Bear Naked by Jessica Sims Read Free Book Online

For all intents and purposes, he was a widower, wasn’t he? And here I was with my heat-scent, shoving it under his nose and trying to get him to mate me.
    If I was a decent sort of person, I’d remind him of his grief, allow him to get it out in the open, and see how it was affecting him. If he was beside himself with sadness, then I’d know he didn’t want me. If he truly seemed like he’d had time to grieve, then maybe I could continue with my plan. I’d then tell him my problem and ask him how he wanted to logically proceed. Did he want to give a mating a go with me? Or did he want to return to the wild and continue grieving Katja?
    The sad thing was…I was terrified of his answer. What if he wasn’t over her? I didn’t know if I could compete with the memory of a dead girl, and so I kept things from him.
    It was awful and wrong to withhold information from Leif, and I couldn’t seem to help myself. I shoved my wet hands into the pockets of my coat and paced down the beach, waiting for my body temperature to cool a bit.
    I walked for hours, circling the island. Leif didn’t catch up with me, didn’t even come out to see if I was okay. When I returned to my tent, the water had been disposed of, the bathing items cleaned and put away. Leif was gone.
    Damn it.
    I wondered if I’d chased him off for good. If he came back, I resolved, I would tell him everything.
    No more secrets. I had to make sure Leif knew his reaction to me was purely driven by hormones. That he wasn’t attracted to me. That he’d left because his beloved Katja had died.
    Once he had the truth, then he could decide how he wanted to handle my heat, instead of me deciding for him.
    As much as I hated it, it had to be done.

    That next morning, I woke up to an ice sculpture of a whale. It looked as if it were cresting a wave, riding a snowy embankment. The sight of it was a good sign, though. It meant Leif was still in there, and he wasn’t mad at me.
    Yet.
    Still made me feel better, though.

    To my relief, Leif returned a few hours later.
    The bear lumbered into camp like nothing had happened, and just outside of the small circle of my encampment, he crouched and began to change to his human form. I placed his clothes out for him, and as soon as he shifted to a man, he immediately began to dress.
    I tried not to stare at him as he did, but failed.
    Leif had shaved. Not only had we cut his long hair, but he’d cut it even closer to his scalp and shaved his face with my knife. Bristle curved the strong lines of his jaw, but the long, crazy beard was gone.
    Leif was gorgeous. Young, strong, and delicious. My hormones sang in response when his attention fixed on me, and the firm lines of his jaw clenched. Without the beard, his nose seemed to dominate his face, a bit too long and prominent to make him model-beautiful, but I liked the look of his face.
    I liked everything about him. I was so screwed.
    He stared at the fire, and I obediently scooped the last of my instant coffee into the thermos, waiting for the water to heat. Leif had gone through my luxury supplies faster than I’d anticipated, but I hadn’t minded in the slightest. It gave me pleasure to see the look on his face as he re-discovered things as small as protein bars or even a broth-flavored tea. I was sure that a lot of that was my crush on him, but I was powerless to oppose it, thanks to my heat-frenzied hormones.
    Leif was silent, though. We both stared at my small fire, not saying anything. The faint crackle of burning driftwood was the only sound in the camp, along with the distant calls of the chinstrap penguins. I no longer even noticed them; they avoided my camp. It smelled too much like predator.
    “Storm’s coming,” Leif said after a long moment. “A big one. Lots of snow. You should find shelter.”
    I squinted up at the gray skies. They looked pretty much the same as every other day here. It was cold, and dry, and blustery. Typical Antarctic day. “How can you