Alpha Rancher Bear: BWWM Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 3)

by Zoe Chant

  "Over near Farmington. My dad was the vet out there."

  "Wait—Doc Russell?" Alec looked suddenly interested. "You're Doc Russell's daughter?"

  Charmian couldn't help laughing. Everyone knew her dad. "Yes. I'm surprised you didn't recognize the name. And ..." She waved a hand at herself. "There aren't all that many black families in the county."

  "I didn't know Doc Russell had a daughter. We usually went to Doc Henderson for the cattle because he used to be friends with my dad, but we had to call your dad a couple of times. He seemed like a good guy." Alec hesitated. "Er ... I hope he's not ... I know he sold his practice, but ..."

  "Oh, Dad's fine. He and Mom moved down to Florida a couple of years ago. He said he was too old to take the winters up here anymore."

  Alec nodded. A hint of sorrow flashed through his eyes, and she wondered if his parents were dead. He seemed young for it; he was only about her age, maybe a couple years younger, and her parents were still in good health, barely retirement age. Still, he hadn't said anything about them, and they didn't seem to be living on the ranch.

  Charmian hastily hunted around for a tactful way to ask.

  "Do you live here alone? In the house, I mean," she corrected herself. Of course he wasn't alone, with Remy and Saffron right across the yard, and apparently other families as well.

  "I share the house with Cody, my cousin. Used to be me and my brother Axl, but he found Tara and they moved into Cody's house across the yard, and Cody moved up here."

  "How many of you are there? I've met Remy—he usually brings in Saffron to her appointments. But I don't know any of the others. I'm starting to lose track."

  "There's really just two sets of cousins." Alec seemed to relax a bit, warming to the topic. "Me and my brother Axl, and our cousins Cody and Remy. And Remy and Axl's mates, of course, Saffron and Tara. There's one more member of the clan who's not related to us, and that's the hired man, Gannon. He lives in a cabin in the upper pasture."

  She looked out again at the snow. "Even in this weather?"

  "Oh, that doesn't bother him at all. The cabin is the original one my great-grandparents built when they first moved here, and it's as snug a den as any bear could ask for." Another of those almost-smiles touched his mouth. "If you like the mountains, you would probably like it up at the cabin."

  "I'd love to see it." The words slipped out before she knew it.

  And, at the same time, she became aware of something else. During the conversation, he'd been drifting closer to her—or maybe she had been moving closer to him, as the ice between them thawed. Now she realized she was standing so near that she could have reached out and touched him, if she had wanted to.

  Oh, did she want to. Every time he moved, his shoulders flexed under that shirt. He had full lips, something she hadn't been able to appreciate as they were usually tightened as if he was trying to hold back a snarl—or a smile. But now she couldn't stop thinking about how those lips would feel on hers, capturing her mouth with their heat—

  Alec took a step back, and she let out the breath she'd been holding. Of course nothing was going to happen between them. Even when he got friendly, it was as if he didn't want to get too close to her. As if she was the only one who felt that magnetic attraction between them.

  "Do you, uh ..." He made a vague gesture with the hand holding his coffee cup. "Do you want to see the rest of the house?"

  The way he asked was almost shy, as if he was afraid she'd say no.

  "I'd love to."

  Again that almost imperceptible brightening. "My grandfather built this house," Alec explained as he led the way into the kitchen. "This part of it, anyway. My dad added onto it later, when he married Mom. But this is all the old part of the house here."

  While he put their coffee cups in the sink, Charmian looked around the kitchen. It had a very pleasant, homey feeling to it. The walls were painted a warm yellow, and there was a massive cookstove, clearly a relic of the past century. Like everything else in the house, the stove was tidy and well maintained, polished to a shine.

  "There's a workshop off the side of the house here. That's one of Dad's additions." Alec opened a door and a cool draft blew into the kitchen. The heat was turned way down in the attached room. Charmian leaned past him and saw woodworking equipment: table saws, a vise, a lathe, and other tools she couldn't name.

  "We do the major repair work, on the trucks and so forth, in the main barn. But it's nice to have an attached shop for tinkering. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed around a farm."

  He looked down at her as he spoke. She hadn't even thought about their proximity, just leaned around him, and now she was so close she could feel the heat of his body, could even feel the slight vibration as his deep voice rumbled in his chest.

  "What ..." Her voice emerged as a squeak. She firmly got a grip on it. "What's that?"

  She pointed at a large angular object leaned up against one of the workbenches, the first distraction she clapped her eyes on. It was about four feet long.

  "Windmill blade." A keen spark of fascination kindled in his eyes. "I'm trying to rig up an independent power source for the ranch so that we don't have so many power blackouts. Do you want to see?"

  She wanted to stay here in the doorway, pressed up against him, but he was already moving past her, as if relieved to have an excuse to be away from her. And yet, the look he gave her was inviting, with another of those little glimmers of light in his eyes, like distant lightning flickering through the irises.

  Nothing like mixed signals, buddy, she thought, following him to the workbench. She wasn't going to be able to stay here much longer, because the more she was around him, the more turned on she got. At some point, if this kept up, she was just going to fling herself on him and start tearing his clothes off.

  Alec picked up the windmill blade as if it weighed nothing, and held it out to her. "Power outages up here can last for weeks. We're set up for it; we can heat the house with the wood stove, and we have lanterns and so forth. But it's a pain, especially when it happens during calving season."

  Because he seemed to expect her to take it, she let him put it in her hands. It was actually much lighter than it looked. It seemed to be a sheet of aluminum, cut from a bigger piece, with the edges folded over and hammered down so they wouldn't be sharp. That was an oddly careful little detail for something that was going to be on top of a windmill tower.

  But then, that was Alec. Even just from the little she'd seen, she had already gotten an overall impression of a neat and careful person, holding something much wilder and more out of control inside. He was the kind of person who would pick up clutter so no one tripped over it, make sure every vehicle on the ranch was in top running order, and take good care of all the people and animals who were his responsibility.

  She could relate. It was exactly what she did at the clinic.

  But lurking underneath all that caution was a wild side, waiting to surge up. Had Alec ever been able to just give in to that part of himself? she wondered. She still didn't know about his parents, but he seemed to be in charge at the ranch, and from the way he acted, she'd lay odds that he was the eldest of the siblings and cousins. Everything about him spoke of responsibility that he'd grown up with, a subtle awareness of hierarchy setting him apart even from those closest to him.

  Charmian didn't have any shifters in her family, but she had met a number of them in the course of her work, including Saffron and Remy. And all of them, no matter how polite and tame on the surface, had something wild in them. Maybe, she thought, that was why Alec always seemed to be pushing something inside himself down when he was around her. It wasn't that he wasn't attracted to her; it was that he was afraid to give in to it. He'd spent a lifetime learning to harness and control the wild beast in him, and he still seemed to be ... not afraid, perhaps, but a little wary of it.

  Well, she wasn't afraid. She might not have a beast in her, but something wild surged up anyway, a reckless eagernes
s to explore Alec's feral side along with him.

  She realized she and Alec had been staring at each other for much longer than was polite. He was the one who broke the accidental staring contest, taking back the windmill blade and turning away from her. "Got a little burr on the corner there ..." he murmured, running his thumb over it. He almost sounded like he was talking to himself, turning so she couldn't see his face. Dismissing her. "Need to fix that."

  Like she was going to let him get away with that. "Is it working yet?" she asked, stepping a little closer. "Your windmill, I mean."

  He glanced at her, and then away. "Not really a yes or no question."

  "So give me the long answer." She moved in on him, closing the distance until her arm brushed his.

  This time, he didn't pull away, though he turned to lay the windmill blade down on a workbench beside some broken ones.

  "I can charge batteries with it, but I'm still having trouble getting it to operate continually in bad weather. Of course, that's exactly when you need it. The blades tend to ice up and break in the wind."

  Charmian ran her thumb over the sheared-off edge of one of the other blades. It was a slightly different shape than the one she'd been holding, longer and thinner, but she could see from the ragged edge that part of it had snapped off.

  Looking along the bench, she saw a startling variety of different styles and materials. Some of the test blades were made of wood, others of plastic or metal. Most were visibly broken or damaged in some way.

  "You've been working on this for a long time."

  "Not that long. I like tinkering with things around the ranch, making them work better." He picked up one of the wooden vanes and rubbed at the splintered edge.

  "Where's the windmill going to be?"

  "It's already there." He went to a small window in the wall behind the table saw, and rubbed with his sleeve at the fog on the inside. "You can see it better from the big window in the living room."

  "Where?" Charmian asked, moving to the window.

  Alec leaned in, his hip brushing hers. "There," he said, pointing. "See? Up on the hill behind the house."

  "Oh." She'd seen it earlier, but she hadn't realized it was a windmill. She had thought it was a cell tower or something. He'd taken off the blades, so all that was left was a sturdy-looking tower structure, about fifteen feet high.

  "The trouble is, we get really high winds up in these mountains." The vibration of his voice shivered through her as he spoke. "Storms come screaming down out of the heights, and tear up or blow away anything that's not nailed down tight enough. We're always having to fix the roofs and patch up the sheds. So the trick is finding something lightweight enough to spin easily, but durable enough to stand up to the wear and tear."

  "Resilient but tough," Charmian murmured. Like you, was her first thought, but then she thought of all the ranch families she dealt with in the course of doing her job. Single widows holding together their husbands' ranches all by themselves. Tough farm wives and the men they loved. Sheriff's deputies and tow truck drivers who had to go out in screaming blizzards to rescue stranded motorists.

  They were a tough breed, the people who lived in this rural country. They had to be. And especially people like Alec, running a cattle ranch in the back end of nowhere.

  She admired that kind of backbone and strength. Admired it—hell, might as well admit that she found it drop-dead sexy. Maybe that was what got her panties damp whenever she was near him. It took one hell of a guy to do what he did every day, and do it well. And she could tell from the way he talked about the windmill, and about the ranch, how much he loved it—how committed he was to making it work.

  She admired that, too.

  She tipped her head back to look up at him, intending to say ...

  No, she wasn't sure what she meant to say, because one thing she did know about guys like Alec was that you couldn't go feeding their ego too much. Instead she found him looking down at her, which meant his face was suddenly much too close for comfort.

  Or not close enough.

  This close, she couldn't help cataloguing all the little details of his features: the dusting of five o'clock shadow on his chiseled jaw, the soft-looking lips in utter contrast to the hard planes of the rest of his face. Those blue eyes, so intense and so interested in her ...

  She couldn't get her breath. In that moment, she wanted him, more than she had ever wanted anyone or anything in her life.

  And she saw the exact moment when his control over his wilder side snapped, and he gave in to it.

  Blue heat flared in his eyes, and he moved forward, pushing her up against the wall. She pushed back, rising to meet him as he leaned down and those full, kissable lips met hers.

  He kissed her with the same intensity that he did everything else, his whole being focused on her, as if there was nothing else in his world, nothing that mattered, except her. He took her mouth with fierce and ardent passion, and she kissed back with every fiber of her being.

  His arms went around her, and she clung to him, clutching at the back of his shirt. His body was as hard and ripped as it looked; he had the kind of muscles that you didn't get from a gym, but from throwing around sacks of feed and wrangling cattle. He was so big that his arms engulfed her, made her feel like she was buried in him.

  Oh God, how she wanted him to be buried in her. The tingling between her legs was driving her half-mad with desire. She'd been riding a low-level wave of lust ever since she'd walked into his house, his den—no, more like since he walked out onto the porch, or maybe even since her first sight of him in the clinic. And now she had her arms around him, and his tongue in her mouth. She writhed against him, arching her back and grinding her crotch against his. Compensating for their height difference, he'd bent his knees to bring himself down to her level, so she could kiss him without standing on tiptoe—and feel his enormous erection pressing between her thighs, straining against his jeans. God, if his cock was proportionate to the rest of him, it must be huge. She could already anticipate the way it would fill her.

  With a low groan, Alec pulled back. His pupils were blown with desire. "I can't," he gasped. "We—"

  Charmian wasn't having any of that. She fisted her hands in his hair and pulled his head back down to hers, so she could capture his mouth again.

  He seemed slightly startled, and it took him a moment to start kissing back. That's right: alpha grizzly. He had probably been bossing around everyone on the ranch for his whole adult life.

  Well, Mr. Big Bad Alpha Bear, now you've met your match.

  Chapter Seven

  Alec's entire life had been a struggle between his cautious nature, and the fierce, wild urges of the dominant alpha bear inside him. He had only given in to it a few times, usually in dominance struggles with the other bears on the ranch. His whole life was about control: keeping his bear down, and keeping everything on the ranch in perfect shape so the whole operation ran smoothly.

  And then Charmian had come smashing through all his barricades, and now he was kissing her up against a wall of the shop. The woodshop smells of sawdust and machine oil couldn't overwhelm her powerful feminine scent, driving his bear to distraction.

  Even in the throes of his passion, he was careful of her smaller, more fragile human body. She was strong for her size, though. He was startled by the strength she used to push back against him, and his urgency as he kissed her was met with equal vigor by her own.

  He had expected her to be intimidated by him. Most humans were. They didn't even understand that they were responding to the presence of a dominant alpha grizzly on an instinctive level, but they automatically gave him space and deferred to him. Even his brother's human mate Tara, while she didn't quite understand the unspoken rules that the bear shifters obeyed and occasionally violated his den privacy without meaning to, had instinctively settled into a subordinate position in the clan hierarchy—probably without realizing what she was doing. Humans simply didn't challenge him. They recognized an
d responded to the presence of the predator in their midst.

  But not Charmian. He'd never met a human who pushed back like she did.

  And she was pushing back now, kissing him like her life depended on it. He'd never been this turned on. His erection pushed against the crotch of his jeans, and when he pushed forward, she ground her crotch into his.

  He ran his hand under her shirt, feeling her body flexing, her stomach muscles rippling as she thrust her hips against him. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, and she moaned into his mouth as he rubbed his thumbs over her erect nipples. She began fumbling with his shirt, parting it so she could get her hands on his chest. Firm, strong little hands, caressing his chest and stroking across his washboard abs. Even the touch of her skin against his drove him wild.

  It had been so long since anyone had touched him, and no one had ever touched him like this.

  With any other human woman, he might have worried that he was pushing her into something she didn't want. It was possible for a dominant shifter to coerce humans in the same way they could push other shifters around, except that shifters usually realized it was happening, and either accepted it or pushed back against it. Humans didn't have any defenses against it, because they couldn't consciously sense hierarchy dominance the way shifters did. It was how Saffron's cruel alpha Creed had been able to dominate her hometown for so many years. The local humans had allowed Creed's shifter gang to dominate them without even realizing it was happening, while the local shifters had been too intimidated to fight back.

  But he had no fears of anything of the sort with Charmian.

  If there was one thing he had no doubt about, it was that Charmian knew her own mind. Knew what she wanted.

  And right now, it seemed, what she wanted was him.

  Charmian gripped his shirt and pulled it down his arms, baring his shoulders. Alec took his hands off her body just long enough to go ahead and peel his shirt off. Charmian pulled back, breaking the kiss so she could quickly strip out of her sweater, leaving her in a red satin bra with a bow between her breasts. Alec caught his breath at the red satin gleaming against her brown skin. She reached behind her for the bra clasp, but he put his hands over hers, and unhooked the bra himself.