Billionaire Alpha Romance: The Proposal (Mature Gentlemen Book 2)

by Maurice Bedard

“Well,” Amanda began.

  Terri motioned for her to continue and took another sip of her wine cooler.

  “He said it the other day. By accident, I think. I didn’t say it back,” Amanda spat out.

  “I see,” said Terri. “Well, do you love him?”

  “I don’t know. I know I’ve fallen for him. So I’m in love with him, but love is such a strong word. And I know that what I’m feeling is strong, don’t get me wrong on that. I just don’t know that I’m ready to jump right in there and tell him I love him.”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” said Terri. “You did the right thing. It’s better for him to be a little uncomfortable not knowing if you feel the same than to find out later you never did but you lied to him about it.”

  “You’re right,” said Amanda.

  “I’m going to go to bed now. Try to get those two into bed at some point,” she said gesturing towards Dylan and Jim.

  Amanda smiled and told her aunt that she’d try.

  Instead, she sat and watched Dylan talking to Jim. Looking at him in the glow of the firelight, so happily engrossed in conversation that had to do with something he was passionate about was so attractive to Amanda. She sipped her drink, letting the alcohol permeate her blood stream and make her feel like the air around her was warm and buzzing.

  She watched Dylan and he caught her staring out of the corner of her eye. He looked at her for a moment and winked. She didn’t wink back but smiled.

  He was hers. That was hard to believe. He didn’t belong to anyone else. He had chosen her and she had chosen him, and there was something inherently magical about a thing like that.

  Finally, the conversation with Jim came to a close and Dylan beckoned her to take a seat beside him in front of the fireplace.

  She joined him, curling into his muscular body and he wrapped an arm tight around her. She watched the flames dance as he placed a kiss on top of her hair and inhaled her scent. She inhaled his, too, and realized just how much she had missed him.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said to Dylan.

  “I am, too,” he said to her.

  They cuddled in the firelight, listening to the sound of each other’s heartbeats for several moments. Then Dylan pulled her chin up with his hand. With his warm touch, he caressed the side of her face and brought her lips to his.

  In the softest and most tender kiss, he pressed his mouth against hers. He tugged gently on her fuller lower lip with his teeth. He slid his tongue slowly along the line that her lips made when they were pressed together. He asked for entrance. She granted it to him and opened her mouth to his. She sighed into him.

  Dylan crushed his mouth against hers more aggressively and Amanda let him. She enjoyed the feeling of his skin against hers and craved to feel their bodies moving together.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

  Amanda and Dylan stopped and sat up straight. They looked at each other. No one else was expected at the cabin.

  Amanda got up to go to the door. Dylan stopped her.

  “Let me,” he said protectively.

  She leaned back into the couch and watched him walk to the door. He opened it and it didn’t seem that there was anyone there, but there was a note taped to the peephole on the door. Dylan grabbed it.

  He closed the door and went back to the couch with Amanda, he opened the note.

  MEET ME AT THE SKI LIFT AT MIDNIGHT.

  JASE

  “Who’s Jase?” Amanda asked totally confused.

  Dylan looked up at her.

  “I assumed it was for you,” he said. “You don’t know a Jase?”

  “No. Do you?” Amanda asked.

  “No,” said Dylan.

  He got up and went over to the windows on the balcony and looked out into the flurry of snow coming down.

  “What time is it?” he asked Amanda.

  “11:45,” she said after glancing at her watch.

  Dylan looked around some more but seemed unsatisfied. It didn’t look like he’d spotted anyone. He came back to join her.

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “No, you’re not,” Dylan said firmly.

  “Yes, I am,” she insisted.

  He got up and walked towards their room to change into more suitable clothing, she assumed. She followed him.

  Once inside he got out a coat and some ski pants and boots. Amanda did the same and began to change.

  “I said you’re not going, Amanda,” said Dylan.

  “And I don’t care what you said,” said Amanda.

  “This could be dangerous,” he said very seriously. “We don’t know who that was that left the note.”

  “All the more reason for you to need backup,” she said back just as seriously.

  Dylan sighed. Amanda smiled to herself. She was headstrong and Dylan knew it. She’d helped him in the past with the encounter they’d had with the bears at Mountain View outside of Seattle. Who was to say that she wouldn’t be just as helpful in this situation?

  They had both changed and grabbed their gloves and scarves and headed for the door.

  Quietly, they crept outside.

  The wind was still as snowflakes fell all around them. Amanda tilted her head back to catch one on her tongue.

  “Really?” Dylan asked. “Right now?”

  “What?” she asked and continued with him.

  They wound around the gift shops and the stores and made their way to the ski lift. When they got there, just like every other attraction at Whistler’s Mountain at midnight, it was abandoned.

  “What time is it?” Dylan asked her again.

  She pulled up her sleeve to reveal her watch which told her it was five after twelve. She told him. They waited.

  Something came whizzing by Amanda’s head. When she turned to look at it, something hit her in the back of the head sharply.

  “Ouch!” she hissed.

  “What is it?” Dylan asked. “Ouch!” he cried out.

  Apparently he had been hit, too.

  Then there was a hiss from the bushes.

  “Shhh! Both of you!” it said.

  “Who are you?” Dylan asked in a hushed tone.

  “More importantly, are you Dylan?” the voice asked.

  “I am,” Dylan said.

  A figure stepped forward from the bushes. It was a man. Tall and muscular with black hair like Dylan’s, though his was cut neatly and short.

  He stepped out across the snow, making no sound as he came towards them.

  “My name is Jase,” he said.

  “Dylan,” said Dylan, “But you already know that. Mind telling us what this is about?”

  “You’re one of the last remaining Kermode bears, are you not?” the man named Jase asked without missing a beat.

  Dylan looked at Amanda and then back at Jase.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dylan.

  The man sighed deeply.

  “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said.

  The man assumed a position that had become familiar to Amanda. He dropped to his knees and his face contorted with pain. His clothes began to tear as though he was growing too big for them. She stepped back. Even though she’d seen it multiple times before, it was still overwhelming and scary. She watched as his skin erupted and he became a mass of white fur, sitting back on his haunches. He was a White Kermode Spirit Bear.

  Dylan’s mouth fell open. Amanda looked from Dylan to the man and back again. She didn’t know what this meant, but clearly it meant something to Dylan.

  The bear got onto all fours and sauntered up to Dylan, its head reaching his shoulders. Dylan reached out a hand for the bear to smell and the bear nudged his palm, asking to be touched. Dylan obliged. Then the bear turned and began to walk into the forest.

  Dylan looked at Amanda.

  “Are we supposed to follow him?” Amanda asked.

  “I think so,” Dylan said. “We’re about to find out.”

>   He grabbed her hand and took off after the bear. Even though it was only walking, it was still fast enough that Dylan and Amanda had to keep up a nice jog to keep pace with it.

  They passed through the trees in the darkness, only the snow illuminated in the moonlight giving them some idea of where they were going. They hiked up the mountain until they came to an opening, and at the opening, there was a cave.

  The white bear turned and looked at Dylan and Amanda as if to see if they were still following. They were. Amanda clutched Dylan’s hand a little tighter as they neared the entrance of the cave.

  They walked inside after the bear. They walked straight into darkness.

  After turning a corner, though, Amanda could see some sort of light in the cave. The great bear ahead of them projected an even more massive shadow onto a wall where there were thousands of drawings. Amanda tried to look at each of them but there were just too many. They depicted hunts and they depicted groups of the Kermode Spirit Bears. She wasn’t sure what exactly they meant.

  They continued through the cave until they reached a point where there was a fire and there were several men gathered around it.

  They were talking but stopped abruptly when they saw the bear and the company it had brought with it.

  Amanda and Dylan looked at each other. Amanda swallowed. This probably wasn’t good.

  Amanda looked at the men who were gathered around the fire in the cave. They were older and looked to be Native American. One of them had a pipe like Sherlock Holmes’ hanging out of his mouth. He had long gray braids and he stood.

  “Jase,” he said to the bear in front of him.

  Slowly, the bear morphed back into Jase’s form. Jase stood there nude and beckoned for Amanda and Dylan to join the circle of men.

  Amanda was reluctant to step forward, but Dylan pulled her with him. He stepped into the circle as the older man threw a blanket to Jase.

  “So this is Dylan,” the older man said with a smile.

  Amanda looked around at the other men and saw that they were smiling, too, much to her surprise. She hadn’t imagined that they would be greeted with so much hospitality.

  “This is Dylan,” Jase said with a smile. “Dylan, this is Robert Williams.”

  Jase pointed towards the man with the pipe.

  Dylan nodded and spoke.

  “This is Amanda.”

  The man nodded at Amanda.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said.

  “What’s this about?” Dylan asked after they sat.

  “I’m sure you know who Jase is,” said Robert, puffing on his pipe, blowing smoke rings.

  Dylan shook his head and looked at Jase as though looking him over one more time might somehow give him the answer.

  “He’s your brother,” said Robert.

  Dylan looked confused.

  “I don’t have a brother,” he began.

  “You were adopted, were you not?” Robert asked with the hint of a smile.

  Dylan paused.

  “I was,” he finally said.

  “Jase is your brother,” he repeated.

  Jase smiled at Dylan as though there was so much that he wanted to say to him, but now was not the time. Amanda felt somehow that she had intruded on an incredibly private moment and that she should leave, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Alright,” said Dylan, trying to absorb everything.

  “The Kermode Spirit Bears are rare. Even more rare in these times,” said the old man. “There is one other, but only one knows where he is, and we cannot find the one who knows his location.”

  “What does this have to do with me? I mean, other than that they’re my brothers?” Dylan asked.

  The old man smiled.

  “If the three brothers can be reunited, the Kermode Spirit Bears will break the curse that has been placed upon their people.”

  Dylan never looked away from the old man.

  “Curse?” he asked.

  “You know nothing of this either, do you?” he asked.

  “I just don’t understand, my dad was the one who taught me about the Kermode Spirit Bears…”

  “Your father is one of us, too, but you are not his biological child. You must be reunited with both of your brothers to break the curse.”

  “I still don’t understand this curse business,” said Dylan.

  “A curse was placed on the Kermode Spirit Bears by the black bears. You know that they don’t want you to breed. They placed a curse that said if the last brothers of the Kermode Spirit Bears could be separated and never meet, then the shifters of that race would die out, giving all the lands to the black bears.”

  “And if I am reunited with both of my brothers?” Dylan asked.

  “Then the curse is broken and the Kermode Spirit Bears will flourish again. Without your other brother, though, you will fade into extinction.”

  Dylan thought about this for a moment. Amanda let it settle on her, too.

  “So what does this mean? What does Dylan have to do?” she asked.

  “We must find Edgar,” said the old man.

  “Someone has kidnapped him,” said Jase.

  “He knows the location of your other brother,” said Robert. “If we can get him back, he can tell you where to seek your other brother so the three of you can break the curse.”

  “Well, who took him?” asked Dylan.

  “How are we supposed to find him?” Amanda asked at the same time.

  “We think that he was captured by a poacher,” said Robert, as a darkness passed over his face.

  “Poacher?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes, a poacher,” said Jase. “Sometimes our kind get caught in our shifted form. Before we can transform back into a human, the poachers inject us with a toxin that keeps us in animal form. They want to sell us on the black market to be used as slaves or in sideshows.”

  “I didn’t even know that was a thing anymore,” said Amanda.

  “Oh, it is,” said Robert. “Once drugged, our kind make great performers. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. And we need to get Edgar back. Not just because he shouldn’t be a circus performer, but also because he knows where you two can find your lost brother.”

  Jase and Dylan looked at each other.

  Everyone stayed quiet around the campfire for quite some time. Amanda tried to absorb everything that she’d just learned.

  Finally, Jase stood.

  “I’d better take you guys back to your cabin before people are wondering where you are,” he said.

  The three of them left the cave and trekked down the side of the mountain until they were back in the resort. Jase left them at the treeline.

  “I’ll meet you again here tomorrow at nightfall. We’ll go after Edgar then,” he said.

  Dylan nodded and took Amanda’s hand once more.

  Chapter 4

  They walked in silence back to the cabin. Once inside, they went to their room and started peeling off the layers of their clothing. Amanda took off her shirt, standing there in only her bra and panties. She unhooked her bra and her breasts fell loose. The cool air in the cabin made her nipples stand erect.

  She turned to grab some pajamas.

  Dylan stood naked in front of her.

  His tanned skin seemed out of place for somewhere as cold as this, Amanda thought. He was fully erect and he stared at her, his eyes dark with desire. He stepped forward until their bodies were touching in the cool room.

  Dylan placed his hands on her waist, slowly grazing his fingers along her skin as he made his way up to her breasts. He ran a finger across the tops of her breasts, making her flesh pucker with goosebumps. He stepped back just enough to place a palm over her raised nipple. He grabbed her breast gently, massaging it slowly with just enough pressure.

  Amanda leaned into his touch and reached down with her left hand and cupped the head of his cock in her palm. He thrust his hips into it, groaning at the sensation and leaning his head back.

  Dylan ran hi
s hands down her body and used his foot to spread her legs slightly, just enough so that he had access to all of her body with his hands. He ran his palm over her soft pubic hair and traced his finger along her folds, making her want to beg him to take her already.