“Do you have any lights?”
“Hmm?” he asked, cabinets opening and closing, glasses clanking.
“Oh, yes, of course. There is no electricity here, but give me a moment. I’ll make a fire.”
Shelly rolled her eyes again, this time at herself. Of course, there would be no electricity! They were in the middle of the woods.
It was stupid to have asked. Still, he didn’t make her feel bad for it.
He crossed the room back to her, taking her hand in his and placing a cup into it.
“Your wife won’t mind me being here?” she probed.
“Or… girlfriend?”
“We do not take wives. That is an invention of your people. We take mates for life. And I have none.”
Shelly sipped the water, the cool wetness sliding down her throat, coating the dryness in her mouth.
“How is that possible?”
“I’ve been accused of being difficult to please. I prefer to think of myself as…” he paused, and though she couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, she could see the shape of his head as it tilted down and back up again. “Particular.”
“I see,” she said and took another sip.
“And what of you?” he asked. “That man in the forest, is he your mate?”
Shelly shook her head violently.
“No! Not anymore. I mean, we were. Together, that is. Not mates. Just dating.”
“Courting,” Aaron said, his tone suggesting it was not as a correction, but more relating for his own understanding.
“Sure, sort of.”
He nodded, guiding her through the living area to the couch and sat her down.
His hand lingered on top of hers for a moment before he slowly let it slide away as he moved toward the fireplace.
“But he is no longer?” Aaron asked as he began to stack twigs and small branches into the fireplace.
“Not after tonight. No way. Did you see the way he just left me? What if you had been a real bear! I’d be dead right now.”
“I am a real bear,” Aaron said.
Stones banged together, a few sparks shooting into the moss and pine needles.
“Okay, sure, but it’s not like you’re going to eat me or anything.”
The needles caught fire and came to life in orange and red. The room was suddenly cast in a soft glow and long shadows.
In the new light, she could see Aaron was looking at her again, studying her.
“There’s a good chance of that happening, actually.”
The look in his eye suggested they were talking about two very different things.
Shelly crossed her legs, the fabric of her jeans rubbing together at the thighs. How could she be so wet?
Aaron came to sit on the coffee table across from her and leaned his elbows atop his knees.
“Why were you with this man? If he was cruel, why did you not beat him senseless and scar him so that other women would see what a terrible creature he is?”
Shelly laughed, but quieted when she saw he wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, you’re serious.”
“Of course. You seem so uncertain of yourself. I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s not easy. I mean, you have all of this pressure to be perfect all the time, and—“
Aaron waved a hand and sat up straight. “You must forget all of them. Too often our females are in brutal combat, fighting over that is the most worthy.”
“The males as well, showing off for the best females. It is a game I refuse to play. You shouldn’t as well.”
“Please,” Shelly said, looking away.
“I’m not even a contender in that fight.”
“Why would you say this?”
“Have you seen me?”
“Yes. You’re beautiful.”
Shelly looked up at him.
“Me? I have fat on my arms, my stomach is… oh.”
He placed his fingers tips against her lips, leaning so close to her she could see the lines of his irises.
“I have seen you. In perfect detail. Do not forget that is my shirt you wear, and I’ll want it back.”
The air again forced itself from her lungs, blowing between his fingers.
“You are beautiful. How can you not see that?” His fingers slid from her lips and she couldn’t stop herself from pushing her jaw out just a touch to run her lower lip across them.
“It’s not that simple,” she breathed.
“It can be,” he said, leaning in. The tip of his nose rubbed against the tip of her own, his lips so close they almost touched hers.
But she wasn’t going to let him win this one. She put a hand to his chest and pushed him back an inch.
Despite being immensely stronger than her, he didn’t resist even a little. The perfect gentleman.
“No, it can’t. You don’t understand what it’s like.”
Aaron leaned back and raised his chin to stretch his neck, and then folded his hands and tucked them between his knees.
“Very well. Explain it to me.”
“I’m not wasting time on your skepticism.”
“That’s not it. I sincerely wish to know. I don’t understand, but I wish to.”
“Well, let’s say my parents have been calling me fat since I was five. When I hit puberty, they even put me on a special diet.”
“Whenever I had friends over, they’d let them drink soda and have ice-cream, but not me. Right there in front of everyone, they would remind me about my diet. As you can imagine, that made me real popular in school.”
By now the fire had caught to the logs, the flames growing larger and casting the room with greater light.
Aaron’s eyes were pressed together in consternation, a look of sympathy she was all too familiar with.
“That is horrible treatment,” he said.
“They meant well,” she said quickly, feeling guilty now for having spoken of them so poorly.
“They weren’t all bad. I mean, they took me to doctors. They were just worried about my health.”
“They took you to doctors? For this?” He held a hand out toward her.
She shrugged and sipped her water.
“It was the same in high school. Too big for cheerleading, always the sympathy case. The stories of my special diet when I was little followed me through high school, even though I wasn’t on it anymore. No one wanted to be my friend for fear of getting caught up in the ridicule. Of course no guy would ask me out, but why would they?”
“I feel perhaps I’m missing something,” he said.
“Were you much larger than this before?”
Shelly folded her arms over her, suddenly embarrassed of what he was looking at.
“No, this is it. I’ve pretty much been this heavy my whole life.”
“But that is ridiculous! You are larger than the sticks in the forest, it is true, but you’re not a great oak threatening to swallow the sun. You move with grace, and curve gently.” Aaron said and paused for second.
“You are like the moon in the day, your beauty subtle and understated, but is the talk of kings and the inspiration of song.”
Shelly wanted to pass all of that off as possibly the greatest line known to mankind, but the way he said it with such passionate certainty made her pause.
So far, she had reason to believe he meant every word. The way he looked at her, touched her.
“If that’s true, why do guys treat me like they do? Looking at me like I’m not worth a damn.”
“Blind,” Aaron said quickly.
“And cowards. Blind cowards.”
Shelly laughed, and he grinned along with her.
“How are you so sweet?”
“I’ve never met anyone that’s awakened me as you have. You’re bringing out the best parts of me.”
For a moment, she could only sit and stare at him. Was this real? She was regretting having pushed him away before that kiss.
“Tell me more. What happened after high school?”
>
“Oh, well, it got better.” She shook her head and took another sip.
“You’re lying. You say one thing, but your head says another.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “No, it did. I mean, once I was out of high school, I got away from all the stories and reputation that had haunted me throughout my childhood. I got a job and moved out of my parents’ house. Got a car. You know, independence.”
“But it didn’t help.” It wasn’t a question. Damn, he was good.
“No, it didn’t. I wasn’t teased daily anymore, but no one talked to me still. I did well at work, but no friends. No guys.”
“There was one. The man in the forest. Yes?”
“Well, there were two before him. Not really boyfriends. We went on a few dates, but nothing ever came of it.”
“And then the man in the forest.”
“Bryant. Yeah.”
“What drew you to him? He seemed so angry.”
Shelly sighed and looked into her cup. “I don’t know. He wasn’t always that way. He was nice at first. Called me pretty. No one had done that before. We dated and talked. He bought me flowers once.”
The memory of it still made her smile, even though it was now tinged with the ugliness of what had happened in the car.
She reached up and touched the place on her face where he’d hit her.
“Then he got mean. Not all at once. It was just little bits, here and there. When I told him about my parents, and growing up, he started to talk down to me in public. Little things.”
“Taking food out of my hands, telling me I should cut back. Buying me a gym membership on Valentine’s Day instead of chocolates. Stuff like that.”
“Those… are not little things,” Aaron said, his voice tinged with both horror and anger. “Go on.”
Shelly looked up at him, uncertain. His eyes were sympathetic, but his hands were out from between his knees now, clutched together tightly.
“It didn’t seem bad at the time. Kinda rude, sure, but whatever. He made sure I knew a f—“
She stopped herself, looked away from Aaron, then met his eyes again, “a curvy girl like me didn’t deserve a man like him.”
He had nodded approvingly to her correction of the word “fat” and then snorted.
“That man was no prize.”
“So I’ve come to realize,” she said and stuck her tongue out at him.
Aaron smiled and even chuckled.
The light mood grew heavy again when Aaron looked down.
“What happened tonight? Your clothes… You were running from him. It was your cries that had drawn me to you. I cannot abide a woman in trouble.”
Shelly gave him a sad smile.
That was probably the most amazing thing she’d ever heard a man say, period, much less when talking about her.
“He said we were going to celebrate, and took me for a drive. A long drive. The next thing I knew, we were pulled over in the middle of nowhere. He started kissing me, and then… he wanted to…”
Tears stung her eyes and she shook her head, unable to say it out loud.
“There was no way I was going to let him do that to me. He’d been drinking on the way, though, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He tore my shirt, and when I fought back, he hit me.”
“He what!”
Shelly shrugged, unable to think of an answer that would calm down the bear inside Aaron.
“When a man hits you, you hit him right back!”
“I did.”
Aaron’s head jerked slightly in surprise, and his postured settled a little. “Oh.”
“Yep. I punched him, and then slammed his face against the steering wheel. In the movies that always honks the horn, but that didn’t happen. Anyway, while he was dazed, I ran. And then you know what happened after.”
IV.
“A true man never takes what a woman doesn’t offer,” Aaron said, fidgeting with his hands.
She could see it was a struggle for him to keep from touching her to comfort her. She had pushed him away, and he was respecting that gesture, even now.
“A man like that… if I had known, I wouldn’t have settled for just running him off. I would’ve grabbed him in my teeth and—!“
This time it was Shelly’s turn to make a move. She leaned forward and placed her hand on his arm, her touch silencing him unintentionally.
That was just as well, as she had something she wanted to say.
“You’re very sweet and brave. And handsome.”
He reached over and put his hand atop hers. “You think I’m handsome?”
She sighed with a grunt and growled at him. “So hot.”
He laughed and squeezed her hand affectionately.
“This is good to know. I was beginning to suspect it was one-sided.”
“Oh no, not even close.”
Aaron slid from the coffee table and stood on his knees before her. Taking the cup from her hand, he placed it on the table beside her, and then held both of her hands in his.
“That man was unworthy of you. I see the strength in you now. Even through what happened with your parents, and the other men, you still respected yourself enough to say no. You refused to be treated that way, and you stood up for yourself.”
“But I ran.”
“After hitting him. Then you ran into the woods in the middle of the night. I turn into a bear and I still know it’s dangerous out there. You’re very brave indeed.”
Shelly laughed and looked away, but he caught her chin again and with soft fingers, drew her face to him again.
This time, his face lingered a breath away from hers.
“May I?” he whispered.
“Please,” she breathed.
His hand spread across her cheek and pulled her lips to his. A moan escaped her throat as they kissed.
In all her life, she thought she understood what it was to be kissed, but this was something different. There was a connection between them, like an unspoken understanding. A hunger.
When Aaron leaned against her, she let herself be pushed back against the arm of the couch. He scooted onto the sofa, his body half on her own and half on the cushion.
They kissed deeply as he put one of his legs between hers. Then, his lips parted and his tongue darted into her mouth for just a moment, almost as if asking permission.
Shelly sucked in a breath through her nose, grabbed his head and pressed his lips more firmly against her own as she sent her tongue into his mouth. When he greeted it with his own, she felt the heat explode between her legs. In all her life, a man had never turned her on so much with so little.
All they were doing was kissing, and it was more erotic and meaningful than any sex she’d ever had.
The hot wetness between her thighs was what real attraction meant, and the ravenous beating of her heart… could it be love? Could it really happen so quickly?
Shelly pulled her head away and looked at the man pressed against her. His eyes fluttered for a moment, proof he’d been as lost in the moment as she.
“What?” he asked, dazed. “I’m sorry.”
“Shh, no,” she said and put a hand to the side of his face.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Should I stop? We can stop.”
Shelly smiled at how confused he was, almost as if he’d just woken up. “Do you want to stop?”
“No.” The word came out as a lusty breath.
“Good,” she said and pulled him to her again. This time, it was his turn to groan as they kissed, his tongue instantly in her mouth.
It was crazy, but she could already imagine spending every day with him like this, in this cottage, away from it all.
Never in her life had she met a man so respectful and kind. She felt it in the way he kissed her, the way he wanted her.
When his hand slipped under her shirt – well, his shirt that she was wearing—she hooked her arm around his neck to hold his lips to hers.
The rough skin of his palm slid
up her side. Normally, she would’ve been disgusted, knowing he was touching her… curves.
Romance: Bearilicious: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection (Werebear, Bear Shifter, BBW Paranormal Romance) Page 2
