Free Bear In The Rough: Book 1: Treasure Hunt (BBW Bear Shifter Romance) by L. Foster Page B

she knelt on top of me, brandishing the flaming torchwood at dangerously low levels, awareness and understanding alight on her face.
     
                  “Why didn’t you tell me,” she said, breathing deeply, “that you were a shifter?”
     
                  “I could be bleeding to death right now,” I said, “and that’s what you’re worried about?”
     
                  She pinched my arm hard, hard enough that I momentarily forgot the pain of my wound. “OWW!” I yelled indignantly, throwing her a scathing look.
     
                  Liv nodded sagely. “If you can feel that,” she said, “you’ll be fine.”
     
                  “How deep is the cut?”
     
                  “It’s actually not that bad. But you’re still going to need a few stitches.”
     
                  While she applied pressure to the wound with a sleeve from my torn shirt and we waited for the bleeding to subside, we discussed the tattoo that seemed to be exerting a greater and greater fascination on her. “All this time,” she said, half to herself. “It was you all along and I never guessed.”
     
                  “What’s up?”
     
                  “It was you, on the site.”
     
                  “And you were—let me guess—that snarky woman?”
     
                  “The one and only,” Liv replied.
     
                  “This explains so much.”
     
                  She blushed a deep shade of scarlet, the look of a woman who had spoken passionate words to a man she had never expected to meet. “Why did you never reply?” she asked.
     
                  “Pardon?”
     
                  “I thought we were friends, I thought we might even be more than friends, and then you stopped talking to me completely. You have no idea how much that hurt me.”
     
                  “Liv, isn’t it obvious?” I said. “I wasn’t lying, I was going away in search of my grandfather.”
     
                  She looked at me, blinking back tears, as if willing herself to be convinced. But she had been holding onto her grudge for so long, it was hard to let go.
     
                  “Liv,” I said again, “I never bailed on you. I’ve been here the whole time.”
     
    She nodded tearfully. For a moment the struggle was visible on her face, but slowly resignation and acceptance crept to the fore. Then her misgivings passed away in a joyful exhalation of release.
     
                  “And the stone,” I said, reaching for the emerald. Olivia picked it up off the cave floor and slid it into my right hand with a clink . “I have never in my life been able to express intense emotions. The stone changes that. As long as I’m wearing this, I’m free to do things I was never able to do before. I can be angry, I can feel grief, I can fight… I can make love?”
     
                  I said the last words in a question, unsure to what extent they were true and how much I would be risking by finding out. Still flush with the adrenaline of the fight, and heady with the intoxicating pull of her courage, I said quietly, “Look at me, Liv.” When she looked the other way, I said, “No, look me in the face.” This time she looked up at me. Her eyes were huge in the torchlight.
     
                  That was all I needed, that curious combination of vulnerability and courage combined with a desperate look of affection that she strove in vain to conceal. Like a chemical reaction, the effect was so heady that nothing except a determined act of will on both our parts could have stopped me. She nodded, still scared, but with a new glint of steely determination in her face. I pulled her in close and smothered her in fierce kisses and caresses, inhaling her scent which smelt strongly of honey