and I…” He gritted his teeth and broke a twig in half. “I messed up. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t sorry until just now. I actually wanted to be with you,” she gritted out bitterly. “I thought my stupid dry spell would finally be over, and I could just get this thing over and done. Then it wouldn’t be this huge, terrifying thing to me anymore.”

“Get what done? Losing your virginity? Lena, it should be special for your first time.”

“Oh yeah? Was it super special for your first time, Jenner?”

“Yeah, it was.”

His answer drew her up short, so she jerked her gaze to his to gauge his seriousness. He wasn’t teasing her, though. At least not that she could tell.

“You look surprised. What, you think a guy can’t have his first time be special?”

“I don’t know about guys, but from the way you just tossed me away back there, I thought maybe you were a player.”

“No, Lena, I’m not a player.” His voice was tired, and he chucked half of the broken stick into the woods as if her snap judgment offended him. “I was twenty before I lost mine. I had a girl I loved and sex with her meant something.”

“What happened?” she asked softly.

Jenner made a clicking sound behind his teeth and picked up another limb. He stripped the leaves off it one by one, then said, “She got pregnant.”

“You didn’t want the baby?”

“Oh, I wanted the baby. More than anything. It was this instant family, you know? But my woman didn’t really know me, didn’t know my secrets, and apparently she was keeping some of her own. I was over the moon, twenty, ready to be a dad because I was going to do this better than how my dad did with me and my brothers. Except when we went to get the ultrasound, they told us the baby was a girl.”

Baffled, Lena shook her head. “And you didn’t want a girl?”

Jenner clutched his fist around the snapped twig and slid his sad blue gaze to her. “I can’t have girls. She wasn’t mine.”

That didn’t make any sense. “How do you know you can’t have girls?”

“Because in my lineage, there have been zero female offspring for thousands of years. And when I told my woman that, she admitted she had someone else. Someone who was no good, not like I was to her, and she wanted me raising the baby instead of the other guy.”

“And you couldn’t?” Her whisper came out airy and devastated.

Jenner shook his head. “Not after all the lies. I couldn’t trust her. I haven’t told anyone that ever. Not even my brothers, so now it’s your turn. Who is Adam?”

“Adam was my best friend.”