Read Online Bearing Your Burden (BBW Shifter Erotic Romance) by Violet Winters - Free Book Online

 
    Bryan Knudsen paced up and down the length of the living room. His great, gnarled hands were balled into fists, his wide brow creased in worry, his bare feet pounding on the floorboards.
     
    He'd laid those floorboards himself – cut each one of them out of living wood, honed them into long, solid perfection, and laid them out into the homely harmony of a cozy cabin in the remote wilderness.
     
    This was the only place on earth that was truly his. The only place he could be alone without feeling lonely, where he could avoid prying eyes, venomous tongues, and steel bars. The only place, in fact, where he could truly trust the floor to not suddenly open up and swallow him.
     
    But at this precise moment, this cabin wasn't quite the place of refuge it normally was for Bryan. Something had breached his defenses, and disturbed the peace and quiet of his mountain retreat.
     
    That something was 5-foot-4, big, busty, and called herself Lizbeth.
     
    Bryan rounded on her, for what seemed like the umpteenth time.
     
    “I don't care how long you've been on the road today. I don't care how hard it was to find me. I made it hard to find me for a reason! I want to be left alone!”
     
    All Lizbeth did in response was shift her weight on the wooden chair she was sitting on, and cock her head to one side. She leaned her cheek on one finger, creating a lovely dimple in the full, soft flesh.
     
    “Oh come on, Bryan... Don't be that way. At least let me stay the night before trying to send me away...”
     
    The powerful man in front of her, chest almost bursting from the seams of his roughspun shirt, stopped pacing again, and looked at her suspiciously.
     
    “If I let you spend the night here, you promise to go away in the morning?”
     
    “Of course not. But you're certainly welcome to try to convince me.” She smiled sweetly at him, and cocked her head playfully to the other side. “I find I'm easiest to convince after a big, cooked breakfast, so I hope you've done some shopping...”
     
    Bryan roared with frustration. He'd spent too long in the woods to be able to bandy about words with a slick, smart city girl like her.
     
    “Look, Mr. Knudsen – would you prefer it if I called you that? – I know you think that I'm just playing around with you... and, well, alright, I guess I am a little... but I wouldn't have come all the way here to the butt-end of nowhere if I wasn't serious. I really have nowhere else to go...”
     
    Bryan – though perhaps he'd prefer it if I called him Mr. Knudsen – hacked out a low laugh.
     
    “You really expect me to believe that the only place you could run away to is the cabin of a man you haven't seen in what, 8, 9 years? Don't you have any friends, family?”
     
    “None that I can trust, or that could keep me safe even if I did.”
     
    “And what makes you think you can trust me?”
     
    She just smiled again, coyly, bringing out the sparkle in her dark, brown eyes.
     
    “Don't you know it's rude to ask what a girl thinks of you – at least before the third date?”
     
    He wanted to bellow, and break something. Instead, he changed the subject.
     
    “Well... what makes you think this place is safe?”
     
    “You seemed to think so, or else you wouldn't have come here yourself.”
     
    “That's different.”
     
    “You're right. It is different. When you came here, you were alone. But now that I've come here, there'll be two of us – to help each other out, and keep each other from going crazy.”
     
    “I... you...”
     
    There was no way around this girl. She had a clever-sounding answer for everything, even if she was totally wrong, in ways she couldn't even imagine...
     
    All of a sudden, Bryan found he couldn't look at her any longer. Something in the way she looked at him – half-playful, half-entreating – and something in the innocent yet womanly quirk to her lips made him need to put some space between them, to clear his head.
     
    He turned his back to