Bear Down: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Read online

  "Nathan!" she gasped in relief.

  Nathan skidded to a halt between April and the other bear, digging his giant clawed paws into the thin tundra soil. He put his head down. All the fur on his shoulders was standing up. He gave another tremendous roar. The message was very clear. Mess with her and you mess with me. Bring it!

  For an awful moment April thought the mother bear might try it. She snarled and flattened her ears, and kept coming. Then the baby bear ran down the hill to Mom. Nathan's arrival had completely terrified it. It scampered behind the mother's bulk.

  With her baby safe, Momma Bear gave another token snarl in Nathan's direction. She slouched off along the shoreline, shepherding her baby in front of her.

  April sat down very suddenly on the ground when her legs decided to stop holding her. She felt like everything from the waist down had turned to jelly. That had been too close. Way too close.

  "Have you been following me all this time?" she asked. "I've been looking for you! Jerk."

  Nathan swung his head around and gave her a look that was ... well, if bears could look sheepish, he was doing it now.

  April got up and approached him cautiously. She reminded herself there was nothing to be afraid of. It was only Nathan. He would never hurt her.

  She held out a careful hand. Nathan held still, watching her. There was something very Nathan-like about him as a bear, she thought. Now that she'd seen him up close, she was pretty sure she could recognize him again, even in bear form.

  Lightly she touched the shaggy ruff of fur around his face. He was so big that even on all fours, she was on eye level with him. Nathan lowered his head, ducking it almost shyly. It was—God help her—very cute. She ran her fingers through his fur. He made a low sound in his throat that was almost a purr.

  "You ought to change back," she said. "We can't have a conversation like this. Here, I brought your clothes." She slung the backpack off and unzipped it.

  When she looked up from the backpack, human-shaped Nathan was crouched on the ground in all his naked muscular glory. He stood up slowly. With a certain amount of reluctance, April handed him the neatly folded bundle of clothing. As far as she was concerned, he could walk around naked all day, but she didn't want him to be cold.

  "So you're .... okay with this?" Nathan asked, as he tugged his jeans over his hips.

  "What? Did you think I'd be, I dunno, mad at you or something?"

  "I thought you'd freak out," Nathan admitted. He frowned at her. "Why aren't you freaking out?"

  Now it was her turn to confess, "I don't know. For all I know, maybe there's an enormous freakout waiting for me when we get back to cars and people and all those normal things. But right now, I'm mostly just—Nathan, do you have any idea all the questions I want to ask you?"

  "Huh?" He looked confused, and vaguely alarmed. "Like what?"

  "Like—like everything! We can radio collar bears and follow them around, but we can't live with them. How do polar bears figure out which ice floes are the best seal-fishing grounds? How do they communicate with each other? Do they communicate with each other? Polar bears are mostly loners, but we're starting to realize their social structure is actually more complex than we'd ever realized. But we can't really study it because they live in such remote areas and they're so hard to get close to!"

  "April," Nathan said when he could finally get a word in edgewise, "I'm a bear shifter, not an actual bear."

  "Oh. I guess you're right." She blushed. "Still, you must know a lot about the private lives of bears that we biologists never see. I hope you're okay with me asking questions, because, uh, I don't think I'm going to be able to stop myself."

  Nathan laughed. "Hey, I'd much rather have you asking questions than avoiding me." Sobering, he added, "I don't usually change in front of people. Not very many people know about this."

  "Who does know?" April asked. "I don't want to say something in front of the wrong person."

  "Well, my family, of course. It's a family trait. And Lee knows, as well as few of my friends in town. I'll introduce you around later, if you're okay with that."

  "I'd love that," she said, smiling. "Though first I guess we have to find our way back to the plane so they can find us. I hope you were paying attention, because everything around here looks the same to me. I tried to mark our way with piles of rocks, but they don't stand out very well."

  "Oh, I can find our way back easily," Nathan said. "All I have to do is backtrail us."

  She frowned. "You're that good at tracking?"

  Nathan tapped his nose. "Smell."

  "Oh." This bear thing was going to take some getting used to.

  "Bears aren't bloodhounds, of course, but we do have a pretty sharp sense of smell. On a wet day like today, every shrub and rock will hold scent for days, unless it rains again."

  "That's useful." Her earlier qualms came back to her. "You could survive out here a long time, couldn't you?"

  "Well, indefinitely, I guess," Nathan said. "I mean, I'm a bear. I can live off the land, just like regular bears do. And cold doesn't bother me, because, well, bear."

  "So you're just wanting to get back to civilization for me?" She wasn't sure why it bothered her.

  "Oh, God, no," Nathan said hastily. "Just because I can live off the land doesn't mean I don't miss things like grilled steaks and beds without rocks in them." He made a "c'mere" gesture to her. "Come on, let's get back to the plane so we don't miss our rescuers when they show up."

  He held out his hand. A bit reluctantly, April took it, and they began walking back in the direction they'd come from.

  "But if we did have to, though," she said. "I mean, if we had to walk overland, back to town ... you could hunt for me, and stuff?"

  Nathan grinned. "Of course I'd hunt for you."

  As it turned out, they'd only been walking for another few minutes when Nathan looked up sharply. After a moment's confusion, April heard what he'd heard—the distant drone of an airplane. They both caught sight of it a minute later, a small yellow plane buzzing along the coastline.

  They both waved wildly at it. The airplane circled them, dipping its wings. Like Nathan's plane, it had big round tundra tires, comically oversized compared to the rest of it. After circling a couple more times, it waggled its wings and went down behind a ridge.

  "He's gonna land over there," Nathan said.

  They scrambled quickly to the top of the low ridge. The airplane had landed neatly in the valley beyond, and someone was forging through the brush toward them. As they got closer, April recognized Nathan's partner Lee, his long hair blowing in the wind.

  "Boy, am I glad to see you two!" Lee called.

  "That's my line, buddy," Nathan said. He caught Lee in a rough hug and slapped him on the back. Lee shook April's hand.

  "Are you two okay? I found the wrecked plane. Damn, man."

  "We're good," Nathan said. "Just a few bruises. What are you doing out here? We weren't expecting anyone to come looking 'til morning."

  "I got worried about you two when the storm system moved in," Lee said. He fell into step with them, heading back to the plane. "After it passed through, I kept trying to raise you on the radio, but no luck. So I talked Bill Owens into letting me borrow his wings to go out and do a bit of looking around. I was really sweating after I found the crash site, let me tell you."

  "The airplane got it worse than we did," Nathan said. "Poor thing's a goner. I don't know how much we're going to be able to salvage."

  April realized with a certain amount of guilt that she'd been too distracted by everything else to think about what had happened to the plane. Nathan had lost his livelihood. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  Lee snorted. "Buy another one, probably. Good thing you got the you-know-what, huh?"

  Nathan looked embarrassed.

  "What's the you-know-what?" April asked. They'd reached the yellow plane now. Nathan gave her a hand into the back.

  "This guy here? He's loaded," Lee said.
"Though you wouldn't know it to look at him. Nathan's uncle made it big on mineral leases when they started mining around here. After his uncle died, the family nest egg came down to him."

  "It's just money," Nathan said. "Money can't buy what matters in the world."

  "No, but money can buy us a new set of wings." Lee swung up into the pilot's seat. "You guys ready to get out of here?"

  "More than ready," April said. But, as she buckled herself in, she wondered if that was really true. A lot had happened out here, and she didn't want everything to change when they got back.

  8. Nathan

  It was near midnight when they got back, but despite the late hour, they were met by both of the reporters from the town's tiny newspaper, as well as the town's one EMT from its little clinic, along with a surprisingly large number of local pilots who'd been prepared to go out on search-and-rescue duty if it turned out to be necessary.

  In all the commotion, April was swept away before Nathan had a chance to talk to her. Eventually the Polar Air hangar cleared out, leaving him alone. At least "home" was a camper-trailer behind the hangar, so it wasn't like he had far to go.

  Lee was the last to leave. "You okay, man?"

  "I'm good." Nathan tossed him a smile. "Thanks again for rescuing us. All I need right now is my bed, I guess."

  ***

  It was good to spend the night in his own bed when he'd been prepared to sleep on the tundra, but Nathan still had trouble falling asleep, and it wasn't the crash. He kept feeling the lodestone tug of April's presence. It wasn't that he could pinpoint exactly where she was; it was just that he knew she wasn't here, with him, and his bear was restless because of that. The bed felt too large and too empty.

  She'd be at the hotel in town, he thought, as he lay awake in the bright polar night. Low reddish sunshine gleamed through his thin curtains. It was 1 a.m., but the light was like that of afternoon. How was April dealing with it? He'd never asked if the all-night sunshine bothered her. In fact, there were so many things he didn't know about her yet. She was like a treasure box, full of riches yet to be explored.

  What was April doing now? Maybe she was taking a shower, water sluicing down that lovely body he'd enjoyed so thoroughly this afternoon ... His bear stirred, and other parts of him as well.

  He had made love to her on the tundra, but he hadn't truly claimed her, hadn't marked her as his own. Now he desperately wished he had. He shouldn't have let her walk away. What if she had second thoughts? What if, like a fool, he'd let his one chance at true happiness slip away?

  He finally gave up on sleep, took a quick cold shower in the camper's little bathroom, and went over to work out some of his aggression on the pieces of the project plane he'd been working on—the one he'd been pounding on when April had walked in on him. It was an old Piper Cub he'd gotten for a song after the owner wrecked it. The damage wasn't even that great; the engine was still in good shape, and Nathan thought it would be a nice little plane once he got the body put back together.

  Guess now I have two project planes, he thought. The Cessna wouldn't be flying anywhere soon, either.

  And that made him think of April again. Of course, everything made him think of April right now. He wanted to head over to her hotel, but despite the sunshine outside, it wasn't even close to morning yet. Nothing like making the girl of your dreams think you were some kind of obsessed stalker.

  He wished he'd had more time to talk to her yesterday, but it had been late when they'd gotten back to town, and she'd gone straight to her hotel. He hadn't even thought to get her cell number; there had been too much going on.

  Some mate he was. Nathan wondered, gloomily, what he really had to offer her. Sure, he had money, but he didn't spend it much. He slept in a camper parked on the tundra, for pete's sake.

  If April was interested, maybe they could buy a house ...

  He laid the hammer down, thinking about it. He'd never really thought about his future all that much. He liked running the aviation business with Lee, and going out on the ice floes in his bear form when he got the chance. He had enough money that he didn't have to worry, and beyond that, he'd never thought about what he'd be doing in ten years.

  But now, he suddenly found himself having future fantasies, and April figured in all of them. April in the kitchen of their own little house, taking something out of the oven; April spread out on the bed, naked and beautiful ...

  It would be a snug little house, he thought. Not a huge one. Neither of them were the sort of people who wanted something grand and opulent. Just a nice little house with big windows to let in the light, a house with a yard for children to play in and maybe a swing in the front yard. If their children didn't inherit the bear shifter trait, they could ride on his broad shaggy back; if they did, he could teach his cubs to swim in the icy water of the sound, while April watched from shore and took pictures.

  He was jarred out of his pleasant fantasy by the ringing phone. After that, it seemed that he'd never have a moment to himself again. Word had gotten around the little town about the crash, and his phone was soon ringing off the hook with worried neighbors, reporters for the town's one small paper, and relatives he hadn't talked to in years. They were calling him on both his cell phone—which he eventually turned off—and his office phone.

  After telling the same story no less than twenty times, he found himself longing for the quiet solitude of the tundra.

  A truck door banged outside, and Lee walked into the office with a fat folder filled with paperwork. He stopped when he saw Nathan's face. "Hey, man, you look grouchy as a—"

  "Don't say it," Nathan growled. "No bear jokes. I'm not in the mood."

  Lee grinned. "All right, no bear jokes. But you'll have plenty to complain about once you finish filling out all the reports on the crash." He dumped the folder on Nathan's already overloaded desk.

  Nathan groaned.

  "There's a couple of crash investigators coming out later to take a look," Lee added. "I was going to ferry them out there in Bill's plane, and while I'm at it, maybe see what we can salvage. You wanna be along for that?"

  Nathan shook his head. "Nah, I got some things to take care of here in town."

  "Some things ... that have anything to do with a certain pretty wildlife biologist?"

  Nathan bared his teeth.

  "I'll take that as a yes," Lee said, and ducked when Nathan semi-playfully threw a stapler at him.

  Just then the phone rang again. Lee grinned at the look on Nathan's face. "That bad, is it?"

  "I tell you, man, you crash one plane ..." He ignored the phone, letting the answering machine pick it up. "Apparently the story made the national news this morning. I'm discovering relatives I didn't even know I had, not to mention people I haven't thought about since I went to high school with them. Or grade school. It's not quite the explosion of newfound relatives and long-lost best friends that I got when I inherited my uncle's money, but it's pretty close."

  "Listen, man," Lee said, getting serious for once. "You look like you're about to snap and grow fangs right where you sit. Not to mention, I got a good night's sleep, which I'm guessing is more than I can say for you; those bags under your eyes have luggage of their own. So, listen, I'll hold down the fort for awhile, and reassure everyone that you're perfectly fine. You can go have breakfast with your biologist lady. If you don't happen to come back today ..." He shrugged. "I'm not your keeper."

  "Lee," Nathan said, heartfelt, "you're the best, man."

  "Just remember you owe me an alibi the next time Great-Aunt Caroline tries to set me up with one of her bingo buddies' grandkids."

  Nathan laughed. "Deal." He clapped Lee on the shoulder and, with a spring in his step, went out to his truck.

  9. April

  After very nearly spending a night on the tundra, April had thought she would sleep better than she did. All she could think about was Nathan. Nathan with his arms around her; Nathan making her body rise in pleasure; Nathan holding her hand.
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  Nathan as a giant polar bear ...

  It had seemed so much more normal out there in the wilderness. Now she found herself plagued with doubt. How could Nathan be a bear? How was that possible? Maybe she'd hit her head in the crash. Maybe the whole thing was nothing but a strange dream brought on by panic and exposure.

  Out on the tundra, she'd felt so sure. She had never met anyone who made her feel like Nathan did. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. But now uncertainty began to hammer at her. She barely knew him, and what little she did know about him was ... well ... impossible. She was jumping in too quickly. This wasn't like her at all. Normally she weighed all the sides of a situation, evaluated it like a proper scientist, and then made a decision. Something about that man sent her common sense running out the door. But what if she was making a terrible mistake?

  She'd finally managed to drift off to sleep when the phone woke her. First it was a reporter, not local but from some sort of national news service. Then it was her boss with the Canadian Wildlife Service, who'd just found about about the crash and forgot she was in an earlier time zone. Then her mother. Ye gods. She unplugged the phone in the hotel room and put her cell phone on silent.

  Under other circumstances, she might have enjoyed being able to tell the story over and over. Things had turned out just fine, after all; no one was hurt beyond a few bruises, and in the end, it had become one of those "only in Canada" stories to tell people over beers at the local bar.

  Except for Nathan.

  Nathan, who had her thoughts and feelings all tangled up. Nathan, who'd had mindblowing sex with her and then turned into a bear. She couldn't talk about any of that, which meant that her attempts to tell the story ended up faltering into uncertainty. She needed some time to get her head screwed on straight.

  Her boss had been more than understanding when she said she wasn't sure if she could resume the bear survey immediately. "Of course not," he'd said. "You should come back to the city. Take some time off. See a therapist."