Read Online A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) by Jacqueline Sweet, Eva Wilder - Free Book Online

first time in years, she didn’t hear Drew’s voice in the back of her head telling her she needed to lose weight, that she wasn’t good enough, that she was boring. She’d lived with the echo of his disdain rattling around in her head for so long and now that it was gone she felt like winter had finally been driven away by spring. Snow was melting. Flowers were blossoming. The land was hungry for seeds.
    She was happy and she didn’t know what to do with it.
    “How do we get there?” Alison asked Michael. She stood at the edge of the road, a metal guard rail separating her from a nasty fall. “Do you have a jetpack? A flying horse?”
    “Sadly, no. But I do have an old hiking trail. Well, maybe an old native trail. It’s hard to tell the difference these days.” He pointed down and Alison saw it, just barely. It was so narrow that it looked like a trick of the light. The path couldn’t have been more than three feet wide, with no handrails. It was a scratch in the face of the cliff, not a path.
    “We can’t walk that. It’s impossible.”
    “I’ve done it before.”
    “You said it’d been years since you were here last.”
    “It has.”
    “Were you as big back then as you are now ?”
    “Probably not, but it’s easier than it looks. Watch.” Michael stepped over the guardrail, took five steps and vanished from sight in a puff of dust and crumbling rock. Alison’s heart leapt. She took one halting step forward and looked down, only to see Michael standing and smiling up at her from the safety of the ledge.
    “It’s narrow, but strong.”
    “You scared me,” she said, easing herself down onto the path next to him.
    “I’m not going to die today, Alison.” He offered a hand to steady her, pulling her close to him once she gained her feet. Looking up into his eyes, she lost her breath again. He was just too pretty, too sexy. Every time their eyes met it was like being punched with his handsomeness.  
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I haven’t kissed you yet.”
    Alison glanced around. They were in the chilly shadow of the mountain, on the far western side. A thousand-foot drop greeted her on one side and a rock wall slick with foggy condensation on the other. It was so not the place for kissing.
    “Maybe once we get down from here. Maybe.” She couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.
    Michael walked the cliff face with a jaunty step, whistling some song that Alison could only guess the tune of. He was a truly awful whistler. Occasionally he would stop and smile and wave at the promontory of Rook’s Roost, like it was an old friend he’d seen across a party. After the third such stoppage, Alison had to ask what he was doing.
    “Are you practicing saying hello to someone? You look mental.”
    “We’re being watched. I’m trying to be friendly. I really don’t want these dudes to get the wrong idea about us.”
    “What are they, like some backwoods hillbilly clan?”
    “Nah,” Michael said. “They’re just old-school shifters. They believe in keeping away from normal people, doing their own thing. Just because they live out here on their own, don’t assume they’re uncultured. These ravens are more like some, what do you call it, survivalist group? Preppers? They have all these ideas about the end of the world and they have enough supplies cached away to live on their own for centuries. They’re a bit like a cult and a bit like some old royal family in a forgotten country.” He shrugged and Alison noted—not for the first time—that his wide, strong shoulders were wider and probably stronger than the path under their feet. “It’s hard to explain. They have their own thing going on and we leave them in peace, but occasionally the younger ones come into town and cause trouble. So most of our town’s impressions of these guys are pretty heavily colored by the teenagers just acting like teenagers.”
    “Like how my mom thinks your whole town is full of nudist