Free Kodiak's Claim by Eve Langlais

sudden glare, and the crystals on her lashes melted leaving her with perfect—and unfortunate—vision. Uh-oh. She blinked some more. Licked her lips. Wet her panties. And not in fear, even if a bear of a man glowered down at her, his irritation over the lump forming on his cheekbone probably the cause.
    ‘Are you seriously accosting me in my home, again?”
    “I thought you were a bear,” she explained feebly with a wave to the window. “I saw one on the porch, and then something opened the door. I reacted to defend myself.”
    “With a frying pan?”
    She shrugged. “I had to think fast.”
    “You hit me.” He sounded so incredulous.
    Welcome to the club. She was becoming well acquainted with the feeling since arriving in Alaska. “Yeah, I did smack you, but I’d say the more pressing point right now is why you’re coming in from minus freaking a gazillion outside wearing nothing but the hair on your chest.” An impressive chest, mind you, but still, a completely naked one that matched his naked bottom half— oh my.
    Imagining Reid without clothes was one thing, the reality, another. Her vivid imagination certainly did not do him justice. He was way more impressive in the naked flesh. But why was he bare-assed?
    He glanced down at himself as if just now noting his nude state. “I lost my clothes.”
    “Lost them? How?”
    “Well, more like ditched them because they were dirty. Real dirty,” he said more loudly before shutting the door and cutting off the stream of cold air swirling around them.
    She took a moment to absorb his absurd reply. “Dirty? Really? With what?” What made a man insane enough to strip in this weather? Did he stain them with blood? Had she misjudged him after all? Was he a psycho? Her grip on the frying pan tightened.
    He noticed, and a single dark brow arched. “Planning to attempt and concuss me again? If you want me flat on my back so bad, you could just ask. But do me a favor, if you plan to ravish me, make sure you use a condom.”
    “Ravish you? I’m wondering if I should call the cops and have them test you for DNA remains. Exactly how filthy could your clothes supposedly be for you to prefer walking naked in freeze-your-parts-off weather to the house?”
    “First off, it’s not that cold, which you can see by all my parts being accounted for.”
    One certain part was definitely not affected by the extreme cold it was subjected to, given how it currently sat at half-mast.
    She averted her gaze, but not in time.
    A sardonic glint lit his gaze. “My grandmother always did say we had some polar bear in our line.”
    She ignored his joke. “Where are your clothes?”
    “Why?”
    “I want to see them.”
    “You don’t believe me.”
    “It’s my job to not believe anyone but to investigate impartially.”
    “And what do my clothes have to do with your investigation?”
    “Establishing your ability to tell the truth.”
    A smile curved his lips. “This from the woman standing in my kitchen wearing fuzzy bunny slippers, wielding a vicious frying pan because she thought a bear was trying to come in the house.”
    “I know what I saw.” Or thought she had. She really had to wonder if she’d hallucinated it because Reid definitely wasn’t acting like a naked man who’d confronted a bear on his porch. Had she imagined it? Or was he trying to divert her from her suspicions? “My nighttime attire and self-defense at least are understandable. You, however, with your nakedness, are not.”
    “You want proof? Very well. But may I dress before we head back to the garage where I left my stuff?”
    “What, is it too cold to walk back?”
    “I try to restrict my polar runs to once a day lest certain parts shrivel to the point of no return.”
    She highly doubted that would happen given its size, but his bare skin was definitely distracting—oh and arousing to the point she wanted to clobber him again just so he’d collapse on the ground and she could give him mouth to