Blind Date With A Bear(37)

“Oh, Quinn, you are beautiful.”

He hadn’t shown many women his bear. Bears were solitary creatures and didn’t experience the need to run in packs like wolves or cats so they rarely shifted in groups. He thought of the first girl—a human— he’d shifted in front of when he was seventeen. She’d run away and drove off in his car before he could change back. He’d donned his clothes and followed her back to her house. She’d been sobbing in her mother’s arms and her father had been waiting outside with the keys to his car and an order never to see his daughter again.

He’d gotten over the event, but he was still cautious. With Paige, the bear had insisted he shift for her. He understood the animal’s logic. She was a mate to both sides. The man and the animal.

The moon cast a silver glow behind her, giving her a dark, mysterious look that was different from the warm, glowing picture of yesterday. Did Paige have two sides to her as well? Was she the quiet, reserved woman who had agreed to a blind date with her friend’s brother? Or was she the woman sitting in the middle of a forest with a bear shifter twenty yards away displaying absolutely no fear or repulsion? Or was she both?

A great battle raged inside Quinn. His human half was telling him to cut his loss and run. Telling him a woman like Paige was not what he and his bear needed. She looked soft, and vulnerable, and breakable. Shit, Quinn. She was a human. A human woman you were thinking of asking to carry your cubs. The other half urged him to tell her he’d give her everything she ever wanted. Be everything she ever needed. Be her mate.

A star plummeted from the heavens, leaving a silvery trail against the dark sky. He breathed in a lungful of fresh air. He loved the city, being on top of the world so to speak when he was completing a build. Here, in the deep of the forest was where his soul felt at peace, when the bear converged with the man. He took another deep breath and this time his lungs filled with the scent of Paige. With her, the bear and man could be one. He shifted again.

Paige couldn’t stop staring. One moment he was a man, the next a bear. Then a man once more. And man, what a man. Quinn’s skin was a gold layer over hard muscles that rippled and bulged. He stood with his hands fisted on his hips, the pose making his powerful arms bunch. The hair on his head looked darker, as if it were wet, falling to his shoulders. He looked primitive and magnificent and Paige wondered how it would feel to have this man completely for herself. She wanted to press herself against him, running her hungry hands over his shoulders, licking her way down his body until she knelt, taking his cock in her mouth.

“Shifting makes me horny,” he grinned as their gazes locked.

“So I see.” She licked her lips again and he growled. “Bears don’t growl.”

Quinn took a step toward the boulder. “No, but the man does. Strip.”

Paige was not one to flaunt her body. In fact, it took great courage to allow a man to put his hands beneath her blouse. She didn’t think she’d ever been completely naked when she’d had sex before. Now a man was telling—no, commanding her—to remove her clothing. For him. She realized she’d do just about anything for Quinn. Hopping down from the boulder she stood tall and proud. She unzipped her lightweight jacket and let it fall to the ground. Next she slipped off a thin, blue sweater. She still wore a white tank and her bra.

“How many clothes do you have on?”

She giggled at his pained expression. “You told me to dress warm.”

Kicking off her shoes, she turned around then bent over at the waist to remove her socks. Hearing the muffled groan behind her, she knew she’d made an impact by presenting him her ass. Oops, she thought suddenly, turning back around. Did a female presenting her ass mean something in the shifter world? Apparently, it did. He’d moved until he was only inches away.

“Off. Now.” He didn’t give her a chance to obey his guttural command. One hand came out, the fingers sporting short, sharp claws and within seconds her tank and bra had been cut away and stripped from her shoulders. Her nipples pebbled with the cold. Next, he opened her jeans and yanked them off her legs. Her panties fell away in tatters. She stood before her bear shifter, the desire she saw in him making her weak with longing.

He lifted her up and laid her gently on the blanket covering the surface of the boulder. Stripped of her clothes, the hard granite beneath her back, Paige gave herself over to the animalist experience of the moment. The sky above her was vast and beautiful. She felt so insignificant and so powerful all at the same time. The stars were just beginning to show, arranged in the familiar patterns she’d learned as a child. The night was cool and clear. She shivered as the breeze traveled over her naked body and she felt none of the insecurities that usually plagued her. She allowed the beauty of the moment to seep into her soul. The vastness of the universe, the dark sky filled with countless stars, seemed to pour down into her, revealing its secrets.