“Maybe I should just go down as a bear,” he suggested.
She looked amused. “There are a few people around these parts that have seen your kind before in animal form, but not many. It’s more likely those State Troopers would start firing on you. And me if I’m next to you. No, I have a better plan.”
She wriggled out of her policewoman’s jacket, and he liked the way her shirt bunched up around her breasts as she did. She certainly was a curvy one, this feisty little human sheriff. His bear growled inside him, not in rage this time but something else. Again he felt that strange sense of longing.
She handed him the jacket. “Tie the arms around your waist and drape it over your … crotch. That should at least keep you from being arrested.”
He obeyed, letting the jacket hang over his willy. He liked the way the fabric rubbed up against him and wondered if Barbara liked the idea of his manhood getting all over her jacket. He bet she did. He was Rick Barnes, after all.
“Don’t wash this afterward,” he said, “or I’ll take it off right now.”
She blinked. “You … what?”
“I like the thought of you wearing this afterward with my smell on you.”
Her face grew even redder this time. In a strangled squawk of a voice, she said, “Let’s … road!”
As if in a big hurry now, she all but scampered down the slope toward the road. With a sigh, Rick followed. What had he said?
When they reached the road, they threaded their way through the stopped cars toward the bridge. Rick noticed that several drivers were staring at him, and one young woman rolled down her window and snapped a picture of him with her smart phone. He grinned, puffing out his chest and walking with an exaggerated swagger. He knew his ass was still visible, and he made sure to flex it just right so that anyone with a camera could get a good shot. He wanted his best assets on display, as it were.
They reached the State Troopers, one of whom was shouting into his phone. Barbara approached him and said, “I’m Officer Barbara Thompson, Pine Ridge PD. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Same thing we told your dispatch ten minutes ago,” said the State Trooper. He was a stocky guy with a balding head but ridiculously bushy eyebrows. Rick thought he should shave his eyebrows and use them as a wig. “Looks like this bridge has been hit with a home-made bomb.” He hitched his thumb at Rick. “Who’s this?”
“He’s helping me with a case,” Barbara said. “Never mind. And—”
“Where’s your cruiser?”
Grinding her teeth, she said, “Never mind. Anyway, who did this—the bombing, I mean?”
The Trooper frowned at Rick, then Barbara, and at last shook his head wearily. “We don’t know for sure, but it had to be Black Valley.”
“You sure?” said Rick.
It was Barbara’s turn to frown. “You mean the Black Valley shifters—that radical group of bear shifters that doesn’t think shifters should have come out of the den?”
“That’s right,” said the Trooper. “We’ve been told to look out for them. This isn’t the first target they’ve hit.”
“No?”
“They dynamited a road up near White Springs just last week.”
That was on the other side of Black Valley, Rick knew. “Bastards,” he said, smacking a fist into his palm. “Someday my crew will show them who’s the boss of these hills.”
The Trooper’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “You’re a shifter?”
“That’s right.”
“I have some questions for—”
“No time,” Barbara said. “We’re on the trail of a perp.” She hiked her thumb over his shoulder, indicating the red Honda. “He’s abandoned his car. Did you see where he went?”
“We’ve had more pressing problems. It’s going to take hours for this bridge to get fixed. Lucky the Black Valley bears don’t make very explosive bombs or they would have taken out the whole thing. As it is, they just knocked out part of the wall and a bit of asphalt. Repairing it won’t take long, but checking the structural integrity is going to be—” he grinned “—a bear.”
Rick didn’t laugh. Barbara, to his annoyance, smiled a little, though.
“I think it’s time to be going,” Rick said. “That jerkwad from the Honda is getting away.”
The smile left Barbara’s face. “Not if I can help it.”
“I wish I had some men to loan you,” said the State Trooper, “but we’ve got our hands full keeping order here. I wouldn’t advise you going into the forest after the perp alone, though. Wait for backup.”
Rick stuck out his chest again. “She won’t be alone. Or is that too much for you to bear?”
No one laughed except for Rick, but he laughed enough for all three of them. Taking Barbara by the shoulders, he steered her to the forest, and with a final tip of her hat to the State Trooper she went along willingly.
“That could have been handled more civilly,” she said.
“He was an assface and I wanted to be gone.”
“I thought he was quite nice.”
Rick’s animal growled in fury inside him. “He was an assface,” he repeated. They reached the treeline and passed into the forest on the far side of the road. Rick untied the jacket from around his waist and offered it to her.
“You keep it,” she said. “Really.”
He shook his head, adamant. “I don’t need it.”
“I think you do.”
He grinned. “Am I distracting you?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad.”
He tossed the jacket at her and she had no choice but to catch it. His grin widened as she reluctantly shrugged it on, sniffing it as she did.
“Now you smell like me,” he said, and patted his cock, just in case she didn’t get it.
She got it. Her look was frosty. “Just keep moving, Winnie.”
Chapter 3
Rick Barnes was an asshole. Of that Barbara was certain. A big, red-hot flaming asshole who thought he has the hottest thing on God’s good earth. The really, really annoying part was that he might be right. He was so hot she’d already soaked her panties from just being in his vicinity, and she was mortified that he probably knew it, especially with his shifter senses. Knew what power he had over her. Hell, of all women. Well, all hetero women, anyway. But why did he have to be a big flaming donkey’s rear end about it?
And the jacket she was wearing really did smell like his cock now—primal, musky, slightly funky, but in a totally sexy way. It made her even wetter to wear the thing, damn it all. It was as if he’d claimed her, somehow. Put his mark on her.
Did she even want his mark? He was a jerk!
“Can you smell him?” she asked, forcing her mind back to business; it was like wrangling a wild stallion. Or a mare in heat, more like. “The thief?”
Rick was prowling up and down the forest, nostrils quivering. At last he nodded, then led in a certain direction.
“Took off this way,” he said. “Follow me.” With a glance over his shoulder, he added, “I know you like to follow, don’t you?”
Since he wasn’t watching where he was going, a branch whacked him on the head, and he turned back around, grumbling under his breath and rubbing his scalp. She laughed.
“Watch the trail, Winnie.”
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
“How about Pooh?”
“Definitely not Pooh.”
“Barney?” she suggested.
“Now you’re just making stuff up. Barney’s a dinosaur.”
“Okay, well then Smokey. My final offer.”
“Rejected! Cagney!”
She smiled. Okay, he could be kind of funny when he wasn’t being such a total jerkface.
She dodged a branch, stepped over a root and kept after him. It was amazing how swiftly and easily such a big man could cut through the forest, almost like he was a part of it. He was a part of it, she thought. Or half of him was.
“What are shifters?” sh
e heard herself ask.
His voice was deadpan. “Uh, people that shift?”
“Can the wisetalk, Winnie. I mean really. How did shifters come about? It’s magic, right? Has to be.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Then what?”
His voice became low. Mysterious. Maybe even a little … reverential. “Some say our abilities come from the Fae Lands.”
“Fae Lands? As in faeries?”
“And elves and—yeah. That place. I don’t know if it’s really magical over there, but their laws—you know, like physics or whatever—work different.”
She tapped her chin. “And your people come from there? That’s why you’re … well, different?”
His broad shoulders rose up and down. “I don’t know if we came from the Fae Lands or if some of the power there just seeped through, or if some elf from over there came over here a hundred thousand years ago and started horsing around, or what, but a lot of my kind believes our animals were put into us by the Fae Lands, one way or another.”
“Do you believe it?”
Again his voice came, strangely hesitant and quiet. Respectful. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I do.”
She liked the sound of his voice when he was being all awed and reverent. It made her realize there was a different side to him than his big swinging dick—or rather, the side of him that was a big swinging dick. The actual dick wasn’t something she had a problem with. Even from the back she could see his balls bouncing and his long cock occasionally slapping against a meaty thigh.
Don’t look at it, she thought, and wrested her gaze away. It wasn’t easy.
Some of the gloating came back into his voice: “How’s that jacket doing?”
Damn it. He must have smelled her arousal.
“Kind of stinky,” she said.
He chuckled. “I bet you like it stinky.”
“Do not. I’m going to have to burn it when I get back.” Or put it under my pillow.
“I think—” he started, then stopped abruptly. He crouched down and sniffed something, and when he stood up again he was frowning.
“What is it?” she said.
“I’m not sure, but this thief of yours—what do you know about him?”
“Not much, except that he’s responsible for the serial burglaries around town the last few weeks. He’s terrorized the whole community. You must have heard about it.”
“Yeah, I remember Taggart mentioning something his mate read in the paper. Something about a jewel thief.”
“That’s the one,” Barb said. “Well, it’s the biggest thing to hit Pine Ridge, crime-wise, for a long time, and I’ve been dreaming I’d get a crack at solving the case. Then came an alarm from a private home, and I responded just in time to see him take off in his Honda.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Not really.” She paused. “Why?”
“Nothing. He probably looks human, anyway.”
She rocked backward. “You mean he’s not?”
“He’s a shifter. I didn’t smell it at first, but it’s stronger now. He’s definitely not human.”
She processed this. “Okay, so what is he?”
“I don’t know. Nothing I’ve ever smelled before.”
Where no man has smelled before. She smiled to herself, imagining the line spoken by William Shatner. She was a big Star Trek nerd, despite being all badass gung-ho cop. Heh, she thought. Gung-ho meets man-ho. We should get tattoos.
“What’s so funny?” Rick said, sounding annoyed at not being in on the joke.
She glanced up from the grass (which she’d been idly watching, since that’s what he’d been smelling), then realized her mistake. As soon as her eyes moved up, they traced his thick legs, then drew, like lead filings to a magnet, to his enormous dong hanging between his sexily muscular thighs. Her eyes latched onto it and wouldn’t move, despite the fact that she exerted all her will to do so.
“Hey, Officer Hotpants, I’m up here,” he said, but he was smiling—she could see it out of the corner of her eyes. She couldn’t see it out of the front of her eyes because they were still on his giant cock. Part of her couldn’t help but wonder if it would even fit inside her; it was that huge.
At last, with an almost physical effort, she swiveled her gaze up to meet his square-jawed, handsome face. Liquid hazel eyes stared back at her.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s pretty private around here. We could—”
“No.” The word came out as a rasp.
He spread his arms wide, making his pecs jump. “Why not? We could always go after the burglar when we’re done—assuming you can still walk, of course. I could carry you if you can’t. I’ll put you over one shoulder, catch the bad guy and throw him over the other.”
He’s playing with me. “Screw you,” she said, feeling her face flush with embarrassment.
He frowned again. “What did I say?”
Was it possible he was so wrapped up in his own charm that he didn’t realize he was the biggest flaming asshole in the entire world?
“Let just keep going, Winnie,” she said.
He shrugged again and started off once more, back on the trail of the perp.
Just to keep herself talking, and to think about something other than Rick’s magnificent ass flexing right in front of her, she said, “We call him the Glitter Thief. The crook, I mean. Well, obviously. Anyway, he likes to steal beautiful jewels—in fact, that’s all he steals. No cash, no statues, no art. Just jewels. Pretty ones.”
“I’d be just happy with cash. Certainly not like my work pays much. Of course, I don’t know what I’d do with the money. I’m happy with what I’ve got.”
“Which crew are you with?” She knew there were several bear shifter crews in the area; mostly they worked as lumberjacks.
“Pine Ridge,” he said.
“Oh, you mean the guys restoring the old ski resort?” It was called by the oh-so-original name of Pine Ridge Ski Resort, and she knew the shifters that worked on it were called the Pine Ridge Crew.
“That’s the one,” he said.
“Just why are a bunch of bear shifters restoring a ski resort, anyway?” It was a question that had bothered her since the work on it had begun a few months ago.
“Um, so that we can run the ski resort?”
“Can the attitude, Winnie.”
“Will do, Officer Hotpants.”
She smirked. He really was kind of charming. And he had also successfully derailed her line of thought. Pressing the issue, she said, “But why do bear shifters want to run a ski resort, of all things?”
“Orders from the Great Alpha.”
“Okay, but why?”
He groaned. “Pushy human!”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s—”
He broke off and crouched, but he wasn’t sniffing the ground this time. He was alert, with his eyes and even ears angled up.
“What is it?” she whispered, crouching next to him. She could smell his musky scent, even feel the heat that emanated from him. He was so warm. For a mad moment she was tempted to reach out and touch his nearest bulging bicep.
“I heard something,” he said.
She swallowed. “Like what?”
“Like … wings.”
“I don’t get it. So there’s a bird. Big whoop.”
He bit his lower lip in concentration, and she couldn’t deny that it was a sexy look. She wanted to bite it, too.
“The smell’s very strong,” he said.
She put a hand on the butt of her pistol. “Maybe I should call it in now. Bring reinforcements.”
“Up to you.”
But she could tell that the idea disappointed him. He wanted to go in and catch the bad guy himself—or at least assist her in doing it. She was impressed that he could resist charging off and doing it himself, no matter what. He had enough restraint to let her make the decision. She was the cop, aft
er all. This Rick Barnes might be a jerk, but he had respect. That was something.
It was her turn to bite her lip as she mulled the situation over. On the one hand, the station was probably buzzing with worry about what had happened to her. She hadn’t reported in, and the totaled cruiser had probably been found by now. On the other hand, if she did call in for back-up, she wouldn’t get the bust herself. She would be the chick who wrecked her car and failed to nab the crook by herself. She would be seen as weak. But if she went it alone (or at least as the only cop) and caught the Glitter Thief herself, then she’d be a hero.
She liked the thought of being a hero. And it would help her career, too. Someday she might make lieutenant.
“Let’s do this ourselves,” she said, and pulled out her gun, holding it so that it pointed at the ground. She flicked the safety off. “You should stay here,” she said. “You’re an unarmed civilian.”
His face went hard. “It’s your call whether to send for back-up or not, Barbara, but it’s my call whether I’m coming with you or not. And I’m coming with you.”
He called me Barbara. Her heart fluttered. Get it together. The Glitter Thief is almost yours.
“Fine,” she said, “but you do what I say.”
“Roger.”
“I’m officially deputizing you, civilian. Understood?”
He grinned. “Does that mean we’re a posse? I’ve always wanted to be part of a posse. I’ve certainly been in enough posses, but never part of one.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your jokes are terrible.”
He grinned back. “Then why are you smiling?”
With some effort, she wiped the expression from her face. “Let’s do this. Three. Two. One. Go!”
She rose partway. Walking hunched over to minimize the target she made, she shoved through the foliage ahead, gun still pointed at the ground. Her heart beat fast and hard inside her chest, and sweat stung her eyes. I’m doing this, she thought. I’m really doing this. She wanted to laugh in glee. She’d dreamt of doing something like this ever since she’d decided to become a cop. Hell, dreams of doing something like this were why she’d wanted to be a cop in the first place. And Rick had helped make it happen. Jerk or not, he was helping make her dreams come true. She owed him for that, if nothing else.
Bear Mated: A BBW Bear Shifter Paranomal Romance (Pine Ridge BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance Series Book 2) Page 2
