Beary Sexy: A BBW Werebear Boxed Set

by Bolryder, Terry

  All he had to do was lay low for a winter, wait out the X Games and come back next year. And hope no one wondered why a person with a traumatic brain injury was suddenly competing again. The fall he’d taken should have killed him. A one in a million hit on the side of the half-pipe that had knocked him out and left him bleeding.

  He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for those at home watching. Had Kylie been watching? He turned over on his side as the phone went silent. A minute later it beeped with a voicemail.

  Kylie had been by to visit, just like everyone else, and he’d turned them all away as best as he could. His brothers, of course, had keys to his room, and they used them liberally, when they worried that he wasn’t going out for food or taking care of himself. The upside was he sometimes got to see his newborn nephews. They were the only lights in a somewhat dark life.

  He grabbed the remote and pushed himself into a sitting position against the headboard. Winter. The X Games had happened without him. They were playing recaps of the guy who took the gold in half pipe.

  They’d given Ryan a nod, a half-hearted memorial that only served to further piss him off. He slammed his fist into the pillow. He should have been up there on that podium, enjoying the roar of the crowd, showing Kylie he was still top dog in the world where he belonged. She seemed to think he was ready to just settle down, some easy target for a lonely girl in a small town, but he wasn’t.

  He was Ryan Hart, Olympic champion at the top of his game.

  Except, he realized as he noted the chip wrappers and empty pizza boxes around him, he wasn’t anymore.

  The thought made frustration well up in him again. It was her fault, she had come into his mind just before he dropped into the pipe, and he hadn’t been thinking straight, hadn’t been in the right mindset. No, he couldn’t blame her. It was his fault for running away from his bear, which wanted her with everything in him, and for ignoring the feelings growing between them.

  A memory rose to mind. Her eyes, welling with tears, as she stood with her friends and watched him escorted into the lodge with his head bandaged, looking wounded and out of it. And he had been out of it. All of the dreams, all of the hopes of the past months that had sustained him since coming back to Bearstone Park to deal with his father’s death, all of it was gone, melted away like a snowflake falling on hot breath.

  The door shook with an aggressive knock, and he rolled away to keep his back to the door. If his brothers meant to barge in, he didn’t mean to reward them for it. He deserved his space. He was an adult. Even if he was the youngest of the brothers, he didn’t need them trying to father him. He’d been taking care of himself for a long time. Ryder had left home for college, Riley had followed not long after, and Ryan had been left alone with an absentee father, no mother, and only mountains for a home.

  He longed to go out on them and snowboard again, but his brothers warned him against it. Said that someone with his injuries couldn’t go out and risk pulling off tricks like he did. And what was the point of being on the mountain if he wasn’t free to do as he liked? What was he supposed to do, ride the bunny hills by himself?

  He grumbled as the lock jiggled. A key turned in the door.

  Damn.

  Someone was coming in. Probably Riley, who would complain about the mess but try to clean it up. Or maybe Ryder, who would tell him he needed to pull himself up by his bootstraps. But none of them understood what it was like to have your life changed in a thoughtless moment.

  According to the press, it would take him months to recover. By the time he would be able to get back to competing, no one would expect him to risk it.

  But he would. And he wouldn’t care if they called him careless or ignorant. Heck, that could be good for publicity. There was no reason why he shouldn’t get back out there and do what he did best. His body was fine.

  “Make sure you’re clothed, because naked or not, I’m coming in,” a voice said. “Not that I’d mind if you were naked.”

  His eyes shot open. It couldn’t be. She didn’t have a key. His brothers wouldn’t dare.

  But the door opened and he turned to look over his shoulder at the small figure silhouetted in the doorway. When she came into the light of the room, she took his breath away, the way she always did, though he’d tried hard to deny it.

  Her thick, blond hair was soft and wispy around her heart-shaped face. Her stubborn chin was lifted, and her large, blue-gray eyes were flashing as she looked him over. Her small arms were folded in front of her ample chest, and the puffy coat she wore only accentuated her curvy figure. She wore skinny jeans tucked into boots and she had gorgeous, curvy legs.

  To others she was probably of average or slightly below average height at around 5’5”. To Ryan, she seemed tiny.

  That didn’t stop him from thinking about what it would be like to press her body up against his, feel those lush curves against his hard muscles.

  She was even hot when she was pissed. And she was definitely pissed now, as she surveyed the mess that was his room, and then the mess that was his person. She eyed his head, which was no longer bandaged, and then moved her gaze down the rest of him.

  He knew what she saw. Light blond hair that was mussed and had grown a little too long and was now curling around his ears and forehead. Skin that was still naturally tan despite a lack of sun exposure. A grumpy, belligerent face with features that women had always liked. Commentators liked to say that he should have been on a runway rather than in a half-pipe. In fact, his agent had tried to console him with the fact that there were offers on the table if he wanted to model sportswear. Or even go into other modeling, if he was willing to lose the muscular look.

  But he wasn’t. Muscles helped him traverse the mountains in bear form, helped him tear up the park in human form. Muscles were essential and non-negotiable. And he liked the way Kylie was eyeing them now. He gave her a sardonic wink and lazily flexed a bicep.

  She flushed, as she always did around him, but then she gave him a look of disgust and bent to start picking up trash. He didn’t know why everyone who came in here bothered. He was just going to throw stuff back over it all over again. The floor should be messed up, just like his life was.

  He flopped onto his back and gave her a bored glare, trying to ignore the way his body responded to her being the room. It was hard not to look at her pretty rear every time she bent over to pick something else up.

  “So, they sent you in as a last defense? Why?” he asked.

  She stood slowly, raising to her full, not very intimidating height. She let out a sigh. “Because you’re refusing to get out there and live again, and it’s bothering them.”

  “Right,” he said, gingerly putting his hands behind his head, because it still ached a little if he moved too quickly. He should probably see a shifter specific doctor again soon, make sure things were still healing. Sometimes it hurt when he regenerated too fast. He’d broken a femur once when snowboarding, and even though he’d healed faster than even the shifter doctor had expected, his leg had been sort of sore for a few months after, almost like it was bruised or traumatized by the rapid recovery.

  Alpha powers were rare with shifters, but even more rare with bears. He wasn’t sure if he was the only one in his family with one, but he suspected as much. Unless you could call Riley’s Hollywood good looks or Ryder’s super smarts with business alpha powers.

  But he didn’t know. The Bear Council had been shocked by his ability, but warned him that they would be watching, making sure he didn’t threaten the discovery of bear society.

  So he was trapped in the cabin, awaiting the pity calls of family and friends, including this small, obnoxious woman that he wanted with his body but in no other way. He needed a fighter for a mate, an athlete, someone up for every adventure. Not a coddled teacher who also did floral arrangements on the side.

  She’d come onto him from the moment she’d met him, but he’d known it was a bad idea. She’d always be waiting at home while he w
as up in the mountains. She seemed the type that never did anything outdoors. And she was small, such that he felt sometimes that if they mated, he would crush her or something. And he was still holding out for a bear shifter mate. Someone sturdy, someone who could regenerate. Someone who wouldn’t die easily, like his mom had.

  Not that you could control such things, not that his mom wasn’t a strong woman. But just that maybe he’d have a chance of being with a mate longer if she was tall and strong and hopefully a bear.

  Kylie was none of those things. She was a scrapper, that was for sure. She had a lot of mental fortitude. She had to because her job involved dealing with kids, and she owned a business, even if she wasn’t very involved in it. He got the feeling that she didn’t really need to work. Leslie had said something about her inheriting money. No, just having money? He scratched his head. He couldn’t remember.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Scratch your head, act clueless, stay there in bed all day being depressed. Let them win.”

  He sat up slightly, shocked by the harshness of her tone. “Let who win?”

  “The voices in your head that say it’s over. The dark thoughts. The feeling that life is pointless.”

  He sat up even further, eyes locked on her in an intense glare. How did she know how it felt? “Don’t act like you know me,” he said. “You don’t. Just because you follow me around.”

  She stopped and sighed. Then she rolled her eyes and pulled one of her boots off and set a small foot on the bed. “Look, I get that you’re not interested in me. I’m at peace with that. I was when you moved away. I gave it my best shot and we didn’t work. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  He looked down at her foot and then up at her face. “What do you mean? Why else would you be here?” His ego was slightly pricked at her being fine with there being nothing between them. And why else would she have gotten the key from his brothers? He folded his arms, preparing to be as stubborn as he’d been since the day he was born.

  She rolled down her sock and put her leg up for him to see.

  He blinked. Once, then twice. He’d been wrong. She was stronger than he could have possibly thought.

  Chapter 3

  Kylie watched nervously as Ryan looked at her prosthetic foot. She was used to showing people, at least, she had been before she’d moved to Bearstone Park, unable to stand the pitying glances from her family. They’d been fine with her doing nothing. With her sitting at home and having no expectations other than living on the generous settlement she’d gotten from the lawsuit they’d had to bring against the trucking company.

  One semi-truck, one icy road, and one missing foot later, and Kylie had suddenly felt like the world was ending. She’d been a teen and it had seemed catastrophic. When she’d first gotten her prosthesis, it had been painful and tiring to stand and walk, and she’d wondered how she could still be a teacher or any of the other things she’d dreamt of being.

  Her family had been understanding. Too understanding. Don’t push yourself, Kylie. Don’t overdo it, Kylie. It had gotten old and had only heightened her sense of despair.

  So she’d moved as soon as she was eighteen. She’d looked up the most remote place she could vacation, somewhere that had nothing to do with her old life. Somewhere on one knew what she had lost. She’d come to rent a cabin in Bearstone Park, and there, in the mountains, she’d gotten to know herself again. She’d gotten to know her friends, and she’d been accepted by the community and the children.

  She’d been here eight years.

  She waited for Ryan to say something. It had been a long time since she showed someone, and it was uncomfortable showing the man she’d been pursuing for so long such a private part of herself.

  Would he feel that she’d been hiding something? She just hadn’t wanted to be treated different. She’d told Janna and Leslie that and they’d done an admirable job of pretending nothing was different. Part of that was they didn’t go telling people about her. They let her decide. After all, it wasn’t the most important part of who she was. Not by half.

  But it was important at times like this, when she wanted to show someone she cared about that life wasn’t over just because of an injury.

  The look he gave her was full of shock, but not pity, much to her relief. She could tell it was the last thing he’d expected of her.

  She rolled her sock back up and pulled her jeans down and plopped on the side of the bed, allowing him a moment to adjust to the new knowledge about her. She hoped it wouldn’t completely change how he saw her. In a way, it was good she was no longer pursuing him, because it would have been harder to show him then. It would have been harder to allow him time to adjust and not care how he took it or what he said.

  She still cared a little.

  How could she not? He was gorgeous. Even lying here on the bed, rumpled and grumpy, he took her breath away with his long, muscled, athlete’s body. In a way, he also had an invisible injury. He wasn’t hiding it, but it wasn’t something anyone could see. She figured that was part of why he was messing up the room around him and making such obvious cries for help by not leaving his bed and not taking care of himself.

  Well, she wasn’t here to take care of him. She was just here to show him he could take care of himself. He just needed to want to do so.

  “How long have you had it?” he asked.

  It was an odd thing to ask. She was more use to people asking how she’d lost her foot rather than asking how long she’d had it. “Ten years.”

  “How old were you?”

  She smiled at him. “You shouldn’t ask a woman’s age.”

  He eyed her foot and then met her eyes with that clear, crystal blue gaze that made it hard to breathe. Made her heart speed up to triple its usual speed. “I feel like it’s a little late for secrets between us.”

  “I was sixteen.”

  “You’re twenty-six?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you when you moved to Bearstone Park?” he asked.

  “It was eight years ago.”

  “So, when you turned eighteen. How did you become a teacher?”

  “I did an online bachelor’s in education. But the requirements in this district are really low for substitutes. I mean, there aren’t a lot of options.”

  “True,” he said. “Did you always want to be a teacher?”

  She blinked. It was odd to have him suddenly asking questions about her. He’d never done that before. She had a fake foot, so she was suddenly interesting? “Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”

  “You shocked me,” he said. “That’s rare. Now I find myself off guard and wanting to know more so that I can feel less off balance.”

  She laughed and he waved a hand for her to join him fully on the bed. She scooted back until her back met the headboard, but kept a few feet between them on the massive king bed. She didn’t think she could deal with being close to him right now. His effect on her was too powerful.

  “So how is your head feeling?” she asked. “Is it healing okay?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “I missed the X Games,” he said, wadding up a chip bag that was between them and throwing it off the side of the bed. He was flushing slightly, like he was suddenly embarrassed of the mess. He needn't worry though, she couldn’t think ill of him if she tried.

  Even when he’d made it clear as crystal that he wasn’t interested, he’d been there for her. Been a gentleman, even been a date at her friend’s weddings.

  “There will be more X Games,” she said.

  “Not for me. Not if I do what I’m supposed to.”

  “Really? But you seem fine.”

  His face took on a dark expression. “As you know, fine isn’t always visible.”

  She shook her head. “No, don’t put me in the not-fine category. I didn’t show you that because I wanted you to see that I’m not fine. I have an awesome life. Even bet
ter than it ever was before the accident. And you can too. You just have to adjust your expectations. For instance, I have great friends, but I’m never going to be an awesome snowboarder.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “But you on the other hand, you still have money, brains, and so much talent. Even if you don’t go back to the games, you have medals, trophies, and the skills that would make you an incredible coach if you can pull yourself out of this awful shell you’ve encased yourself in.”

  “I guess I have been wallowing in self-pity a bit, but you didn’t answer my question,” he said, eyeing her with an odd gleam in those blue eyes. For the first time since she’d come in, he seemed genuinely interested in something.

  “What question?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what? Stop being cryptic.”

  “Fancy words, teach. Why can’t you be a snowboarder?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “There are snowboarders with double prosthetic limbs. I don’t see why we can’t at least try it. In fact, I’d be happy to teach you, unless you’re afraid.”

  She swallowed, pushing away the excitement that arose at the prospect of hitting the mountains not only with the hot guy that she’d been practically stalking, but with a world champion in a sport she’d always loved watching but had thought was beyond her. Still, she hesitated.

  He exhaled hoarsely and sat back, arms behind his head. “No, you’re right. Not a good idea. I don’t know your limitations, and I’d be a crappy teacher right now anyway.”

  “Would it be safe for you to go out on the snow with me?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just teaching. We’ll be on bunny hills. I can’t imagine even my brothers would have a problem with that.”

  “Overprotective?” she asked.

  “Of their secrets, yes. And I guess they do care.”

  “You should have seen them when you first got back,” she said. “They were all worried out of their minds.”

  “So what do you think?” he asked, turning to her with that dimple in his cheek that she never saw turned her way before. His blue eyes were glowing. Should she really agree to this? She’d never thought about being able to go up the mountain like that. But if there was anyone who could show her, it’d be him. But she didn’t want to risk him being injured.