Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) (15 page)

“Then go!” Eve said, trying to sit back down, but not fighting too hard. “I don’t need to.”

“Girls always go to the bathroom together. Come
on
.”

Eve heaved a sigh and stuck her phone in her pocket as it started buzzing again.

It took a few moments to push through the crowd of jolly beer drinkers all staring at Lexie and Blake screwing up a cross-stitch pattern. The fight didn’t even seem to be a distant memory for the crowd, which was slightly amazing, but it’s pretty amazing sometimes what the appearance of true love can do to a bunch of folks just wanting to see someone beat the shit out of someone else.

By the time they got back to the women’s room, Eve’s phone had buzzed two more times, and she’d swiped both off. “He’s never going to give up,” she said as they pushed through the door.

Dora took Eve by the shoulders, directed her to the sinks, and held her there as she took a deep breath. “Nope,” she said, “he’s not. Has he
ever
given up?”

Eve looked down at her phone, which was just then silent. “Only when it really mattered,” she said.

Dora heaved another sigh. “Okay, look.
Twenty years
. Twenty years! Two decades! Five presidents, five Olympics, fourteen
Expendables
movies!”

“Three,” Eve said. “And the third one doesn’t count because it sucked.”

Dora just stared at her, and Eve diverted her eyes.

“I don’t know if Rake’s the one for you, I really don’t,” Dora said. “But I
do
know that you’ve got a big, burly bear out there in Morales who is showing exemplary decency by not jumping your bones.”

“We’re just friends,” Eve said, weakly. “He knows about Rake.”

“Yeah! He does! And he knows you’re never gonna move on until you face that lion. Also, while we’re at it, that lion? He showed up here, twenty-goddamn-years after the last time he saw you, and I can tell you right now, he’s still in love.”

“How?” Eve asked. “You haven’t seen him.”

“Uh, honey?” Dora balled up her fists and planted them in her hips instead of on Eve’s shoulders. “How many times has that phone buzzed?”

Eve shrugged. “That’s not love, that’s stalking.”

“He. Is. A. Lion,” Dora said. “That’s what he does. I admit it’s a little heavy handed, but what the hell, you can’t stop yourself from getting pissed off at Tootsie Roll jokes, and you turn your head around too much and it makes people uncomfortable. But you can’t stop being an owl, can you?”

“No,” Eve said, “I guess not. I just don’t—”

“And you won’t,” Dora said sternly. “You
won’t
know, you
can’t
know until you find out for sure. And I’ll tell you this, I’ve never seen you this twisted up about something before. That right there should give you a moment’s pause, shouldn’t it?”

Eve closed her eyes tight, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“When that phone rings again,” Dora said, “and you know damn will it’s gonna ring again. What are you going to do?”

Eve just kept pinching her nose, although she added dramatic sighing to her performance. “Come
on
, Dora,” she said. “Just—”

“What are you going to do?”

On cue the phone started up buzzing once again. Dora arched her eyebrow as Eve looked down at the big screen with the jumbo-sized numbers. “God damn son of a bitch,” Eve said glumly. “I’m gonna answer it.”

“Good girl,” Dora curtsied slightly. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“I don’t either,” Eve said. She hit the green slider on her phone and paused with the phone halfway to her mouth, before she said ‘hello’. “Dora?” she asked as her friend was turning to leave.

“Yes’m?”

“Thank you,” Eve said softly. “I think...” she sighed. “I think I’ve always known this was the right thing to do. And no one else on Earth cared enough to ride me until I broke.”

“Uh, actually you might want to save the whole riding until you break thing for someone else. Remember, you promised to tell me all the dirty details of whatever sexual exploits you find  yourself in, remember?” Dora turned around to face the door again, but paused. “And I want a
real
good one.”

“Hello? Rake?” Eve asked. “I’m...”

Dora paused with one foot out the door just long enough to hear the next few words, which were a few moments in coming.

“I’m glad you called,” Eve said. “I think.”

Dora smiled, wiped away a tear, hid a sniffle, and marched straight back into the bar. On the TV sets, Blake was badly singing a Bon Jovi ballad to Lexie. It was so horrible that it was hard to make out, but being a life-long Jovi-holic, Dora knew it by heart.

“
Always
,” she whispered. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

––––––––

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Mating Call Dating Agency

W
hen fox-shifting Angie Holton goes to work, she’s all business. Being all work, all the time, is starting to wear her down. Angie is lonely, though she’d never admit it. She goes from one thing to the next, more surviving than living, and has more or less given up on the whole love thing – who has time for all that anyway?

That is, until she meets Dawson Lex – a piano playing, hamburger cooking, sexy-as-hell werebear.

Dawson’s not just a pretty face and... really, really muscular arms. This bear has a dark, violent past and a present that barely keeps him from exploding again. But once he lays eyes on Angie, he knows he won’t—can’t—let this one go.

These two will have to scratch, bite, and hold on as tight as they can. Even if they have to survive gunshots, claw fights, and some REALLY obnoxious 911 calls, they’re never going to give up on this weird, beautiful love.

***The Mating Call Dating Agency is a series of standalone paranormal romances that can be enjoyed in any order. Each pair finds their own HEA – these books are perfect for a quick getaway in the middle of a hectic day!***

Mating Call Dating Agency

W
hen you’re a shifter who don’t have the first clue where to find the love you need, WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Mating Call Dating Agency!  

Fate is nice and all, but in the busy worlds of journalism and professional wrestling, sometimes a rabbit needs a hand, and a bear needs a place to grab.

Garnet Pendleton is a freelance journalist, and moonlighting as a librarian gets the bills paid, but barely. It’s a busy life, but it’s hers. Lately though, she’s felt like something was...lacking. With her life absorbed in pounding pavement and wrestling with the Dewey decimal system, Garnet hasn’t had time for something she’s starting to get REALLY edgy over – finding a mate.

Stacy Graves’s entire life has been lived in a ring. He’s big, muscled up, and can bodyslam and headlock with the best of ‘em. But he’s also not getting any younger. Stacy’s mind is starting to drift in the middle of matches. Instead of being worried about pinning his opponent, he can’t stop thinking about settling down and finding himself a mate.

Will Garnet’s journalistic drive for truth and Stacy’s life on the road be too much of an obstacle for them to overcome in the name of love? With mating experts Yvette and Dora on the case, Garnet and Stacy just might stand a chance.

The Kendal Creek Bears

R
aine Matthews used to be quirky, fun and slightly goofy. She’s not allowed to be any of those things while she is firmly under her husband’s thumb. Her only reprieve comes from distant memories of a man she saw only once six years ago. In that instant, Raine knew there was something special about him. The memory of that twinkle in his eyes, of his careless smile, gives her a shot of hope at her darkest moments.

She knows the only way to survive is getting away from her husband, no matter what. And in the back of her mind, she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere, somehow, she’s going to see that mysterious stranger again.

Daxon Mark is the frustrated, irritated, sexy-as-hell alpha bear of the Kendal clan. Trapped between shuffling truces with other bear clans, and the meddling of an overbearing shifter council, he can’t shake the feeling that the woman he saw six years before is what he needs to stay sane. He's teetering on the edge and when a bear as big as Dax goes nuts? THAT ain’t something anybody wants.

With Raine on the lam and Dax trying to escape the confines of small town politics, the two of them finally meet again – in the most romantic of places – in the toilet line at a concert.

With a glance, he steals her heart, and with a word she sets a fire in his soul. But with trouble brewing back in Kendal Creek and Raine constantly looking over her shoulder, will these two fated mates find their peace? Or will fear, loss, and murder rip the pair apart before love is allowed to bloom?

Alpha Lion Romance

C
assiopeia is lanky, quick-witted, and spent most of her life running from one thing or another. She escaped an overbearing family, and a series of dangerous misadventures, but then landed square in the midst of a traveling carnival. In the gritty, grimy dirt circus, love is the furthest thing from Cass’s mind – she’s much more occupied with avoiding her boss Lyle’s slimy fingers.

Just about the only things Cass has left are her mind, a few books, and impossibly vivid dreams of a man she’s never met, but who she knows – somehow – is going to find her. And when he does? Well, who knows? But it’s gotta be better than the circus.

Oh, and then there’s the lion who sleeps in her trailer.

At first, Lex was impossible to control. He clawed, he snapped, he roared and raged like any lion would, but somehow never hurt anyone, like there was something more to him than caged animal ferocity. He lashed out at everyone except for a certain woman with curly brown hair and a thing for khaki cargo pants.

No one knew that the REAL Lex – the same man Cass dreamed of for so very long – was hiding beneath the fur and claws. When the lion-shifter lays eyes on the woman he knows he can’t live without, this king of the jungle can’t rest until he’s taken his queen. And when he first reveals the tall, dark and handsome underneath the tail and teeth? Cass isn’t too surprised that the man IN her dreams turned out to be the man OF her dreams.

A Jamesburg Shifters novel

J
amie Ampton is a sharp-tongued, pointy-toothed, vampy shifter with a penchant for neatly done-up hair buns and a habit of attracting EXACTLY the wrong sort of guy. Guys with a dash of arrogance, a pinch of cocky swagger turn her head... but when her last one turned out to be more “self-important jackass” and less “gruff and strong and takes what he wants,” it left her cold.

So to speak.

Ryan Drake has a dark past and a mysterious present. When he shows up demanding the town alpha do his part to care for Jamesburg’s aging shifters, the first thing Jamie notices is that her heart starts beating a little quicker. The second is a knot in the pit of her stomach. And then, before she can catch her breath, he stares straight into her eyes.

She’s never been one for the big, loud, muscled-up types, but in the space of two breaths, the elegantly detached Jamie finds herself falling for a bear.

Little does Jamie know that before he stomped into that courtroom, Ryan decided that nothing was gonna stop him from getting what he wanted. But, once he saw Jamie? Suddenly there were two things that this massive blue-eyed alpha bear were going to have, no matter what it took: help for his friends... and Jamie.

And Ryan? Ryan is one bear who ALWAYS takes what he wants.

A Jamesburg Shifters novel

AVAILABLE FOR FREE!

S
ometimes a wolf’s gotta fight and bark and bite.

But other times, a wolf just needs a mate.

Erik Danniken is the alpha of Jamesburg, a small town, hidden from the world, and full of all
kinds
of shifters, and secrets. But underneath it all, he’s just a big, rough, bad-boy of a werewolf with a tattoo that goes all the way up his chest. Oh, and don’t forget his massive, building-shaking motorcycle.

He’s done his fighting, he’s done his carousing. Now he’s the mayor of Jamesburg, and he’s done looking for a mate... because he found her.

Sometimes a girl needs romance and wine and sweet kisses.

Other times, she just needs a job.

Isabel Taylor was more than a little frustrated when she answered a very vague job ad and moved across the country. Curvy, tough and with more than a little bit of a naughty streak, Izzy couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that first Jamesburg hedgehog stand up, turn into a man and order a drink.

She’s found her place, found a life she thought she’d never have, and found the love she’d given up on... the problem is, she and Erik have to keep it a secret from everyone else in town.

Erik wants to claim her forever, mark Izzy as his honest-to-goodness mate. Izzy wants him to quit being such a coward and just come out and do it, but will a good old-fashioned small town scandal make them keep their love a secret, and in the process, kill it before it can grow?

A Broken Pine Bears Novel

F
rom USA TODAY and NEW YORK TIMES best-selling author Lynn Red comes a steamy, sexy, hilarious alpha werebear romance... with two times the bears!

Jill Appleton is a witty, slightly-lanky, tall-enough-to-make-most-guys-nervous biologist with a thing for bears.

Whoa, whoa, not like that - she's got a thing for SAVING bears.

When she hears stories of a secretive group of Kodiaks in the Appalachian Mountains, she knows she's got to check them out. First of all, they're not supposed to be there, and second – bears that live in a pack? That's about as rare as biologists who love big crowds. Or, when it comes to Jill, it’s as rare as one of her dates not turning into a train wreck. She's all but given up on finding that one guy who the universe decided was right for her.