Heart of the Bear (Hells Canyon Shifters Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

and his ability to lighten the mood had her more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. Which was insane, because she’d just found out an hour ago that werebears existed.
    “You probably say that stuff to all the ladies.” A man who looked like him wouldn’t have any problem in the women department.
    “Not so,” he said as he pulled a pair of forest green cargo pants off a hanger in his closet. “You’re the first one to ever stab me in the back, literally speaking. I don’t think I’ll ever forget you, Rae.”
    Even if he was teasing, she liked the way he said her shortened name like that. She’d always thought the name mannish and used to give her mother grief for naming her after her great grandfather. When Jesse said it though, it sounded like the prettiest name in the world.
    “Jesse?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Were you born like this?”
    He shoved his foot into a boot that looked like a bigger version of what she was wearing, then sighed. “My parents were both bear shifters, and I turned for the first time when I was four. I’ve always been like this. Does that make you think less of me?”
    She shook her head and wanted to cry with the words she would admit to him. Words she hadn’t said out loud since she’d let her ex-boyfriend go. “I’m different, too.”
    He frowned and opened his mouth like he was going to ask her a question, but a great pounding at the door rattled the cabin.
    “What?” Jesse yelled.
    “We’ve got two missing hikers,” came a muffled reply through the door. “Teenagers. Their parents just called it in. They were due back midday and never showed.”
    “Shit,” he muttered, rushing to tie his boots. “We’ll be right there.”
    Rae knelt down so she could loosen the strain of the handcuffs for him, and when he stood, he grabbed her hand like he’d done earlier, then led her back through the living room.
    “What about your shirt?” Because if he didn’t put the damned thing on, her ovaries were going to explode.
    “I can’t get the sleeve over the cuffs. Sorry, princess. You’ll have to suffer until Ethan decides to give us the keys.”
    The word suffer was funny when used for his perfectly sculpted torso, but on the other hand, he was causing a whole lot of inconvenient stirrings between her thighs. A shirtless Jesse made her want to simultaneously run away and rub up against his leg like an attention-deprived kitty. She’d have to try real hard to look at anything other than his perfectly rippling abs and the impressive bulge he was currently buttoning into his pants.
    Jogging behind Jesse toward a big tent in front of the cabins, Rae looked longingly at the road she’d almost escaped on. She had a real life to get back to. One where she needed to call the police on Shay for stealing her car, and one that didn’t involve an off-limits sexy werebear who was shooting warm tendrils into her stomach as he intertwined his fingers with hers. Sure, he was probably just trying to lessen the strain of the handcuffs, but she hadn’t held hands with a man since her ex, Matt, and even then, it hadn’t made her feel all tingly inside like this.
    This must be another bear shifter power. All of the males probably had the ability to seduce a woman with a glance or a touch so they could get what they wanted—whatever that was.
    “What trail?” Jesse asked as he pulled back the heavy looking canvas tent flap.
    Ethan looked up from a huge map laid across a scuffed table. Red pins were pushed into it by a winding line. “They headed up the bank of Snake River and were only supposed to go a couple of miles and turn back. Tarran and Reese are already up there looking, but I need all eyes we can spare in the woods right now. I have Landon at the tower, and he’ll be coordinating grids, but you and I need to be out there now.”
    “And what do I say when I find them and I’m still handcuffed to Rae?”
    Ethan’s bright, inhuman eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t give a