Read Bear Your Teeth (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Shifter Romance) for Free Online Page A

bedroom, right? Why don’t you come visit some weekend? This place is... different from Cedar Falls, that’s for sure.”
    “And you’re an expert at subject changing. Listen, I gotta run,” she said, noticing the time. “Interview in thirty minutes.”
    Petunia sighed again and said goodbye. “Oh wait,” she said just as Paprika was about to hang up. “You know we need a dentist, right? The old witch doctor finally admitted that neither he, nor either of the weird zombie bear things he runs around with have steady enough hands for root canals.”
    “Witch doctor?”  Paprika asked, the shock evident in her voice.
    “It’s, yeah well, like I said, Jamesburg is a different sort of place.”
    “Huh. Well yeah I’ll tell Thor to move there, no problem.” She hit the button on the phone, and didn’t realize for at least three beats of her heart, what she’d just said.
    Opening her eyes halfway, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am definitely an idiot.”
    *
    T he interview came and went – it wasn’t a big thing, just a series of boring questions about how customer centric she was. Paprika found that kind of funny, because the old man who owned the Stop N Shop where she had applied to clerk was just about the gruffest, rudest guy she’d ever come across. Whenever she went in there for a drink or five or six candy bars, he just sorta watched her, old, unlit cigar between his stained lips.
    He never said much of anything except. “Anything else?” and “Any gas today?”
    In fact, the interview was the first time she found out his name was Norman. Norman Cruise, proprietor, was the way he’d introduced himself. He was nicer during the interview than he was during midnight candy runs, but Rika got the distinct feeling that working the graveyard at a gas station was probably not where she wanted to end up.
    Of course, she wasn’t really sure where she did want to end up, except that she couldn’t get that big damn bear out of her head. Nor could she forget what she said to Petunia. How casually she’d said it. I hope she knows it was a joke. Oh wait, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. And that’s going to take some explaining .
    With her purse in one hand, a folio folder with a resume in the other – turns out? Gas stations? Don’t really care about your resume – and a six pack of beer and one half-gallon of milk in a sack over her shoulder, she shambled to the door. She felt guilty just buying the beer at two in the afternoon, so she grabbed the milk, too, to make it look like she was just out shopping. It probably didn’t fool anyone, but hey, it made her feel a little better.
    “Son of a bitch,” she groaned, when she turned the door handle that connected her basement directly to the outside world. She’d dead bolted it, then promptly forgot and left through the front door. The thought crossed her mind that maybe she was getting a little batty in her old age.
    Steeling herself for probable contact with the alien life form known as her mother, Paprika started really wishing that the bag with the beer in it wasn’t clear. Her mom, she thought, would probably want to mix it with Gatorade powder.
    Shuddering at the thought, she tried every way she could think of to open the thumb-latch door, but just couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve putting all of her carefully picked up belongings down, and that was just out of the question.
    Unfortunately, just as she was about to execute her carefully planned balancing act, the door swung open, both screwing up Paprika’s plan, and also removing the thing she was using to balance on, which sent her into one hell of a spill. Feet over head, bottles over milk, she tumbled through the threshold, over her very surprised looking mother’s outstretched hands, and straight into...
    Holy shit .
    “What are you doing here?” she asked the giant standing in front of her, who had managed to catch her, and two bottles of Pale Ale. “I was