A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

jerking and spraying fire across the room. It leapt out of her hands with the force of the kickback, throwing itself down the long hall behind her.  
    Michael stumbled backwards, his face so surprised it would have been comical if she hadn’t just basically killed him. She met the most handsome man in the world and then accidentally killed him. Her mother would love this.  
    The buckshot from the gun sent glass shards flying, smashed the window behind Michael, and generally ripped up mounds of her grandfather’s hoarded books and papers. A thin cloud of gun smoke hung in the air and Alison’s ears rang with the lingering thunder of the accidental shot.
    She raced over to Michael to inspect the damage, running her hands up and down his firm taut chest. His skin radiated a comfortable warmth that made her eyes feel heavy even then.  
    She couldn’t find any wounds.
    “I don’t see any blood,” she said.
    “I’m fine. I think the buckshot missed me.”
    “At this range? Look at the room! The room is destroyed but you seem fine. Maybe I just can’t see them.” Alison grabbed his hand. An electric spark leapt between them and the fire inside her swirled and thickened into something primal. “Come with me to the bathroom. There’s better light in there.”
    “Really, I’m fine.”
    “You broke into my house. If you don’t want me to press charges, come right now.”
    Up close he was even taller than she’d thought. Alison wasn’t short by any means, and her curvy figure made her seem taller than she was, but next to Michael she felt positively petite. She liked it. She liked it a lot.
    The big man sighed. “Okay, but really. I think it missed.”
    Alison dragged him down the hall, weaving between stacks of antique china, a pile of old street signs leaning against the railing in a rusty mess, and around a bleary-eyed, fluffy, squashed-face old cat who stared at them with a look somewhere between disdain and boredom.  
    “Oh, hello!” Alison said. “I didn’t know a cat lived here.” In response, the old cat rolled his eyes and padded off into the office they’d just left.
    Michael sniffed. “I was wondering why there weren’t mice or spider webs everywhere.”
    “But the kitchen—all of the boxed food had been gnawed open—what else could it have been if not mice?”
    “Maybe the cat did it? Your grandpa’s been gone weeks and no one knew a cat lived here. The mangy thing must have gotten hungry enough to play rat.”
    “Don’t talk about him like that.” Alison frowned, pushing open a door to locate the bathroom. She’d found it once, but the house was a maze of junk piles and she had the feeling that they were shifting around when she wasn’t looking.
    “You just met him, and already you’re feeling protective? He’s just an old mouser and by his size, a pretty good one at that.”
    Alison had always wanted a cat. Drew had said no. Firmly, absolutely no. He wasn’t even allergic, he just thought of cats as starter babies and that was a road he never wanted to walk down. “If we have a cat,” he’d told Alison, “we get tied down. We can’t travel. We have to be home by a certain time to feed it or water it. No, that’s not for me. Besides, you don’t want to become one of those weird cat ladies, do you?” It turned out she did. She really did. Drew had been so opposed to putting down roots, to joining any community, to having anything permanent in his life—besides Alison, for a while—that he’d convinced her it was what she’d wanted as well. Just one more falsehood she’d accepted as truth, because he’d filled her ears with it every day. What else had he said to her that was wrong? Maybe—just maybe—she wasn’t too chubby to be loved? Maybe finding a place to call home wasn’t a death sentence?  
    She’d been in her grandfather’s house for less than twelve hours, and aside from accidentally shooting a beautiful man with a shotgun, she’d been happy. Oddly,