Snowbound With Her Christmas Bear: Wylde Den #4 (Alaskan Den Men Book 16)

by Talina Perkins

  These people used his state to move heroin and cocaine. When a friend was killed on duty, he slipped into the ranks as an undercover operative to break apart the infrastructure of the gang.

  He did. But in the process he also lost his mate, who didn’t want someone who couldn’t focus on her and be there for her one hundred percent. Tore his heart out and he swore never to love—or mate—again.

  His bear made a sound of utter disgust. Mating was another word for death. He would never go back to that nightmare. A black-hearted way of thinking maybe, but his brothers could suck it and their judgmental stares as they hugged their mates. He was happy for them, loved the new members of the family like sisters, but wanting one of his own? Nope.

  Been there done that, used the t-shirt as a cleaning rag for the bar.

  Angry, he let out a deep thunderous roar and forced his attacker back several paces with a swift slap of his front paw. Didn’t believe in magick. He paced the wide alley behind his bar. What kind of person didn’t believe in what they saw with their own two eyes?

  And those glasses she wore. His dick twitched every time she reached up to situate them on the dainty bridge of her nose. He wanted to kiss the tip of the pointy refined edge and work his way down to her pouty pink lips.

  What kind of werebear denied what he felt the second their skin connected? He did. And then she’d bombarded him with a hundred questions and a curious stare looking for answers and he’d choked. Fucking choked. He interrogated some of the roughest, most lethal gang members Russia could produce. He never faltered for words, but she tied his tongue into one large knot.

  One harmless handshake.

  Knots tightened and gnawed at his insides. He only had anger for himself. Why the hell did he have to kiss her? He never had a problem with impulses before her arrival.

  All those tiny mistletoes and that god-awful sweater messed with judgment.

  He didn’t even know he was going to kiss her, but her strawberry flavored lip balm screwed into his brain every time she uttered a word and drove him mad every step of that damn race, and it wasn’t like he could just step away. He was tied to her, for God’s sake. He nearly fucking shifted the second his fingers touched the warm cotton of her long johns as he’d tied their legs together. He huffed a cloud of frustration. And who the hell wore those ugly things anyway? Old men in western movies?

  Not Christmas angels with raven black hair that brushed her waist like a sheet of silk.

  An angel. His angel, his bear growled.

  Given half the chance he would strip her of the bright pink offending material and never allow her to cover herself up in them again.

  But that wouldn’t happen.

  Ever. His dick would not go within five feet of her bed, kitchen counter, or anywhere else he could strip her bare and have his way while unrelenting fire gnawed away every inch of vein in his body.

  His bear rose up and landed paws first with the full force of his weight in the snow. A burst of powder billowed into the air and distracted the other bear.

  The rich smoothness of her creamy skin and sweet scent. He didn’t know he wanted the taste of her on his tongue either until he had her in his arms and her delicate tongue darting between his lips to touch his.

  His cock had swelled instantly and he’d hurt her when he set her away from him.

  What a mess.

  Rone slammed into the fresh snow, his sparring opponent mimicking his moves, opening his underbelly to attack. Just what he wanted.

  Four sleepless hours and her scent still clung to him, her taste still a sweet reminder on his lips. He charged, dodged a high swipe and sunk his incisors into flesh. Rolling forward, Rone drew to his hind legs and lashed out, claws sheathed. He didn’t want to kill the boy, only teach a lesson.

  The younger bear lunged and took them both down. His age and experience had the younger bear pinned beneath him, his teeth locked on his attacker’s throat in seconds.

  Rone rolled right and took the weight of the younger bear with him. A bellow worked up the back of his throat to carry through the early morning in warning to for the boy to get his shit together.

  A brush of a curtain from the second story caught his eye and cost him. Teeth sunk into the meat of his front leg, dragging a guttural roar from the back of his throat so loud the sound of glass rattling carried over the falling snow and his gruff breathing.

  He reared back and shook off his cousin before shifting back to human form, paying no mind to the trickle of blood easing down his forearm or the cold against his naked skin. It would be healed before he hit the shower, his pride, not so much.

  His brows snapped together. “You’re getting faster. Good,” Rone grated. “But not fast enough. You need to practice more,” he instructed with the same force his sergeant had with him in the police academy. The old man was a hard ass but he’d taught the shifters under his care how to move their asses, protect those under them and manage to go home at the end of the day.

  A nice trade off in Rone’s opinion. His cousin would appreciate that when he got a little more age on him and a son of his own to care for. Right now he didn’t mind looking like the hard-assed cousin that didn’t know how to have fun.

  A werebear needed daily training and hours on end to learn the skill of protecting, shifting between their human and animal forms in rapid succession and honing the heightened senses of their beast. Instinct only carried a man so far. But Rone could only manage a couple of hours at the ass crack of dawn and before school with the boy. It would have to do. “More practice, fewer games. You want to be an enforcer for the PD, take your father’s place in the force, you have to take this seriously.” Rone felt like a heel saying it, but sometimes the only way to get through the cloud of a teenager’s mind was with some harsh realities. He walked up to the boy who stood heaving from the exertion of their sparring. “You got this.”

  The younger bear shrugged, flakes of snow melting the second they came in contact with the hot flesh of a shifter. “I’m fast enough to beat you, old man.”

  Damn if he didn’t feel old. Rone smiled and smacked snow on his arm to clear the remnants away. “You think you’re fast.” Rone reached out and smacked the back of his little cousin’s head.

  “Ouch. What was that for?”

  “GP. General purpose.” Rone grabbed the young bear by the neck and pulled him in for a hug. “Now, focus. Make the grades, do the work, and be good with your mom. Remember, cockiness gets you killed. Something your dad failed to learn,” he added in a lighter voice. “Don’t open yourself up. Keep close and move fast. Speed is your friend.”

  A frown formed on the younger boy’s face. But Rone didn’t back down. At sixteen he was old enough to get a taste of the real world. As the only male of his den with a mom and sister to protect, he needed hard facts and if they came in the form of an ass-kicking, Rone would dish it out.

  “But you didn’t.” He pointed at the bite mark.

  “Lost focus and it cost me. Take it as proof.” Speaking of, his distraction was awake. He could feel her eyes on them, and a faint light flickered on the snow signaling she’d turned on a light. Rone wrapped his hand around the boy's forearm and pulled him in until he had his undivided attention. “Keep close to your opponent, use your surroundings to your advantage and protect your throat. They get their teeth into there and you’re dead. You’ll learn the rest as we move along.”

  “Yes, sir. Same time tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “Don’t look so down, boy. You’re doing fine. Your father would be proud of you. Tell your mom I’ll be by later with some things. Seen you then.”

  Rone watched as his younger cousin he’d helped raise for the last four years kneeled in the ankle-deep snow and let out a boisterous roar before the shift took over him. Within seconds a grizzly smaller than his bear, but growing into his own, tore out through the snow and hit the thick tree line that hugged the end of the alley. Darkness swallowed his dark fur instantly.

  Ron
e looked around the quiet alley as he plucked his sweatpants from the stair railing by the back door. The cloak of night still held the town captive for a couple of hours yet. Angling away from the second-story window, he slipped the cotton pants on as a fresh flurry of snow drifted in on a stiff wind.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught the wisp of a curtain again and smiled.

  The little angel-eyed temptress was watching. Let the torture begin.

  His bare feet masked his progress up the back stairs as he made his way through the bar, taking them two at a time.

  “Ms. Kennedy,” he drawled from the landing. “Nothing like an early morning workout to get the blood pumping.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She brushed the sleepiness from her eyes, her long hair pulled to the side in a braid mussed from sleep and the tempting dark locks looked sexy as hell fanned along the side of her face. The neck of her sweater dipped over one creamy shoulder to reveal an emerald green strap.

  He also noticed the pale coloring of her cheeks and dark circles brushed along the undersides of her eyes. He frowned.

  “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “After all that we’ve seen of each other,” she looked pointedly at his bare chest and dared scan her gaze lower with a flush of red to her cheeks the lower she went. God, he was in so much trouble. “I’d say you can stick with Sabine. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Wylde?”

  “Okay, Sabine.” He liked the way she shuddered the slightest bit when he said her name.

  Truth be told, his name on her tongue made his cock throb and his hands itch to bury his fingers into that braid and work the length free to see where the ends brushed when loose. That would taste like heaven. He knew it like he knew he damn well shouldn’t want his mouth anywhere near hers.

  He moved down the hall and leaned an elbow on the doorjamb, the smell of coffee wafting out the door at her back. “The kiss alone should put us on the path to at least sharing coffee in the mornings while you’re here. Don’t you agree?”

  Her eyes widened and his bear reared up as at the sound of her breath catching in her throat, thirsty for the hunt.

  Run. His animal dared. He tightened his fingers around the wood of the frame until they turned white as the sexy sound tugged at the alpha in him.

  Two more nights with her under his roof. Forty-eight torturous, heavenly hours and he would be free. He could send her away to the Wylde home with Cherry and her mates. But the thought had red flashing across his vision and his gut dropping to the floor.

  Soft light from a nearby lamp on the opposite of the door leaked into the hall to cast a deep shadow across her face, but he didn’t need the light to see every angle of her delicate shoulders or the way she worked her bottom lip between her teeth and fiddled with the ends of her ugly sweater, this one more atrocious than the last.

  Rone reached between them and twirled several loose strands around a finger. Dark hair on a white pillow. His gaze clouded with the images of her tucked beneath him, his bed at her back and him tending to every fucking need her body craved. Phantom moans and tortured groans of ecstasy already played in his ear as he imagined luring the sweet sounds from her plump lips.

  “Do you always stare at a woman’s lips, Mr. Wylde?”

  “Rone,” he corrected her gruffly as he leveled his gaze with hers. “And only when I can’t get the taste of strawberry out of my head.”

  “Oh? Do you associate strawberries and lips often?” she asked softly.

  “More and more. What’s with the sweater fetish?” That had to be a safe enough topic. He stared at her a moment longer, torn between walking back to his room and taking care of the raging need she stirred in him, or seducing her and finding out if her soft lips would feel as heavenly wrapped around his shaft as they did pressed against his own.

  “What? The clerk at the counter said it looked good on me.”

  “I bet she did.”

  “He,” she corrected with a playful smirk. His little tease wanted to play? She stood back from him then and her gaze pulled him over the threshold of her apartment.

  His chest tightened as unwanted fire seeped into his blood to ignite something he didn’t want. Had no desire for and hadn’t for years. The fire of mating. A need so powerful the strongest of friends and brothers recently fell to its powers as willing—and in his case unwilling—victims.

  “He gave me his number if I ever need more sweaters.”

  He gave her a look.

  “No one needs more than one cheesy Christmas sweater in their lives. All that thing needs is lights to win the ugliest sweater award of all time.”

  Son of a bitch. He ground his teeth against a sudden attack on his senses as his bear fought to be freed. Pushed for him to eat up the sliver of space between him and the woman his beast saw as their mate and sink into her— teeth and cock— to claim her as theirs.

  Fuck that.

  He eyed the island counter through the opened door at her back, which was the perfect height for burying himself into her dripping channel. And she would be wet. Wet for him and hungrier after he made her come with his tongue pressed between her folds, his fingers dipping into her to tease her further.

  Hunger grabbed him by the balls and tightened until he couldn’t see. A hungry bear was a dangerous thing. Did she know how tempting she was fresh out of bed? Mussed hair, dreamy eyes and flushed cheeks.

  His cock swelled to press against the soft material of his sweats.

  He growled when her gaze drifted down his bare chest to rest on his cock.

  Sabine. An angel with raven hair and the bluest eyes. When her gaze lifted to his and recognition flared with a glittering surprise in her eyes.

  She bit into her lip. “Strawberry?”

  He took another step closer then another. “Hmm-mmm.” The thin veil fixed between his beast and human spirit shimmered, weakened by every second the sweet feminine scent filled his nostrils.

  Beyond the kitchen the curtains were drawn. No one would see him devouring the beauty.

  His gaze caressed her heart-shaped cheeks, the way her chin came to a delicate point.

  “Have you eaten?” husky and low, he drew out his question, fixing his gaze on the way her tongue flicked over her lower lip, the way her chest rose and fell with every breath.

  Could he kiss her again and walk away? Doubtful. He had a feeling no one walked away from Sabine Kennedy unscathed. In the last twenty-four hours and she filled his head like a bad idea waiting to happen. A charged bomb ready to explode in his face. Then why couldn’t he keep away? He shouldn’t be here, this close to her.

  She brought her face up to his and her eyes glittered with what he wanted to believe was unspent need as he reached out and tucked a stubborn strand of hair behind her ear again as it slipped free, causing the lines in her forehead to deepen and her eyes to shutter closed for a brief moment.

  Like a taut drum, his acute hearing picked up on the increase of her heartbeat as his fingers brushed the baby soft skin of her cheek. What was it about this woman that he couldn’t resist?

  “Did you know that there are over one hundred different species of berries in Alaska?” Her blue eyes darkened and she mirrored his steps as he entered the apartment and flicked the door closed behind them. He advanced, she retreated until her back bumped against the small island situated in the center of the kitchenette. With nothing between them but air, he watched as she slipped a finger into the neck of her oversized sweatshirt, black, big glittered up neck and gold letters that spelled out Santa’s favorite HO HO HO.

  He tracked her movements and fantasized how she would look on top of him, her glasses on as she rode him and that ugly sweater tossed aside.

  Heat fused his blood and pounded through every inch of his body. Instinct mixed and jumbled his thoughts until his movements became jerky.

  She fetched her glasses and slid them on with a practiced ease. “Watermelon.” Like a teacher set on driving home a point, she raised a tiny digital finger. “That’s
my favorite one. Watermelon berry. Of the berries, I mean and the rarest. Have you had those?”

  He sent her a bemused look and nodded. “Did you memorize everything you could about this place?”

  “Oh. Um.” She plucked off her glasses and he stopped her before she could pull them completely free.

  “Don’t. They make you look sexy.”

  She froze with her hand mid-air. “Right.”

  “A sexy angel,” he dragged out as she complied with pushing the frames back into place.

  “Excuse me?” Her gaze danced over his as she worked the ends of her as if she needed something in her hands to keep from reaching out and touching him.

  Like an invisible force pushing at his back, everything in him drove him forward, and it took every last ounce of control to keep his feet nailed to the small spot of carpet. But he could easily lean in. Caress her with a kiss along her neck.

  As if she sensed his internal war, Sabine edged out of where he had her pinned and rounded the counter to a safe distance. Or what she perceived as safe anyway. “I don’t usually, you know, wear them. In class they become more of a hassle than anything. I can’t seem to keep up with them and then my supervisor loves to find anything I do wrong as an example for everyone else’s learning opportunity.”

  He continued to regard her from the safe distance. “She must be a jealous old hag.”

  Sabine turned and rose on her tiptoes to retrieve a couple of mugs from the cabinet. The movement inched up the hem of her sweater over the globes of her round, sexy ass and the tight stretchy pair of pants she wore molded to her every delectable curve. He groaned but disguised it as a cough.

  He brought his gaze up just as she turned. But didn’t hide the fact he watched her every move. Some things couldn’t be hidden and he didn’t pride himself on being a liar.

  She shivered delicately, the reaction so minute only a shifter would pick up the change in her stance. The way her heart rate fluttered and her pupils dilated. She arched her brow but continued on as though she didn’t notice anything. The sweet blush that dusted her cheeks told him otherwise, teasing his bear into hyper mode. Rone grunted something following her weird train of conversation about berries, but couldn’t take his eyes off the way she rubbed the pad of her finger over the rim of the mugs.