Wylde Den, Book Four
Alaskan Den Men Christmas Special
TALINA PERKINS
Snowbound With Her Christmas Bear
Copyright © 2016 by Talina Perkins
Excerpt from BEAR HIS MARK
copyright© 2016 Talina Perkins
Excerpt from BEAR HIS BOND
copyright© 2016 Talina Perkins
WWW.TALINAPERKINS.COM
Edited by Em Petrova
Cover Artist: Bookin' It Designs
All rights are reserved. No Part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Snowbound With Her Christmas Bear, Wylde Den #4
This holiday season come and take a walk on the Wylde side!
No strings attached holiday vacation sex was just what the doctored ordered. While visiting over the holidays, no one prepared med student Sabine Kennedy for Christmas in Alaska. Mesmerized by endless miles of pristine snow, she's downright enchanted by the dark-haired homegrown men decorating the vast landscape of Claw Ridge. Especially one Tyrone “Rone” Wylde. Nothing got a Southern girl's heart racing faster than an amber-eyed man with a voice that could strip panties off in a Christmas blizzard. He’s 100% werebear and she’s 200% willing to try new adventures as long as it’s purely physical.
Naked and challenged to the local tradition of the Rum Run within ten minutes of touching down, Sabine has two choices—freeze or get moving. Heat of the mating season was long over, but the second his brother's sister-in-law rolls up with a feisty attitude and enough sass to melt the polar icecaps, Rone is hit with the fever to claim. As the owner of the only bar and bakery in town, Rone also needed all the help he could get. It is a win-win in his book.
When a hidden force strikes out, the fun holiday times are over as the past tears away more than the spirit of Christmas. Dragons, black magick, and murder taint the deeply traditional town so many hold dear. Sabine is forced to face her fears head on and if Rone can’t find a way to chip away at her tough façade to find the soft heart he knows she guards, he’ll lose her forever.
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Wylde Den Book 1: Bear His Mark – Out Now
Wylde Den Book 2: Bear His Bond – Out Now
Wylde Den Book 3: Bear Their Secret – Pre-Order Now!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title
Copyright
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Note from Talina
Excerpt: Bear His Mark
Excerpt Bear His Bond
Other Books by Talina
Coming Next
About Author
Complete Alaskan Den Men Collection
CHAPTER ONE
People who loved Alaska should come with a warning label that read in fat, bold letters: bat shit crazy and loving it! Sabine Kennedy eyed her sister with a stare hot enough to melt the snowflakes clinging to her lashes.
Despite her black-rimmed spectacles nothing seemed to beat back the little, frozen fairy kisses.
Sabine scootched the eyewear up the bridge of her nose and eyed her surroundings, a little nervous at where Cherry had stood them. Sparkly icicles hung from the frozen eaves of the storefronts and several dangled nearby. One good bump from a passerby and she could be spending Christmas in the morgue. Ironic how something so beautiful could be so lethal. Apparently, Alaska and danger went hand in hand and the locals didn’t care about putting themselves in peril.
She drew cold air into her lungs and let it out in a billow of hot air, considering her sister’s batshit crazy request.
“Pleeeease. It’s tradition. You get naked, get drunk, tie yourself to a partner and run. It’s why it’s called the Rum Run,” Cherry crooned, holding up a black-labeled bottle with Moon Lust scribbled down the side in a flourish of gold calligraphy.
Eyeballs glued to the liquid, she asked, “Exactly how much and what is it?”
“Depends if you wanna win? And we wanna win,” Cherry said, patting her plump belly. “Mama needs a nursery and if you beat Everett for me this year, my prize is a handyman with wood and my set of plans.”
That could be dangerous. When her sister set out to do something, she did it to the nines. Their communal room at the orphanage never saw a holiday without some kind of decoration strung, looped or piled to create a festive holiday. Sabine could only imagine what she would do with a whole house and nothing holding her back.
Her sister’s ruby red lips parted into what Sabine referred to as the evil sister challenge left over from their childhood. All teeth and glittery eyes daring her to back down from the challenge.
Hoots and cheers erupted from the bottom of the street where the team ahead of them completed their race. White and red streamers snaked through the air, and she couldn’t take in the whole town fast enough with everything that was going on. No rumbling sounds of cars or trains. No smog and definitely no irritated city folks brushing past her on the sidewalk. It was all weird and surreal. Like a small town straight off a postcard. Or out of a tiny snowglobe. The kind she liked to shake at the antique shops in downtown Houston. All hand-painted and beautiful to look at.
At the head of the street where they stood, a long foldout table held down a large amount of real estate with three fold-out chairs on one side and two orange cones in the front. Several plastic trays lined the front with dozens of little shot glasses filled with the same substance her sister dangled in front of her nose.
One team on one side and a place for another opposite them, she assumed. Above it, a single large banner stretched from either side with stark blue lettering, and Christmas lights cast a cheerful glow on the words: Annual Rum Run.
“Right. Yeah. Sure. An everyday occurrence. Got it.” Her brows pinched in confusion, and she caught the sleeve of her sister’s coat before she could escape to tell the judge she’d lured her in to fill her sister’s spot. Not that a six-month pregnant lady could do more than waddle in snow up to her knees if you veered off the shoveled path.
“Did you say naked? As in commando, nada? Not even panties and pasties.” Her voice hit a couple of notes higher than she intended. In a bob and weave fashion, Sabine dodged in and out of Cherry’s line of sight to check if some alien hadn’t kidnapped her strait-laced sister.
“Yep, you’re still Cherry but you don’t sound like my sister. Since when did streaking become a wintertime sport?” Leaning forward so no one overheard, she whispered, “I can at least keep on the panties and bra? Right?” Some facts you didn’t leave to chance and miscommunication.
“As long as it’s not your scrubs, you’re good to go. Tradition among the townsfolk is you do their v
ersion of the polar bear run, you do it naked and drunk. It’s seventy years in the making. Human and shifters are welcome as long as you can shoot back homemade hooch and don’t mind your tatas grabbing some winter air.”
“It sounds like someone got bored and horny and came up with a drinking game in the dead of winter.”
Cherry laughed. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Or at least that’s how Elder Wylde put it when he told me all about ‘the tradition.’” Cherry threw up air quotes as a smirk played at the corner of her lips.
Sabine had made promises to visit her sister over the last year Cherry had made Claw Ridge her new home… and hadn’t. She’d skipped out on every promise. Flaked out for one reason or other. Local crazy customs should have made at least number three on that list but she’d failed to do all her research. And her new guidebook riddled with facts about Alaska failed to mention anything about snow streaking.
A wicked grin played over Sabine’s lips. She just might survive this trip after all. She bounced on the tips of her toes in time with the Jingle Bells that blasted out over the crowd. “Scrubs. Nope. Left them back at the office.”
Permanently, she thought wistfully. Dropouts didn’t need scrubs. But she kept the real reason she braved an Alaskan winter to herself. For now. Busting her sister’s bubble with bad news seemed pure evil on a day like this when everyone around them smiled and cheered with an astonishing amount of holiday spirit. “But I am armed, you could say.”
The midday temperatures easily dipped below holy shit Fahrenheit and settled in for a very long haul. It felt twice as cold with the wind chill factor, and Sabine thanked her new lucky leg warmers she’d decided on more layers rather than the opposite.
“Your nose is scrunching up like it does when you want to say something but don’t.”
Damn. Time for deflective tactics. “Well, I wouldn’t call them scrubs, per se. They’re really cute, though, and red if that counts for something. With little bitty mistletoe all over them.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to show the actual size.
“Oh, sexy!”
“Sure. Sexy booty warmers.” And Sabine left it at that with a wiggle of her brows. “You know this is past crazy and straight into batshit zone, right?”
Cherry patted her cheeks and stepped back from the cleared path down Main Street. And Sabine really got her first look at what lay ahead of her. Her hearted tumbled to the ground and dragged her stomach with it. Main Street was better described as her strip of doom.
“Holy shit I’m screwed.”
“You always did like to tell it like you saw it.”
She shot a sideways glance down Main Street’s or Claw Ridge’s frozen version of a slip and slide.
Two teams barreled down the street in their birthday suits, tied at the leg. Human or shifters, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t seem to matter. Ice was ice. She cringed as the team on the left took a nosedive and crossed the finish line on their asses.
Oh man. She couldn’t do this. Not and actually manage to cross the finish line. But if she managed to win, maybe telling her sister she’d quit med school would go over easier.
She could hope. The only reason Cherry had come to Claw Ridge was to help her pay the mounting school debt she’d racked up.
Her teeth threatened to clatter, so she raised her gloved hands and cupped them around her face. “Remember that time I tried ice skating. You know that double date I ended up saving you from?”
Cherry set the metal canister down on the table and waved to someone over Sabine’s shoulder. “Oh my God, whatever you do please don’t do a repeat. When you fell on that ice you somehow tripped everyone. There had to be thirty people on the rink!”
There were four times as many lining the streets watching the Rum Run.
“Well, it’s not like I meant to.” With another long look down the icy lane, Sabine let out a heavy sigh and fisted the material of her coat over where her heart wanted to pound out of her chest.
Her date had been a great guy but the ice skating had led to mountain climbing, which led to her twenty thousand feet above jagged peaks contemplating survival probabilities with a questionable parachute strapped to her back. And that was where she drew the line. Nerdy girls with book fetishes didn’t do extreme sports and this sat at the top of her oh-hell-no list.
She took another gander at the street and scrunched her nose in horror. This would easily turn into a game of human bowling in less than five seconds. She paused, fingers clutching her sister in place, only long enough to grimace at the possibility of a total wipeout in front of the entire town. NAKED.
Men clad in loincloths with lumberjack physiques dotted every snowy surface her eyes touched.
She shuddered long and hard. And Cherry wanted her to strip in front of them?
“No. Freaking. Way. Nope.” A cluster of the sexy guys in question walked by and she really tried to keep her eyes north of the nipples, but when five, yes FIVE naked, men built firmer than a freight train walked by you smiling, what was a girl to do? “Cherry, when you said I needed a change of scenery you didn’t say anything about mountain men with dimples and no clothes?”
“Thought I’d leave that as a surprise.”
“You dirty slut!”
“Only on Christmas and twice on Sunday if you know what I mean.”
Right. Her sister, the straight-laced high school teacher and now the meaty dish between two scrumptious and deliciously hot male specimens. Some girls had all the fun!
“It’s about to get very cold for me, isn’t it?”
“Only if you think about it.”
Everyone from the small mountainside town gathered on the edges of the street. “It’s like they’re taunting my inner klutz and she’s greedily rubbing her hands together in anticipation of embarrassing me. They’ve all unwittingly positioned themselves to fall prey to my tendency to have the worst luck ever.”
“Look at it this way. You’ll meet everybody at once and kind of break the ice. Would make one helluva meet and greet, huh!” The excitement on her sister’s face tore her between giving in and giving up. She pinched the bridge of her nose to hide the laugh that wanted to break free.
With her best deadpan look, she eyeballed her sister without cracking even a sliver of a smile. Her glasses slipped and she edged them back into place with her chunky mittens. “Not. funny.”
Cherry twisted her mouth into a grimace, and it was game over.
“That’s all right. Maybe next year then.” Her sister pulled out the old poor me routine.
It worked. “Damn you, woman. If it weren’t for that little baby bear in you, I would be stripping your ass naked instead.”
“Human, Sabine. Remember? No half werebears in here. So you’ll do it then? You’ll race in my place?”
Sabine caught her sister’s smug expression and she narrowed her eyes. “You’re so gonna owe me for this.” Okaaay. So this was happening. Sabine shucked off her heavy coat and tossed it in the bin her sister pulled out from under the table.
“Anything you say, sis.” Those berry red lips of hers peeled back into a big grin. “I see the ugly sweaters have made their appearance.”
God, she was such a softy. Sabine kicked off her not-even-broken-in boots and then started work on her Christmas sweater. “What? You didn’t think I would leave my Rudolph home alone, did you?”
Sabine loved tormenting her sister with her tacky sweaters year after year. No sense in breaking tradition. This one happened to be her favorite. Solid white with a huge reindeer face hand-stitched on the front with a large red nose.
She glanced up and caught the scrunched expression of horror and smiled with satisfaction.
“Let me make sure I have this straight. You guys do this run every year?” Freaking crazy people.
“Like clockwork. Every December twenty-first.” Her sister laughed and shook her head. “Damn girl, how many sets of socks do you have on?”
Sabine choked out a gurgled laugh of surprise.
“Did you read the thermometer?” she asked in disbelief as a gust of wind played hanky-panky with the ruffles of her clothing.
Gray clouds swallowed crystal blue sky in vast swaths to settle over the snowy peaks in the distance. Puffy fingers reached, ready to rake over the growing crowd gathered to see the spectacle. A few rays of sun beat back the inevitable, but before long another downpour of snow was due to hit Claw Ridge according to the news report she’d caught back in Fairbanks. Hopefully, not for a little while, though.
“By the way. You’ll have a partner too.”
Sabine buried her hands in the snow for balance as she toed off her boots and shimmied out of her snow pants to reveal a pair of jeans. “Who would that be?”
She couldn’t help but think maybe the impromptu trip here wouldn’t be so bad after all. Now that she didn’t have to worry about pristine records, a little pre-holiday fun wasn’t such a bad idea.
Sabine rolled her eyes at herself. Geeky to a fault, she wouldn’t approach a man that good-looking to whip up a ‘date’ if her life depended on it.
Clear of the outer layers of her clothing, she set to work on the rest. How did anyone manage to move in this brutal cold? She popped the button of her pants and looked up to see her sister smiling again. “Rone.” Red lips curled into something that looked somewhere between mischievous and oh this is gonna be fun.
Her stomach dipped. Uh-oh.
“You know the owner of Wylde Fire and the most eligible werebear bachelor.”
Drop a hint much? Sabine chuckled. “Yeah. Got it. I also got your little hints in your last email, and your last phone call and the phone call before that.”
Cherry pressed a hand to her lips.
The little sly faker.
“But…what ever do you mean?” Cherry snatched Sabine’s boots up and gasped, her red lips in the form of a very convincing O.
“Right,” she drew out with an arched brow. Sabine didn’t buy the good little Southern girl act for a second. Cherry wanted her sister hooked up and settled down right alongside of her by any means necessary. Sorry, but that wasn’t about to happen. Especially in Noname, Alaska where her tatas would freeze before she could get a guy interested in warming them up for her.
Snowbound With Her Christmas Bear: Wylde Den #4 (Alaskan Den Men Book 16) Page 1