Free Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) by Lynn Red

really well— stop that! Save it for later, you pervert! ”
    Just hearing Eve squealing with laughter was a good thing. But, Lexie still wasn’t sure why she, of all people, was of such interest to the great matron of White Creek mating, as to merit a double date. Everyone knew beyond all doubt that she never did things like that.
    “Say, Eve?” Lexie asked. “Why do you want to double with us? I mean, I really appreciate it and I’m glad to get to know you better and all that, but I’m just sort of confused.”
    “Why?” Eve asked as she cackled again. “I want to learn how to take Mating Call on the internet. I’m kidding, but not really. Also I figured it’d be fun. I don’t know, I’m not as stiff and stodgy as everyone thinks. Stop it! Oh... Okay, jeez, you can keep doing that .” She cleared her throat. “Er, sorry, he... well... I better save that information for Dora.”
    “Well I’m flattered,” Lexie said, trying to make sense of Eve’s last cryptic comment. “I mean, sure, we’re ready to go, are you guys heading over there? I know it’s been a couple hours, so—”
    “Ralph’s Fun Pit,” Eve said. “ Stop that! Or don’t. Okay, don’t .” she cleared her throat again. “Remember, as everything with Mating Call, it’s on the house. So all you two have to do is show up and manage to keep your hands off each other for an eighteen-hole round of mini-golf. If you get arrested for PDA or hiding off in the side of the course to go at it, we’re not responsible for any of those fees, although just between us, I’d probably chip in to cover the lawyer, because that’d be fuckin’ hilarious.”
    Lexie couldn’t help but laugh at the stream of consciousness apparently escaping from Eve’s mouth. The whole thing was so surreal, so wonderfully strange, that her standard dose of self-doubt and confusion didn’t have time to take hold. I’m just going along for this damn ride , she thought. If nothing else happens with any of this, then at least we had a good night .
    Blake was still watching her, though his eyes were tracing the line of her jaw and her collarbones. She turned over and draped her legs across his thighs. It was just so comfortable . Everything about him was just so comfortable and safe.
    In the back of her mind, she thought something was going to have to eventually go wrong. Something was going to have to put a little spike in between them. Whatever it was, she hoped, they could get past it. She’d already decided, probably when they sat down and watched Trek five minutes after meeting one another that no matter what happened, this one was worth trying to keep.
    After a few more brief instructions, including a strange request to stop by the Mating Call offices to pick up a box that Eve had forgotten on her desk, the phones were hung up and everyone went back to their barely resisted sexual tension.
    Blake had his fingertips resting on the back of Lexie’s head, his fingers curling gently against the tiny hairs on the top of her neck. “So, minigolf?” he asked. “I’m kind of a beast with a multicolored putter, you know. I think you might want to watch out because I’m gonna destroy every last one of you.”
    Suddenly, Lexie had a thought that seized her. “There’s gotta be something wrong with you,” she said abruptly. “I mean, I’m crazy in about four thousand different ways. There must be something about you that isn’t perfect because God’s honest truth, you being this nice and patient and beautiful is starting to unnerve me a little.”
    She almost immediately regretted she’d said anything, but from the look on Blake’s face, from the way he sank away from her just a tad, and from how he pulled his fingers off her head, it was a question he had been expecting, but hoped not to come.
    “Well,” he began, and let his voice trail off into the ethers. “I can tell you right now that I’m not perfect. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m