Romance: Bearilicious: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection (Werebear, Bear Shifter, BBW Paranormal Romance)

by Ashley Hunter

  Before I could, the back door opened to reveal his brother lawyer.

  “Well, hello,” he said. “This must be Ms. Tanner?”

  “Lorelai,” the two of us answered.

  Oliver’s brother smiled only slightly. “Yes, right. I have the paperwork, if you’d like to look it over.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be done till Monday, Tom,” Oliver said as we pulled apart.

  “Yes, I ended up finishing things faster than expected. You made it sound like you wanted this done as soon as possible.”

  I inwardly sighed. Of course he did. In the heat of the moment, I had forgotten how all of this had started: he needed to keep me quiet about his curse.

  He may have softened through our time together, but the situation was still at hand. Perhaps he warmed up to gain my trust, so I simply wouldn’t want to say anything (though who really would believe me anyway?)

  Tom had all the paperwork out and ready to be signed. He explained broadly what the agreement said - mostly to keep my mouth shut - but I read through it anyway.

  “Wait, you want to give me that much money for my silence?” I asked, blanching at the large amount. “Did you know about this, Oliver?”

  He nodded, “I wanted to make sure you didn’t have to work again or could at least start something of your own.”

  “Right,” I answered. For some reason, it offended me that he was paying me off with so much money, like I needed that much in order to keep his secret. I had no reason to tell anyway, and we’d become close. “Where do I sign?”

  “At the bottom there,” Tom said. “As per the agreement, we’ll get you your money in installments to make it seem less fishy. Plus taxes and all of that.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Um, I guess just how I can get home now.”

  “I can give you a ride back to your car,” Oliver said.

  “I think you’ve done enough here, Oliver,” Tom replied. “I will give you a ride back to your car, Ms. Tanner.”

  I nodded and stood. Oliver stood as well, his eyes appearing stormy and confused. I gave him a slight smile and followed Tom out. Tom seemed incredibly eager to just get me out of his family’s hair.

  “I think it’d be best,” he said before I got out of the car to get into my own once we returned to Oliver’s normal residence, “if you just not talk to my brother again, especially before his whole bear project actually goes through. You’re a pretty girl - you don’t need this.”

  I frowned, “Thanks for driving me back.”

  I drove myself home slowly, thinking over all that had happened to me. Being faced with the reality of the situation, I wondered if I got close to Oliver out of my own loneliness.

  I lacked human companions, and he made an attractive one. I parked and walked up to the floor of my apartment. Before I turned the key, the nosy, recluse old woman who lived next door peeked out.

  “Where did you go?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I just took a little vacation,” I said.

  “I thought you might’ve been kidnapped.”

  I smiled, “Don’t worry. I was just fine.”

  I unlocked my door, opened and closed it, and then leaned my head against it. What had really happened over the past week?

  VII.

  I didn’t answer any of my calls for the next few days. The only calls I missed were from Oliver and Tom - the latter telling me about the settlement.

  I needed to decompress and think things over. I attempted to think of ways Oliver could’ve been untruthful to me, but I couldn’t think of any.

  Yes, he’d made a rash decision by taking me to his cabin, but I never felt threatened. Really, I chose to stay because I enjoyed his company.

  Perhaps I was just telling myself that, but, then again, he became quiet kind once he opened up. He’d been candid with me, and he listened when I became candid with him. Unfortunately, our week together was probably the healthiest relationship I’d had.

  After another day of thinking, I decided there was no point to being angry with him. I attempted to call him, but his cell phone was off - he always turned it off at work. He insisted work contacts shouldn’t be calling his personal line.

  I got myself together and drove to my old work. I felt the same sense of unease I’d felt when I first entered, but this time for a different reason. Upon entering the office, his new receptionist sat at her desk, looking frazzled.

  “Hello, is Oliver… I mean, Mr. Mathan in?” I asked her.

  “Do you have an appointment? He’s very busy today,” she answered.

  “No, but if you let him know Lorelai Tanner is here to see him, I think he can make time.”

  “You’re his last receptionist, right?” I nodded. “How did you deal with him?”

  I smiled, “He’s a tough nut to crack.”

  She didn’t seem to like my answer, so she only nodded politely and sent a message (I presumed) to Oliver. He exited his office a moment later, looking just as clean-cut, handsome, and intense as the first day I met him.

  “Come in, Ms. Tanner,” he moved to the side and guided me in with the gesture of his outstretched hand.

  I gave a slight nod to the new receptionist and entered. He closed the door and gestured for me to sit. I shook my head, moved forward to place each of my hands on the sides of his face, and reached up to kiss him.

  He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back, his lips tasting of mint and clover. His tongue parted my lips and entered my mouth gently, passionately.

  “I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” he whispered between kisses.

  “I got scared, I guess,” I responded.

  He pulled away finally and looked me in the eye. His look spoke louder than any words he could’ve spoken. I kissed him again, no longer afraid or over-thinking anything.

  I’d been a personal secretary for three men, but my last boss, Oliver Mathan, showed me looks could be deceiving. In some ways, he was my worst boss - he’d kidnapped me, after all - but as a man (and bear, I suppose), he was the best I’d ever met.

  On the last week of the month, after the third Friday, we’d take the week off together for a romantic vacation.

  I never spoke of his secret to anyone. I only spoke of how madly, deeply, I’d fallen in love with him.

  ***

  Bought By The Military Bear

  Ashley Hunter

   Copyright 2015 by Ashley Hunter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced

  in any way whatsoever, without written permission

  from the author, except in case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical reviews

  and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any

  person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First edition, 2015

  Chapter 1

  Kathleen sobbed as her stepfather slammed his beer mug down so hard on the bar she was sure it should’ve shattered. The loud crack didn’t silence all of the loud drunken arguing, but it dulled it enough so her father’s voice could be heard.

  “Right, Jed, what’d I just tell you? You can’t just buy her out. This here’s gonna be a right proper auction, like’n I seen on TV. Smile, dear.”

  Kicking Kathleen in the hip as she lay on the floor, beaten, chained, and handcuffed to the bar.

  He added in a growl, “Smile!”

  Afraid of what he’d do if she didn’t, Kathleen tried holding her breath to stop the crying and pulled her lips back.

  “Aw, now look at that. A finer angel never would you see,” her stepfather said.

  “Buck, Steve, you sit two down right now a’fore I shoot ya. You wanted a part of this, so you gotta follow the rules.”

  “How high can we go?” Henry asked from the back.

  “Well boys, that’s the beauty. I gotta lot a debt, and this here us
eless fatty is gonna finally pull some weight around ‘ere. You go as high as you want, and to the highest bid goes this… thing. Smile!” he shouted and kicked her again.

  Kathleen screamed, surprised by his sudden viciousness and tried to smile again.

  A few of the older men in the front, fat and hideous as they were, ran wormy tongues over their chapped lips.

  “An’ you’re not going to want her back?” Jed asked, his eyes hungrily roaming over her body from top to bottom.

  “A’course not, Jed. Damnit boy don’t you listen? You buy her, you get to keep her. Once she’s yours, I don’t want anything t’do with her or you. You take her home, you do whatever you want. She cooks real fine, as you can tell, and she can mend a shoe or shirt or what have you. This’n here has the learnin’ y’all need, and she talks real good on the phone.”

  “Yeah,” another man asked. This one she didn’t recognize, but he was just as revolting as all the rest, “but how good is she at other things?”

  “What other things?” her stepfather asked.

  “Other things.”

  The men all laughed knowingly at that one, a few nudging one another with their elbows. Her stepfather laughed and waved his hands to calm them down.

  “I’m sure she does those just fine. Don’t tell me about it, because I don’t care. I just want her good ‘n gone. Y’all ready t’start bidding?”

  A raucous roar crashed through the bar as the men all stomped their feet and shouted.

  “Right then, how ‘bout we start things nice ‘n easy. Say, ten bucks?”

  “I got ten bucks!”

  “Ten? Fer that, I got twenty!”

  “Twenty-five.”

  It was happening. As the men rattled off higher and higher numbers, it settled into Kathleen’s bones that this was really happening.

  No amount of hoping and praying was going to stop this now. He was doing it. That bastard of a stepfather was really doing it.

  The drunken lush was only too happy to sit and mooch off of her mother, and when she died, he refused to move out. Kathleen had been staying at home to take care of her mother as her health worsened.

  At nights, she worked as a waitress at the local diner. After repeated – and refused—come-on attempts by her stepfather, he’d finally had enough.

  Tonight, as she tried to leave for work, he clocked her across the face so hard she saw stars. In all her, life she’d never experienced the shift in perspective that made the ground seem like it came up, instead of her body falling down.

  Punching, kicking, he beat her senseless, tied her up, and tossed her in the back of the truck.

  The whole way his drunken mouth ranted about all of the medical bills he had to pay now due to her mother’s failed health, and how the only way this was going to be solved was through selling Kathleen off to the highest bidder.

  Somehow, in some broken part of her brain, she’d convinced herself he was just drunk. This wasn’t going to happen.

  How could it? In what part of the world could this take place?

  But there she sat, too beaten and exhausted to even move, and men twice her age or more glared with bestial greed in their eyes as they all tried to outbid one another for her. For her body.

  Kathleen, unable to lower her hands as they were chained and handcuffed to the bar, buried her face into her forearms and cried. She couldn’t even stand, much less fight. There was nothing she could do to defend herself, or protect herself from this.

  “Five-hundred,” a greasy voice in the back cried, and Kathleen shuddered.

  The other men guffawed in surprise or outright swore as none could afford to outbid such a price.

  Kathleen glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw a middle-aged man with long stringy gray hair staring right at her face.

  “Ya heard me,” he said. “I pay you five-hundred for this luscious tart.”

  “Hoooo,” her stepfather said, impressed.

  “Look at that, fatty, you’re worth something after all. I don’t think we can go higher ‘n that, eh boys? I do believe that means she’s sol—“

  “A thousand.”

  The words were a razor’s edge slicing across Kathleen’s face. Who could pay a thousand for her? This was insane!

  The men in the bar shouted now, almost angry at this new bid.

  “What’s that now,” her stepfather asked.

  “I said,” a man sitting a dark table in the corner of the bar stood, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars, cash, for her. Right now.”

  “Now look here,” the middle-aged man said, standing and pointing a threatening finger, “I done already bid, and you—“

  “Two-thousand,” the younger man said without even flinching.

  “How far do you wish to take this?”

  “I got a rifle in the truck,” the older man said, but her stepfather laughed it off and stepped forward, putting his hands on the old man’s chest to calm him down.

  “Now, now, let’s not scare off this fine customer. Two-thousand, you say?”

  “I-I can give you twenty-one-hundred by Tuesday if you’d just—“

  “Three-thousand.”

  “Now look here!” the old man shouted and threw his chair.

  “You can pay me three-thousand, cash, right now?”

  Kathleen shook her head, abhorred by the idea of being sold off to anyone.

  The young man, handsome in his way, looked at her. There was an odd look of sadness in his eyes. “Yes sir.”

  “Sold.”

  Kathleen shook and buried her face in her arms again, unable to stop the sobs. Her life had just been ripped away from her and handed to this complete stranger. All of her dreams, the plans she had for her life, gone.

  Who knew what horrors this sicko would visit on her defenseless body?

  She knew he was a sicko too, because who else would come into this bar at this time of day and bid on a beaten and bruised girl?

  There was no excuse for it.

  In her fuzzy state, she missed when everyone cleared out. One moment she was sobbing into her arms, the next she was almost too exhausted to keep her eyes open.

  When the chains unlocked above her, she hadn’t the strength to hold herself up. Before she could fall, however, a single strong arm caught her and lowered her to the floor.

  “Once you take her, I don’t wanna hear from you again. You got me? This piece a property is sold as is. I ain’t responsible if you break her.”

  Her stepfather chuckled above her.

  When she opened an eye, she saw the young man knelt beside her, an expression of barely contained rage on his face.

  “Yes. You’re excused.”

  “That’s my chain, son.”

  The young man threw the heavy chain at the old man. “Take it!”

  Her stepfather cried out as the chain smacked him in the face, wrapping partially around his neck and chest.

  In his drunken imbalance, he stumbled back a step, tripped over a stool, and fell.

  “No,” Kathleen whimpered as the man scooped her up into his arms.

  Mustering all the strength she had, she lifted her arms and pushed against his chest, one hand pressing against his face. In seconds her muscles gave out, her arms falling limply.

  “Shh,” the man said to her and walked through the bar.

  “I’ve got you now.”

  A weak sob shook her chest, knowing it was true and there was nothing she could do to fight it. How could she be so helpless?

  Chapter 2

  Consciousness faded in and out, the world going black for whole episodes. She saw the bar, and then the street. When she opened her eyes again, she was buckled into the passenger seat of a car, the scenery passing quickly.

  For a creep that had bought her at an auction, she was expecting to be dumped in the trunk or something. Instead, a blanket had been wrapped around her.

  The leather seats had a warmer touch, and she felt toasty on her rear and the back of her thighs. The
windows were clear, with none of the hard water stains she was used to seeing. No dirt, or gunk buildup. The dash was black, smooth, with none of the sun fading.

  Wait, leather seats? Kathleen reached down and ran her fingers over the plush material she sat on.

  Oh no, a rich psycho? She’d heard about those. This was even worse than she thought!

  Her heart raced, and the telltale signs of adrenaline coursed through her system as her arms and legs tensed, preparing for fight or flight. The rush suddenly made her dizzy and she had to rest her head against the glass.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “We’ll be home soon. Just relax. I’ve got you now.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” The words wheezed out of her throat.