The Bear's Arranged Mate: A Bear Shifter Romance Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

reverted to human Form, and so had he.
    He seemed to notice it first and leaped off her, taking a few steps back. Sarah saw that he was at least six feet tall, and quite well-built. His abdomen heaved with washboard muscles, and the defined angle of his pelvis bent gracefully toward his groin where a full black shock of hair obscured his penis. She suspected that in the heat of their fight it had swollen, for it hung large and oblique between his legs.
    “Why did you attack me?” he asked levelly.
    Sarah tried to sit up and gasped when she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. She looked down and saw three parallel cuts in her stomach, oozing blood. They ran in bright red rivulets down her thin mid-riff, and pooled in her navel for a moment before branching down over the scant stiff bristles above her labia. Connor’s eyes bulged and he quickly rooted around in the nearby grass, returning seconds later with a small med-kit.
    “Hold still,” he warned, bending down beside her. The heat of his body was overwhelming, almost enough to distract her from the lacerations to her stomach.
    He reached down and she tried to strike out again, this time in fear. The fact they were both naked seemed somehow secondary, and she grappled with him for a few panicked moments before he finally managed to pin her arms again. She had felt fear before, but nothing like this. Connor put his full weight on her legs, and she could feel the skin of his inner thighs against her shins.
    “Would you knock it off,” he finally exclaimed.
    It was enough to silence Sarah, who froze, eyes wide with fear and her black hair muddied by the grass. She looked down and saw that he had a water bottle and jolted when it touched her wound. From the med-kit by his knee, he withdrew a white linen bandage and put it onto the cuts. Sarah gritted her teeth against the pain.
    “It’s not deep, but that’s a sensitive spot. It’ll hurt before it starts to feel better,” he said at last, standing up and walking back to the grass where he reclaimed a small backpack and a bundle of clothes. He tossed an emergency blanket in her direction without looking. “You should cover up. When you’re not in Form, you’re just as vulnerable to the elements as any human.”
    Sarah looked down and saw her small breasts were erect, a bit paler than the rest of her body, and the pink nipples bulged from the broad perimeter of each dark areola. She sat up and saw that mud from their struggle in the grass had also stained the inside of her taut legs and dusted the round rise of her pubis. She quickly covered her crotch, but not before seeing Connor turn his head abruptly. If she hadn’t been in pain, she could have sworn he was blushing.
    *
    “Care to explain yourself yet?” Connor asked.
    He had put on pants, a pair of heavy-duty cargos with pockets on the side, but he was still naked from the waist up. In the light of a small campfire he had built, his torso still brimmed with an untapped ferocity. He squatted down opposite her and prodded the ashes. Several squirrels were spitted on sharpened stakes above the flames.
    She guessed he’d been hunting at the time she had attacked him, and her stomach growled in spite of her situation – she rubbed her stomach and tried to avoid his gaze as he continued to toy with the coals.
    Sarah balked, and wrapped the emergency blanket around her body tighter. Connor saw the edge of the blanket slip down her leg, revealing a narrow slant of her inner thigh and the darkness that ran further up. She quickly pushed her knees together. In truth, she didn’t know what to say to him – she didn’t have a good reason for rushing him, and she felt ashamed and embarrassed about the events that had led up to it. Then she remembered the gun, still hidden in her backpack.
    “I’m sorry… I… wish I could tell you,” she said.
    The linens on her stomach tugged as she straightened herself. He had cleaned the small cuts on her stomach, which upon