Furever Mine: A BBW Werebear Romance (Furever Shifters Book 1)

by Iris Balfour

  I turned around and flopped beside him. “My Bear.” I nibbled his ear.

  He pulled my mouth up to his and kissed me. I shivered at the intimacy of tasting myself as he tasted himself. It felt like I was cut open and spread out so he could see all of me, inside and out.

  Bear

  My Georgette, my mate, lay in my arms, her chest rising in slow even breaths. Relaxed and happy, she had fallen asleep while we cuddled after making love.

  My heart was full. All I ever wanted was here in my bed. Georgette, my mate.

  Tomorrow I would have to tell her I was a shifter. I didn’t know how to tell her. Humans didn’t believe in such things, but here I was. If she recoiled from me, if she feared me, was disgusted by me… I couldn’t endure the thought.

  But I had to tell her. She had to accept my bear nature before I could claim her.

  xiii

  Bear

  I woke as the first light of dawn was breaking over the trees. The morning called to me. I slipped out of bed and padded downstairs.

  Stepping out onto the porch, I sniffed the air. The scents of pine and manzanita and other plants came to me, and the scents of possum, squirrel, and other creatures.

  And bear.

  Rory.

  I checked the garage apartment. He was gone.

  That might be no big deal. Or it could be a problem. He was as new to the great outdoors as he was to being a shifter. His bear didn’t have the experience to know what was dangerous and what wasn’t. Granted, there wasn’t much that could hurt a six-hundred-pound bear. But he could get himself in a bad situation.

  I stripped out of my clothes and set my bear free. Once in bear form I circled the garage until I picked up Rory’s scent. I followed it out through the trees.

  He wasn’t going to like being followed. I’d already discovered how independent he was. But as his guide I couldn’t let anything happen to him.

  I followed him to the game trail that led to the river. The scent was several hours old. Well, I wouldn’t beat myself up for spending time with my mate instead of monitoring him. At least, not if I found him safe and sound.

  There were no other bears, shifter or animal, on this part of the mountain. The animals stayed away from shifters, and the shifters purposely spread out.

  But there were coyotes. A pack of them could harm a bear.

  His scent disappeared in the river. Sneaky shifter. I went upstream a bit, then downstream to a point where the river widened across a bed of boulders. I crossed there, ignoring the bright flashes of fish in the water, and finally caught his scent. Following it, I ended up back at the cabin.

  Rory waited for me outside the garage. His bear was stirred up after the ramble through the woods, and inflamed by the presence of another male. If we’d grown up together he wouldn’t have felt the competition, but he didn’t have his own territory and he wanted mine.

  Fights among shifters happened sometimes. It was one of the reasons not everyone could be a guide. It took someone who could control his bear side.

  I could control my bear, but Rory wasn’t in control of his yet. He growled at me as I came within view.

  My bear was a little irate also, wanting to defend my property, my cabin, my mate inside. Trying to defuse the situation, I shifted to human.

  Rory didn’t. He had my scent in his nose, and his bear wouldn’t back down. He came at me.

  I shifted back. I was bigger than Rory, but he was quick and fired up. With a roar he came at me, claws extended.

  I leaped to one side, human in thought. My bear wanted me to go straight for Rory. But I didn’t want to hurt him — or get hurt myself.

  He was already charging again. I lunged at him, at the last minute slipping past and coming at him from behind. I jumped on his back, knocking him to the ground. His bear, fully in control, rolled over on me, trying to throw me off. I wrapped my arms and legs around him.

  He clawed at my arms. Blood flew everywhere. Doggedly I held on. I got one arm under his chin in a choke hold.

  Rory! I growled. Control your bear!

  Over and over I said it, pressing hard on his throat.

  He finally went limp and shifted back into human form.

  I immediately shifted back too before I crushed him.

  Rory was still breathing. All the blood on him was mine. His throat was bruised, but he’d heal.

  My arms dripped blood. He’d ripped me clear to the bone. I sighed. Shifters healed fast, but I wasn’t going to be able to hide my injuries from Georgette. With the adrenaline fading, I started to feel the pain of my torn flesh. As the flesh pulled together and knitted, it tingled like a strong electrical shock.

  I sank to the ground in a sit. I wasn’t that tough a guy, I admitted.

  My heartbeat slowed to normal. The blood stopped rushing in my ears. I heard the normal sounds of the forest, the leaves brushing together, birds taking flight and landing with a rustle of leaves, the scratch of claws on limbs.

  And a gasp.

  I turned, and immediately scrambled to my feet. Georgette was standing there, a look of horror on her face.

  Georgette

  I woke up feeling happy, but something wasn’t quite right. I reached over, not sure what I was reaching for, until I felt the emptiness where Bear should be.

  Bear was missing.

  I smiled to myself. Bear. If I were a cat I would have been purring.

  Thinking he was either in the bathroom or getting a snack, I waited for him to come back to bed, and fell back asleep. When I awoke he was still gone.

  I got up and put on a pair of shorts and a tee. Where was that Bear?

  I checked the kitchen and living room, and went back upstairs to look at the other rooms. He wasn’t anywhere upstairs or down.

  I wandered back to the living room and out to the front porch. The air smelled wonderful outside, fresh and pine-scented and revitalizing.

  Bear might be over at the garage with Rory. That seemed a little weird, to go from our bed to see him. Rory was just a friend, right, not a — I wrinkled my nose. Not a lover. Whatever Bear had done in the past was his own business, but I wasn’t much for sharing.

  Bear didn’t treat Rory the way he did me, with that tender protectiveness. But he did have a lot of concern for Rory, although they didn’t seem very close. And it was strange he’d bring Rory on our lover’s weekend. That thing he had to tell me in the morning — this morning — could it have anything to do with Rory?

  A noise sounded from the direction of the garage. That had to be Bear. I went down the steps and around the side of the cabin.

  I froze, shocked at the sight of Rory lying naked and facedown on the ground, with a blood-covered — and naked — Bear sitting next to him. I gasped.

  Bear jumped to his feet. “Georgette!”

  “What is going on?” My voice barely trembled. I clung to the thought, Bear isn’t a killer. I had to think that thought for my own sanity. I was an hour’s hike away from the car park where I could possibly find a stranger to take me out of here.

  Bear took a deep breath. “That thing I had to tell you about. This is part of it.”

  Rory made a choking noise and rolled onto his side.

  “Is Rory your lover?”

  Bear recoiled. “No.” He glanced down at himself, glanced at Rory. “It’s not what it looks like.” He took a step toward me. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked, not moving. “Why are you and Rory out here stark naked?”

  “Clothes are uncomfortable when we shift. They either get ripped or cut off the flow of blood.”

  “Shift,” I repeated.

  “Into our bear shape.”

  I turned on my heel. There was no sense in talking to him. He was delusional, Rory was probably delusional with him, and I didn’t want to have any part of his sick fantasy.

  I stumbled back up the porch steps. Bear — god, even his stupid nickname played into his delusion — leaped up the steps beside me
.

  “Georgette…” The pleading tone in his voice nearly got to me. I’d been so close to falling in love with him. I had wanted to believe he loved me. Probably I was the only one he’d been able to fool into thinking he was normal.

  A bear shifter. Good grief. What a story I’d have to tell Becky.

  I groped blindly at the door, everything a blur through my tears. I found the knob, jerked the door open, and ran up the stairs. I went through Bear’s bedroom and the bathroom, methodically collecting my toothbrush, my panties, my hairbrush. I threw everything in my overnight bag.

  Bear came inside the bedroom. Closing the door, he leaned against it. If it hadn’t been for the blood splattered over his bare skin, he would have looked sexy.

  A shiver of fear ran through me. I said quietly, “Let me out, Bear.”

  He didn’t move. “Last night I told you I have something to tell. This is it, Georgette. I’m a shifter. Rory’s a shifter too, a new shifter, and it’s my job to help him get used to it. Sometimes new shifters gets panicked when the bear inside takes control.”

  For the first time I noticed the long scratches on his arms. Long, mostly healed scratches that hadn’t been there the night before.

  No, it was dark before he took off his shirt. I just hadn’t seen the scratches.

  “I’m leaving now,” I said with fake calm. “Please move.”

  He opened the door and stepped to one side. “Please don’t go.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I passed him, staring straight ahead and avoiding his naked body. He reached for the bag I carried. We tussled for it for a moment, until I gave up and relinquished it. Fine. I could get another bag.

  I descended the stairs to the hall, and went out to the porch and down the steps. Bear followed me with my bag.

  Rory was sitting up. When he saw me, his face blanched with embarrassment. Then my eyes went wonky. I thought I saw him shimmer into a shapeless mass of shadow. Rory disappeared, and a bear crouched in his place. A grizzly bear with its distinctive hump. A large grizzly bear not twenty feet away.

  Never taking my eyes off it, I barreled backwards, colliding with Bear’s solid form.

  He grabbed my shoulders. “It’s okay, Georgette, it’s just Rory.”

  I jerked free. “Stop the delusions already,” I snapped. “That’s a real bear.” I escaped inside the cabin.

  Bear — foolish Bear — remained outside.

  I couldn’t let him be mauled. I slipped back out and tried to drag him inside. “Come on, Bear.”

  He stood rooted. “Georgette, watch me.”

  Releasing him, I stepped back. “Oh Bear,” I said despairingly.

  Again my eyes played tricks on me. Two steps away from me, nearly arm’s reach, Bear faded into a dark mist. The mist swirled and solidified in the shape of a grizzly bear so big the porch creaked under its weight.

  A bear. There. Where Bear had stood.

  I fainted.

  xiv

  Bear

  Georgette! I shifted back quickly. My sweet Georgette, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I scooped her up in my arms and carried her back upstairs. Gently I laid her down on the bed.

  The pulse in her throat beat erratically. I got a wet washcloth from the bathroom and covered her eyes and forehead. I loosened her clothing, unzipping her pants and unsnapping her bra but leaving them otherwise in place.

  When she revived I didn’t want her to think of anything unpleasant, so I washed off the blood and put on a shirt and pants.

  I was leaning over her, watching anxiously, when her eyelids fluttered open.

  She stared into my eyes. “How much of what I remember is true?” she whispered.

  “What do you remember?” I hedged.

  “Blood, leaving… Bears.” Her hands lying loose and forlorn clenched into fists. “Bears, Bear. Tell me about them.”

  “I’m a bear shifter. So’s Rory.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “So are my sister and my parents. There are quite a few of us, actually. California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia.”

  “But why? When?” she wailed. “How can it happen? How can it be a secret?”

  “Why,” I repeated, nonplussed. “Some things just are. According to our history, what’s been passed down through the years, there have always been shifters. People who were different were always in danger, so we learned to keep our abilities secret.”

  She nodded slightly, immediately understanding. “But how? It’s impossible — conservation of mass, a whole slew of science I don’t know says it’s impossible.”

  The terror in her eyes, the sense that nothing was as it seemed and her solid ground was quicksand, tore at my heart. She didn’t resist when I took her hands in mine.

  “Some things just are,” I said firmly. “Maybe science doesn’t apply to everything, just most things. The science we know, the world we know, is still the same. Shifters are an extra topping.”

  “A secret sauce.” She smiled weakly.

  It was too soon to ask her, I knew it was, but she was my mate! I had to know.

  “Georgette.” I took a breath. “Now you know everything. This was what I was going to tell you. I don’t have any other secrets from you. I want—” I knelt beside the bed. “—I want to live the rest of my life with you.”

  Her face turned pink. “Are you proposing marriage?”

  “Well, that too, but more important for us shifters is the claiming.”

  “What?”

  “Do you want me or not?” I growled suddenly, tired of the questions.

  “How can I know if you don’t—”

  I covered her mouth with mine.

  Georgette

  Bear kissed me. His lips were demanding, passionate. My questions died in my throat. Surely it was wrong to want a man as much as I wanted him. I kissed him back, luxuriating in being desired by him. Never had I felt so safe and protected.

  But.

  I forced back my desire and sense of security, and made myself think.

  A bear shifter. A man who was more than a man. Could I believe what he had just told me? Could he be somehow influencing my feelings?

  Bear felt my distancing myself from him. He pulled away from me. His face — oh god, his face was carved in lines of sadness. I couldn’t bear to see him like that.

  But I couldn’t make him a false promise. I had to give him all of me, or nothing.

  I thought back over all our encounters, from the first time I’d seen him to now. He had always been sincere. He had been only good to me. My new job, his patience in wooing me, his restraint.

  How could things like bear shifters exist? I closed my eyes against a sudden dizziness. It was too much.

  No. I had to face it.

  Bear still watched me, his face still as granite. He would let me go if I wanted. Despite the secrets he’d shared, he would let me leave.

  He loved me. It came through in everything he did. If I rejected him, I was rejecting everything I’d ever dreamed of.

  But. I saw again his bear shape looming over me. He had exuded a primal energy that awed me with its intensity. That creature was beyond my control. His bear wasn’t a house pet.

  Shamefully, I felt a stirring of desire. I loved his gentle lovemaking, but I also wanted to feel the wild frenzy of his animal side.

  “Bear,” I asked reluctantly, “what does it mean to be claimed?”

  Without his ever moving, a hot blast of his excitement rolled from him. Being the focus of his intensity was both frightening and thrilling.

  “When I claim you,” he said slowly, “I make you mine forever. I’ll put my cock inside you, and hold you close, and when I give you my seed I’ll bite you. With my seed and my saliva I’ll mark you as mine.”

  I shivered, the tones of his voice rumbling in my chest. My pussy was slick with my desire. I wanted him to do exactly what he said. I wanted his hard cock in me, taking me, claiming me, making me his forever.

  S
till I hesitated. If I said yes to him now, it had to be to all of him, both Bear the man and Bear the animal. Not despite his bear nature, but also his bear nature.

  He waited for my answer, not pressuring me.

  An upsurge of love swamped me. My perfect, wonderful Bear.

  I held out my arms. “Yes.”

  Bear

  My mate accepted me.

  Almost I changed into bear form, my excitement was so great. I reined in my bear and took Georgette in my arms as gently and tenderly as I could. The heat throbbed through my body.

  My mate.

  She wound her arms around my neck, completely trusting.

  I could never do anything to hurt her.

  We kissed. Her lips were soft against mine. She relaxed against me. A strong desire to always protect her welled up in me.

  My mate. I couldn’t say the words enough times. I’d found my mate.

  And she wanted me back.

  She was aroused by all of me. I smelled her juices. Her eyes and face were completely open to me. I didn’t have to keep any secrets from my Georgette.

  My cock ached with need for her. I had to claim her before I exploded.

  I released her mouth. Gently tugging, I pulled off her shirt and bra. She wiggled out of her shorts and panties.

  My breath caught. She was so seductive moving like that. My cock vibrated with desire.

  Naked, my Georgette sprawled on the bed. Her eyes looking deep into mine, she spread her legs so I could see her sweet pink pussy. Panting like an animal, I forced my bear into submission.

  I stripped off my shirt and pants. Her gaze caressed me. I stood there for a moment, letting her see how my cock was hard for her, thrusting out hard and strong.

  “It’s all for you,” I said, my voice raw.

  With her two hands she spread her pussy lips, baring herself. My bear roared with lust.

  I fell on her, grabbing her hands and pulling them over her head. “You tease me too much,” I growled. I nipped at her lips, and licked her throat, and sucked at her hard ripe nipple.