Read Online Bear Naked by Jessica Sims - Free Book Online Page B

fine. How are you?”
    Leif gave a small, wry laugh. “I’m not the one in heat. Speaking of, are you…?”
    “It’s going to take more than just one round,” I told him. “I can still feel it in my body. You have time to catch your breath before we go again, though.”
    He gave a wry snort and moved off of me, and the small cot creaked as he moved to my side. “Why do I have a feeling you’re going to work me into a boneless puddle before the day is over?”
    I didn’t correct him. Even now, I was fighting the urge to roll over and pin him down on the bed and take what I needed from him. “Did I exhaust you already?”
    Leif rubbed a hand on his face. “It’s not that. It’s…I don’t know.”
    I frowned, rolling onto my side to face him. The movement pushed my breasts against him, and I thrilled at the contact of our skin. “What is it?”
    “I…I keep thinking of the first time I saw you here on the island. I didn’t think you were real. I’m still half afraid to touch you for fear of hurting you.” A haunted look crossed his face. “Hurting you again,” he corrected. “I hate that I did that to you.”
    I ran my fingers over his breastbone. “That was as much my fault as it was yours. I didn’t realize just how…feral you’d be.” Or completely out of your mind. “Once you realized what you were doing, you stopped.”
    “After you kicked your way free,” he grumbled, and there was self-loathing in his words. Apparently it still weighed heavily on Leif’s mind. “If you hadn’t been strong enough—“
    “But I am,” I reminded him, and slid my fingertips over to one of his nipples to tease it. Were his as sensitive as mine? A light furring of chest hair darkened his skin on each pectoral and met across his breastbone. It was fascinatingly soft, and I tickled the hairs with my fingers as I explored his body. “I’m just as strong as you, so there’s nothing to worry about.” It wasn’t a total lie - I was much stronger than a normal human girl, but a were-bear male in his prime would always be stronger than a were-bear female. Still, he’d know what I meant.
    As I watched, his body twitched in response to my light, exploring touches, and he reached out to grasp my hand. “What are you doing, ‘Lina?”
    “I’ve never touched a man before. Can I?”
    “Never?” He released my hand and placed it back on his chest. “I thought you were promised to someone…” His brow wrinkled as he tried to recall.
    “I was,” I said. “Ramsey Bjorn. Remember him? When he was fifteen, he was exiled for breaking the laws, and he never came back. After that, everyone just seemed to kind of ignore me.”
    My few attempts at dating human boys had encouraged such scorn from my father that I’d given up. Better to be lonely and accepted than reviled, right?
    “Poor ‘Lina,” Leif murmured. His hand brushed my hair off my cheek, and he couldn’t resist touching my nose ring again. “He’s a fool for leaving you behind.”
    I shrugged, inwardly pleased at his words. “I was just a gawky girl when he left. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all.” But that didn’t explain the later years, when I’d grown into my adulthood and still Ramsey hadn’t returned, despite knowing full well that there was no mate for me if he didn’t.
    It had been incredibly selfish of Ramsey to leave me behind while he took off to live a life of exile, and I still burned with the resentment of that.
    “He’s in your past,” Leif said, and there was a possessive note in his voice. His hand brushed over mine. “And you’re welcome to touch me any way that you like, though I’ll probably need some time to recover my stamina before pleasing my woman again.”
    I giggled, the sound high and girlish. Your woman? But instead, I just said, “Is it because you’re so old now?”
    Leif gave a mock growl in his throat.
    I tangled my fingers into his chest hair and then slid them lower down his stomach,