Big Bear Mountain - The Complete Series

Copyright © 2015 Bianca James

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in full, without express
written consent from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages in a review.

All characters
appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living
or dead is purely coincidental. All characters depicted are aged 18+ and all
sexual acts depicted are consensual and occur between non blood relatives.

From the time she
opened her Mom’s laptop as a small child and wrote her first story, Bianca
James knew she wanted to be a writer, although her Mom probably wouldn’t
approve of her current stories.

As an award winning
freelancer, Bianca has made her mark in the world of magazine journalism over
the past decade, during which time she has been a voracious reader of erotica
and romance.

Now, she has found
her true calling – writing hot, uncompromising and highly entertaining erotic
romance.

With a penchant for
sexual fantasies (yes, we all have them, even if we like to think that we
don’t) Bianca’s stories are never predictable and always push the sexual
boundaries to their limits, including some acts which many may regard as taboo.
Never say never is a recurring theme in her stories as Bianca believes that
exploring sexual boundaries can have a profound and exciting impact on other
aspects of life.

Bianca enjoys her
new calling with a passion and hopes you will enjoy reading her stories as much
as she does writing them.

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E
lle was born and raised in the big city, so the yellow
warning light with the cute little snowflake inside a triangle didn’t really
seem that important, despite the ominous sound the warning chime made at
regular intervals. Besides, it wasn’t
actually
snowing and her BMW coupé
was almost brand new, so it was unlikely that it had any kind of serious
problem. Hot air was blowing from the vents and the heated leather seats were
doing their job, so there was little else to focus on, other than maneuvering
the stylish European coupé through the countless sharp twists and turns on the
narrow mountain road.

Well, maybe there was one thing. Glancing at the
discarded power bar wrapper on the passenger seat, her stomach grumbled. She’d
been in a rush at her last fuel stop, anxious to fill her tank and get out of
there that she didn’t want to waste precious time buying food. She was
regretting that decision now. The emergency snack she carried in her handbag
just hadn’t cut it.

Elle needed to put as much distance between her and
the city as fast as she could, so the snowflake and her hunger pains would just
have to wait. With the cops and the cartel gangsters hard on her heels, the
only way she could get through this was to get somewhere they’d never find her
and disappear. Fast.

A business graduate, she’d worked in finance long
enough to know that a money trail was impossible to hide. Ironically, that’s
what got her into this huge mess in the first place. She knew what she needed
to do to survive. Go offline and live off the grid for a while until she could
figure out a way to get out of this mess. That was her only chance. No
internet. No cell phone. No credit cards. Her first thought was that a life
without the three essentials might not actually be worth living. Then she
reminded herself that it was only temporary. She needed time to work things
out. Right now, though, she had to run. Nothing else mattered.

She was still trying to convince herself that she’d
have no problem living without her cell phone when the damn thing rang. The
caller ID displayed ‘Mom’. Not that she needed to see the display. The Darth
Vader Imperial March ringtone had already told her who was calling.

“What’s up, Mom?”

“I hope you’re not talking while you’re driving,” her
mother admonished, without introduction.

“Hello to you, too, Mom. Ever heard of Bluetooth.”
Elle rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me. I’ve had the
police here … the
police
! Asking questions about
you
! I’ve never
been so embarrassed. And all the neighbors saw them, too. I nearly died of
shame!”

“Of all the diseases you claim to have had over the
years, I’m pretty sure that’s one thing you can’t die from, Mom. Oh, and I’m
OK, by the way. Thanks for asking.” Her tone was thick with sarcasm. That’s how
these conversations usually ended up. This one wasn’t wasting any time and was
starting out that way.

“You need to come back. I told them it was some kind
of mistake. No daughter of mine would do such a thing. Embezzlement … that’s
what they said. Do they even know who we are? How dare they! What are they
going to think of me at the tennis club? My God! It’s a disgrace and you need
to come home and set things right straight away, young lady. I won’t have
people gossiping about me. Do you hear me?”

Without so much as a second thought, or a goodbye,
Elle hit the switch to roll down her window before hurling the phone onto the
road, where it smashed into a thousand satisfying pieces.

“Yeah, I can definitely live without
that
,” she
said to herself as she rolled up the window, sealing herself from the chilly
mountain air.

And that’s when she hit the patch of black ice. As the
car began to lose control, despite the valiant effort of the traction control
system, her eyes locked on to the snowflake-in-triangle warning light, it’s
cryptic meaning suddenly becoming apparent. Risk of black ice.

Damn Germans and their stupid pictograms …
was her last coherent thought before the
front of her car ploughed into the barrier. German engineering competing with
American construction.

The Germans won.

J
arrad’s
fingers trembled as they strained to cling to unyielding cliff face long enough
for him to steady his labored breathing. Even through the bulky Alpine climbing
jacket his massive bicep bulged as he tried to pull himself into a more stable
position. Despite the layers of high grade thermal wear, Jarrad’s fingers were
numb and unresponsive thanks to the brutal wind chill factor, even though he
was only at 10,000 feet. As a High Mountain Ranger, specializing in mountain
search and rescue, this was just another day at the office for Jarrad.

Heights didn’t
really bother him, but his bear had never really got used to the whole climbing
thing. There’s not much a 1,500 pound Kodiak bear likes more than the feel of
solid ground beneath its massive 18 inch paws. Vertical rock faces are not
really a part of any bear’s natural habitat. Growling in protest, his bear made
his feelings very clear.

“We’re going to
be fine,” Jarrad said in a soothing voice. “I’ve got this.”

Not so sure, his
bear growled plaintively.

“We’re nearly
there.” He hoped that sounded encouraging, but he wasn’t convinced he’d pulled
it off. “Just remember, there are two times you never look down. One of them is
right now. The other is when Whoopi Goldberg is giving you a blow —”

Crack!

Suddenly, a
piece of metamorphic rock that had been an integral part of the mountain for
something in the region of a billion years decided to break free, just when it
was actually needed for the first time in its history.

“Oh, crap!
That’s not good.” Jarrad was nothing if not the master of understatement.

With his feet
precariously balanced on a 2 inch ledge and one hand still clinging to small
fissure in the rock, he quickly discarded the now useless chunk of mountain he
held in his flailing hand as he frantically sought another hand hold.

The bear wailed
pitifully inside him. Although a full grown Kodiak was all but indestructible,
even if he shifted as he fell, nothing could survive a fall from that height
and it was unlikely that the strongest pitons and cams anchoring the belaying
ropes could withstand the impact a falling Jarrad would subject them to.

Even in his
human form, Jarrad was one hell of a big unit.

S
omething wasn’t
right. Actually, there were a lot of things not quite right, Elle came to
realize as she regained consciousness. The air bags had deployed, for one
thing.

That’s not
good.

She’d broken a
nail on the steering wheel just two days after having them manicured.

Damn it!

One of her new
shoes had broken a heel.

Like this could
get any worse!

Then she noticed
that the view through her windshield was no longer that of a narrow, winding
mountain road. All she could see was a whole lot of sky, distant mountains and
nothing in between but fresh, mountain air.

No road.

Her car felt like
it was suspended in mid-air.

Because it was.

Oh-my-fucking-God!

With trembling
fingers, Elle reached into the console, where she kept her phone …

Oh, crap!

“
B
ig Bear Mountain Rescue to Preacher, do you
copy?”

You can take the
man out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the man. He was going
to be stuck with that call sign for the rest of his life if Rosie, the seasoned,
veteran radio dispatcher had anything to do with it.

Releasing his grip
on the rock face with one hand, Jarrad keyed his mic.

“Preacher to base.
Now’s not a real good time,” he snapped in reply.

“Yeah, well it’s
not such a great time for the girl trapped in her car hanging half ways off the
mountain, either and you’re the only one near enough to do her any kind of good,”
Rosie replied with equal curtness.

The ears of Jarrad’s
bear pricked at the mention of a girl in trouble as its protective instincts kicked
into gear.

“Easy big fella.
We got to get ourselves squared away before we can go rescue any damsel in
distress,” he reminded his bear.

With that, Jarrad stretched
to reach another handhold, using it to pull himself further up the sheer rock
face. The urgency of the situation gave Jarrad the surge of power he needed to haul
his heavily muscled frame and his 30 pound equipment pack the remaining fifteen
feet up the mountain to the plateau that had been his objective when he’d
started the climb. Once there, he radioed his position to Rosie, knowing she
probably already had a chopper in the air to airlift him to the rescue site.

“The helo will pick
you up at Kodiak Peak in five, Preacher. They’re gonna have to turn and burn if
there’s any chance of helping that girl. Highway Patrol called it in and the
trooper says it’s a miracle the car hasn’t gone over yet. Seems a piece of
railing is all that’s keeping her on the mountain.”

“Let me guess,
another hipster townie who thinks black ice is just another AC/DC album,
right?”

“Hey, no more
hipster bashing, Preacher. My grandson Cory used to be a hipster. Had himself a
man bun and all, ya know.”

“How is he,
anyway? Haven’t seen him in a while,” Jarrad asked. The compassion in his voice
was evident, even over the crackling radio transmission.

“He’s good.
Graduated top of his class at the academy. Not a day goes by his Momma don’t
pray to Jesus for what you did for him when those sons of bitches at the HMO
refused to pay for his treatment. You’re a good man Jarrad. A real fine man.
That boy owes you his life and I know he’s never forgotten that.”

“That’s a first,
Rosie.”

“Say again,
Preacher?”

“Nothing, you just
called me by my name for the first time … well … ever. I’ll call in again when
I get to Kodiak. Stay tuned Big Bear Mountain Rescue. Preacher out.”

It would take Jarrad,
in his human form, at least ten minutes to reach Kodiak Peak to be airlifted to
the crash site. Time wasn’t on the crash victim’s side. Besides, he hadn’t let
his bear loose for a good run in a couple of days. Now was as good a time as
any. Making his way to the Kodiak Peak trail, Jarrad shifted to his bear form
as he ran, transforming into a magnificent hulk of Grizzly Bear, its soft dark
fur catching the rays of the late afternoon sun, rippling and undulating as the
robust layers of muscle beneath pistoned inexhaustibly, carrying the heavy set
bear along the trail at an unimaginable speed. The giant bear was a thing of
beauty as it veered off the path and careered through the forest, taking a
short cut Jarrad would never have been able to traverse as a human.

Less than five
minutes later, Jarrad reached the extraction point. There was no sign of the
helicopter as he shifted back into his human.

“Preacher to Big
Bear Mountain Dispatch. I’m at the extraction point, waiting on the helo.”

“Dispatch to Preacher.
You made good time. Did you have some help?”

“You could say
that, Rosie. Hey, I can hear the helo. Time to light ‘em up.”

“God bless
Preacher. Be careful out there. Big Bear Mountain Rescue out.”

Taking a bright
colored tube from his pack, Jarrad struck the smoke flare, releasing a cloud of
blue smoke to show the chopper pilot his exact location and wind direction.
Within moments, a hunched Jarrad was running under the lethal, fast whirling
blades of the helicopter before awkwardly maneuvering himself through the
massive sliding door into the spacious rear cabin of the powerful Sikorsky
search and rescue helicopter.

As soon as he
stood upright, though, the rear cabin didn’t seem so spacious. Jarrad’s frame
filled it easily as he strode purposefully toward the front cabin.

“Spider,” he shouted
into the mic, acknowledging the pilot over the roar of the turbines as he
fitted his flight helmet and headset which awaited him in the equipment rack.

The pilot simply
nodded in reply.

Smalltalk and
social skills were not among their strengths. These were High Mountain Rangers on
a rescue mission. Socializing was what the bar in town was for. After the
rescuing was done and dusted.

As Jarrad buckled
himself into the harness of the winchman seat in the rear compartment, the
pilot, former Navy Lieutenant Jim “Spider” Webb opened the throttle and made
way to the crash site at full speed.