Chapter 2

Perplexed, I simply whispered its familiar name, which sounded sweet escaping my lips, “Timber.” Petrified, fearing for my life, I added, “It’s you, Timber. I know it’s you. Timber Skenandoa,” I said the bear’s full name, unafraid, knowing that he wouldn’t hurt me.

A wind kicked up, and leaves spun around. A tornado of the crisp foliage blew over us. I closed my eyes and mouth, preventing autumnal dust and dirt from hindering me. The funnel of wind and leaves licked at every part of my body, tormenting me.

When the wind stopped, I no longer saw or felt the bear. Instead, one of the most handsome men I had ever dated and loved lay on me, naked. The wild bear that chased after me only seconds before had shifted into a Native American Indian with dark skin and beautiful brown eyes. Someone I knew. Someone I had made love to. Someone…I had hurt.

“Shayne Law, we meet again. And this time, you’re exactly where I want you,” Timber said, sharing his statements in a deep and pleasurable tone that sounded more like animalistic woofsas opposed to human sounds.

I said nothing in return to the thirty-seven-year-old man, staring into his eyes and taking in his thick, black waves of hair, his nicely trimmed and furry black beard, broad shoulders, titanic-sized chest with its black hair, and muscular biceps. He lay naked atop me, pressed against my sweater and jeans, still pinning me to the leaves and earth, maybe ready to sting me with an insult or make love to me again—something. His dark eyes twinkled, and his lips were the color of salmon blood, a beautiful and rich crimson red that had always caused me to lose my balance.

He growled above me, “Long time no see. Where the hell have you been?”

“City life and the magazine keep me away.”

“You shouldn’t be a stranger, even if you broke my heart.” He winked at me but didn’t grin in an affectionate action. “You’re a sonofabitch for leaving without saying goodbye to me the last time you were here in March.”

Frankly, I didn’t want to piss him off and risk him shifting into a bear again to hurt me with his long claws and fury. The man had the potential, and good reason, because of my last visit to his woods and lake.

I said nothing. Motionless. Caught in his stare. Semi-hard, excited to be in his company again…awkwardly positioned under him.

“I could kiss you right here and now, but it would piss me off,” he whispered, touching the tip of his nose to mine.

Again, I said nothing.

He rolled a fingertip over my lips and then my chin. “I shouldn’t like you. I shouldn’t have missed you. You’re not a nice man, Shayne, particularly to me.”

I didn’t object to any of his comments. How could I after ripping his heart apart on my previous trip to Penobscot?

He pushed up and off, standing at six-three. I sat up and stared at his amazing body: muscular in all the right areas, black hair covering his chest and face, pinkish nipples and mounded pecs, thick thighs lined with pulsing veins, a limp dick between his legs that I estimated to be six inches soft. His hips and arms looked like steel. He tried to conceal his privates with a hand, but failed. Had he forgotten that I visited that area with my lust (mostly with my mouth) numerous times in our past, coveting its beauty with my hunger for him? I presumed so.

To distract me, he pulled me off the ground and faced me. Within seconds, his mouth connected to mine. He nipped at my bottom lip, careful not to break skin. Then he slowly backed away and shook his head.

“You do the craziest things with my head and heart. How can a mortal man, a non-shifter like you, fuck with me that way? Tell me, Shayne. I want to know.”

I remained silent, my best option; perhaps my only option.

He moved closer to me and started to undress me, peeling my sweater off with one hand and grazing the other over my denim-covered cock, beginning our reunion exactly where we had left off only eight months before. He began seducing me, possibly excited, hating me, loving me, still angry with me…

I pushed him away.

He gripped my wrists, brushed his bearded chin against my clean-shaven one, and growled like the bear he was, but said nothing.

“Let me go,” I whispered to him, begging, my wrists cuffed by his forceful palms and fingers. “I’m not yours. I’ll never be yours.”

It was a lie. Shame on me. Honestly, I only wanted him to pull me closer and kiss me again, seduce me, make love to me there on leaf-covered yard, next to the lake and rundown cabin. Just the two of us. Men in lust, relentless concerning my drive to collide my naked body with his hefty and bear-like one. I wanted him to force me to have sex with him yet again, tainted by the bear shifter’s spell, needing him all to myself, just as my previous travels to his neck of the woods.