Bearing Up In Wolf Rock (A BBW Bear Shifter Romance) (Wolf Rock Shifters) (3 page)

As the three conversed
, a young woman broke away from the crowd of tourists who’d managed to stay away, and walked straight up to Maddox. She was young, blond and skinny. The sort of thin woman with large breasts who irritated Kyla just by existing. There was the sort of dewy youthful look to her that denoted a lack of hardship and experience in life.

“Hi,” said Maddox
as she stood next to him, staring down at his face and body. He didn’t offer her the smile that he’d displayed for Kyla. Instead, he seemed cold and aloof, almost irritated.

The woman didn’t seem to mind, however, and she crouched down beside the big man and slid a hand under the table. Kyla couldn’t see where it was headed, but she could guess.

Without missing a beat, Maddox took her wrist gently between two of his long, thick fingers and pulled it away from his crotch. He then wrapped his hand firmly around her arm and forced her to stand, pushing her away from the table.

She backed off, still smiling
, but looking a little apprehensive now.

“My friends and I just wanted to see if you’re as big as you look,” she said
, as a group of other young women in the corner of the pub began to giggle.

Maddox slid out of the boot
h and stood before her, his mass casting a shadow across her small form.

The woman seemed tiny; as though the hulking Maddox
could pick her up and snap her like a twig.

“Oh God
,” said Kyla under her breath.

Maddox let go of the woman’s arm. She stood before him, clearly awaiting an invitation to dinner or some sort of congratulations on her incredibly forthright nature.

Instead, the giant
man slowly took off his boots, which was not a move that anyone had anticipated. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off, revealing a wide, muscled chest and broad shoulders, sculpted and decorated with the black tattoos that seemed to have been designed to accentuate his impressive form.

For a moment, Kyla wondered if the two
strangers were going to have sex in the middle of the pub, and she began to back into the corner of her bench, irritated that the world was populated with such unbearable women.

Not to mention the fact that only a minute ago, this man had been flirting with
her.
Maybe he wasn’t so appealing after all.

But then things changed.

Or rather, Maddox did.

In a flurry of
twisting, glistening flesh, tearing fabric and dark brown fur, Maddox, the perfect man, altered into something else.

The young woman
, less certain now that feeling him up was a great idea, sprang back, as did every other human in the pub.

“Now, t
his is more like it,” thought Kyla as the giant grizzly stretched to his full height before her. She watched, her face erupting in an expression of amusement and curiosity. She’d never seen any sort of shape-changer other than the members of her own wolf clan; she hadn’t even been sure they existed. She’d always hoped so, though.

As he stood facing the woman
, who was now frozen in place, the bear’s upper lip pulled back into a snarl and he reared up on his hind legs, letting out a tremendous roar in the direction of both her and the rest of the tourists who were now sensibly gathered, terrified, by the door. His head reached nearly to the pub’s high ceiling and his enormous paws waved threateningly, their claws putting the long canines of the wolves to shame.

The members of the wolf pack who were sitting around the bar watched with the same
calm amusement as Kyla and waited to see what would happen.

A
nother human opened the door and the throng tried to rush out, so quickly that groups greater than two people wide kept getting stuck in the doorframe and crying out, as though the bear would swallow them whole if they didn’t reach the outside quickly.

“Classic,” said Jay, howling with laughter.
“Give the people what they want, I always say. Well done, Maddox.”

Finally, all the humans including the foolish blonde had made it safely through the door, which
was now closed behind them. At last, if only for a moment, the Lion’s Head had reverted to its former glory: a shifter hangout, now with a new honorary member.

The
grizzly turned again to Kyla, who was standing now, examining him. She studied his enormous head, which was level with hers. It was powerful and beautiful in its own right, much like its human counterpart. Kyla wanted to touch him, to feel his fur, but she regarded it as disrespectful to handle a shape-changer uninvited.

Maddox’s
body took up most of the floor space in front of the bar and Kyla marvelled at how much larger he was, even, than her pack members.

“
Cam, could we get a towel please?” she said to the barkeep when she’d had a moment to examine Maddox. The wolves had found ways of covering themselves over the years. Sometimes they simply wandered nude, though most were relatively modest. But Cam was kind enough to have prepared for situations like this by stashing large beach towels and even some extra clothes behind the bar.

“Sure thing,
Ky.”

Maddox’s clothing lay all over the floor, mostly in small torn pieces, and he would be nude when he
changed back to human form. Kyla suspected that any items of clothing behind the bar would be far too small for this man.

Maddo
x understood what was going on and as soon as the towel was ready, he shifted into human form and, straightening to his full height, took it from her hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

He wrapped it casually around his waist, but not before Kyla had snuck a brief glance at the impressive member dangling on display between his legs.

“Hung like a grizzly,” she thought. “
Oh my.
I suppose it’s true what they say about a man’s hands after all.”

Between her legs, s
he felt the coolness of her now seriously moist panties and wondered how it was possible to be so utterly turned on by a person she hardly knew.

“So, how
about some food?” said Maddox, seemingly unfazed by the events of the last few minutes.

“I’m in,” said Kyla, trying to snap out of her daydream.
“The guys here cook a mean steak.”

“Coming right up,
Ky,” said Cam, who was listening intently, amused and interested in the new development.

They sat down back at the booth with Jay, after Maddox had gathered his clothing off the flo
or. His shirt was still intact of course, and so were the chaps, which apparently were designed to tear away from his form in this sort of situation. Kyla sort of wished he’d put them back on without the jeans, which were now a write-off.

She settled for gratitude that he didn’t seem in a rush to put his shirt back on.

“So,” said Jay after things had settled, “what’s a bear like you doing in Wolf Rock?”

“A fine question,” said Maddox. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Anyone we can help you find?”

“Probably not. But thanks.”

“Is it a girl?” asked Kyla, attempting to make the question sound innocent and indifferent, though she knew perfectly well that it was far from it.

Maddox turned to her with his crooked
, knowing smile. “No. Not a girl. It’s just a guy I knew when I was younger. I’ll find him sooner or later.”

“Well,” said Jay, “I’m pleased to meet you, and that you two deemed me a worthy dinner companion, but I’m going to head out
and let you get to know each other.”

With that, he winked at Kyla, who was moderately annoyed and extremely grateful
.

“
Ky,” Jay added, “you’re not on patrol tonight, are you?”

“No, it’s
Dascha tonight. He’ll be happy about it. He loves responsibility, that enthusiastic young pup. I think I’ll go sleep at the cabin so I can check in first thing and see how he made out.”

“
Maybe he won’t be the only wolf making out tonight,” replied Jay, who was beginning to tread on thin ice. Kyla glared at him and let out a low growl.

“I’m speaking, of course, of myself,” said Jay. “I plan on pi
cking up a puma on my walk home.”

“Good luck
with that. I hear they’re prudes,” said Maddox.

“I’ll just have to work my charms on him then.
I’ll see you tomorrow, Ky.”

“Yeah. Have a good night, Jay
. Don’t get bitten.”

“Good to meet you, brother,” said Maddox.

“Is it typical for you guys to patrol at night?” asked the bear shifter when Jay had left.

“Yeah. E
very night at least one of us is on the lookout through our territory. Since the show aired we’re especially careful; people are always trying to find our cabin and the last thing we want is for anyone to figure out its location. Of course if they did, there’s not much we could do about it. It’s not like we’re going to kill them, regardless of the fact that a lot of people seem to think we would.”

“
There’s too much of that: paranoia and interest in shifters lately, ever since that damned show. No offense. I know it was your pack’s project.”

“None taken. I was against it from the start.
And it wasn’t our new alpha’s idea. It was Craig, the ousted wolf, who’s gone to a better place.”

“Yeah? Where’s that?”

“New York.”

“I see.”

“He has it in his tiny brain that he can get a job as an actor now that he’s been on TV. The sad thing is that he’s probably right.”

Kyla fo
und herself studying Maddox closely as they spoke. She gave herself an excuse to stare at his body by examining the black markings on his pronounced shoulders.

“What can you tell me about your tattoos?” she asked.

“Oh, these,” he said, looking down at his chest and arms at the dark designs. “They were inspired by my heritage. My father is Maori.”

“Reall
y? I’ve heard about them. Warriors, right? It’s not often that you meet a Maori in this part of the world.”

“My mother was
a big traveler when she was younger, and she and my dad met when she was in New Zealand on a trip years ago. They came back here…well, not here. Montana. And settled down on a ranch.”

“So are they both morphs
?” It was possible to become a shifter if only one parent had the genes, but not all that common.

“
Yes. My mother’s a bear, like me. My father is a little special,” Maddox said, grimacing slightly. “He’s a true shape-changer. He can morph into a number of things, though it’s been a long time since he’s done any of that.”

“Why’s that?”

“A number of reasons that I don’t want to get into right now. Let’s just say that he’s grown cautious over the years. So has my mother.”

“It can be hard on people, this life,” said Kyla. “I know. You know Nikki—the one from the reality show; our alpha’s mate. Her parents’ marriage split up because of it.”

“Yes, I remember hearing about that. Has she ever talked about finding her father? It sounds like she hasn’t seen him since she was little.”

“She does talk about it sometimes. Meanwhile she’s working on getting her mother on board with the idea
that she’s in love with a wolf.”

“There’s a reason that shifters tend to mate with their own,” said Maddox earnestly, his dark eyes staring into Kyla’s. “Only we understand one another. It’s very hard for a normal human being to get what it’s like to live in our bodies, with our instincts and our troubles.”

“Yeah, it is.” Kyla thought now of her own youth, spent largely ostracized from the society of her peers for her size and for her strangeness. It was a hard life for a child.

“You asked about my parents,” said Maddox.
“My father is a good man but aggressive, which isn’t surprising when you think about his heritage. He grew up being taught the traditions: how to fight, how to be strong. How to be a
man
.”

“It sounds a little like you don’t approve
of it.”

“I think you can be a man, be strong and powerful, and still treat others properly. Sometimes my father was harsh; hard on us kids and hard on my mother. She’s a strong woman and hell, it’s not like she couldn’t turn into a grizzly and rip him a new one if she’d wanted to. But she’s kind and patient with him
, more than he sometimes deserves.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you’re a sort of mix of the two, from the little I know of you
. Gentle and strong, threatening, even.” Kyla was surprised at the honesty of her own words.

Maddox laughed. “Not really threatening. Protective, maybe. But I was just playing with those tourists.
I try to be good, like my mother. It’s funny that the bear genes are the patient ones and the other side of me is the wild one.”