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

“You’re the one who’s beautiful,” he whispered before laying a chaste kiss in the middle of John’s stomach.


The flesh was warm, smooth, and smelled clean.


John chuckled and squirmed. “Your beard tickles.”


Mitch looked up. “You like it?” Despite all John had said, Mitch still feared the man found him—or something about him—unattractive.


“Do it again, and I’ll show you just how much I like it.”


The pressure in Mitch’s jeans was becoming uncomfortable, and if John’s frequent rubbing of his own crotch was anything to go by, he, too, needed to be freed.


Mitch rose up from his kissing of John’s belly, the flat white flesh now covered in moist patches, and reached for John’s belt. “This okay?”


Slowly, knowing he was about to unwrap a prize, Mitch released the buckle. Yes, he’d seen John naked before, or rather Teddy had. But this was different. John was warmer, more turned on.


Chapter 54