I grabbed him and then lowered myself onto him, filling myself with my mate. “Never.”
He reached up and filled his hands with my breasts. “I love you like this. Ride me, Elizabeth.”
Who was I to deny my mate? I leaned over him and kissed him long and hard. “I love you, bear.”
“Always.”
THE END
RANCHER BEAR’S MAIL ORDER MATE
STORY DESCRIPTION
Matt Long has had a hell of a six months. Hiding out like a hermit in the little cabin at the top of the mountain, fighting with his brothers, drinking himself under the table, and sleeping all day. When he isn’t roaming the woods as his bear, Matt is wallowing in misery and guilt.
Running out of time, and with a nasty ex literally nipping at her heels, Leila Harold makes a desperate move. She bribes her way into Beatrix’s Buxom Beauties, a mail-order bride service. She just needs a way out of town. But, when Leila opens the door to the small cabin deep in a pine forest in Landing, Wyoming, instead of finding her intended, she comes face to face with a giant grizzly bear. Lovely.
Matt had forgotten all about the mail order bride website. It was a drunken mistake. He tries to scare her away with his bear, but she just seems more annoyed than anything. She’s not new to the shifter game.
Both, however, are new to the magnetic pull of finding one’s true mate. They try to fight it, but it’s no use.
Not even a cranky bear like Matt can run true love away.
CHAPTER 1: Leila
I was wearing the same clothes that I’d worn the day before. Jeans and a thick sweater that’d seen better days. My hair was dirty and hanging limply from a ponytail. I hadn’t touched makeup in years, so every dark circle and bag was clearly displayed, without a trace of concealer to hide behind. What I’d give for a stick of concealer. What’d I’d do for a chance at a hot shower.
“Next stop, Landing. Two hours until arrival.” The bus driver announced over the static filled speaker system. He glanced at me through the rear view mirror and shook his head. “Sure you’re okay, lady?”
I hugged myself tighter and nodded. “Never been better.”
It was the truth, and wasn’t that just the saddest thing ever? Two years earlier, I would’ve seen that bus as a big doom wagon. What a thing perspective was. That bus was a freedom wagon, carrying me straight to another chance at life.
I knew nothing about Landing, Wyoming, except that there was a man there named Matt Long who was desperate for a wife. My stomach twisted, but I knew that no man could be as bad as my ex. Even if Matt Long was a balding man who wore gold chains and referred to me as his bitch, he’d be better than my ex.
I stood up and made my way to the bathroom at the back of the bus. The only other person who’d gotten on the bus in Cheyenne had gotten off earlier in the trip, so I had no competition. The tiny room smelled like death and I prayed the smell didn’t stick to me.
My reflection in the small mirror was sad and pitiful. The last fight I’d had with my ex showed in ghost-like prints across my neck and throat. A bite mark here and five finger impressions there. A real standup guy, he’d been. I pulled the sweater higher and tried to imagine myself as a beautiful bride arriving to meet her new husband for the first time.
Everything was wrong with the picture. Matt Long had ordered a bride. Instead of that bride, I was showing up. A beat down, beat up, smelly mess of a woman who’d bribed her way into a mail-order bride service last minute. The poor man.
I’d been on the run through a small town in Southern Louisiana when I’d stumbled across Beatrix’s Buxom Beauties. The sign in the window read that she arranged long distance marriages and I’d rushed right in. Beatrix turned out to be a seventy-year old woman who didn’t get many calls. She’d been more than willing to talk to me all about her latest bachelor.
Matt was a rancher from Wyoming who needed a wife to settle some family issue, but he was open to love. It’d taken Beatrix a while to find someone young enough for him, but she’d finally settled on a woman named Maggie. Maggie was a few years older than Matt, but she loved the country and had once owned a cow.
Beatrix was also ready to retire. I had twenty thousand dollars in my bag that I’d stolen from my ex when I’d left. I offered her half to replace Maggie. She’d given me a plane ticket and instructions on which bus to take once I’d reached Cheyenne and sent me on my way.
It had been dumb lucky to show up there when I did. As I was leaving, the real Maggie appeared to get her plane ticket. I’m not sure what excuse Beatrix gave her; I didn’t stick around to find out. It felt a little like fate. I’d walked into the perfect situation, at the perfect moment. Perhaps it was a sign that my luck was about to change.