The Hawk and Her LumBEARjack: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (2 page)

Why, oh why had she flown so far from her car? It had seemed so much fun in the warm spring sunshine of morning, but now she wasn't even sure which way to fly to find her way back. In clear weather she could orient by landmarks, but there was nothing to be seen except clouds and rain.

Now she was flying so low that ice-coated branches snatched at her. She had to dart between tree trunks.

Even the farm seemed like a better option than the ones she had. She could transform; they might try to kill a hawk, but they would surely help a cold, naked woman. Except she wasn't sure if she could find her way back. The winds were blowing her every which way, turning her around, confusing her. For all she knew, she was flying in circles now.

And she was getting exhausted.
I have to land ... have to get down, just for a little while ...

When an obstacle suddenly appeared in front of her, she was too tired and clumsy to avoid it. She struck hard, rolled, and plunged to the ground, a feathered ice-covered lump, falling into darkness.

Hunter Holt had just settled down by the fire to wait out the storm with a cup of coffee and a book when there was a thump on the roof.

He rose from his chair. Hunter was a big man: tall, powerful, tremendously broad through the shoulders. He was the sort of guy that people were often afraid of, until they looked closer and saw the gentleness in his soft brown eyes.

Still, a lot of people
didn't
like to look past the exterior, which was one of the main reasons why he lived out here. People were busy, loud, and hard to cope with. He found them difficult to talk to, and he knew that he scared them sometimes. Here it was peaceful and quiet, and all he had to do was walk out the back door and shift into his bear form with no one the wiser.

If he was lonely, what of it? He relied on himself and no one else. He'd learned that the hard way, after Christine.

He went to the door of the cabin and shrugged into a raincoat. That noise might have been a branch hitting the roof. Hunter kept the trees around the cabin cut back to reduce fire danger, but there was still a chance of trees blowing over or branches being torn off during winds like these. He'd better take a look and see if there was any damage.

Hunter stepped outside, bracing himself against the wind and the sweeping sheets of rain. Everything was coated with a fine layer of ice—his truck, the woodshed, the ground itself. He had to step with care to keep from slipping. The trees around the yard were weighed down by it, their branches bending toward the ground as they swayed in the wind.

He saw no signs of any downed branches, though. Hunter circled the cabin, his eyes on the roof. He'd split those shakes with his own hands, building the roof in an old-fashioned style that had stood up to the test of time. As far as he could tell, it seemed undamaged.

So what had he heard, then? A wind-driven pine cone? It had sounded bigger than that. Hunter made another circuit of the cabin, and was about to go inside when he spied the pathetic, ice-covered lump of feathers by the woodpile.

"Aww, poor thing," Hunter murmured. He went down to his knees and picked it up carefully in his big hands. Red-tailed hawk. Female. She was totally limp; her iced-up wings spilled down toward the ground, and her head lolled loosely in his palm. At first he thought she was dead, but then he felt the heartbeat fluttering weakly in her chest.

"Poor thing," he said again. "Let's get you inside and warmed up."

He tucked the unconscious hawk into a crook of his big arm and carried her into the warm cabin. There was no good place to put her except on his bed, so he laid her gently on top of the blankets.

Hunter fetched a towel and, sitting on the edge of the bed, began to dry her gently. She was a beautiful hawk, in the prime of her life, her feathers glossy with health. When he had her as dry as he could get her, he wrapped the towel around her and then went to stir up the fire.

As Hunter crouched down to poke at the fire with a metal poker, he became aware that something had changed behind him. He couldn't say exactly what. It wasn't a noise, precisely. Maybe the tiniest of rustles. But something instinctual, something that came directly from his bear soul, told him things weren't as he'd left them.

Hunter looked over his shoulder.

Where there had been a limp red-tailed hawk lying on his bed, now there was a beautiful naked woman curled on her side.

Hunter froze, then laid the poker down and straightened up slowly.

She was curvy and smooth and gorgeous, curled on the bed, her tousled brunette hair spilling around her perfect face. And she was also, from the look of her, freezing cold. Goose bumps prickled the flawless skin of her shoulders. The damp towel had been thrown off when she'd changed, and lay rumpled under her.

Hunter snapped out of his shock. He had a warm quilt draped over the back of his chair for cold nights. He draped it carefully over her still, unconscious form, and then touched the cold skin of her throat. Her pulse beat strongly, but she was going to need more warmth than that.

Climb in with her.

If he'd known her—if she'd been one of the neighbors, say—he would have done it. But he balked at the idea of wrapping himself around an unconscious stranger. It would have to be a last resort if he couldn't get her warm any other way. Instead he brought more blankets and a deerskin robe. Carefully and gently he bundled her up, wrapping her in fire-warmed fabric and fur, checking frequently as he did so to make sure she was still breathing steadily, her heart beating in a strong rhythm.

Little was showing of her now except the spill of dark brown hair, the same color as her glossy feathers.

Now that he'd discovered she was a shifter rather than an animal, he wondered if she ought to go to a hospital. There was just one tiny problem with that: he didn't have a phone in the cabin. The nearest phone was at his neighbor Bill's place, a couple of miles down the road. If her condition got worse, he'd wrap her up warmly and put her in his truck, but it was a couple hours' drive under good conditions to the hospital in Grand Rapids, and the roads would be absolutely terrible in the ice storm. It was safer to stay here unless he had absolutely no choice.

A hawk shifter. It shouldn't have been such a shock. He hadn't known there were any around here, but of course, in the storm, she could have blown down from somewhere much farther north.

A powerful, deep tenderness arose in him as he watched her sleep. He wanted to protect her, to cradle and cherish her. It had been a very long time since he'd been this close to a woman. Not since Christine—but no, he wasn't going to think about Christine right now.

Instead he stirred himself, got up, and began to busy himself around the cabin. She was going to need something warm inside her; it would help with the hypothermia when she woke up. He put the coffeepot over the fire, and opened a can of soup into a tin pan. Then, needing something to do with his hands, he started tidying—hastily picking up the chain saw parts spread on newspaper on the table, putting away the heap of laundry piled on the floor, stuffing books back onto their shelves.

It had been a long time since he'd had company. He was used to being alone in the cabin. Even when he wasn't looking at the sleeping stranger, he was aware of her: the soft sound of her breathing, the light and clean female smell of her.

She seemed to be sleeping deeply and naturally. Her breathing was slow and even. Hunter checked her pulse again, sliding a hand down her neck to feel its gentle flutter at her collarbone. The touch of her soft skin warmed something in him that had been very empty and very cold since Christine left.

She stirred a little, and her full lips parted in a soft moan; she leaned into his hand.

"It's okay," Hunter said quietly. "You're going to be okay."

He wasn't sure if she heard him, but she seemed to respond to that. Her breathing quickened, and her lashes fluttered. With some effort, she opened her eyes sleepily and looked up at him.

Green eyes, flecked with gold. Beautiful eyes. Eyes a man could become lost in.

The shock of recognition was instant and powerful, a live wire down his spine. He'd never felt anything like that before. Never dreamed he'd feel it for someone he'd just met, a hawk shifter of all things. But his bear had responded to her like it had to no one else. Certainly not to Christine, who had used him and left him.

This was different. This was something he'd never felt before.

This woman, this hawk shifter with eyes like a sun-drenched summer forest, was his mate.

Felicity was .... warm. Sleepy, drifting, she burrowed a little deeper into the pleasant warmth and tried not to notice the painful tingling of sensation returning to her hands and feet.

Someone was speaking. A deep, rich voice. It was a voice she'd never heard before, and yet somehow familiar, like coming home to a place she'd never been.

Sleepily, she opened her eyes.

For an instant, she couldn't think at all. Then her first thought was,
Wow
.

There was a man looking down at her, the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen. His face was strongly masculine and yet, as close to beautiful as she'd ever seen on a guy. Warm brown eyes gazed at her.

She had to be dreaming. The last thing she remembered was getting caught in that ice storm. She must be lying in the storm, freezing to death, and hallucinating.

Yet it all seemed so real. There were warm blankets wrapping her, and some kind of soft, tanned fur brushing her cheek. And this
guy
, this stranger ... Her drowsy gaze roved from his mesmerizing eyes, across his amazing shoulders and powerful arms, and the trim waist under the checked shirt he wore.

But her eyes kept returning to his, as if drawn back by a magnet. Something about his gaze captivated her. As she woke up a little more, she became aware of the warmth of his hand against her cheek. It sent thrills racing through her. She'd never responded to the touch of a man like that before. It wasn't even sexual, just the gentle touch of his palm against the side of her face, but it woke something hungry and quivering inside her.

Actually ...

Actually, maybe that was just hunger. She was
very
hungry.

"Excuse me," she said. Her voice came out as a quiet rasp. The gorgeous stranger jumped and quickly pulled his hand back. "Where am I?"

"You're pretty far from anywhere," he said in a slightly embarrassed kind of way. "You're in my cabin. We're a few miles north of a little town called Falls Creek."

"Oh." Felicity swallowed, her mouth dry. She really
had
been blown pretty far; she'd never even heard of that town. Of course, she'd also been outside her usual flying grounds to begin with. "How did I get here?"

"I found you." He blushed, a flush of color rising in his cheeks. "You hit the roof of my cabin. I found you outside and brought you in, and you, uh, changed."

Now it was Felicity's turn to blush. She would have been completely naked—in fact, under the blanket and deerskin that she seemed to be wrapped in, she was
still
completely naked. On the other hand, it seemed he'd been a perfect gentleman about it.

Also, she was pretty sure he was some kind of shifter himself. She didn't think she'd be responding to him like this if he wasn't. Even now that he was no longer touching her, she could feel his electric presence, vibrating against her skin like a live wire.

"I'm Felicity Groves," she said.

"Hunter. Uh, Hunter Holt." He turned away quickly, and Felicity became aware of a warm, rich smell filling the cabin. "I just heated up some soup. Do you want some?"

"I would
love
some."

Though she still felt weak and shaky, she was able to sit up, propping herself against the bed's wooden headboard. She untangled her hands from the covers enough to accept the bowl of soup that Hunter handed her. He ate, too, sitting on the only chair in the room.

It was a very tiny cabin, and it was obvious to her from looking around that Hunter must live here alone. The bed was comparatively huge, easily big enough to accommodate two people, but there was only one chair, and only one cup sitting on the narrow plank table under the window. The one thing the cabin did have in abundance was bookshelves. They might be rather crude compared to the tastefully modern shelves in her apartment—these were wooden planks, though neatly planed and sanded—but they were loaded with well-used paperbacks and hardcover novels. She saw a thick dictionary, some animal field guides, a book on tracking animals ...

She realized she was leaning out of bed and tilting her head to see the titles, which seemed rude. Hastily she went back to scraping out the last of the soup from the bottom of her bowl. "Do you read a lot?"

"Not much else to do," Hunter said, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

"Don't you get bored?" She saw no signs of a television or a computer in the cabin. In fact, she couldn't even tell if he had electricity. The only light came from the fireplace and a kerosene lamp on the table, casting a warm, homey glow.

Hunter shook his head. "No. There's always something new to look at."

Then he blushed again and dropped his gaze. Felicity smiled. He was shy! But probably he didn't get a lot of visitors out here. "It's all right," she said, a spirit of flirtatiousness seizing her. "I don't mind if you look at me."

Now his blush flamed all the way up to his ears. He cleared his throat. "So, uh, do you want some coffee? I make pretty good coffee."

"Sure," she said. "I'd love some."

She was able, with a bit of squirming, to redistribute her blankets so she could move her arms more freely without being completely indecent. Still, whenever she
did
move, she noticed that Hunter's gaze kept dropping to the fold of the quilt covering her generous chest—and then breaking hastily away. Still trying to be a gentleman.

Which she did appreciate, but she'd also realized that she didn't mind at all if he decided
not
to be a gentleman. It was just the two of them in this cabin, and they were both adults, after all. She wondered if he, too, felt the electric sense of connection between them. From the way his fingers lingered against hers when he handed her the hot cup of coffee, she thought perhaps he did.

"You're some kind of shifter too, aren't you?" she asked, sipping her coffee.
Oh please,
she thought,
please be some kind of bird.
She didn't think he was, though. There was something very solid and grounded about him. Hunter wasn't a shifter who had his head in the clouds. Whatever he was, it was something land-based.

He nodded. "Bear," he said.

Bear. Her first thought was
Oh dear
, but then she decided to keep an open mind. She really hadn't met very many bears in Minneapolis at all. Most of them didn't like the city. They preferred a semi-solitary lifestyle in rural country. This certainly seemed to be the case with Hunter, considering the way he was living out in the middle of nowhere like this.

Which means,
she thought, stirring her coffee,
that he's never going to go back to the city with me. Which also means he definitely isn't my mate, no matter how this feels, so I don't have to be all full of nerves about this. I can just enjoy myself, and perhaps, if he's interested too, we can both have some happy memories to take with us when we go back to our lives.

Mel would probably laugh at her, but would also encourage her. Felicity wasn't sure if it was just the lingering effects of her brush with death, but she felt daring and alive. Hunter was here, and so was she. Outside the cabin, rain and sleet rattled against the windows, but inside it was warm. There was nowhere to go and no one to see whatever they did.

What happens in the cabin, stays in the cabin,
she thought, and almost laughed.

She could tell that Hunter wanted it too. His eyes were dark with arousal.

However, since it was becoming clear that he didn't plan to make the first move, she carefully let the blanket slip down—not enough to be completely indecent, just enough to expose her generous cleavage and the swelling curves of the tops of her breasts. She saw his eyes flick down. He was definitely taking interest, and the hawk inside her gave a wild cry of eagerness.