Red's Bear (Erotic Shifter Fairy Tales) (9 page)

If she hadn’t come to Den to rest and recuperate, she
would have been appalled she’d slept so late. She’d always been an early riser,
up with the sun. Slipping from her cocoon, she stood beside the bed. She waited
for the wave of nausea that always greeted her in the mornings when she rose.
Feeling nothing, she let out a sigh and went into the bathroom.

After a quick shower, she pulled on her robe and went
to find sustenance. She had a craving for her grandmother’s muffins. As soon as
she entered the kitchen, she grabbed one from the tin and devoured it while she
stood in front of the open refrigerator deciding what else to cook.

Licking the sticky sweetness from her fingers, she
decided on cream of wheat and eggs. Not as devout a vegan as her mother, Rena
enjoyed an egg and other dairy products every now and then. Instead of grabbing
the stick of butter to fry her eggs in, she opted for the sweet butter her
grandmother said was from the diner in town.

She was thankful that she was feeling better, because
consuming so many sweets was going to swell her hips, more than they already
were, and she would need to exercise.

Once her breakfast was made, she set the plate on the
bar. The only thing missing was a sweetener for her cream of wheat. She went to
the pantry for the agave nectar her grandmother had picked up for her.

At the door down the short hall from the back door, she
flicked the light switch then opened the pantry. Entering the small room, she
was amazed to see the many shelves of homemade canned fruits and vegetables as
well as other staple items. Her grandmother had enough stuff in there to hold
her over for several months.

Spotting what she was looking for, she stepped into the
room and grabbed the bottle on the shelf in front of her. Turning to leave, she
halted in her steps. Before her eyes, on the shelves adjacent to the door, had
to be more than a hundred jars of honey.

Since she had arrived at her grandmother’s house and
begun to feel better, she had not thought about the cravings that had plagued
her. Now, having one of them less than an arm reach away, the desire for the
golden syrup crashed into her like a tidal wave.

The salivation started first, followed by the tremors
in her limbs that ended with heat. Her temperature spiked so high she was
sweating. Not just a light sheen of sweat, but her palms were damp, a bead of
perspiration was running under one breast and her bare thighs beneath her terry
cloth robe were slick.

One taste
. A voice called out from inside of
her, seeming both a part of her and separate at the same time.

“I shouldn’t.” Rena argued, feeling as if she were
losing her mind. Lifting a hand, she caressed the cool glass trapping the honey
from her fingers.

One taste
.

I have to get out of here.
Rena felt as if her feet were
rooted to the floor as she fought against her indecision.

~YH~

It wasn’t the smell of fried eggs, or the warm fragrant
scent of steamed wheat that bombarded his senses when he entered Genma’s home.
After spending the last two hours pulling up the summer flowers and preparing
the soil for the winter buds he would plant, he’d come inside for the
instructions Genma said she would leave for him.

He had not gotten more than two steps past the back
door before he picked up on it, honeyed asters. Stronger than the light trace
he’d detected last night by the lake, it was now heavy and saturating the air.

His bear, who was normally subdued during the day,
reared up inside of him and propelled Cord to action.

Hunt. Claim
.

Cord’s vision became narrowed. Everything around him
was painted in a golden hue. His body became tight, as each hair on his arms
and the back of his neck rose. Need burned through his body, setting his blood
on fire.

Moving on nothing but animal instinct to locate the
source of the scent, he turned right down the short hall. The only thing before
him was the door leading to Genma’s pantry. However, before he could enter it,
he was struck hard by something against his chest.

Not something, but someone. Her.

He didn’t even have time to make out her blurred form
as she’d come running out of the pantry as if she was being stalked by
something. Then she was in his arms.

His mind shut off and his body responded. No time to
weigh the right and wrong of it, he pulled her to him and lowered his mouth to
hers.

Cupping her face, he held her against him. Not giving
her any space to deny him what he wanted. Her. Not a request. No permission.
Like some Roman gladiator, he was willing to conquer anything that stood in the
way of his kissing her. His woman.

His bear knew it from a whiff of her scent.

Cord knew it from the moment he tasted her.

If she would have fought against him, he would not have
been shocked. However, she didn’t. She gave back to him all the fierce passion
that he showed her.

They bumped up against something. He wasn’t even aware
he’d moved forward. Pressing closer, he sandwiched her between himself and the
structure. The taste of her mouth was sweet and hot, like warm honey. He
couldn’t get enough.

She buried her hands in his hair, pulling the cool
strands out of the band that held it back while he worked. He didn’t care. He
wanted to make a mess of her as well.

He had to assure himself that she wasn’t a mirage. That
he wasn’t dreaming and she wasn’t a figment of his imagination, again. His
mouth left hers and trailed down her chin, tasting her scent. The savory flavor
of her skin and the smell of her heat was a cornucopia of pleasures to his
senses.

She sighed.

Pulling open her robe, he touched her. The delicate
curve of her waist was softer than silk against his fingertips. She was real.

His cock was hard, swollen with the demand to be
sheathed inside of her and to claim her, marking her as his forever. His bear
rejoiced, and a low growl broke forth from his lips as he licked the upper
swell of her breast.

She placed her hand against his chest, her fingers
flexed and dug into his pec.

“I need you… Let me in. Don’t deny us.” Snatching her
robe wider and off her shoulder, he glided his tongue lower ready to suckle the
tight twin peaks.

“What was—wait—stop!” She shoved him.

He felt the stinging slap on his cheek. The impact
barely turned his head. His mind was a fog of lust, but her resistance and
assault was a wind of sanity clearing the haze. Dropping his hands from her, he
stepped back. He didn’t want to, and every foot of space that he created
between the two of them was painful, a stab in the gut.

Bumping against the wall a short distance across from
the pantry, he dragged in several breaths, filling his lungs. The madness of
lust was slow to clear as he took in the beautiful black female before him.
Slender with sienna-kissed skin, the color of Native American clay. She had a
narrow waist but hips so full he could imagine holding them firmly as he
pounded his cock deep inside of her. His dick twitched in approval.

Noticing his gaze along her body, the female before him
yanked the sides of her robe together, shutting him off from the tantalizing
view. He clenched his fist to keep from reaching out and ripping the robe away
from her body and shredding it.

“Who are you?” There was a tremor to her voice, but it
still maintained a sultry huskiness.

Her words pulled his gaze to her face and he was struck
by a bolt of lightning. She had the face of one of the Great Spirit’s angels.
He took in the oval shape, with her broad nose, wide lips so plump he could
kiss them for hours. Her eyes were hazel with a hint of gold sparkling in their
depth. A Were-bear, but not.

“Did you hear me? Explain yourself. What kind of person
comes into someone’s house and accosts them? Not a sane one that’s for sure.”
She folded her arms over her breasts and eyed him.

It was her unique hazel eyes that clued him in to who
she was, after all these years. “It’s you.”

She frowned. “What? Of course I’m me. The question was,
who the
hell
are you?”

“You don’t remember? Remember me?” He banged his head
back against the wooden wall.

Staring at him, she allowed her gaze to travel along
his body from head to toe. Her perusal was causing the heat that had lowered to
a simmer to spike again.

He stifled a growl.

Evidently, not enough, he thought as he watched her
head lift sharply.

Tilting her head, she looked into his face. “What’s
wrong with your eyes?” She sounded breathless, as she said, “They’re gold.”

Better to see your lust with, my
dear.

He pushed the bold words away and considered the female
before him. Not as unaffected by him as she was trying to make him believe.
However, he hadn’t been convinced anyway, not only from the passion in her kiss
earlier, but by the scent of her arousal that was still teasing him from the
three-foot distance.

Lowering his head, he closed his eyes and took a deep
breath. He inhaled two more times, trying to think calming thoughts instead of
the female before him. Once he felt a little more at ease and less like he
wanted to pounce across the floor at her, he opened his eyes.

When the pucker in her brows deepened, showing
confusion in her features, it was a declaration that his eyes had returned to
black. Instead of answering her last question, he said, “I’m Cord. Cord Bjorn,
Rena.”

The lids around her hazel eyes stretched wide with
shock. “How do you know my name? Did my grandmother tell you I was here?”

“I have never forgotten a thing about the last time I
saw you. Or you.” He confessed. It was the truth. Over the years his memory of
her had begun to fade, but not how he felt about her. Not about the experience
of the first time his eyes had shifted to gold. It had been when he kissed her.

They had been so young then. She had blossomed from the
girl she was into a real beauty.

“You don’t recall.”

Pushing off the wall, she moved into the kitchen.
Standing by the sink she kept her back to him. “I’d only come for a week or two
in the summer and it’s been too many years since the last time I was here. How
could I remember?”

Hearing those words was like a weight crushing on his
heart. However, he wouldn’t give up, not this time. She was his.

Now that the heat had cleared his mind, some, he was
able to have more lucid thoughts. Something was wrong. As a Were-female she
should not have been able to resist the mating lust once it was upon them. Her
return kiss had been passionate, desperate and fierce, yet still restrained.

Inhaling deeply, wanting to capture her scent, imprint
it on his soul, he became more aware of the problem. Under the floral honey
notes of her scent, there should have been marking of her species—Were-bear
markings. Rena’s was faint. Almost as if she was a young Were. One just coming
into maturity.

However, she had to be close to thirty and that change
took place around their sixteenth human year. Like how old he was the first
time he’d kissed her.

“Why have you stayed away so long?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder then turned to
face him, slowly. “I don’t know what business that is of yours. I’m still
trying to figure out how I can get you out of this house and off my
grandmother’s property.”

A single corner of his mouth kicked up, she was a bold
saucy thing. He liked his women with backbone. “You can’t. I’m here to do a job
for Genma while she’s gone.”

She lowered her head, dropping it into her hands. “Oh,
goodness, that’s right…the landscaper was coming.”

“In the flesh.” Widening his stance, he folded his arms
over his chest.

Raising her head, she gave him a small smile. A false
smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Look, you’re here to do a job. So, we will
just keep out of each other’s way and chalk up the kiss to a mistake.”

“It wasn’t,” he declared.

The smile slipped some. “Okay, we will say…you were
expecting someone else.”

“I wasn’t.”

The smile on her mouth was only held in place because
she was clenching her teeth. “Would you prefer that I radio the sheriff and
tell him you accosted me?”

Laughter rumbled through his chest and exploded into
the room as he tipped his head back letting it free.

“I’m not sure what you see is so funny.”

She would if she were fully Were. Sheriff Smokey would
walk into the house and take one whiff of the heat boiling between them and
Cord’s golden gaze and know what was going on. The law man would turn right
around and leave. In Den County the law didn’t interfere in life mate issues.
The mates were expected to work it out or die trying.

Composing himself, he said, “It would take too long to
explain and as you said, I have work to do.”