Bear Meets Bride (Online Shifter Dating Agency Romance) (12 page)

He shook his head, hoping that really was everything.

“You sure about that? Take your time and have a think about it,” she said with a teasing grin.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Divorced with ten kids? Ex-con?”

“Definitely not.”

“Scientologist?”

“No!”

“Trekkie?”

“Not really.”

“You sure? Don’t hide it from me if you speak Klingon.”

“How would you know I was?” he said, reaching over and tickling her.

With a bit of perseverance and good humor, she eased off. It was very late and they both knew that, when they woke up the next morning, the world would be back to normal again…even if ‘normal’ was a little different than they originally thought it was.

19

When the autopsy results came back, nervous folk who had yet to warm to having shifters in their midst would have to accept that Andrew Karl Neiman was not simply mad or evil but that, as was usually the case, life was a bit more complicated.

Of all the findings that were revealed, the standout factor proved to be the discovery of a bullet lodged in Neiman’s skull. No shots had been fired at him at any time during the investigation and, after a bit of digging into the shifter’s personal history, now they knew who he was, investigators were able to discover that he had been involved in a shooting incident at a time when he had been helping police round up a known felon.

Neiman had been a park ranger and, by all accounts, was extremely well-liked and respected. He had survived a brush with death after the bullet hit him, something doctors told him was as good as a miracle. Retrospect told that he had clearly been changed, however, and was unable to live with the lasting complications. The effects of a bullet embedded so close to the brain could be uncertain, and doctors had urged Neiman to seek out help if he experienced any behavioral changes. Whether through pride or delusion, this was a piece of advice he had overlooked when his bear form started to go out of control.

Rather than taking advantage of his growing bloodlust, the discovery of a diary had confirmed that Neiman had struggled tragically with his own acceptance of the behavior and where it might come from. Clearly some deep psychological issues had lingered from times when ‘shifter’ had been a misunderstood word and some of the prejudice had started to dig in. Behaving in a manner that dirty stereotypes had always told him were part of his nature deep down made him feel like a ‘monster’. What grip he still had over his personality began to crumble at a rate that accelerated since his bullet wound. He called himself ‘cursed’ and became more and more inclined to give in to the notion that killing was in his blood and that non-shifter human beings were his enemy.

In the end, his soul in torment had gone after a contradiction upon discovering a fellow bear shifter was in the ranks of the forces charged with tracking him down. This man was still going about his life with the assumption that shifters could really be accepted and appearing to look very smug and happy about it—so the diary recalls. As a result of this ‘hypocrisy’, Neiman wanted to see his own curse spread. That was when the random killings had stopped and Neiman’s attention had moved on to the desire to see Tom’s world crumble around him.

Of all those investigating, Tom had been closest to figuring this out, and Jake was urging him to seek a promotion as a result, considering the lives that had been changed. For his part, Tom wasn’t sure and just wanted to let life settle down, enjoy his time with Erin and put the case behind him as much as possible—though he took comfort that the press reports had no reason to question the integrity of shifters as a result. Unfortunate medical factors had been at work and, though it took some clever analysts to point out, the case wasn’t setting a precedent. Although murder had not been involved, the story of Phineas Gage, a railroad construction foreman who had lived during the nineteenth century, showed that humans and shifters were subject to the same biological quirks. Gage had somehow survived a large iron rod being shoved completely through his brain and lived on for twelve more years. However, the man who survived appeared—to those who knew him—to be someone else completely. Due to the loss of his left frontal lobe, Gage had undergone a complete personality change and had—as good as—become another person.

Something similar had been happening with Neiman’s personality because of the bullet, except that the new personality had been violent; that of a serial killer’s mentality, only with a bear’s form to manipulate when choosing its victims.

By the time of his attack on Erin’s bakery, the civilized and well-spoken Neiman was becoming more and more repressed by the violent and sinister replacement and was probably close to being extinguished completely.

On learning of the findings—which Erin made a big deal out of reading up on thoroughly, having turned over a new leaf about having her head in the sand—she could not help recalling Neiman’s soft and innocent face when his dead body had shifted back into human form. She was surprised to admit it, but she told Tom that she pitied rather than hated the shifter. He was unlucky…and luck clearly played a big part in all their lives.

When it came to adjusting to other matters, Erin couldn’t say that she did so without difficulty. For a time, on almost everything that Tom did, she found herself wondering as to whether his reaction should be interpreted as a human or bear one. Obviously, whenever his stomach was involved, that was the bear side at work, but for everything else it was hard to say. In addition, she found that her mind couldn’t help going over and over the early stages of their relationship in looking to figure out if she had misinterpreted anything.

She didn’t quite understand the need to turn into an animal and wander off to do animal things, even if she had never had any problem with the gene existing.

In the end it was a visit to Jake’s, advertised as a casual get-together but clearly a way of restoring workplace bonds and morale after a traumatic time, that helped her really come to terms with who and what Tom really was. On seeing Tom interact with his work colleagues, including Nana Morgan and her fiancé, as well as Jake’s family who had returned from Oregon, Erin saw Tom for what she needed to at last: a totally normal person. They had all known him for longer than she did, and none of them treated him any differently just because he could turn into a bear.

That night, as the snows returned outside, she snugly curled up in his arms and forgot all her dilemmas. Love and companionship could be confusing entities, but who would choose to not have them in their lives?

***

The next morning, she woke earlier than him and went downstairs to make the kind of breakfast that a grizzly bear would need to get going in the morning. She took so much pride in cooking that having a lover with such a big appetite had many advantages and so it was time to get back to enjoying themselves again, free from the likelihood of danger poised to rear its ugly head.

Tom woke up and joined her in the kitchen just as the bacon was getting crispy, and he wrapped his big arms around her. His bare chest pressed up against Erin’s back, and she smiled and turned the burner off.

“Just in time,” she said.

“Mmm…how lucky am I to wake up to this every day?” he replied.

“Wait…you think you’re getting breakfast like this every day from now on?” Erin said with a hint of mischief in her voice. “Wait…no! Don’t tickle me again…I was kidding!”

“Too late,” he said, hands roaming all over her curves. “The food can wait a few minutes to cool down…I’m hungry for something else right now.”

“Oh, very witty,” Erin replied as she turned around, although to tell the truth, looking at him shirtless and was really turning her on as well.

She teasingly pulled her pajama top off, and his eyes widened as her nipples puckered into stiff points. A raging fire burned through Erin’s blood as she watched her shifter lover’s reaction, and she smiled. “Want me to take the rest off?” she asked, reaching down and fingering the sides of her pajama shorts.

“Yes,” he growled, reaching over and grabbing her hips in his strong hands as he picked her up and carried her out of the kitchen and over to the lounge room sofa. “And then I want you on me.”

Erin definitely wasn’t going to say no to that.

She straddled him on the sofa, reaching down and grasping his cock with one hand. He reached up and groped at her breasts, squeezing and kneading the soft flesh. Erin moaned, pushing herself into his hands, and he pinched her nipples as her eyes glazed over with wanton need.

“Come on, Erin…ride me,” he whispered as she rubbed herself on his groin.

She nodded. Then she lifted her hips and placed the head of his cock right at her entrance, and the swollen heat from her core begged him to enter. To claim what was his. Tom’s fingers curled around her waist and pulled her down at the same time as he lifted his hips again, impaling her on his shaft. He grabbed her ass and moved her up and down, hard and fast, barely giving her time for her body to adjust to the thrilling invasion.

“God, you’re so sexy,” he growled, and Erin cried out for him as her hips rocked back and forth.

Moving her head down a little, she nipped at his chest, and his hard cock jerked inside her. She smiled and moved back again, looking down and watching as his cock disappeared from tip to base into her. Tom groaned, and Erin gasped at the same time as her muscles began to contract around him. She was getting closer and closer to the edge, and when he reached a hand down and began to rub his thumb over her clitoris, her body shook with spasms. It was too hard for her to keep bouncing up and down on him as the pleasure seared every nerve in her body, but he held her steady against his muscular chest and flipped her over onto her back.

“Oh god…oh god. Tom!” Erin’s head dropped forward, her nails digging into his shoulders as she clung to him. “I’m going to…”

His thrusts turned rougher, slamming harder into her, and her entire body tensed as her muscles locked around him. So close now. One more hard thrust and she felt like screaming the house down as she rode out the waves of her orgasm, arms and legs twitching and shuddering beneath the gorgeous man above her. He leaned forward, closer and closer, and he sucked one of her stiff nipples into his mouth. A long moan of bliss escaped Erin’s mouth, and he slammed back into her and nipped gently at the tiny tip as he did so.

Hot wetness soaked Erin as her muscles clenched hard around him, and he made one final push inside her before a loud growl rushed up his throat. Gasping for air, Erin watched as his own pleasure overtook him, and there wasn’t a shred of doubt in her mind that she loved this man.

The two finally broke apart and reclined on the sofa, gasping as they caught their breath.

“I’m kinda hungry for the food now,” Tom said, glancing over at Erin with a cheeky smile.

“Same. By the way, I even made Hollandaise sauce for the eggs.”

“Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better,” he replied, jumping to his feet.

“And just think…you didn’t even have to break into my bakery to get all the goods this time,” Erin said, also getting up and padding back into the kitchen.

“Are you ever going to let me live that down?” Tom asked as he rummaged around in a nearby drawer.

Erin snickered as she plated up bacon, eggs, mushrooms and toast in the kitchen. “Never.”

“Not even if I give you this?”

“Give me what?”

Erin turned around to see what Tom was talking about, and she nearly dropped the plate of bacon she was holding. He was on one knee, holding out a beautiful ring and gazing up at her adoringly.

“I was going to wait for a big special moment to do this, but…well…every moment with you is special, and I just couldn’t wait,” he said. “So, Erin Silguero…will you make me the happiest man on earth and be my bride one day soon?”

Tears of joy sprang to Erin’s eyes. “Oh my god…yes!” she said.

Tom grinned and slid the ring onto her left hand, and once again they embraced in a tight hug.
He’s right,
Erin decided. No matter what they were doing, every moment the two of them spent together was a special moment.

She’d never had any idea that her perfect man might be a bear shifter, and she’d only met him through what seemed to be either a stroke of luck, or her own sheer silliness, seeing as she hadn’t even realized she’d been browsing an online dating site for shifters. Either way, everything had worked out perfectly. She’d ‘dared to bear’, and now she was finally engaged to be married to the man who’d turned out to be the love of her life.

Another bear shifter might have tried to harm her recently, but her savior had worn a furry coat as well. Just like the non-shifter human race, the shifter side had its fair share of the good and the bad….and she’d definitely found one of the good ones.

THE END

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