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

you something,” she repeated, raising her small childish features toward him. That stopped him again, because for a moment he seemed transfixed. It was a look Sarah had never been given before – one which was part awe, and part desire, a burning combination of the two that smoldered in her chest and made it difficult to breathe.
    Connor stepped past the fire and kneeled down in front of her. His shaggy brown hair covered his brow and he looked up at her. For the first time, she saw how hazel his eyes were, a deep auburn hue that caught the fire and reflected it even brighter. He rubbed the square edge of his jaw again, as if trying to contemplate something – or find the right words.
    Then, in a surprising gesture, one which was on par with Caroline being kind, he reached forward. But this time, she didn’t flinch. Gently, almost with abject curiosity, like a man discovering a woman for the first time, he touched her cheek. She held his gaze and blinked back and cursed herself again. It was all so stupid . She had embarrassed herself by attacking him, and now she was naked, with none of her possessions. On top of that, she was wounded, and probably looked like a mess – but she couldn’t move even to straighten her hair as he reached toward her. It was like she was paralyzed, waiting to see what he would do next.
    He rubbed his fingers further up her cheek, and she let him touch the edge of her lips. They barely parted and she let out a slow breath, felt another surge of blood flood her legs and groin. His hands went further up the side of her neck and she quivered in spite of herself, which seemed to surprise Connor back to reality. He lifted a lock of the black hair over her ear.
    “You have really black hair,” he said.
    “Yeah, it’s a gift from my mother,” she said.
    “You’re lucky,” he said, grinning a bit more naturally, “all I got from my mother was a bad temper.”
    “You don’t seem that bad,” she said.
    He shrugged. “You said you had something to tell me. Why don’t you fill me in while I finish the shelter,” he said, picking up a small hatchet among his belongings and indicating the tall cedar boughs that overlapped downward from the pale trunks of trees nearby.

CHAPTER THREE
    Sarah was quite candid when she described the events leading up to their being dropped off on the rocky outcrop, and even mentioned the gun and what Caroline had told her.
    She blushed again when she got to the part about spying him through the bushes and attacking him. He listened impassively, never interrupting, as he worked away on a small lean-to shelter. He cut down a few small saplings and skinned them with the hatchet, and used a bit of cedar-twine to hold them fast. Next, he made a thin makeshift framework of interwoven cedar branches to lay against it at an angle. Finally, he picked up the cedar boughs he’d chopped, and in no time there was a crude but functional shelter standing nearby.
    “Well I’m glad you didn’t kill me,” Connor said at last, stuffing the inside of the shelter with moss and ferns to make a serviceable mattress of sorts.
    “I thought, maybe, you were told the same thing by your father.”
    “To kill you? God, my father adores you, and he doesn’t even know you. No, this sounds like the work of your aunt. I don’t want to pick sides here, but… the evidence is there.”
    Caroline had taken care of Sarah through the worst parts of her life, and it seemed completely unfathomable that she could be the engineer of such a cruel and daring conspiracy. Yes, she could be cruel, and there were plenty of people who  feared her, for good reason.
    But Sarah could scarcely imagine that she would put her own cousin at risk. And yet , a lingering doubt reminded her.
    “I don’t want to admit it, but… you may be right. The question is…”
    “Why does she want me out of the picture?” Connor filled in, and nodded to himself. “I can’t answer that. But if my father taught me