Read A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) for Free Online Page A

forgotten any reason she had to be mad at him shortly thereafter.
    But Alison was different.  
    He could barely talk to her. He was so eager to make the right impression, to not freak her out with the shifter stuff, that he just mumbled and grunted like some caveman. It would’ve been easier to just pretend he knew no English. Maybe then he wouldn’t have said so many dumb things.
    Maybe you missed. She’d shot him right in the chest and he basically called her a liar. Way to start the relationship, jerk. Lies and evasion and breaking into her home do not a good first impression make. Just because his bear—who was oddly still and quiet—thought she was his one true mate, the woman he was fated to be with, didn’t mean she thought that.
    The old stories they told in the Lodge on Bear Night were full of fated mates gone wrong. It was basically the old codgers’ favorite topic, aside from “Once I Did A Badass Thing.” Matt now had his story to share, how he’d found his mate and fought a were-shark. The old timers would be buying him drinks for years off that one. Michael would be damned if his contribution to the lore of Bearfield was “I Broke Into My Mate’s House Naked And Now She Won’t Speak To Me. PS Ravens Suck.”
    So when Michael was awoken in the late morning by Sheriff Pete banging on the door of his shack, he shifted into man form, pulled on some pants and a vintage Carebears shirt with the Irish bear on it, whatever his name was, and presented himself for arrest. Old Petey was freshly shaven, his round pink face looking tired and annoyed in the late morning sun. The man had a thick white mustache that looked like it was right off of Old Cops Magazine and bushy eyebrows that would have been more at home on a muppet. He wore a uniform shirt that was one size too small, and the buttons strained as Old Pete went about his business.
    “I’m real sorry, Michael. You know I am.”
    “It’s okay, Pete.” Michael looped a thick chain through the door of his shack, snapping it shut with a padlock. It was mostly for show. Even Pete could have pulled the door off the hinges if he’d given it half a try. “You’re just doing your job.”
    “No, you idiot. I’m not sorry for arresting you. What the heck were you thinking breaking into that woman’s home?” Pete’s pink face grew redder with grumpy exertion.
    “I didn’t know she lived there!”
    “Didn’t you smell her? See her car? With all your gifts that the great bear saw fit to bestow on you, how can you blunder about like this?”
    “There was too much honey, too much junk in that house. I couldn’t smell a damn thing. And there wasn’t any car last night.”
    “Well, there’s a car this morning. A car full of pissed off women, so you better be on your best behavior.”
    Michael sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He had barely slept. He’d been thinking about Alison all night. The fire he saw in her eyes when she leveled the gun at him, the way her wide soft mouth fell open into a little O of surprise when she shot him. And the way the curves of her body caught the light and held it like pooled water. He’d never been with a curvy girl in his entire life. His usual type was lean and sporty, either dancer-thin or muscled and hard. The tourists Bearfield attracted were inevitably hikers and kayakers and mountain climbers. City girls with something to prove and no fear in their hearts. They took Michael to bed with the same fearlessness they showed the river or the mountain. Fucking him was as much a sport to them as anything else in Bearfield.
    But Alison was different. He could scent her attraction, but it was a different sort than he was used to. He couldn’t quite place it. And when he thought about the softness of her, the way it would feel to pin her down, to feel her legs wrap around him, to plunge deeply into her—he’d given his hand a workout last night, and still hadn’t been able to sleep.
    It was all her