Free Bear Pause (BBW / Bear Shifter Romance): A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance (Bear Fursuits Book 6) by Isadora Montrose Page A

did to her. Like a bear to her mate.
    As she bent to examine Star, her hair fell forward and brushed his cheek and just like that his cock sprang to attention.
    “Darn it,” she said, and scooped her fall of soft curls up into a ponytail on top of her head. She rummaged in the pocket of her jeans and found a linty hair elastic and turned the ponytail into a bun. “Sorry about that, Steve.”
    What could he say? He didn’t mind being touched by her. But it was clear she was not the type to hit on an employee. Or to recognize her own arousal. Besides they had work to do. He grunted.
    “Nearly there,” she crooned to the mare.
    Star looked back as if she wondered what was taking her baby so long. She didn’t appear to be concerned. Her birth canal visibly contracted and the foal was born on a gush of fluid. Steve caught it and helped it to the ground. Star turned around and began to nibble at the sack still enclosing the foal.
    “Let her do it,” Laura said. “It’s better for her if she eats as much of the afterbirth as she wants.”
    “I’ll go wash my hands and get the disinfectant to clean them up,” Steve said.
    “Okay. Bring a pitchfork. I want to clear this old straw out.”
    “I’m on it.” Steve went whistling for the wheelbarrow full of essentials that he had placed at the end of the aisle for dealing with the cleanup that was routine after the birth of a foal. He felt like a pro after dealing with foal number eight.
    Together he and Laura dipped the foal’s umbilicus and swabbed Star’s udder before letting the baby suckle. Laura moved mama and baby to one side of the roomy foaling stall while he dealt with the soiled straw and sloshed some more disinfectant around. They repeated the process on the other side, and then Laura told him to bring Star her post-delivery rations.
    Laura was still gazing misty-eyed at the mare and nursing foal when he returned with the special feed. “Look how strong he is,” she exclaimed.
    The colt’s spindly legs were marginally less wobbly than they had been when he had first tried to use them. He was now standing under his mother suckling lustily. Like his dam, he had a bright white blotch on his forehead. But he was a less dark brown than she was. Steve felt a tenderness towards both animals that still surprised him. The first time he had been asked to forgo a night’s sleep he had resented it. But each birth had turned out to be a special event.
    “She’s of my breeding, did you know?” Laura said.
    “I did.” Steve leaned against the stall wall and enjoyed the loveliness of both the Boss and the horses. “Beautiful.”
    “She is. And the colt is out of my Guardian of Colorado.” Pride and joy mingled in her voice. “What shall we call him?”
    “Surely you have a name all picked out and ready for the stud book?” he teased.
    She nodded. “Of course. I meant his real name. The one he’ll answer to for the rest of his life.”
    “I thought their stud book names were the real ones.”
    “Oh, no,” she looked at him her blue eyes glistening in the dim light that was all that was permitted in the foaling stall. Horses were nocturnal deliverers and strong lights could panic mares in labor. “A horse’s real name is the one he knows.”
    Steve thought. “With that mark, he ought to be called ‘Star’, but I guess that name’s taken.”
    “Yeah,” her voice was soft and sultry. Probably his imagination.
    “He’s a strong little cuss. How about ‘Atlas’?”
    “How about ‘Hero’?” she suggested.
    Those blue eyes were looking right at him, so he did what he had been wanting to do from the first moment he set eyes on her. He kissed her. A soft kiss. Just the barest brushing of lips on lips. But her mouth opened under his like a flower to the sun and he deepened the kiss and pulled her hard against his chest.

CHAPTER NINE
    The dusty, delivery truck drove down the unlit country road. Its scarred white sides appeared to have been repainted