Bear Pause (BBW / Bear Shifter Romance): A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance (Bear Fursuits Book 6) (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“I’ll pick you up at lunchtime,” Steve bent over and kissed Laura’s cheek. “We’ll have that picnic. You catch up on your sleep. Promise?”

“All right.” She rolled over.

He turned at the door, but she was out like the proverbial light. Pregnant, he thought smugly. He was glad he had persuaded her to take the afternoon off. He knew that even though they were married, he still had some courting to do. And now that, as the police had promised, things had settled down, he thought he and Laura were entitled to an afternoon of freedom.

Steve went out to the barn to give a hand with the morning turnout. He returned at noon on his bike and picked up a cooler from Rosa.

“Where are we going?” Laura asked as she swung aboard his motorcycle and buckled her red helmet on.

“You tell me,” he said. “This is your spread. I’ve only seen the bits of it that are visible from the road.”

“Do you want to go north? Towards the foothills?” She gestured to the misty blue lumps on the horizon.

“Sure.” He kicked the chopper into life and braced himself for the thrill when she slid her arms around his waist and held on. The electric jolt was as bad as he had feared. And twice as addictive. He would have thought that sharing his wife’s bed would have cooled him off. Instead, he was more attuned to Laura every day.

The May sun was hot, but a cool breeze blew out of the mountains. The forecast called for snow, and he could believe it, even this late in the spring. Colorado weather was nothing if not changeable.

When Laura took a hand off his waist and pointed, he turned onto a narrow road that wasn’t much more than a gravel track. It was as die-straight as most of the other roads through the Double B, but on either side taut barbed wire fences framed green pastureland. In places the grass was almost waist high.

The lush, bright green was dotted with wildflowers. The undulating prairie was broken here and there by outcrops of rock and the occasional tree still trying to come into leaf. Steve relaxed and enjoyed the breeze, the ride, and the feel of his very own mate resting against his spine.

He kept his eyes open for the perfect spot. He had asked Rosa to pack him a picnic and a blanket to go with it. He spotted the glint of water in the distance. He knew that the ranch was laced with streams that filled the stock ponds and made the Double B the lush pastureland it was. But he couldn’t tell if what lay ahead was a muddy cow pond or a picturesque running brook. Well, sometimes a fellow had to take a gamble.

Steve aimed for a spot where a little cluster of trees rose above the waving grass. He didn’t see a single cow, he hoped this meant there were no cow patties in the pasture. The road passed over a culvert, through which a rippling brook ran. He slowed down a bit, and watched for a gap in the fence. But although there was a road, it didn’t seem as though the Bascoms had built many gates in their fence.

But eventually there was a barbed wire gap. Steve had gone past it, before it registered. He had to turn and come back. Laura clutched his waist tightly as he made the unexpected pivot. She was laughing. He could feel her chuckles vibrating through his spine. He braked by the gap.

“Why are we stopping?” Laura asked.

“I thought this would be a good place for a picnic,” Steve suggested.

Laura seemed to be making up her mind. She looked at the gate. She looked at Steve, and at the waist high grass. She looked at the bushes growing on the bank of the creek.

Amusement curved her lips. “I guess we could go over by the water. But the grass is very high on this side of the creek, and we wouldn’t like sitting on it. We should go back and picnic on the other side where the stream has carved out a bare patch.”

“Okay,” Steve was agreeable.

He turned the Harley and they went back over the culvert until he found another gate. Laura swung lithely off the bike. She opened the gate wide and held it open while he drove through. She latched it again before remounting.

Once they were in the middle of the grass, Steve was surprised at how difficult it was to see any distance. The tall blades came up almost to the windscreen. Fortunately, he could hear the brook babbling across the stones. He followed the downslope towards the sound of the brook.

Suddenly his motorcycle broke through the grass to the bare edge of the bank, and he had to steady his Harley to prevent it from plunging into the water. It looked as though the spring melt had scoured the edge of the stream and left a pebbly beach about a hundred yards long. While on the other side, the bank was four or five feet higher.

“Next spring, we’ll have a stock pond here,” Laura said happily.

She helped him spread out the blanket beside the water. The stones were warm from the sun, but the ground was not the soft spring grass that he had imagined. Even with a blanket, making love on this would bruise them both. He would just have to adapt.

He pulled the little cooler out of his carrier. He and Laura set out the sandwiches and fried chicken that Rosa had made for them. The cook had included a couple of bottles of lemonade and one of water, so they had something to drink.

Laura was a good sport about the hard ground, and his misapprehension about the open prairie.

“I hadn’t realized how tall the grass got out here. I guess closer to the house and the stables, it’s all eaten low,” he said as they were finishing up with the brownies Rosa had packed for dessert.

“That’s right,” she agreed. “But we wouldn’t want to have a picnic over there either, those fields are all full of cow patties.”

“I was trying to think of a way to get you to myself,” Steve explained.

“Well, here I am, away from other people. What did you want to do?” Her eyes were sparkling and she was almost laughing.

“I had intended to make love to you in the great outdoors.” Steve patted the blanket and the stones underneath. “But this is a little firmer than I expected.”

Laura’s laughter rippled out, young and frivolous. Steve stroked her cheek. “I have another idea, but it also involves taking our clothes off.”

“Yeah?” She grinned at him.

Steve shrugged out of his leather jacket. He folded it in two and laid it on the blanket. His hands went to his shirt snaps and he began to undo them slowly. “You might want to take your own clothes off,” he suggested with a lascivious look that made her giggle.

“I thought you said the ground was too hard to make love?” She was still chuckling.

“We could probably work something out,” he said. “And maybe we will, later. But right now I think we should have some fun another way.”

Laura’s face got a touch wary, so he gave her a hand with the buttons of her shirt. And with her bra. He didn’t need an excuse to kiss her breasts. Or pinch her nipples. And he didn’t offer her one. She giggled harder when his hands went to the snap of her leather pants.

“You’ll never get me out of these,” she said smugly.

“Did I ever tell you that it’s a huge mistake to challenge a Green Beret?” He dove for her hips and hoisted her into the air.

She was laughing so hard she could hardly meet his lips with hers. Steve let her feel some of his urgency. She had to know he couldn’t always be a gentle, tender, and considerate lover. Sometimes the feeling between them was going to be too elemental for him to hold back his bear. And here, outside, with the sun beating down on them, and the birds singing, and crickets chirping, and the smell of grass and wildflowers all around, was one of those times.

While he was sucking her tongue down his throat, he was also wrestling those skin-tight leathers down off her butt. He found the zippers at the back, and the front. It was still a struggle to peel the leather pants off, but he was up to it.

Kissing Laura when she was laughing, and squirming, was exciting. It made him feel like a hero to have her respond without a single trace of fear. He hoped that she was becoming used to the idea that he found her beautiful, desirable, and everything a man could ever want.

When he got her pants as far as her knees, he had to put her down because he hadn’t enough leverage to pull them any further. She leaned against him, weak from laughter and he hoped with passion. “What the heck are we going to do bare naked?” she asked still laughing.

“I thought we go swimming,” he said slyly. He bent and unlaced his boots and removed them and stuck his socks inside.

Laura sat on the blanket and pulled off her cowboy boots. “That creek isn’t deep enough to swim in.”

He liked that she continued taking her clothes off even though she thought he was quite mad. Laura didn’t have enough chances to play. He didn’t know when she had decided that life was so serious, but it seemed it was long enough ago that it had left her somber. He planned to alter that.

She leaned back on her hands, her naked breasts wobbling as the posture shoved them forward. Her nipples were rosy and peaked. He noticed that she had left her panties on. She was still shy. But not too shy to admire him when he pulled his own jeans and his shorts down. But she stopped chuckling when she saw his cock. Good thing. No man liked to have his dick mocked.

He stood up before her perfectly nude. And then he dropped down onto his hands and knees beside the blanket. He began to take bear. He knew what Laura would see. His bear was dark brown with a golden muzzle and golden eyespots.

He was fairly large for a black bear. The shifters in the Holden clan were all smaller than he was. He had always thought that that was because he didn’t have the same genes that they did. He hoped that he wasn’t so much larger than Laura’s bear that she would be frightened of him.

She did look a little appalled. She smiled uneasily. He saw the moment when she decided to follow his lead. She pulled off those white panties that she favored, and he was almost sorry that they weren’t going to make love now, because she was so beautiful. She smelled so rich, and right, and ready for him, that it was a waste. But getting her acquainted with her bear was important too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Laura felt self-conscious stripping down in front of Steve. For all that he was such an attentive and affectionate lover, she still had trouble believing that he found her fleshiness attractive. She preferred to make love in half-light, or even in darkness. When it was dark she could pretend that she was as beautiful as Steve was with his clothes off.

She looked at him out the corner of her eyes. Yes, he really was one hundred percent male. All hard muscle and hairy legs and arms and chest. His backside was tight and firm and her mouth watered. She took her own clothes off and folded them as Steve had done with his.

She didn’t know why he was pretending that they weren’t going to make love. But if he wanted to play games, she was willing. Laura’s eyes widened when Steve thrust his pants down his legs and kicked them aside. His cock was already erect, purple, and dripping. He was such a tease.

To her surprise, he winked at her, dropped to his hands and knees, and began to morph into his bear form. Within moments, he was a huge black bear with golden eye-spots and a magnificent, muscular body. He made a chuffing noise and padded off on silent paws as big as dinner plates to drink from the creek. He looked back at her expectantly.

She didn’t want to do this. But she didn’t want to disappoint him. Her own change hurt like the dickens. It felt as though someone was tearing the bones out from her body. Wrenching them into new shapes and then stuffing them back in willy-nilly, oblivious to her agony. She moaned. She howled with the pain. But eventually she was a bear. At least she thought she was. He clucked his tongue at her in what she thought was approval.

But her senses were overwhelmed. The hundred scents of grass and sage bush, of wild flowers and alders swirled together in a delicious miasma. Sunlight bounced off the water and dazzled her eyes. She could see the trout in the stream leaping about. She was pretty sure that she had never seen such a thing in human. Steve was wading into the water and bouncing up and down on all four legs. She joined him because she didn’t know what else to do.

The water smelled wonderful. Full of life. She smelled frogs and fish. Somewhere close by there was a nest with ducks. She scanned the other side of the stream, wondering if she could spot the waterfowl. The nest was camouflaged, and the female sitting on it was a mottled taupe, but they popped out at her as if they were brightly colored.

Steve turned around. One enormous front paw dipped into the water. He flipped water right in her face. This time his chuff sounded like laughter. She jumped. All four of her paws smacked the water at once and waves splashed up and wet his belly. He rushed at her and tumbled her onto her back. She discovered she was nimbler than he was. She flipped over and, half swimming and half running, she darted away from him.

At some point she realized that she was playing tag with a gigantic predator, but that she wasn’t the least bit afraid of this big boar bear. She wouldn’t have gone so far as to say she was aroused. But she was certainly happy. And enjoying her game.

She wasn’t even worried that there would be people who spotted her. Not out here. She was sure she would be able to hear anyone who approached. After all, she could clearly hear the woodpecker chipping himself a hole in a dead tree, and the ground hogs tunneling in the higher ground on the other side of the stream. Other than the sweet sounds of wildlife and the wind soughing through the new leaves, it was very peaceful, if not silent.

Of course, Steve could’ve caught her at any time. If he had cared to spring, those big muscular haunches of his would have launched him twenty feet. He could easily have pounced on her back and subdued her. But she knew he was not going to do any such thing. He smelled protective. That was the only word for it.