Her Bear In Mind by Maria Amor Read Free Book Online

unannounced the next day. Thankfully it was Sierra who answered the door.
     
    “Hi.” she greeted him, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his check. Quickly, she whispered into his ear, “Molly thinks we had sex in the woods.”
     
    He grinned at her before sliding on his poker face.
     
    “Hi Joe!” Molly called out to him. “Just wondering for no particular reason, do you have any birth marks?”
     
    After Joe had satisfactorily answered Molly’s questions, they escaped into her bedroom. Sierra shut the door behind them.
     
    “Well that was horrific.” she said.
     
    “That’s quite the cover story, Sierra.” Joe smiled seductively.
     
    He moved closer to her, pushing her up against the door.
     
    “You sure you can keep her convinced?”
     
    He kissed her neck and wrapped his hands around her waist, sending shivers down her spine.
     
    “Maybe it would be easier to lie about it if we actually made love.”
     
    His hands slid up her shirt. He toyed with one nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
     
    “It could be easier.” She agreed breathlessly.
     
    “Besides,” he said as he fingered the top button of her jeans, “It’s completely unfair that you’ve seen me naked and I haven’t seen you.”
     
    He unzipped her pants and tiptoed his fingers towards her clit.
     
    Summoning an enormous amount of will power, Sierra reached her hand down and stopped him.
     
    “How about you take me to dinner first? One where you don’t have to leave half way through.”
     
    “How about dinner after?” he replied hungrily, pressing the bulge of his erection against her.
     
    She pushed him away and sat down on the bed.
     
    “Nope,” she said. “Dinner first. And a movie. And then maybe I’ll let you see me naked.”
     
    “You know most women don’t say no to me.”
     
    “I am not most women.” she replied.
     
    Joe sighed. “No. You are not. I suspect that’s why I like you.”
 
    *
    This time he took her out for steak.
     
    Joe was noticeably more at ease here then he had been at La Petite Maison. He relaxed back into his chair, laughed easily at the waiter’s jokes, and gave the guy manning the grill a backbreaking hug. They each got a pint of stout and a thick porterhouse steak. Joe told the waiter he’d like his, “as rare as you’ll make it .”
     
    When the waiter was out of earshot Sierra asked Joe, “Do you eat raw meat?”
     
    Joe chuckled.
     
    “Only in bear form. But I do like my meat a little less cooked then humans seem to.”
     
    Sierra’s mind reeled at his use of the word human s. She was trying very hard to reconcile shifters into her view of the world. Sometimes she could accept it. Other times, in spite of all she’d seen, the logic part of her brain ran screaming from the notion that a person could sometimes be a bear. It felt more like a dream than something she had actually witnessed.
     
    “You don’t consider yourself human?” she asked.
     
    “I’m not human, Sierra.”
     
    “But…you don’t think of it like sometimes you’re human, and sometimes you’re a bear?”
     
    They switched their conversation to a banal one about the weather as their waiter returned with their steaks. Joe took a bite of the bright red meat before answering.
     
    “There’s more to it than just a penchant for rare steak. There’s other ways we’re different from humans.”
     
    “Such as?”
     
    “I heal faster. I’m stronger. Better able to help damsels in distress lift their hybrid’s out of the mud. My body temperature runs a little hotter and my heart rate a little faster. I don’t age.”
     
    Sierra choked on her beer.
     
    “What?” she sputtered.
     
    “The young ones continue to age until about twenty or so then stop. The ones that were bitten, like I was, just freeze in place.”
     
    Sierra found herself grasping the table as if it would keep the world from spiraling out of control.
     
    “So you’re 46…forever.”
     
    “Actually, I’m 34