by Anya Nowlan
BEAR THE FLAME
FIREBEAR BRIDES
BOOK 2
BY
ANYA NOWLAN
A LITTLE TASTE…
“So, where does that leave us? I think this might go down in the record books as the shortest engagement ever recorded,” Redmond laughed, stopping as they reached a little stream.
He pulled her to face him and she smiled in return. She barely knew the man’s name—well, she knew that and what little she could dig up on the heroic firefighter bear on the internet—but she felt an inexplicable pull toward him nevertheless. Though he came off as cocky and self-assured, there was a certain sweetness to him underneath that bravado and she could sense it easily.
“Might be one of the few that ever happened without the betrothed even kissing,” she said, laughing.
A devilish smirk crossed Redmond’s lips and he licked across them, looking like a wolf about to devour his prey.
“We can fix that, you know,” he said.
Before she could utter a word of protest, his hand had curled around her waist and she was pulled against him, her hands landing on his rock-hard chest. Gasping, her mouth responded easily as Redmond sought it out in a kiss, her tongue dancing against his as he thrust it into her mouth and claimed her so easily as his own. Her hands fisted around the fabric of his jacket, crushing her body against his as they kissed ravenously.
Copyright © 2015 Anya Nowlan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Bear The Flame
Firebear Brides
Book 2
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Cover © Jack of Covers
You can find all of my books here:
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A LITTLE TASTE…
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT
WANT MORE?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Rose
The street was eerily calm and quiet, except for Rose’s hurried footsteps. She was running now, not just rushing away. It was a jog, but she was inches from breaking out in an all-out sprint. Her light blue Nike running shoes barely made a sound along the pavement as she pounded over it, one hand stiffly clutching her duffel bag.
Every few seconds, she would throw a look over her shoulder, her insides twisting with horror. They were right there. She knew that much. Maybe they weren’t in sight now—maybe she’d even threw them off the trail for tonight—but they’d get her again. They’d find her, pick up her scent, and just keep on her like the dogged little rodents that they were. If Rose knew Kenner at all, then she knew that he was a very, very sore loser and he’d made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of letting Rose get away this time.
Her breath kept catching in her lungs as she continued running, but it wasn’t because of the exertion. Sure, she was a curvy girl, not one of those stick-thin women with amazing metabolisms who frequented her Pilates and yoga classes, but she was fit. As a fitness instructor, it was sort of a point of pride at this point.
She loved her curves, but she loved the muscles she’d packed away underneath them that allowed her to squat heavy weights, as well as the endurance she’d built up that kept her running even when her mind told her to stop, rest, and take a break even more. Finally, Kari’s house came into view and she let out a sigh of relief. Checking over her shoulder one more time, she was glad to see that neither Cole nor Conrad had managed to sneak after her in the shadows. One crisis avoided. At least for one more night.
Trundling up the stairs, she pulled the keys out of the pocket of her pink windbreaker just in time for Kari to open the door in front of her and yank her in. She yelped, almost falling on her face, and she had to shuffle her feet a bit to keep her footing.
“Girl, where do you think you were sneaking around at this hour? And don’t you go lying to me. I know that your classes ended more than two hours ago!” Kari said, worry evident on her expression as she took Rose’s bag from her.
“I’m sorry, Kari. I couldn’t call. I was running from those two bastards again,” she said, sighing heavily.
She kicked off her running shoes and took the windbreaker off, following Kari into the kitchen. A big glass of red wine was thrust into her hands and a cheese plate appeared as if out of thin air on the kitchen table.
“Sit,” Kari said sternly.
A second later, a steaming bowl of chicken and rice was set down in front of her and a fork clattered down next to it.
“Eat!” Kari commanded again, sitting down across from Rose. “And then explain why are we not going to the police about this? Just humor me. Tell me again how I don’t get it and how it would be a horrible idea. Come on.” Kari goaded Rose as she took a big gulp of the wine and then dug in ravenously.
“I can’t!” she protested loudly, swallowing a mouthful.
God, the food tasted so good. Kari must have noticed that she’d been neglecting taking care of herself. Stressing out about Kenner and her graduation and work had obviously been getting the best of her, and she was struggling to keep up with the demands of her body on top of it all.
But that’s to be expected when your psycho ex-boss won’t let you go, right?
The look on Kari’s face told her that it was totally not enough of an explanation.
“Yeah you can. This is not some sort of odd backward nation where going to the cops means that you’d put yourself or anyone else in danger. You know this! So what if he’s some sort of a goddamn mogul, girl. You can’t let him treat you that way. Stalking you, sending his cronies after you… sheesh.”
Kari rolled her eyes, obviously both annoyed for and because of Rose. Rose blushed slightly, taking another mouthful and chewing it a bit slower this time. What could she tell Kari? She’d crashed at her friend’s place because she didn’t feel safe in her own apartment anymore, not with Kenner’s henchmen knowing exactly where she lived. It had started innocently enough, but things had escalated way past what Rose could deal with.
With a sigh, Rose’s shoulders slumped and she stared into her wine, getting up the courage to speak. “Well, it’s… he’s not just some kind of a mogul, okay? And when I said he was my boss, I wasn’t lying. He was my boss… but not at the health food store that I said I worked at. I was a… dancer for him.”
“A dancer?” Kari asked, frowning.
Rose nodded. She held eye contact with Kari for a second longer until her expression cleared and she put the wine glass down. “OH! A dancer! Rose, you minx,” Kari laughed, making Rose blush and grin at the same time.
There was no judgment in that comment. If anything, Kari sounded impressed.
“It wasn’t anything too bad. I was an exotic dancer in one of his clubs. I never got
fully naked, never did anything I’m really ashamed about… but I wouldn’t want my parents to know.”
“But why did you do it? And why is he chasing you now?” Kari asked, still as confused as she was before, just now with more details.
“That’s a long story,” Rose grumbled, instinctively looking out of the window to make sure that no one was creeping around back there. She’d been doing that a lot lately—checking if no one was listening in on her, or following her. “We got together for a while. Just a few weeks. He was nice and he paid attention to me and he gave me a shoulder to cry on when school got too much. I only danced in his clubs because he saw me shaking my ass at a club one night and gave me his card, saying he had a job for me if I wanted it.
“My school tuition was killing me and if I would have taken one more loan, I would have put my parents out of house and home. It paid well and he treated me and the rest of the girls with respect. But after a while, I understood that his attention wasn’t so simple to shrug off. It was a fling for me, but he’s not the kind of guy you dump. Since I’ve quit the club, he’s been putting tails on me, wanting to know what I’m doing, where I am.”
Rose snaked her phone out of her pocket, showing it to Kari. “He won’t stop calling me and texting me. It’s creepy. He wants me to go back and work for him, but I know it isn’t just that. If I go to the cops, I’m going to have to tell them everything about my past as a dancer and I can’t do that to my parents. I just want to put it behind me,” she said, cringing at how silly it sounded.
Kari looked sympathetic. She nodded her head, taking a sip of the wine. Rose picked at her food, her appetite suddenly missing altogether.
“Well, there are other options. You said you don’t want to stay in Philly anyway, right?” Kari asked, propping her chin on the palm of her hand.
Rose looked at her friend suspiciously, tucking a blonde strand of hair behind her ear. “I did. It’s too… too tight here. I’m from Minnesota, for God’s sake! I’m used to the forest and the plains and room to breathe. While Philly isn’t as bad as a lot of cities, it still feels really tight. And now, considering that I won’t be doing anything with my degree, I think there’s no reason to stay here.”
The last words came out a lot bitterer than she intended them to be. Truthfully, she felt like a mess. Not only had she picked the wrong major—business administration! Who studies that?!—but she’d picked an expensive private school instead of knocking out a lot of the general courses at a community college. She was badly in debt, though she could handle that, even if the only job she could land was as a trainer at small salon fitness centers. After a year of trying, she’d given up on finding something closer to her major. It helped that she’d found out fast that it didn’t interest her as much as she’d hoped, anyway.
Truthfully, she felt like a bit of a mess. A disappointment to herself and others, especially now that she had to rely on the kindness of her friends to dodge a clingy ex who would not take no for an answer.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked, curious enough to hear anyone’s take on what she could be doing to untangle herself from her current mess.
Kari grinned mischievously, plucking Rose’s phone off the table. “Hey!” Rose protested, but Kari had already unlocked the screen and was skimming through her apps.
She pulled up SassyDate, and what had just been a bit of a flush on Rose’s cheeks earlier had now turned her lobster-red with embarrassment.
“Kari! What are you doing!”
“Hold your horses, girl. No shame in liking this thing. You don’t think I figured that your ex had to be a shifter? I knew you had a thing for the big burly types that could rip a guy’s throat out if need be,” Kari chuckled. “I’m just showing you one that I think you’d like. Maybe he’d even be a solution to your current problem!”
In a moment, Kari turned the phone back around on Rose and showed her the profile of a tall, handsome, blond-haired man with the most striking blue eyes. He had a cocky grin and an easy charm, with a black leather jacket hung over his shoulders like a second skin. She could tell that he was hiding tattoos underneath. He was just the kind of guy who would.
“He’s in Los Angeles. And even if he weren’t, how’s getting another man in my life going to untangle the crap I’m in?” she asked, grinning at Kari’s mischievous smile.
She didn’t really see how any of this would help her but damn did she enjoy Kari’s flavor of problem solving. Throwing a hot guy into the mix would have usually been the kind of thinking Rose would have happily applauded.
“But he’s not, you see. He’s in Idaho now. And he needs a bride. And you need a man to drive away your ex, so what’s not to love, huh? It’s perfect!”
“He needs a what?!” Rose asked, incredulous.
“A bride! It’s the latest thing. These sexy beasts move out of the city, to get closer to their ancestors or whatever, and then they find that there are no women out in bumfuck wherever. They have to resort to flying them in like some twisted mail-order bride scene from the eighteen hundreds! I love it. It’s just insane enough to be completely awesome,” Kari laughed, handing the phone back to Rose.
“It’s insane all right,” Rose said, but her eyes kept wandering back to the cute guy grinning back at her from the ad.
“He’s not even looking for a forever wife. Ad said he needs some sort of a temporary arrangement. And hey, Idaho has mountains and forests and whatever, right? Sounds too good to be true,” Kari said, snickering as she stood up to get more wine.
“Maybe,” Rose said, shutting the app down.
But she made a point of remembering the guy’s name beforehand. Kari was by her side in a second, filling her glass up again.
“Well, in any case. You gotta drink up and tell me all the dirty little deets about your time as a stripper! I feel like I’ve known you since first semester and I always thought you were this sweet, nice girl, and now it comes out you’re some sort of vixen!”
Rose groaned good-naturedly, taking a long swig from her wine. This was going to be a long night. But maybe with enough wine, she’d get a good enough idea to fix the jam she was currently in.
Hell, maybe that idea could even include a sexy-as-sin werebear in Idaho…
CHAPTER TWO
Redmond
The burnt tree trunk weighed heavily on his back as Redmond dragged it across what used to be a long stretch of pristine wilderness. Now it was a charred mess, the mere remnant of a wild sanctuary that he’d known for only a short while before he lost it. The low hum of a chainsaw in the near distance caught his ears as he shrugged the log off his shoulders and let it fall in a pile of similar burnt trees.
Redmond stood up, growling low as the muscles on his back contracted and protested against the harsh treatment he was showing them. Wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, he glanced in the direction of the noise. The big, almost monstrously wide form of Battle watched as a tree tipped back and then fell to the ground, its scorched and dead trunk cracking and breaking into pieces on impact.
It was just Redmond and Battle in the forest now, though the morning had seen more helping hands. In Shifter Grove, one family’s misfortune seemed to be shared by the whole town. It was certainly different from Los Angeles, where having a lick of decency seemed to be reserved for you only if you were exorbitantly wealthy.
“Battle, you calling it a night?” Redmond hollered, grabbing his discarded shirt from on top of the pile.
“Just about, I think,” Battle answered, cutting the felled tree into manageable chunks.
Redmond wandered over to the other werebear, his hands shoved into the pockets of his worn jeans. He breathed in through his nose and his bear murmured its pleasure, trying to coax him into running home through the woods instead of taking the truck. Being in Idaho was damn different from the Golden State, that was for sure. Being in a forest already was sort of a cultural shock and the fact that he liked it was weirder still.
Redmond Hamilton had come to Idaho on a whim. Led by his brother Royce’s invitation to come see the family homestead left to them by their late uncle, he’d cashed in his three weeks of vacation and hopped on a plane. Instead of finding a rundown farm and a general sense of disinterest about it all, Redmond had found himself entirely entranced with everything.
Bits and pieces from his past came back to him, consuming his memories and making him look at everything a bit differently. He’d lived on the grounds as a child, before the unfortunate death of his father, and somehow he’d managed to block all of that happiness and buried it in the back of his mind. Stepping on Hamilton grounds brought it all back in an instant, though, leaving the Los Angeles firefighter and seasoned playboy considering a whole different kind of life from the one he had always known.
“I appreciate the help,” Redmond said, putting one leg on a scorched trunk and leaning in as Battle packed his gear.
“Don’t mention it, man. I remember your family from way back. I’m not much older than you are, but my clan always thought highly of the Hamiltons. I remember the elder members discussing your little settlement down here all the time. It seems only right to give back, you know?”
Battle grinned his big, perfectly white smile and Redmond returned it with one of his own. Next to Battle’s hulking, tank-like build, Redmond seemed almost lean at his six-foot-four height and wide-shouldered swimmer’s build. Working as a firefighter, a firebear as they were jokingly called, had given him a physique built for speed, agility, and strength. And living in Los Angeles had shaped his sense of style into something more urban sensible compared to the rugged, outback types that seemed to be the main force in Shifter Grove.
Redmond pulled his hand through his slick hair and rose up, cringing slightly as the ache in his joints caught up with him. He was physically fit, yes, but getting used to this country lifestyle had been no easy task. His body still protested to the constant toiling.
