Free The Bear Who Loved Me by Kathy Lyons

than pointing that stubborn chin at him.
    “Becca, you can’t come,” he said, already knowing it was futile to argue.
    “You promised me answers.”
    “It’s going to be a long, cold night of waiting. We can talk in the morning.”
    “When another dozen people fight for your time? I know you were fobbing me off tonight, but you were also cornered by every adult there at one point or another. You’re their leader, aren’t you?”
    He nodded. “Every shifter group has an alpha. For us, we call that man Maximus.”
    “Mr. Max.”
    “The kids named me that and it kind of stuck. My father was Maxim. My uncle was Maximus Prime.”
    She tilted her head at him. “How very Roman of him.”
    “He enjoyed power.” And that was the understatement of the century.
    She must have keyed in to his tone because she twisted to look at him. “There’s a story there.”
    Dozens, more like. All of them brutal and bloody. His uncle was a perfect example of what happens when the grizzly rules and the man obeys.
    “Fine,” she huffed. “Don’t talk. But I’m going to pester you all night long, Mr. Max. So either get used to getting harassed or start talking.”
    “Please call me Carl. The Gladwin Maximus won’t give you anything. He can’t. It’s too big a risk for someone who hasn’t fully adopted our ways. But Carl might be convinced to share more.” And why the hell had he just told her that? He needed more formality between them, not less.
    “Does it make it easier to split yourself into two people, Carl?”
    Two? He was at least three—his human self, the Maximus, and his bear—all trying to rip each other apart. And every time he thought he’d negotiated a peace with himself, something happened to upset the balance. Or someone.
    He looked at her in the dark cab, using his bear’s night vision to trace the contours of her face. She had beautiful eyes, but that’s not what drew him. It was something about the curve to her nose. A little ski slope that ended in a pert tip that lifted into the air when she was feeling aggressive. His bear loved that. The rest of him adored the smooth skin that he knew was softer than down. He’d caressed her cheek often enough when she was unconscious. He hadn’t been able to stop himself.
    And then there were her lips. Plump and red from when she chewed on them because of nerves. Her mouth was always moving, not talking, necessarily, just expressing her emotions, even when she pressed her lips firmly together and refused to speak. The man in him watched that mouth obsessively and had fantasies about what she could do with it. There was the window to her soul, and that was what he wanted to touch, taste, and possess.
    He was out of control.
    “You can’t come, Becca. It’ll be hours just sitting.” They’d be right next to each other within touching distance. He’d be able to smell her every shifting mood while he created elaborate fantasies around her. Hell, he was already hard. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise.”
    “Tomorrow happens in about ten minutes,” she said firmly. Then she finished him off: she touched his hand in the barest of tentative caresses. She didn’t know how rare it was for someone to touch him softly. Bears, as a rule, were forceful creatures, shifters even more so. She touched the back of his hand as if she were nervous but unable to stop herself. The lightest of touches that felt like a whisper against his skin and sent reverberation everywhere through his body. “Please, Carl. I’m crawling out of my skin with worry. And being here with everyone makes it worse.”
    He sighed. He knew that feeling. Understood it to the depths of his bones. “It’s going to be really cold,” he warned.
    “You’ve got my blanket back there. I’ll use that.”
    It was what he’d planned to use. He’d wrapped her in it when they’d taken her from her apartment. It smelled like her and Theo, and he’d wanted to bury himself in it all night long. Now