Free Theirs to Bear: Icy Cap Den #3 (Alaskan Den Men) by Jennifer Hilt Page A

returned to town horny as hell.
    Liv always ignited my drive to claim her. Years ago, I’d resisted. That was ancient history. She’d moved on. So had I. If I’d had a mate, my urge to fuck the living daylights out of this woman would have been gone. A mate would keep me satisfied, and it would be my job to do the same for her.
    Unfortunately, Icy Cap was not full of available females. In fact, it didn’t have any. In my recent wanderings all over the frozen north, I’d not discovered any unclaimed female ice bear shifters; our numbers were down. Liv’s visit couldn’t have come at a worse time.
    “So I’m good enough to visit here but not good enough to live here? That’s discrimination. Aren’t you a lawyer?”
    I haven’t seen Liv in four years, but she still smelled like strawberries.
    “Ex law student. I’m sticking to law enforcement. The way things are going here, this place needs deputies. You can’t live here because you’re human.”
    “I’m not going to be scared away by a tradition.” She brushed by me. I inhaled her scent, feeling it imprint on my brain as it had countless times. “Mine”flashed inside my brain like a firework display.
    “It’s for your safety. Every paranorm here has some ‘gift’ that makes them a potential danger to you.” Especially me. My ice bear spirit was rising regularly. I had learned that rather than suppressing the creature inside me, only by respecting it could I have some peace within myself. But around Liv, I felt anything but peaceful.
    “Creditors took everything I had in Toledo. I’m lucky no one wanted this place. At the risk of winding up homeless, I’m not going anywhere. End of story. Or are you really going to argue with a woman holding a knife?” Liv cut the packing tape open on another crate.
    “If she’s a human woman in a town under siege by a succubus? Damn right I’m going to argue.”
    “Oh, that.” Liv paired a grimace with a shrug. “Every place has something. Drugs, gangs, carjackings.”
    My fists clenched. I closed my eyes, silently counting to ten. She was doing it again. This woman made me crazy. Ask anybody in Icy Cap, they’ll tell you how easygoing I am. Usually. For an ice bear shifter.
    “A succubus is not going to carjack you. She’ll kill you and be on her way to her next victim.” I cracked my knuckles. Just the though of the succubus anywhere near Liv made me pace. This damn place was so small that after about four strides, another stack of boxes walled off my track.
    Unconcerned about my distress over her safety, Liv dug around in another box. My eyes strayed to her curves, so nicely outlined in jeans and a bedazzled black T-shirt with sparkles in all the right places. I loved having her near me even as I loathed the risk she faced in Icy Cap. Seeing her too-tight tee made me want to lick the slope of her neck. Those few dark curls escaping her ponytail tantalized me.
    I swallowed. I couldn’t stay here.
    But neither could she.
    Icy Cap was having an early spring thaw. Temperatures were in the forties. For us that was downright tropical. The whole damn tundra was erupting in green grass that peeped out from melted patches in the snow. Bird and insects darted through the air.
    Even though Liv had only been here for a week, she was embracing the festive spring atmosphere. The back door was propped open, letting the sunshine in.
    “I’m done living my life being afraid. Ted’s accident was over two years ago. I have to move on. It’s what he would have wanted.”
    “Ted wouldn’t have wanted you to live here.”
    “The deed to this building says otherwise.”
    “He was going to open a fly fishing outfit when he retired.”
    “Instead, I’m opening a salon.” Liv dropped her voice, even though it was only the two of us in the cramped two-story clapboard she now owned. “I’m secretly calling it Get Nailed, though officially I’m going with Icy Cap Salon.”
    “Knowing this town, you’d have better