Read Online Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) by Lynn Red - Free Book Online

about it with anyone else.
    Talk with anyone else... for some reason, I felt like I was forgetting something. I stood still for a moment, staring at the top of Mt. Jamesburg, off in the distance. It had some other name to outsiders, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Everything around here has another name outsiders have given, but to us? That hardly matters.
    My mind was a blank slate except for the golden haired, pale-eyed bear I couldn’t shake. There was nothing else I wanted more than to feel his hands on my arms again, to feel his calmness surrounding me.
    Slowly, I made my way back to the house, stripped off my soaked shirt and running shorts, and threw them in a heap in my laundry room. I could have started a load of laundry, but...
    My phone, which I’d forgotten on my nightstand, started buzzing. Good thing for my lynx ears. I heaved a sigh, getting a little impatient with myself for pining like a teenager over a guy I’d hardly met. At exactly the same instant, two things happened – I picked up the phone and saw Dean’s name pop up, and realized with a shock that I was supposed to meet them for barbecue.
    “Shit!” I texted back without even looking at his message. “Sorry, I was running, I have no idea how it got to be so late.”
    I shot a glance at the clock – already past eleven. I’d been out running for almost five hours. I must really have had some angst to bash out. On the other hand, that meant a giant pile of vinegar-sauced meat would be exactly what I needed.
    “No worries,” he shot back. “We’re late too, meet us at the joint by the food trucks at half past?”
    My stomach growled just thinking about the sticky, tangy sauce, the perfectly smoked ribs and pork and... I shook my head. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. At least hunger was something I was ready to deal with.
    Orion? Not so much.
    Helmet on, tires aired up, I pedaled past the courthouse, giggled at the bureaucratic erection, and shook my head. I had to get him out of my mind.
    If I didn’t, I was going to be as whacked out as that screeching beaver from the art museum. And it wasn’t going to take long.
    *
    “D amn these are good,” Dean said, cramming his eighth rib into his slightly yellow mouth.
    For my part, my stomach had stopped rumbling after the second piece of brisket, but I didn’t stop until the... ninth? I took a quick survey of the wreckage. Three cornbread hunks, a pile of green beans, some macaroni, that sublime brisket and ribs all lay destroyed across my plate like discarded corpses strewn gloriously around a giant’s castle.
    “I’m gonna be sick,” I said, smiling as I dropped a bone on my plate. “But it’s the good kind of sick.”
    “There’s a good kind?”
    “Uh-huh, this kind,” Malia said, wiping a glob of sauce off her chin. “I feel like I’m drunk.”
    “Meat drunk buddies,” Dean grabbed his plastic cup of iced tea and lifted it in the air. “I propose a toast.”
    I picked mine up, but took a swallow before lifting it in the air. “What for?”
    “Two reasons. First of all, I’m pretty happy you’re still alive.”
    I snorted a laugh. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m kinda... to be honest I never really felt scared. That whole deal happened too fast for me to think much. And afterward,” I shrugged. “I had other things on my mind.”
    Malia just shook her head.
    “What’s the other thing?” I asked.
    He paused, considering what he was about to say. “Out with it,” I urged. “Come on, don’t leave us hanging like that.”
    I had almost gotten Orion out of my mind. Between the meat-drunk swooning and the conversation and the jokes, I’d gotten myself almost back to normal.
    “I’ve never seen you happier,” Dean said. “I mean, it’s a confused kind of happy, but I can see your eyes sparkling like I haven’t seen in... hell, a decade? Maybe more?”
    And there it all went, right down the hope toilet. Welling right back up, a sewer blockage of