Free Grayslake: More than Mated: PAWS & Surrender (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Bear Allegiance Series Book 1) by Josie Walker Page B

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    “You’re ruining my life! Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?” she screamed at him.
    “It’s language like that that earned you this restitution in the first place. You’d better keep your voice down or my mom will hear you,” Parker warned her as he squatted down, yanked out a few weeds, and added them to her bucket.
    She couldn’t have explained what came over her, but in that moment she snapped as a wave of fury shot through her body. She howled in rage as she ran and tackled him to the ground. He wrapped his arms protectively around her as they went rolling down the side of the driveway and then went spilling out into the nearby woods. She pummeled the unrelenting and firm expanse of his muscled chest. She scratched shallow furrows down his arms with her sharp nails and she yelled at him, but he never once made any move to hurt her.
    When it didn’t seem like she had any intention of ever stopping he rolled again so that she was trapped harmlessly beneath him. He straddled her with his powerful thighs and pinned her arms above her head. He pressed a hand over her mouth so that he could say his piece.
    “I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t know you couldn’t swim. I was just trying to stop your phone call before it went through. If the dumb sheep hadn’t given you the phone in the first place I never would have had to intervene.”
    “Sure, blame the sheep,” she hissed when he removed his hand briefly so that she could speak. He put his hand back over her mouth and continued.
    “I’m sorry you saw those tigers and that it put you in an impossible situation of having to leave your life behind. No, that’s a lie. I’m not really sorry about that because if you hadn’t had to run from those tigers we’d never have met.”
    Just when he thought he’d finally gotten through to her she bit his hand, hard. He sucked on his bleeding digit while she yelled at him. “Did it never even enter your mind to just take the phone?”
    Parker shook his head ruefully no.
    “And why were you even in the lake? Why do you keep ruining all my dates? Don’t you want me to be happy?”
    “Those men could never have made you happy. None of them understand you. All I want to do is to take care of you. Is it so hard to believe that I want to dedicate the rest of my life to making you happy? Eugene and James are afraid of their own shadows. How much help do you think they’d be if the tigers found you?”
    The man had a point there, but damned if she was going to tell him that. She could feel something hard and firm digging into her and it didn’t take her long to pinpoint exactly what it was. The man had a lot of nerve, or perhaps balls would have summed it up better. Here they were in the middle of an argument and he was aroused, so much so that his erection was digging into her. He must have taken her silence as a sign of like interest, because he dropped his head down as if her were preparing to kiss her.
    That was when she kneed him hard in the crotch and crawled out from under him while he was cupping himself and growling in agony. She ran past the bucket of weeds without bothering to pick up her tools. If Mia complained about her unfinished driveway she could take the matter up with her oldest son, the one who didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.
    She slammed the door to her room shut and she briefly considered showering some of the sweat and dirt off. But she was just too upset to risk running into him in their shared bathroom so she just crawled into bed instead. She didn’t care if it was the middle of the day; sleep was the only place left where she could be alone with her thoughts. Now if only she could get her racing mind to shut off and power down. It took her a long time to conk out because her subconscious kept shouting at her to give the bear a chance already.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    S he woke up to the feeling of a thousand fire ants biting her all at once. She