A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) (10 page)

They were fated to be together. Alison knew the truth of the words in her blood. She’d known from the moment he touched her, even if she didn’t have the right words for it then. She wanted to ask him what it meant, to talk it over, but since leaving the Raven Queen’s Hot Topic Goth-er Than Thou Lair of Eternal Blackness and Slinky Dresses, he’d been quiet, saying only what he needed to. Michael didn’t seem mad at her, not at all. He seemed embarrassed, worried even.
 

The kiss burned on her forehead.

Once, as a little girl, she and her sisters had been watching that Christmas Story movie. The one with Ralphie and the parade of misfortune? There’s a scene where he dares his friend to stick his tongue to a frozen telephone pole and he does. And it sticks and hilarity ensues. Well, her older sister Diana did not believe that would happen. “No way,” she said. “That’s not how tongues work.” She was ten years Alison’s elder and to a four year old, the epitome of worldly knowledge. So when Vivian, the next oldest, decided to argue the point they decided a practical experiment was in order. The sisters went to the freezer, where their mother had approximately nine thousand cans of frozen lemonade cooling, awaiting some summer day. Alison couldn’t remember the exact details, but the sisters had talked it over and come to the conclusion that the metal lid of a can of freezer juice was the closest they could come to a wintry telephone pole and for some reason, Alison had to be the one to stick her tongue to the can. “It won’t stick,” Diana swore. “Don’t be a baby.” But then Vivian countered with, “It’s going to stick so bad they’ll need to buy you a new tongue.” Sure enough, Alison’s tongue stuck to that can, burning coldly and painfully. Her sisters ran around like cats with their tails on fire, crying and screaming even louder than Alison. They needed to get the can off her tongue before their mom got home, and Vivian was sure Alison was going to get “freezer burn” on her tongue, so instead of doing the smart thing and thawing the can with warm water until it slid from her tongue, they tore it off, leaving the tippiest bit of Alison’s tongue a little bloody circle.

That was how her head felt now, like the Raven Queen’s lingering kiss was a can of frozen juice pressed to her head, only she didn’t know how to pull it off.

As they picked their way down the path, trying to be quiet and sneaky, both of them thoroughly rubbed with musk sage and other strong-smelling botanicals, Alison busied her mind by naming every plant they passed, identifying the edible and the medicinal and the toxic. The plants near the citadel were all impossibly large. She saw blueberries as large as baseballs and a bush of northern monkshood with spurred fruit larger than her leg. It was unreal. But as they passed through the Rookswood, out into the forests surrounding Bearfield, the plants dwindled in size until they were normal again, though the distribution was odd. Alison would have said
unnatural
but after meeting the queen of the ravens, she wasn’t sure what that even meant anymore. There was a precipice her mind was approaching. As a scientist, she believed the world had rules. Hard, strict rules for how things behaved. There were equations that determined how large plants could grow, where they could thrive. But those systems that governed the rest of the world didn’t apply here. Bearfield was exempt. How could she accept that?
 

Creeping down the deer trails, toward the thicket where the queen swore Jack Sable lived, Alison saw plants that shouldn’t thrive in the western hemisphere at all. She saw plants that were thought to be extinct. She saw plants that resembled the familiar, but with tiny differences that made her head spin. So even trying to name and classify the world around eventually offered no solace. It was just as confusing and odd as the rest of Bearfield.

Could she really live here? Her dream was to open a bed and brew, to make amazing beer and put down roots somewhere kind and good. Was Bearfield that place? Or did horrible shifters lurk under every rock?

And most importantly,
what was Michael?
She knew he was more than human. The clues and comments had been too frequent to miss, but what was he? If he was her mate, and she was destined to be with him—well what if he was something awful, like a salamander shifter or some nasty thing that ate people? It could be possible, right? If skinny ass raven bitches could have secret kingdoms just north of wine country, anything could happen. But looking at the man, the strength of his shoulders, the taut roundness of his butt, the way he roved ahead and then always glanced back with kind, concerned eyes to make sure she was safe—she knew he wasn’t bad. Whatever he was, it was good and warm and sexy as hell.

Maybe being Michael’s mate wouldn’t be so bad?

They stopped for lunch when they were still an hour away from Jack Sable’s location. The queen had drawn a map, given Michael directions that made sense to locals but to Alison’s ears were no better than code. “Past Janet Paley’s tree, take the old stream path. But if you get to where the Withers farm was, you’ve gone too far.” That sort of thing.

Alison’s stomach was growling for food, twisting and knotting itself like it’d been days, not hours, since she’d eaten. From her bag she produced a heavy sticky roll and two sandwiches. One appeared to be thinly sliced salmon and the other was some sort of roasted veggies and hummus deal.

“Nice food,” Michael said, breaking his concerned silence.

“Thanks, but I can’t take the credit. Your brother’s wife gave me this bag before we left.”

“Mina? She’s an amazing cook. We’re in for a treat,” he said, splitting the roll in two and offering her the larger half. “But they aren’t married yet. Soon though, another few months.”

Alison saw an opportunity and took it. “Are they
mated
?”

Michael’s eyes went wide. “Sort of? It’s hard to explain.” He took the salmon sandwich and started to walk away, to eat a bit further from her, but Alison reached out and took his hand.

“Please,” she said, almost gasping at the heat that raged inside her when their skin made contact. “Please tell me about them. I need to get my mind off that raven woman, off this Jack Sable guy. I just need a distraction, for a little bit.” And so Michael told her. He left things out, she knew, but he told her the important bits. How Mina had wrecked her car while passing through town. How Matt had been her attorney and Michael had given her a tow. Gangsters, a fight, and then amongst all of it, love.

“And then she opened her bakery—well, sort of. It’s still in process, but she’s baking out of it for the locals and the hotels and the Lodge now. Just until she gets it all set to open up the front to the public.”

Alison devoured her sandwich like it was made of air and then bit into the sweet roll. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure as the sugars coated her tongue. “Holy crap,” she said. “This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, ever. It’s a good thing she’s engaged or I’d have to marry her myself.”

Michael grinned. “Right? It’s a good thing Matt’s a shifter or he’d put on like a hundred pounds being married to her.”

Alison tried to chew, to enjoy the roll like Michael hadn’t accidentally admitted they were shifters. The big handsome man with the honey-brown eyes sighed and hung his head, knowing he’d messed up. She wanted to ask, to
know
, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. So instead she fished around in her knapsack and pulled out a long thin stoppered flask.

“Libation?” she asked, passing the flask to Michael. “It’s my own recipe. I sort of invented it in college. It’s a kind of mead made from orange blossom honey, but I add in sweet apple cider during the fermentation process to give it a sweeter finish. Well, now I use orange blossom honey. When I was in school I was so poor that I had to use like corner store honey. One of those honeybear squeezy containers, y’know? Also it didn’t ferment nearly long enough, that first batch. But I’ve worked out the kinks. ‘Orange blossom apple mead’ isn’t a great name, so I’ve always called it
Honeybear Wine
.”

Michael took the flask, popped out the cork stopper gently and sniffed at the liquid inside. A deep rumbling growl rolled out of his throat. He glanced up at Alison, his eyes wide with shock, but she just laughed.
 

“That’s an excellent response. Go ahead. Try some. I promise it isn’t poison. Actually, making this mead for my botany final is what first got me started on the idea of opening a brewery. At first it was a meadery, but mead just isn’t popular enough to make a whole restaurant around. Well, maybe in the city. They probably have mead hipsters in the city.”

Michael sipped the mead from her flask, his soft pouty lips grazing the top of the bottle so gently that it made her toes tingle. How would those lips feel kissing her toes and then her knees and then that sweetest spot just between her thighs? The gorgeous man groaned as he tasted it, his eyes squeezing shut with delight.

Then, in one quick motion, he was on top of her. It was so fast, Alison didn’t even see it happen. Her back was against the dry leaves and dust of the trail, her legs were parted with the big man’s hips between them. His eyes stared down into hers and she felt like if she looked too long the world would tip and she’d tumble into the swirls of gold in his eyes and be lost forever.

“Your honey wine is incredible,” he said, his voice a whisper. His breath smelled like honey and salmon and sun-dappled afternoons. He took another swig of the wine and then brought his lips to hers and then, in a trickle, let the wine pour from his mouth into hers. The wine tasted even sweeter than Alison remembered. She swallowed every drop and then whimpered as Michael’s lips pressed against hers in a fiery kiss. His hands slid up under shirt, the electricity of his touch making her skin sing with delight. Just being
touched
by this man felt better than any sex with Drew ever had. Something inside told her she should roll over, should slide her pants and underwear down and let him take her here, in the wild, like animals in heat. It’d be so easy, so right to give in to her desires.

As Michael’s hands found her breast and his wide rough thumbs began circling her nipples, Alison couldn’t resist running her hands down his wonderfully warm, magnificently hard body. His muscles were so firm they felt like oak under her touch. She’d felt mountains that were softer, steel that was more yielding. Not for the first time, she wondered at the feel of his cock. She’d already seen it, of course. She’d met his cock practically before she’d met him. But seeing and feeling and stroking and tasting were all such different things, and Alison wanted to do all of them. The heat between them built and grew, like two forest fires racing at each other, becoming something greater, something primal and elemental. The length of his cock was pressed into her thigh and she had no choice at all but to reach down and unbuckle his pants and free it. His lips were soft and demanding on hers, his thumbs teased her stiff nipples until she felt like she was going to burst, and the fire in her needed to be quenched in the only way that would work.

“Take my pants off,” she moaned into Michael’s mouth.

But.

Then.

Came.

A.

Sound.

The crunching of leaves and sticks under a heavy foot snapped her attention to the edge of the path, where a very, very large wolf was staring at them with glowing red eyes. Alison went still. She never liked wolves. Unlike other predators, they liked to play with their prey. They liked to use feints and gambits to draw your attention one way and then—she looked behind herself and sure enough, three of the largest wolves she’d ever seen we’re creeping up on her and Michael. They were timber wolves, she thought, with a coarse light brown fur with smatterings of white like a line of snow across their midsections.

Michael chose that moment to unzip her pants. He was so focused on her, that he’d missed the wolves. Alison slapped his hand, trying not to move too much. “Michael!” she whispered. “Wolves!”

He glanced at her quizzically, like she was asking him to do some sort of sex game he’d never heard of, but then his nose twitched and the man leapt to his feet in one fluid motion.
 

His pants remained behind.

Michael stood in the middle of the path, between Alison and the three sneaky wolves, butt naked, his hard cock pointing at the beasts like a secret weapon.
 

“What the hell is this?” Michael growled, a rumbling bass rolling from his throat, so deep and powerful that it shook Alison’s bones.

“Timber wolves,” Alison said, finding her feet slowly after taking time to fasten her pants.

“Shifters,” he said. “What the fuck are werewolves doing in Bearfield? Your kind aren’t allowed here.”

The three wolves looked at each other, backing away from Michael. They had the look of beasts who’d gone after prey only to realize they’d stumbled on a predator. The lone wolf, the one facing Alison, crept closer. She wished she could growl and roar her strength to the canine, to make him clench his fluffy tail between his legs like a terrified little doggie. Instead she just looked the wolf in the eyes and said, “Get the hell away from me. This man is my mate.”

Saying it made it true. She
was
his mate. She’d known since they first touched. Denying it, hiding it, pretending it was something else didn’t change the fact that they belonged together. She’d expected the relief that flooded her veins when she said
mate,
but the utter light-hearted happiness that followed almost knocked her down. Most people spend their entire lives chasing love without ever finding the real thing. They settle. They mistake affection for romance. They choose companionship over the toe-curling, panty-wetting awe of real love. But she’d found it. She wasn’t even thirty yet, and she’d found her true love. And oh, by the way, he was a gorgeous mountain of a man with a heart of gold and the sexiest shrug you’ve ever seen.
 

The trees on either side of the path rustled, and more wolves emerged, circling them with fangs bared, slavering with thick clear drool. There were at least ten wolves. Maybe more.