Free Bear Mated: A BBW Bear Shifter Paranomal Romance (Pine Ridge BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance Series Book 2) by Belinda Meyers Page A

light made
Barbara look even more beautiful than before, and it didn’t hurt that she was
naked except for the bra and panties she’d put back on. She’d thrown her clothes
over herself as a blanket, but they’d fallen away when she sat up.
    “It means that you’re my mate,” he
said, as if it were obvious.
    “Your mate,” she said. She sounded
shocked—but not horrified. After all, they’d talked about it last night, or at
least he had. They hadn’t mentioned it since, though.
    Her reaction encouraged him. He
nodded and held out a hand to her. After a moment, she took it and let him pull
her to her feet. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him,
and instantly he could feel himself begin to harden against her belly. His bear
growled inside him, and he growled, too, but this time it was a different sort
of growl. A lusty growl.
    Barbara laughed but pushed herself away.
“Can you explain just a little bit about what’s going on?”
    “Don’t you see? No woman has ever
been able to handle my bear before. But here you are, and at one touch from you
my bear chilled the hell out. You’re my mate!” He threw his head back and
whooped. The birds stopped chittering for a moment, then resumed with even greater
volume than before. “See?” he said. “They’re singing for us.”
    She knelt beside the lagoon and
splashed water on her face, then rinsed out her mouth and spat.
    “I think you need some of this cold
water, too,” she said.
    He joined her, washing his face and
rinsing out his mouth. Barbara became strangely quiet, and he grew worried. Had
he frightened her off? Playing the exchange back in his head, he realized he
may have come off a little strong. Maybe even a little crazy.
    “I’m not crazy,” he said, facing
her. Her cheeks glistened with water, and some of it had gotten in her hair,
making it shine.
    “Are you sure?” she said.
    “Well, no crazier than usual,
anyway. But I’ve been looking for the woman that could live with my bear for …
well, ever since I got the bear. And
not only can you live with him, you can soothe him. Music to soothe the savage
beast. Only it’s not any music you can hear.”
    She sort of smiled. “It’s music of
the heart?”
    “Exactly!”
    Still smiling, she shook her head,
and droplets of water rained out. “I still think you’re nuts, Rick.” But she
said it in a warm way, an affectionate way, and her tone of voice sent shivers
all throughout him. “Besides,” she said, “I don’t want to be your mate, or
whatever, just because your bear likes me.”
    Ah .
Laughing again—he was suddenly in a very good mood—he grabbed her hand and
kissed it. “Trust me,” he said, “all of me likes you. See?” He glanced down, to
where his cock was beginning to stir.
    “Whoa, there,” she said, but her
eyes lingered on his manhood for a moment. With an obvious effort, she wrenched
her gaze away. “And I don’t mean him, either. I mean you .” She placed her hand over Rick’s heart, and he knew she could
feel it hammering. “I mean here. I want you to like me here.”
    Clapping her hand against him, he
said, very solemnly, “I feel it here, too,” he said, then added, “ Especially here. And it’s more than
‘like’.”
    She swallowed. Clearing her throat,
she pulled her hand back and said, “We need to concentrate on practical matters
before any more … er , mating.” Her cheeks flushed.
“We need food, and we need to get back to Pine Ridge. I wouldn’t be surprised
if there was a search party out looking for me by now. People will be worried,
and if I don’t have a damn good story about why I didn’t call in, and just what
happened to me, well, I could lose my job.”
    Frowning, he stood, then rooted
through the storage hole his crew had dug. Finding various supplies, he let out
a cheer when he found the fishing net, then returned to the stream and began
casting it. It wasn’t as much fun as fishing in bear form, but he