Free Bear-ly Human (Bear Claw Security Book 4) by Terry Bolryder Page A

was exciting because he wondered how things would be changed. How her body would look and feel now, naked.
    He pulled one strap over her shoulder and caressed the creamy flesh there.
    “Hercules,” she murmured. “I missed you.”
    He pressed his lips to her shoulder. “I missed you, too. So much.”
    “Stay with me tonight?” she asked.
    “Of course,” he said. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”
    Her nails tightened around him. “But you still won’t stay forever.”
    “We’re still at an impasse there, I’m afraid.”
    She put a hand on his hair and then stroked the side of his face. “With everything we’ve been through, why are you still hiding? You know I couldn’t hate anything about you.” She took his hand and put it over her heart.
    They used to do that in bed sometimes. Just to feel each other’s heartbeat.
    She’d hold his hand there and say, “Look what you’ve done to me.” And he would wonder at the truth of it.
    “It’s been so long,” he said. “It’s like I’ve known you forever. And like I don’t know you at all.”
    He ran a hand over the curve of her waist, and she squirmed. “Stop grabbing my fat,” she said.
    He laughed and grabbed harder, loving the feel of it. “I love how you’ve filled out. You’re even more beautiful, if that’s possible.”
    She muttered something at that, and he just laughed again.
    “Or maybe it’s just I’ve been seeing you in my dreams so long I forgot how beautiful you were in person.”
    She sighed as he nipped at her skin. “This is a quick turnaround, you know,” she said. “This morning you were still insisting you could hook me up with someone else.”
    “I’m stupid,” he said. “A part of me still wants to do the noble thing. Nothing about what we’re doing now makes sense.”
    She put a hand over his heart. She’d be able to feel just how hard it thudded. “It makes sense to our animals, though,” she said. “It always did.”
    That was true. “Bentley is some kind of asshole.” He nipped along her shoulder. “I don’t know why your dad invited him.”
    She grinned. “Maybe to make the others look better?”
    He grimaced. “Ugh. Not Adam. Don’t even know what’s going on in his head.”
    “Me neither,” she said, letting him kiss down her arm, reaching her sensitive elbow. He loved the way she shivered. He loved how they tended to talk in bed about random things. “What do you think about Dean?”
    “I don’t know what to think,” he said, removing his lips momentarily to look into her eyes. “He seems like a nice man.” He frowned down at her lips. “But I’m not a nice man. And I don’t want you to be with him either.” He covered her lips with his, stifling her moan, swallowing her pleasure, making it part of him as her arms wound around him, bringing him home.
    “Why did we even fight?” she asked.
    “Because you couldn’t let my past go,” he said, nipping her ear. “Because you had to know if I was suitable.”
    “No,” she said. “I just wanted to know why you were holding back from me, if you meant for us to be together.”
    “I didn’t know if we would be together,” he said.
    She took a quick intake of breath and started to pull back, but he put a hand on her back to steady her.
    “But I always knew you’d be it for me. The only one I’d love,” he said.
    She sighed. “That’s sad. That you’d just give up on that.”
    “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come. It took time for me to start living again, after my work in the Special Forces was done. I buried myself in work after we broke up. When it ended, I was doubly lost.”
    “What did you do before the military?” she asked.
    He frowned down at her. “I thought you weren’t going to pry this time.”
    She sighed. “I can’t help it. I want to know everything about you. But fine. Don’t tell me.”
    “Not much to tell,” he said, licking down her neck to her delicate collarbone. She