Target: BillionBear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (7 page)

She indicated a grassy spot three or four yards from the edge. “This is where I sometimes sit and paint. I try to catch the exact color of sunset. But it changes so fast!”

“Shall we sit?” he asked, one hand absently running up to his shoulder.

So he did feel the effects of that horrible fall. “Sure,” she said, and they each sat down on the grass.

He sat within easy distance, like he was trying not to crowd her. She snuck a peek at how the low, ruddy sunset light caught in tiny pinpoints on his stubble, and lit the tips of his eyelashes. Her breath stuttered in her chest. He was so . . .
gorgeous
. Compelling. Mysterious.

Sexy.

Especially sexy.

“What about you? What do you do?” she asked. “You said you weren’t interested in what Marlo Evans is doing. Why are you here, then?”

“It’s supposed to be therapeutic,” he said, looking out at sea.

Kesley longed to draw his profile, and capture the sunset colors highlighting his strong cheekbones and the clean angle of his jaw. The strands of fine dark hair that fell over his forehead. She flexed her fingers. She wanted more than to draw them, she wanted to touch them.

She was so involved in looking at him that she was only aware that the pause had lengthened into a silence when he spoke again. “Call me Jameson,” he said, his voice rising slightly at the end—almost a plea. One hand lifted briefly—the arm with the shoulder bruise stayed still, she noted. “I don’t like to lie to you.”

“Having a nickname isn’t a lie,” she said, her curiosity flaring up again: why would he have a fake name? Did it have to do with the amnesia? Who
was
he?

His head dropped a little, his long eyelashes shuttering his eyes. “No. Well, yes, in the sense that no one ever called me that. I don’t think. My brother called me Jay, that much I remember . . . ”

“Can I ask what happened? Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“I can’t answer—I don’t remember. All I know is that I was in a bad crash.” His voice roughened.

“So ‘therapeutic’ is literal,” she said slowly.

He turned to look at her. “I do want to tell you the truth. But what is the truth? I’ve got almost as many questions as you do. In a different sense, maybe more.” He frowned.

“That biker today? You think that guy was trying to run you down on purpose?” she asked.

“Not sure. Of anything,” he murmured, once again gazing out to sea. His good hand flexed.

She surrendered to an almost overwhelming impulse. “Look, say no if this sounds awful, but I’m considered pretty good at massage. Not professional,” she hastened to say. “But if you’d like me to rub that shoulder . . .”

“God, that sounds awesome,” he responded with unmistakable sincerity. “It feels like a load of cement got packed in there.”

She rubbed her fingertips as she shifted behind him. Raccoons, she had discovered when she was little, are all about touch. Once she’d learned that, she began to understand why even as a tiny kid she’d always had her fingers into everything. Texture and feel were all-important, at least as much as sight and hearing.

“I’ll start gently, because I know you’ve got to have a big-ass bruise.” She laid her hands on the breadth of his shoulders at either side of his neck. She pressed the sides of her thumbs into the muscles there, and listened to his breath hiss in. But he didn’t stiffen under her fingers, so she knew it was good hissing, not pain hissing.

She began to knead in slow circles, smoothing out the muscle. On the hurt side it was rock hard, but not swollen. So she began to dig her fingers in a little more as she worked outward in broader circles.

“That feels insanely good,” he sighed, his voice rough and deep in his chest.

Heat flared inside Kesley. She began kneading with her palms, caressing the contours of his muscles as she worked his knots ribbon-smooth. Whatever he did, he stayed in shape, she thought, light-headed with desire.

His head dropped back, and she concentrated with both hands on his bad shoulder. It didn’t seem to hurt him at all, so she dug in deeper, wishing she could follow all his beautiful musculature all the way down, and then work around to the front . . .

He growled softly deep in his chest, as she shifted her weight to his side so she could knead his shoulders on both sides. He turned his head, and lifted his arm, and she glanced down into his face—

And their lips met.

Soft, tentative, questing, he nibbled her lips, which parted eagerly. His tongue swept inside her mouth, sending sheets of lightning through every nerve, and she kissed him back, hot, hungry kisses. Breath shaking, they gasped and kissed again, and his hands slid up her sides, over her shoulders to cup her face.

She slid her fingers inside his shirt, groaning at the softness of those little hairs in the dip between his collarbones. Her fingers twitched at the buttons of his shirt and then stiffened as his hands drifted down to cup her breasts.

Heat flowered in her core as he thumbed her nipples through her shirt and bra. Her nipples tightened into throbbing nubs. When his hands slid up her ribs under her loose shirt, she swayed with urgency.

Her eyes met his, and saw the question there—and the want.

He wanted her. Pleasure and delight flowered in her as they kissed again, until they were both breathless. Then he smiled as he eased her back on the grass, unbuttoning her shirt and bending down to press a kiss at each inch of exposed skin. She held onto his shoulders as he skimmed his thumbs under the cups of her bra, and lifted them. Then one hand caressed her breast as his lips brushed over the nipple of the other. Then he opened his warm lips and closed them around the tip of her breast. He took his time in swirling his tongue around as her nipple hardened into a peak of urgency, sending tiny pulses down deep into her, and then he sucked.

She groaned, arching her back. He switched to the other breast, leaving the first to tighten even more in the cool air. His fingers smoothed and caressed down her belly to the top of her pants as he teased and nipped and sucked her second breast.

When he raised his head, she became aware of cool air below: he had unzipped her pants, his fingers brushing gently along the edge of her panties. Once again he glanced at her in question. She could not believe her luck as Jameson ran his fingers inside her panties, stroking the curls there before cupping gently over her mound.

His breath hissed in as she widened her legs. He stroked softly, insistently, then worked a finger deep into her. She groaned, her hips rising. He grinned at her and slid her pants easily down to her knees, then away—for once she was glad she wore loose clothes. Then he eased her panties down with teasing slowness as he bent to kiss her lower belly, and when the fabric slid over her knees, he ran his fingers inside her thighs, stroking slowly. “You,” he whispered, “are so beautiful.”

And he bent to kiss her as he widened her knees. His tongue lingered over her slick, wet folds, then probed deeper, deeper, before coming to rest over her throbbing clit. Each flick of his tongue fired ever-hotter pulses deep within her and she met every lick with a thrust of her hips.

His lips and tongue took utter possession of her core, causing her to pant in rising desire. Her fingers dug deep into the pungent grass, her hips rising as he grazed her clit with his teeth—sending her plunging into an abyss of shattering pleasure, intensified as he sucked in time with each throb.

“As sweet as honey,” he murmured, as she came down slowly from the most intense crescendo of her entire life. She lay there boneless, catching her breath, then sat up to catch his smile. Gently she pushed his shirt over his shoulders.

“Your turn,” she said—and spread her fingers over his chest as she pushed him flat.

As she scored her nails gently over the hard bumps of his ribs and the ripples of his abs—despite that hospital stay, he was in incredible shape—she lowered her eyes to his pants, and the bulge there.

“Oh, yes,” she said, unzipping his pants with one hand, and sliding her other hand under the warm silk of his boxers.

His cock sprang free and she paused to admire it before running her fingers over it. It wasn’t so much its size, though that was magnificent. She kind of expected that in a big guy. It was the fact that he was already hard as a rock—for her. For
her
. She was very good at this—in her relationships, too often it had taken a lot of work on her part before her various ex-boyfriends showed enough enthusiasm for bed play.

But Jameson’s princely erection had happened before she touched him.

And so it was time for payback, with all the skill she possessed. She bent to nip his head, causing his breath to give a most satisfying hiss, and she stroked him lingeringly from tip to the base of his balls before using teeth, lips, and tongue up and down his length until he was breathing fast, his hips bucking.

She was ready to take him down her throat to finish him off when he touched the sides of her face and said in a deep, guttural voice, “I never thought I’d ever interrupt what feels like heaven, but Kesley, as far as I know now this is my first time, and I want it to be in you. Together.”

She’d thought, after that amazing high he’d given her, that she was done, but his words shot heat straight to her core, and she laughed, pulling her top off and tossing it and her dangling bra to the side. With an abandon she had never thought to feel in her life she straddled his hips—and lowered herself onto him, an inch at a time. At once his hips began to buck. She reveled in the silk of his skin, the hardness of his cock that filled her so exquisitely—and began to rock as she worked him deeper into her.

His hands came up to caress her breasts. She leaned into his grip, riding him with a deeper roll of her hips. Her clit rubbed against his length sliding in and out, building the heat of friction, and she shot to even higher heights, teetering on the brink as he gave a long hissing sigh, coming so hard that she crested again, so strong and hard and sweet that stars flickered in her vision.

She collapsed onto his chest and his arms closed around her, fingers burying in her hair as they pulsed in rhythm together. Kesley slowly became aware of the grass tickling her back, and the fast-cooling air of evening. She didn’t want to move.

And that’s when the theme from
Cats
began to play on her cell phone.

“That’s my sister,” she said with a sigh.

“Maybe you’d better get it,” he murmured into her hair.

Reluctantly they untangled their limbs. Her ribs hollowed at the way he caressed her over her shoulder and down her arm as she sat up.

“I hope nothing is wrong,” she muttered, and got up on her knees to reach for her purse.

As she did, she glanced at Jameson, admiring his beautiful chest as he sat up and began to sort through the clothes they had thrown off with abandon. As he turned his back to reach for his shirt, her gaze slid over his shoulder. And stopped.

Instead of the black and blue mess she’d expected to see after that hideous encounter earlier, she looked down on the multi-colored blotches of a half-healed bruise.

Chapter Six

Kesley, Jameson quickly discovered, was a genius at massage. It was like she had some kind of telepathy—she knew exactly where to press, and how hard. It felt miraculously good. So good that the residual ache from his shoulder all the way down his arm and to the back of his spine began to fade, leaving him with the world’s worst case of pants rocket.

The weird thing was, though he didn’t think he was all that sensitive a guy or he’d be a lot farther along in his recovery than he was, he’d been pretty sure she was turned on as well. He thought he could feel it in the touch of her palms—a caress—but mostly in her compellingly wonderful bouquet of scents.

He guessed that he’d always had a sensitive nose. He remembered how sickening he found Beth’s perfume, though it was apparently expensive. A couple times he’d smelled sharp anger or fear sweat on some of the other patients at Tranquil Breezes, before husky nurses calmly escorted the guys away to somewhere else in the facility.

With Kesley that close, he could smell the subtleties of her acrylic paints, and the soap she’d washed her hands with, and the faint remains of her shampoo, but over them all lay the sweet and salty smell of
her
as she moved, and he looked up at her softly parted lips, and heard her breathing. And before his mind could react, his entire body caught fire.

And
damn
if she didn’t catch fire just as hot, with passion and sweetness and a blaze that ignited a bombshell of happiness inside him that he couldn’t remember ever feeling. Her rounded, soft curves fitted him as if she had been made for him.

He could have lain there with her all night, making love again and again, but her phone rang, blasting them back into the world.

Reality closed in, bringing memory of danger, and all the questions.

As he sat up, some of the earlier pain echoed, blissfully forgotten while the two of them had rocked together in matched heat. He heard her breath hitch when she moved behind him to get her purse. He stayed where he was, grimacing down at his shaking hands as his brain caught up with what they’d done. Hell.

The glory of what had to have been the best sex of his life was doused by the cold thought:
What if I already have a girlfriend?
Though his memory was still largely Swiss cheese, he knew he despised cheaters.

“ . . . no, I’ll be right home. Sorry.”

Kesley turned away, scrambling frantically for her scattered clothes. “We should go. I forgot to tell my family I wasn’t coming home for dinner, and there seems to be—well.” She talked with difficulty as she yanked and tugged hastily. “Anyhow, though I loved . . . every second of what we just did . . . it’s late. It’s going to be pitch dark up here in half an hour . . . and no streetlights.”

He paused in easing his shirt over his aching shoulder, dizzy with conflicting emotions: adoring her simple honesty, worry over what making love to her meant, why he’d been nearly run down, and beyond those the questions he still couldn’t answer.

He reached, and touched her arms. She stilled, and leaned into his grip as he said, “Thank you for the most wonderful experience of my life. What I can remember of my life,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to do that again, I’m grateful for your gift.”

Her smile bloomed. “It was awesome. But . . .” She looked away, and made a little gesture with her hands that could have meant anything. He read it as appeal.

“Yeah, we just met. I for one would like very much to remedy that,” he said as he quickly rebuttoned his shirt. “Though I should warn you that my end of the information exchange is going to be kind of spotty.”

“Oh yeah, the amnesia.” Her brow puckered as she finished tugging and patting her clothes into place. Then she gave him that bright smile. “I’d better go. Would you like to . . . Um . . .” She looked at her phone.

“I don’t have a phone,” he said. “Or, if I did, it’s somewhere else.”

“Part of the memory issue?” She cast him a worried glance as they started back down the trail.

“I guess. Since I can’t remember, I’m not certain how to answer that. But I will say this: until now I never felt the need for one.” He hesitated, wanting badly to ask if they could meet after she returned to her family, but he restrained himself.
Don’t rush things
, he thought, feeling guilty again about having followed her to her home. So he compromised. “Will you be working tomorrow?”

“No. I only work there part-time, except right before the holidays, or the occasional times a really big order comes in. Though I sometimes go there to paint my own stuff. The skylight lets in more light than my place, and the artificial lighting is way better.”

He felt a pulse of guilt at knowing exactly where she lived. “Here’s my suggestion, how about breakfast at Ralph’s? The food there is really good.”

She brightened. “Sure. How about eight?”

“Sounds excellent.”

Going down was considerably faster than going up. They reached the side street, and a minute later the corner of Main Street, a few yards from where the biker had tried to run him down. He looked around, and listened, but caught no revving motorcycle engines among all the other noises. But he felt restless, an itch at the back of his neck, as if he were being watched—and he caught sight of Marlo, almost invisible in the gloom. But she wasn’t looking his way, she was scurrying after some guy who’d just walked out of the hardware store.

He turned down Main toward the Primrose five hundred yards away, then glanced back at the same moment Kesley flipped up her hand in a wave. As he raised his hand to her, she gave him another wistful smile, her eyes full of question, and then turned away and walked up the street.

He paused to watch her. Oh, how he wished she didn’t shroud herself in those floppy clothes—he wanted to watch her walk, and enjoy every delightful curve in motion, his body pulsing with remembered pleasure.

But he was also aware of that that sense of near danger, and he did not want any of it threatening her. So he retreated to the Primrose. As he slid his key in the door to his room, he remembered Marlo still chasing people on the street. Good. He wasn’t ready for her questions. He needed to think about what had nearly happened.

He didn’t
feel
like he had a girlfriend, but when he’d first woke in the hospital, he hadn’t felt like he had a family. He had vague memories of Charlie in boyhood, but he didn’t remember Beth at all. His dad was a vague blur, his mother clearer. But nothing recent.

Surely if he’d had a girlfriend, wouldn’t she have shown up at the hospital?

What if I’m married?

The thought shocked him cold. He stared at his left hand—no band, of course, and not even the smooth skin where a band might have been. He breathed slowly in relief. Right now his memories might be in pieces, but he felt certain that if he married, he would wear a ring because it would be forever. Like his dad and mom . . .

Some memory cluster—freighted with emotion—nudged just under the surface of his thoughts. He tried searching his mind for it, but all he got was heat—fire—pain, and over all a nearly overwhelming sense of betrayal. Due to Charlie? His head panged, and he stumbled into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, his hands clenching the edges, as he stared into the mirror.

When his heart rate had slowed, he went out and looked around the room. The impulse to grab for his phone made him reach, then remember: no phone. He’d even agreed that he didn’t need one. One more effect of those meds, he thought as he dropped into the chair by the desk and picked up the old-fashioned telephone receiver connected by a spiral cord.

He dug out his wallet and retrieved the number Beth had given him. She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

Interesting. He felt no assurance at the sound of her voice—instead a slight tightening at the back of his neck, and the weird internal sense of that . . .
thing
inside . . . alert and listening.

“Yes? Who is this?” she asked, her voice sharpening.

Jameson realized he’d let a silence build. “Beth, it’s me. Jameson.”

“My dear! Is anything wrong?” Her voice returned to that sweet lisp, but he sensed sharpness beneath.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Right now I have a question: am I married?”

She trilled a laugh. “No, darling boy. You are not married. You don’t even have a girlfriend. You’ve been so busy playing the field—an excellent strategy for avoiding those tramps trying to weasel into your family’s wealth. Did you really call to ask me that?” Her voice hitched a note higher.

That inner voice spoke again:
Ask the questions, give no answers
. “Trying to recover something, is all.”

“Don’t fret about recovery,” she breathed. “It will happen, and you’ll find out that your life isn’t all that much different now. The doctor said to rest. Relax. It will come, remember? And do take your meds. You are taking them, aren’t you?”

“Doing everything I can,” he said evasively. He knew he hated outright lies. “Gotta go.”

“Bye, dear. Do call any time. I am always here for you. You know that, don’t you?”

He thanked her and hung up, then sat down to consider what he’d heard. ‘Tramps.’ That kind of language belonged to the older generation, he thought. Beth had at most ten years on him. He grimaced, hoping she wasn’t hinting that he’d been some kind of sleazy cheater. He began breathing slow and even, knowing that this type of breathing was an old lesson learned somewhere earlier, because the rhythm was so familiar.

The churning in his stomach diminished, reminding him of his reaction to his meds the day he left Tranquil Breezes. Since he’d chucked the pills back into the bottle instead of taking them, the mental fog was definitely clearing. What did those meds actually do? That just raised more questions, more of a sense of unreality. As if the world was skewed. Who was telling him the truth?

Kesley.

That much he was sure of.

So start with her
, he told the Jameson in the mirror.
A step at a time, don’t rush things
. He might once have been a player, but one thing he believed: he wasn’t playing now.

* * *

Full dark had fallen by the time Kesley got home.

McKenzi was in her place, in the process of taking Apfelstrudel out of the oven. “There you are! Granny gave me her recipe.” She grinned, then her eyes narrowed. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Walking around.”

“Uh huh.”

“Sorry I lost track of time.”

McKenzi ignored the apology. “Walking around. So you’re really gonna go with that?”

“What?” Kesley demanded.

“‘What?’” McKenzi mimicked, then grinned as she said bluntly, “You look like a girl who’s just had king-hell, brain-rattling sex.”

The heat of memory flared through Kesley, then she caught herself up. Everything was going way, way too fast. She coughed, and cleared her throat as McKenzi gave her the hairy eyeball. “Uh, when will that strudel be done?”

McKenzi stepped closer. “Don’t huh
me
, little sister. I invented the sidestep-with-a-question before you were out of kindergarten. You’ve totally and completely got that pants-on-fire look, and I don’t mean the liar, liar kind, I shoulda said
panties
-on-fire. And may I just add, hallelujah! It’s about time!”

Kesley bit her lips. They felt tender, and she knew it wasn’t from the cold air outside. She caught a lingering taste of Jameson, and there it was again, that heat sheeting through her.

“
Day
-am,” McKenzi whispered, eyes round. “I’ve never seen you like this before. Nick the Prick certainly didn’t ever make you look like
that!
”

“I don’t want to know what I look like,” Kesley interrupted. “We’re supposed to be eating with our
parents
. I’m going to take a shower. A cold one.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Not until you spill. Or I’m going to tease the crap out of you all night long . . .”

“I think I’ve met my mate,” somebody said through Kesley’s mouth.

McKenzi stilled, her eyes wide and shocked. “Really?” Her tone had completely changed. “Who?”

“I don’t even know his last name, I just realized. Oh, God, I am in so much trouble. Jameson—the cameraman who came with that nosy Marlo woman, though he says he’s not interested in her project.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Why would he lie about that?”

“I dunno. Maybe to trick us into talking about shifters?”

Kesley shook her head slowly. “I know it sounds crazy, but I believe him.”

“If he’s your mate . . . Oh, I really don’t know how that works. But listen, Bandit. Dad wanted us to talk about this situation. Marlo,
and
the guy. Dad said there’s something fishy about him. Not evil, more like some mystery. Besides someone trying to run him down.”

“What? Oh, never mind. Knowing Dad, I’ll have to hear it whether I want to or not. But McKenzi, that’s not all that’s mystery.”