On his first night renting a cottage on the Cornish coast, widower John Tennant comes face to face with, of all things, a grizzly bear. Fearing for his life, John tries to convince the animal he isn't worth eating, and is relieved when the bear ambles away. Maintenance man Mitch Benjamin is two hundred years old but doesn’t look a day over forty. As a werebear, he needs to stay under the radar. The new renter is making that difficult. Not only is John attractive, but his vulnerability triggers all of Mitch’s protective instincts. If that wasn’t trouble enough, Mitch is struggling with his inner bear’s desire to befriend John. He knows what his bear is up to, but Mitch doesn’t want another mate. His last one was murdered ninety years ago, and he’s still grieving. John is confused by Mitch’s mixed signals. Physically, Mitch -- with his bulging muscles and hulking frame -- is a gay man’s wet dream come true. But emotionally, he keeps closing down. John discovers more comfort with the magnificent grizzly bear he occasionally meets on his evening walks along the beach. In an effort to help, Morwenna, the owner of the cottages, uses her psychic gifts to give John a message from his dead lover, George. Far from helping, it adds another layer of strangeness to what’s already turning out to be the strangest summer John can remember. Can a well-meaning medium and a determined grizzly bring John and Mitch together? Will Mitch come clean about his werebear nature? If he does, can John accept that a man and bear exist in the same body?

Summer's Lease

Despite its shaky beginning, Mitch was enthusiastically getting into his and John’s make-out session. His hands wanted to explore every part of John’s body. Mitch needed skin. He undid a couple of shirt buttons and then looked up into John’s face to gauge his reaction.


John nodded his agreement, so Mitch opened a couple more buttons.


Previously, the two of them had kissed, cuddled, and there’d been a bit of light petting, but always above the waist and on top of clothing.


Now that Mitch had taken the initiative, John seemed to want to match him. He quickly unfastened a few of Mitch’s shirt buttons and began to run fingers through the thick pelt of hair that was revealed. Mitch was about to apologise for being so hairy when John let out a moan and launched himself at Mitch’s bared chest, licking, kissing and lightly biting.


“Hey, bud, no fair,” Mitch protested. “You bent down like that means I can’t hold up my end of the deal.”


Chapter 53