Riding Bearback (BBW Shifter Cowboy Romance) (Bear Ranchers Book 1) Read online

  She turned away from him again. Scanned the darkness like she was waiting for something. Behind her, Henry’s boots scraped against the boat’s edge, but he didn’t move, just stood there wordless and breathless behind her, rooted to the stern.

  Lila would not turn. If she turned, she would cry, and she decided she was done crying over him. Over anybody.

  “Lila.” Henry’s voice split like old wood. Something deep inside her twisted sickly at the sound.

  Lila shook her head.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I just kept waiting to tell you, because I didn’t want to do it wrong, but I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted you to find out like this.” Henry made a sniffling sound, muttered a curse like a prayer. “I just need you to listen to me, Lila. Please. Just five minutes.”

  Lila turned to glare at him. She looked Henry up and down, trying to find something else to resent him for, looking for soft spots to drive in words like knives. But his eyes were so red and so wet. He looked just as scared as she felt.

  She wanted so badly to hate him. She wanted it to be that easy.

  “Five minutes,” he repeated, “and if you’re not convinced, I’ll go rent you a hotel room right now and bring your things to the front desk in the morning. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  She stood and clung to the rigging overhead. “Three minutes.”

  Henry nodded fast. He sank down on the bench and gripped the tiller with one hand. Lila wasn’t sure if it was for instinct or comfort.

  “I want to tell you something nobody knows,” he said. “Not even Matt.”

  Lila examined the toes of her boots, feigning disinterest.

  “My dad raised me. It was just me and him until I finished up high school, and then it was just me. I told everyone here that I don’t remember my mom and she died in a car accident when I was really little.

  “But, um.” Henry wiped at the corners of his eyes. “My mom’s alive.” He held the tiller so tightly Lila could see every tendon in his hand rise like tributaries. “I remember her. I remember everything about her. She and my dad met on Kodiak Island, just a little ways out there.” He pointed toward the water and paused. Breathed in shakily.

  His eyes were far away from her. From everything. “So the first time I changed, I was two years old. My dad told me we were in a grocery store, and I was just this toddler throwing a fit over something stupid, and then all of a sudden there wasn’t me anymore, just this little bear cub.” He squared his hands around some invisible shape only he could see. “But I’m still me, when I’m like that. My brain’s still there, you know? That doesn’t change.”

  Lila watched him, unsure of what to say.

  “That was the first time my parents moved because of me. Shifters didn’t even get full citizenship until I was ten years old. 1995. So every time I shifted in public, we’d get evicted, or I’d get kicked out of preschool, or word would get out at my parents’ jobs, and then we’d have to find somewhere else to go. That’s just how it was back then. I think we lived in ten different cities before I was six years old.

  “My mom left when I was seven, I think. Maybe six. She said she couldn’t handle me anymore. Couldn’t handle all the moving and everything, I guess. She left after she picked me up from school. I remember because she was crying, and I’d never seen my own mother cry before, and she was throwing all her shit in bags and apologizing like crazy. I helped her carry some of her stuff to the car, then she sat me down on the couch and told me to stay here and watch movies until my dad got home from work. And then she was just gone.”

  Lila’s stare softened. “Just like that?”

  Henry snapped. “Poof,” he said, his smile small and blank. “We all have stories like that. Me and the guys. When we moved up here a couple of years ago, we decided we wouldn’t tell anyone. We wouldn’t give another town a reason to kick us out.”

  “That’s not legal anymore.”

  “Lots of things aren’t legal, but people like me scare people like you. Out here, that means more than any law.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Lila said, softly. She eased closer to the center of the boat, closing the space between them. “I read you guys can be all different kinds of bears, right?”

  “Not just bears. But, yeah.” Henry looked at her like he was afraid to move. As though he’d shatter the moment like porcelain. “I could show you, if you wanted.”

  Lila’s chest tightened. “Show me?”

  “What it’s like when I’m the other guy.” He patted his chest like the bear could claw its way out any minute. “You know. When I shift.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to make things right. Because you’re stunning and brilliant and no one in the world is like you, and I’d hate myself every day of my life if I lost you over something like this.”

  Lila rubbed the wet away from her eyes. “I haven’t decided if I forgive you.”

  “You don’t have to. You don’t owe me anything. Just let me show you.”

  Lila, her chest full and heavy and uncertain, nodded.

  For once, Henry’s house was empty.

  Lila sat on the front steps, bundled up, holding a cup of tea just for the warmth of it. She jiggled her knees, nervously. Henry had disappeared behind the house a few minutes earlier in nothing but a T-shirt, sweats, and his ratty house slippers.

  She sipped her tea slowly. She imagined Henry shirking his clothes and standing there in the midnight cold, goose bumped and trembling, willing his human self away. She wondered if swapping one skin for another hurt.

  Then she heard it. Heard the heavy shuffling footfalls, the snuffling muzzle, the little growls and grunts of Henry the bear muttering to himself as he rounded the corner of the house.

  Lila’s spine stiffened. An innate, primordial voice deep in her own skull urged her to run run run. She took a deep breath, set her tea down on the porch, and stood.

  Even on all fours, the top of the bear’s head reached the top of her sternum. He made human-Henry look so small. In the porch light, Henry watched her with those same amber eyes, but his head was enormous and full of teeth, his ears round and alert. He was huge and lumbering, but his thick and unkempt winter coat made him look lovably absurd, like a teddy bear made real.

  Lila stepped toward him. “Henry?” she whispered, feeling foolish.

  The bear bobbed its head up and down and pranced in a little circle, as if Henry were proving his self-control.

  She smiled, fascinated despite herself. She came right up to Henry, so close that his muzzle was up against her chest, his breath warm and hot against her jacket. With both hands, she cupped the thick and unexpectedly soft fur on either side of his neck, brushed along the velvet edges of his ears.

  “You’re marvelous,” she murmured.

  Henry leaned his head into her, gently, and Lila closed her arms around him, twined her fingers into the thick coat of his chest. He smelled damp and foreign. Like a wild thing.

  She kissed the spot just above his eye and whispered into his fur, “I wouldn’t know how to tell me either.”

  Then Lila pulled away, staggering a little, feeling surreal and bewildered and amazed. She looked at the bear—who wasn’t just a bear, who was Henry, who helped her and listened to her and held her when she needed it and gave her space when she didn’t, Henry Henry Henry—and said, “Let’s get inside, okay? Let’s get inside.”

  Lila waited for him in the entryway, pacing, chewing at her cuticles. There were a dozen pairs of shoes stacked haphazardly against the wall, some tennis shoes, but mostly huge rubber boots that made the whole room smell faintly fishy.

  A few minutes later, Henry opened the door, shivering and sheepish. “You forgot this,” he said, holding up the tea cup.

  “I don’t care about tea,” Lila murmured. She rose onto her tiptoes, put her hands on the back of Henry’s head, and pulled him down to kiss her.

  Henry pulled away only to smile, set the tea down on the floor,
and tell her, “Me neither.”

  They kissed and they kept kissing, all the way from the entryway to the living room couch, up the stairs, down the hall, along the wall, until at last they got to the door of Henry’s room, and he held her pressed up against him, fumbled with the doorknob, and lifted her up like she was nothing but light and air. Lila wrapped both her legs around him, circled her arms around his neck, and buried her face into his shoulder.

  Henry shut the door and leaned against it, his forearms cupped under Lila’s ass, his breath coming fast and needy. She wanted both his hands on her. She wanted to know every inch of him.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered into his skin.

  He nipped her ear, kissed the sweet spot where her lobe met her jaw. “I like you.”

  “I like you too.”

  Then Henry pushed off the door, brought her to the bed, and dropped her squealing on the mattress. He looked at the bedside clock. “We have twenty minutes left in this year, Lila Ellis. What do you want to do with it?”

  Lila looked up at him, at his gorgeous flushed cheeks, at the bulge of his pants, the clean line of his belly. “I want you. I want all of you.”

  “Oh. Oh.” He opened the bedside drawer and pawed around until he found a little accordion sheet of condoms packaged in silver foil. “I have some of these, if that’s what you mean.”

  A thrill shot through Lila’s lower belly. She put her hands in her lap, as though Henry could see her through her jeans. “I’m kind of hairy. It’s gross.”

  Henry dipped down the band of his boxers to show her the tuft of curly black hair nestled between his hipbones. “Me too.” He pinched at the barely noticeable paunch of his belly. “And I get fucking fat in the winter. It’s all that hibernating I do.”

  Heat gathered deep in her pelvis at the sight of his exposed belly.

  “You’re not fat.”

  Lila sat up, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him onto her.

  “I’ll crush you,” Henry whispered, and she murmured back, “No, you won’t,” and he settled over her and covered her mouth with his, kissing her like the world itself was ending in twenty minutes. He slid his hand under her head, grabbed her hair at the root, and pushed her even closer to him, his hot delicious tongue exploring the inside of her lips and the edges of her teeth.

  Lila ground her pelvis against his thigh, whimpered into his mouth, tugged the back of his shirt up. She pulled away just long enough to tell him, “Take your shirt off.”

  “You first,” he returned, and he sat up, the thick curve of his cock pressing between her thighs. She moaned at the feel of it, her hips rising to rub the aching bead of her clit against him. He growled at the back of his throat, and he wrestled her shirt off and then his own, reached under her to unclip her plain gray bra.

  Her tits fit perfectly in the bowl of his hand, and he kneaded them between his fingers, brought his head down to her nipples. He licked one, tentatively. “Is that okay?”

  Lila nodded, grabbed a handful of his soft dark hair, and pushed his head back down. Her other hand under the waistband of his sweats, into that incredible electric heat. She rubbed her palm against the smooth head of his cock, slick with pre-cum. He moaned against her breast, made her damp slit even wetter.

  “Condom,” she gasped, undoing her pants. “I need you. I need you.”

  Henry’s rough enormous hands reached under her, gently pulled her jeans over her hips, down her thighs, onto the floor. He grabbed her ass in both hands and massaged her cheeks, pulled them apart and pushed them together, murmuring, “God, Lila. God. You’re tremendous.”

  Lila nodded. “Please fuck me,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” he whispered back.

  In the dark of the room, Henry dropped his sweats and slipped on the condom. Lila eased out of her underwear, and Henry dipped his finger into her wetness, growled something needy and incoherent, pushed his finger deeper into her opening.

  Lila heard herself gasp. She couldn’t think, could barely keep her eyes open. Henry’s finger moved inside her, and she pushed herself down on his hand, drawing him in deeper, until the pad of his finger brushed that sweet spot deep in her cunt, and Lila moaned, reached for Henry and his impossibly hard member.

  He climbed on top of her and ran the tip of his cock up and down the length of her soaking swollen lips until Lila pushed her hips up again and again to meet him, whimpering and delirious with need.

  And then he pushed his thickness into her, and she spread for him like he’d been made for her. She clutched at his hair, his neck, his back. Her hips collided hard with his. Henry drove into her over and over, inexhaustible, his dick hitting her in her deepest, most sensitive parts.

  Her orgasm built up inside her like a storm, her own wetness running down her thighs and ass. She felt him pulse inside her, heard his gasps turn into sublime moans, and suddenly Henry sat up, still firmly inside her, lifted her by her hips, and pounded into her hard and fast, deeper than he’d ever been, deeper than anyone had ever been, some place of profound heat that sent her orgasm thundering from her belly all the way down to her clit, to her tingling pussy lips, and further still, down to the very soles of her feet.

  Lila came with a cry of astonishment, and moments later, Henry burst inside her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs, his cheeks flushed and his eyes closed.

  He withdrew and paused for a second, holding his emptied balls, staring at her nakedness in disbelief.

  “What?” she said, shyly.

  “You’re tremendous, Lila Ellis.” Henry stood on shaking legs, blinked like a man seeing the world for the first time, and wandered into the bathroom to clean himself up.

  Lila stared at the ceiling, her eyes glassy, her head and her pussy pulsing with the eternal thrum of her heart. She didn’t know she could finish like that. She never could before.

  But then, she’d never been with anyone like Henry before.

  She tilted her head to look at the clock. It was a little after midnight on the first day of a brand new year.

  The bathroom door squeaked open, and Henry climbed back under the covers. He drew Lila’s naked body to his and kissed the back of her neck. His stubble made her shiver.

  Lila tilted her head to look at him. His soft-lidded, perfectly content smile made her whole being feel lighter. “Happy new year,” she told him. And then she kissed him, gentle and sweet as she could.

  “You better come back for the next one.” He held her tighter, and Lila ran her hands up and down his forearms, trying to remember the shape of them.

  “Or sooner.”

  “Or sooner,” he agreed.

  They held each other all night and watched the window, waiting for dawn.

  BEARLY PROTECTED TITLE PAGE

  Bearly Protected

  Big Paw Security Book II

  by

  Becca Fanning

  BEARLY PROTECTED

  “Beth, listen to me. You've done all you can. It isn't safe for you anymore. Take a few days off, lay low, and you can come back to work when all of this blows over. It will blow over, I promise. Beth, listen to Cheryl and I. Your life depends on it.”

  “Beth! Are you listening to me? Beth!”

  Beth Anthem shook herself back to reality. Whatever her boss, Jeff Kastner, had just told her had went in one ear and out of the other. If Cheryl hadn't gotten in her face and yelled her name, she didn't know if she would ever have come out of her trance.