Brew Bear (Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (Rescue Bears Book 4)

BREW BEAR

RESCUE BEARS

SCARLETT GROVE

Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

About the Author

Also by Scarlett Grove

Copyright © 2016 by Scarlett Grove

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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1

I
t all started nine months ago when Geek Bear announced that he’d invented an algorithm that could match a shifter with his fated mate. Brew Bear remembered that day like it was yesterday…

Drew Bock climbed into the passenger seat of Big Bear’s truck and took out his smartphone. The Rescue Bears had just finished celebrating a rescue mission at the lodge, and Drew and Angus were on the way home.

“Are you going to sign up for Mate.com?” Drew asked.

“Do you really believe Corey’s computer program can predict your fated mate?”

“Levi signed up,” Drew said.

“If our alpha thinks it’s a good idea, who knows, right? Maybe it is.”

“Don’t you ever feel like something is missing from your life?” Drew asked.

“Sure, all the time. I want a mate as much as anyone else.”

Angus turned onto the highway, headed back to Fate Mountain Village. The white peaks of Fate Mountain rose in the distance against the backdrop of a velvety night sky. Drew flicked through his phone and started to download the Mate.com app.

“It’s strange to think that we can openly mate with human women now,” Drew said.

“Times are changing.”

“Used to be that dating a human woman came with a lot of risk.”

“You remember what happened to Levi back during the war, right? It was terrible,” Angus said.

The Rescue Bears had all served together as Navy SEALs during the war. After the war ended a few years ago, they’d all settled in the burgeoning shifter community on Fate Mountain.

Angus dropped Drew off in front of Fate Mountain Brewery, and Drew thanked Angus for the ride. On the way into his house behind the brewery, Drew pulled his phone out of his pocket. Corey’s dating app required him to answer a ton of crazy questions Drew couldn’t even fathom the point of. When he got inside, he sat down at his couch and started to answer them.

“If you were a vegetable, what kind would you be? Squash, celery, cucumber, corn, sugar pea, or green bean,” Drew muttered to himself. How was this supposed to find his fated mate? “If I were a vegetable, I’d be celery.”

After he finished the questionnaire, he waited anxiously as the matches loaded. Corey said a hundred percent match meant the woman was his fated mate. As the matched profiles filled his screen, Drew scrolled through them, looking for that perfect match. Unfortunately, none of these ladies were it. Drew sighed, rubbing his black beard. What did he expect? To find true love on the internet? As much as the world had changed in the last few years, Drew still believed in the physical here and now more than anything digital.

2

Q 
uinn Jacobs grew more anxious with each mile the van drove toward Fate Mountain. She’d signed up for Mate.com as a joke to make fun of her best friend Juliet. She hadn’t expected to be matched with a shifter who lived in the very town she was traveling toward at sixty miles an hour.

Drew Bock was the hottest hunk of man meat Quinn had ever seen, but she was totally unprepared to meet him in person. When Juliet said she’d been matched with a shifter on the new shifter/human dating site, Quinn had warned her friend to be wary. You never knew what you were going to get on the internet. And the fact that these men where shifters made her doubly concerned.

Although Quinn didn’t hate shifters, she had been raised in an anti-shifter family. Those early life impressions were hard to shake. Shifters had different rules and different customs when it came to dating and mating.

No matter how objective Quinn tried to be, and no matter how sexy Drew was, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to trust any of it. Not that she had much time to think. By the time she made it to Fate Mountain Lodge she was practically a basket case.

She’d agreed to meet Drew at her friend Charlotte’s bachelorette party when he delivered his kegs of beer to the lodge.

The night of the party, she couldn’t find a damn thing to wear. With all the commotion going on around her, Quinn could barely think straight on the way downstairs in the elevator. She’d never been this nervous before a potential date.

When she and Juliet entered the party in the dining room, she grabbed a drink and started to dance to the music.

“This party needs men!” Quinn shouted over the music, trying to quell her anxiety with her usual enthusiasm.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a burly, bearded man holding a silver keg on his shoulder. He passed through the open door and headed to the bar. Quinn stopped still as a statue, grabbed Juliet’s arm, and squeezed.

“That’s him,” Quinn whispered.

Quinn and Drew’s eyes locked before he set his keg down. He glanced back at her as he started to set it up.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Juliet asked.

Quinn felt rooted in place.

“He’s busy,” she whispered.

“Go talk to him,” Juliet said, pushing her toward the bear shifter across the room.

Quinn took several baby steps forward, stopped, took a deep breath, and strode toward him like the confident girl she knew herself to be. Quinn tossed her head and greeted him with a hand on her hip.

“Hi,” she said over Drew as he knelt beside the keg.

He looked up at her, his eyes full of unreadable emotion. Quinn was instantly struck with the most overpowering sensation. The man before her stood, rising to his full height. He towered over her curvy frame by almost a foot. He could have carried a keg on each of his broad shoulders. Quinn gulped, trying to keep her cool.

“Quinn,” he breathed.

She felt flushed and faint. Quinn put her hand to her heart to try to stop it from beating so fast. Blinking several times, she tried to push away the emotions filling her body and mind.

“Drew,” she whispered back, her voice unrecognizable.

He reached out to her and took her sweaty hand in his, looking at her with those intense brown eyes. She wanted to drown in them forever. He raised her hand to his lips, softly kissing the backs of her knuckles. His beard brushed her fingertips, electric sensations shot all through every nerve ending. Quinn shuddered.

“Want to get out of here?” Drew asked.

“Yes,” she breathed.

He held on to her hand and led her out of the dining room, past Juliet and her new boyfriend Levi. Drew didn’t stop or speak until they were outside in the cold mountain air. The night sky above was so full of stars, Quinn felt swept up in it. He led her to his SUV and opened the passenger side door for her to climb inside. She had no idea what was going on, and she didn’t care.

Quinn sat down, and Drew closed the door behind her. She smelled the distinct scent of hops as she buckled her seatbelt and waited for him to come around the other side of the car. When he got inside, Quinn had gathered her senses enough to speak again.

“You own Fate Mountain Brewery?” she asked. “I’ve heard good things.”

“Yes. Opened it two years ago with my shifter veterans benefits.”

“I’ve had your Fate Mountain Lager in Portland. Good stuff.”

“Want to see the brewery?”

“I’d love that,” she said, trying to keep her cool.

The sensations going through Quinn’s body were anything but cool. She was ablaze with all kinds of feelings she’d never had before. Intense, overwhelming, insane feelings that were definitely not first date emotions. She had to get a grip. If only she wanted to. In that moment, all Quinn really wanted was to hold on and enjoy the ride.

She’d always been a girl who liked new experiences. Being outgoing and the life of the party most of the time, Quinn had always taken life by the horns. It was kind of a life motto for her. With Drew giving her all these crazy feelings, it was definitely a ‘life by the horns’ kind of moment.

Drew pulled up in front of the brewery. It was busy this time of night. She could hear the music coming out the front door when she got out of the car. Drew met her on her side of the vehicle and took her hand in his, leading her to the front door. He pushed it open and held it for her as she walked inside.

Most men didn’t act so intimately or so affectionately with a woman they’d just met. Quinn was used to the standard human hook-up culture that so many of the people her age were locked into. She’d never really longed for a long term thing, like a lot of girls. But Drew was definitely changing her mind as his big, warm hand held hers.

They walked up to the bar, and the bartender asked Drew what he wanted.

“Bring us two sample trays,” Drew said.

A few moments later, the bartender sat two trays full of small chilled glasses of different beers in front of Drew and Quinn. Drew lifted the first light colored beer from the tray and brought it to his lips. He took a sip and then wiped the foam from his beard as he set the glass back on the tray.

“That one is Fate Mountain Lager,” he said.

Quinn took a sample of hers and felt the warm flood of intoxication start to tingle inside her after only a sip. This stuff was known for its high alcohol content, but she really didn’t care right now. It all tasted and smelled so good. She just wanted to dive in head first.

“So good,” she said, setting her glass back down.

They drank the rest of the samples, tasting each one in turn. When they’d finished the samples, Quinn was feeling more relaxed and smiled at Drew’s handsome face.

“What made you want to open a brewery?” she asked.

They hadn’t texted each other all that much about their lives since they’d been matched the day before. She wanted to know everything about him right now. She wanted to see, touch, taste, and feel everything about him too.

“I’ve always been interested in fermentation, especially with beer. The whole process fascinates me. Then, of course, there’s the end product,” he said, taking a sip from the pint of Fate Mountain Lager the bartender had set in front of him. Quinn took a sip of her own beer, feeling more lightheaded with each taste. “What is it that you do again?”

“I’m a PR executive in Portland. I work with a lot of local celebrities and corporations.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it. I get to meet a lot of new people. Do new things. I enjoy the experience.”

“I can see why we were matched,” he said in a husky voice. “I like to experience things too. Maybe not in the same way.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, intrigued. Everything Drew said fascinated her right now.

“I’m sensitive to sensation, to feelings, beauty, art, experiences, joy…pleasure.”

“Oh…”

The word pleasure vibrated through her like the tone from a tuning fork. It was like their resonances were coming into coherence. Quinn gasped at the immensity of it, her nipples pricking.

“Want to dance?” Drew asked.

A slow song had come on the jukebox and a few other couples were dancing in an open area on the floor. She wanted to feel his arms around her more than anything else in the world at that moment.

“I’d love to,” she said.

He took her hand and led her out onto the dance floor. Instead of holding her hand and wrapping one arm around her back, he wrapped both arms around her and pulled her snuggly against his chest. Quinn sighed and wrapped both her arms around his neck, surrendering to his animal magnetism. She could feel the hard planes of his chest and the pounding of his heart under her cheek.