Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire Book 1) (11 page)

The new rooster was going at the morning sun with all he had, squawking and crowing the ugliest sound Elyse had ever heard. That wasn’t what had woken her up, though. It was the smell of bacon and the soft sounds of Ian moving around the house that had dragged her from sleep. The rooster was too late. Elyse was already sitting up in bed glaring at the sunny sunshine that was filtering through the bedroom window. If the sun had a dick, she would kick it.

After hobbling into the bathroom, she washed the horrors of yesterday’s misadventures from her skin, careful to avoid the bandage. She was still too chicken shit to look under it, but when Ian strode wordlessly into her bathroom as she was towel drying her damp hair, it was abundantly clear he didn’t suffer from the same cowardice.

“Sit,” he grunted, jerking his chin toward the edge of the bathtub.

He looked in as foul a mood as she was, and she wasn’t up for a row this morning, so she waited an extra two seconds just to let him know he wasn’t the boss of her, then sat daintily on the edge of the plastic ledge of the tub.

Ian knelt on the floor and lifted her foot onto his thigh, then removed the bandage from her leg as if he’d done so a million times. Gentle and efficient were his hands until, at last, the damage was exposed. Huh. She leaned forward and squinted. It wasn’t that bad. Sure, it would probably leave four thin scars that would silver over time, but even the worst one was sewed tightly closed, and there wasn’t even any redness or swelling around it.

“I thought it would be much worse,” she admitted.

Ian didn’t answer as he poured some kind of cleaning solution over her cuts and, mother fluffer, it felt like he’d poured boiling water onto her injuries. She gritted her teeth, refusing to make a noise. Quick as a whip, he had fresh bandages firmly in place and strode out of the room.

“Are you going to give me the silent treatment forever?” she called.

“Nope.”

His boot prints echoed through the house as he made his way to and out the front door.

She narrowed her eyes at where he’d disappeared, then stood and dressed herself. The echo of the ax blasting into wood on the chopping block was loud. Much louder than the noise she made when she was chopping wood, but one look out the window explained why. It took her several strokes to get through a log. For Ian, it took one.

An overkill breakfast was on the counter in the kitchen, piled high on a plate and covered with a cloth napkin. It was cold, but good, and she ate every bite of it before washing her dish.

At the pump outside, she began to fill the bucket for the chickens’ water dispensers, but Ian, with a saddle slung over his shoulder, jammed a finger at her and said, “I already did it. You’re supposed to stay off your feet.”

“What are you doing with my saddle?”

“Cleaning it. You have a fine saddle with horse shit splattered on it.”

“Oh.”

Grumpily, she sat on the rocking chair on the porch and watched him work with her arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t used to sitting around.

The man was a sight to behold, though. He’d chopped nearly a cord of wood while she’d readied for the day and ate breakfast, and the woodpile was looking much healthier, plus he had several logs lined up to chop later. He must’ve hauled them up with the four-wheeler this morning. He watered and fed the horses, milked the goat, and washed off a dark-stained table he’d apparently used to clean their fish sometime in the night if the dried scales were anything to go by. Out of curiosity, she hobbled around the house to the freezer and, sure enough, the bottom was covered in two layers of fish filets, neatly labeled and individually wrapped. Damn, it was good to see some meat in there.

When she came back, Ian was nowhere to be seen in the yard, but the telltale sound of tinkering echoed from the barn, so she hobbled closer and sat on an old rope swing tied to a tree in the yard. From here, she could see inside the double doors. Ian was working on the opened front of the broken-down snow machine. And from the pan of grease in the yard beside the generator, he’d been working on that this morning as well. Handy bear. She cracked an accidental smile at her little, silent joke.

Cocking her head, she tried to put the massive bear she’d seen yesterday to Ian’s human form. Okay, so he was a bear-man. Or…a werebear? He changed into an animal when the feeling struck, and thankfully, he’d done it yesterday to save her. She’d be a lot worse off than a swatted leg if he hadn’t been there. Undoubtedly, this place would be safer with him around. But spending winters without him would be brutal.

Perhaps she was thinking about this all wrong. She did love him. It seemed so strange to have that thought this soon, but there had been this instant connection between them. He cared about her enough to tell her what he was when he hadn’t told anyone his secret before. Winters would be hellish, but at least she would get half the year. It came down to just warm-weather months with the man she was falling in love with, or cutting him loose and hoping to find a man who was less than Ian. And the more she thought about it, the more she considered that, for the rest of her life, this decision could cause her pain and regret. Who could compare to him? No one she’d ever met. If she cut her heart off from him and moved on, the most she could hope for was a relationship with a man half as good.

Elyse sighed. Half as good didn’t sound good enough anymore. Not after he’d made her feel so deeply.

“Would you hibernate around here?” she called out, gripping the rough ropes of her swing.

Ian didn’t answer, but Miki came bouncing out of the barn toward her. Ian muttered something below her hearing and yanked his hand back, shook it, and sucked on the side of his index finger. He wore a white T-shirt with grease smudges all over it, and old, worn-out, threadbare jeans that sat low on his waist. The brown had left his eyes. She could tell from here because, when he cast her a quick glance, it was all blue-flame sexy.

“Ian!”

“No, I wouldn’t hibernate around here.” He strode out of the barn, wiping his hands on a dirty rag as he sauntered toward her.

“Why not?”

“I have a proposal,” he gritted out, pulling back the rope swing she sat on and pushing her forward.

“Oh, now you want to talk?”

“I didn’t want to talk because I know what you’ll say. And dammit, woman, I want to get shit done around here before you give me the boot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw the way you looked at me last night. Like I was a freak. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want to tell you what I am. And I get it. I do. I’m not normal, and this is a lot. But hearing you cry over what I am last night ripped me up. I know what’s coming, but I still want to get you set up for winter before you kick me out.”

“I wasn’t crying for what you are, you ridiculous man. I was crying about missing you all winter.”

He stopped pushing her and strode around front. “What?”

“You’re a bear, okay. I can deal with that. It’s a lot, yeah, but I thought about it, and the animal side of you isn’t a deal breaker. Not after you used him to save me. It’s hard to swallow being away from you for half the year, though. I already miss you.” She shrugged helplessly and repeated softer, “I already miss you.”

His chest rose with his deep inhalation. “Well, we have options on that.”

“What options?”

“I can sleep six months as a bear, holed up in a den somewhere, or I can hibernate human. I’ll wake up for about an hour a day to eat if I do that. The upside is that we’ll be together an hour a day, the downside is I’ll take up more of our food, and we’ll have to work harder to feed us both through the winter.” Ian squatted down between her legs and looked at her eye-level. “I don’t want to leave you for winter either, Elyse. I wish I was human and normal for you, but I can’t avoid this part of my life.”

“So, if you hibernate human, you can stay here?”

“Yeah, but I’ll be boring as fuck. My body slows down so much, I literally only revive for food so I don’t starve. If I’m a bear, I don’t need food. My body is more efficient at hibernating as a grizzly.”

“So, technically speaking, if I had an hour, and you ate quickly, would you have enough energy for anything else?”

Ian gave her a baffled smile. “Like what? Card games?”

“Like sex?”

“Oooh,” he said, lifting his chin as his eyes sparked with humor. “You’re worried about your needs all winter.”

“Whose selfish now, bear-man?”

“Still me…and that’s bear shifter. I have no right to ask you to be okay with this.”

“Will it hurt you to hibernate human.”

He shook his head as the smile dipped from his face.

“Then will you do it for me? I don’t want to dread the winter alone. I’ll take care of your body when you’re sleeping, and I’ll have food ready when you wake up every day. I’ll protect you.”

His eyes went soft, and he leaned forward, pressing his forehead between her breasts. “Are you saying I can stay?”

“Well, if it’s between having you half the year or not at all, I choose you, Ian. That’s an easy decision for me.”

Ian’s striking blue eyes jerked up, and he searched her face like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “You choose me?”

“Mate,” she whispered, running her fingers through his hair.

That sexy growl rattled his throat as his eyes rolled closed. “Say it again.”

“My mate.” The word felt strange, but exactly right on her tongue.

Ian let out a shaky breath and pressed his lips against hers. She still couldn’t get over how easy it was to kiss him when he was clean-shaven for her, and with a happy giggle, she laid kisses over his cheeks.

Ian growled and bit her neck softly, and her instinct to freeze overpowered everything else. Ian wasn’t being playful now. He was being sexy as hell. Feeling brave, Elyse slowly arched her head back, giving him more access to her throat, and as she did, his teeth disappeared and were replaced by his lips, gone all soft. A delicious shiver worked its way up her spine, and she let off a soft gasp as he lifted her off the swing.

“Careful,” he rumbled deep in his throat as she brushed his hip with her bad ankle.

She was straddled on his waist but didn’t have to do any of the work since her bear-man seemed to have infinite strength and carried her like she weighed less than a feather.

Her eyes rolled closed against the saturated morning sunlight as he sucked harder on her neck. The man knew how to use his lips.

Miki bounced along somewhere in the vicinity of Ian’s feet, yipping in his little puppy bark as Ian toted her smoothly up the porch stairs and into the house. Anticipation zinged through her as he took a sharp turn directly into her bedroom. Oh, her mate was on a mission now, and she nuzzled his neck and smiled against his skin, then inhaled deeply. He smelled so good. Soap with a hint of oil from the machinery he’d been working on.

“Are you sniffing me, woman?”

“Maybe.”

“Clever little human, using your nose like an animal. I like the way you smell, too.”

“You do?”

Ian lowered her to the bed and spread her knees, then leaned down and clamped his teeth gently on the zipper of her jeans, then blew a puff of warm air through the denim. It tingled and, dear goodness, it felt better than almost anything she’d ever felt before. “I like the way you smell here best,” he murmured.

She writhed and gripped his hair. This should be embarrassing, but Ian was kissing all of the discomfort out of her. And as he rucked her shirt up and laid those sexy lips to her stomach, fingers gripping her sides, she forgot exactly why she was supposed to be embarrassed. Ian was touching her as if he knew the exact map of her body, and his confidence eased any leftover nervous flutters.

Unrelenting, he pulled her shirt over her loose hair and unsnapped her bra, then slid it off her arms. His fingers were steady—slow and controlled. Heat pooled in her middle as he unsnapped the button of her jeans. The material tickled as he pulled it past her hips and knees, slower at her bandaged ankle, then off completely with a smile at the messy pile he was leaving on her floor.

The smile lingered as his gaze went first to her eyes, then lower and lower. His breath caught as he stared at her body. Running a soft touch over her knee, he shook his head as though he’d never seen anyone more beautiful. “I’ve imagined…” Ian swallowed hard. “It’s not the same.”

She wanted to cry at his admiration. Softly, she admitted, “I haven’t ever let anyone see me like this. In the light.”

A slight frown marred his face, making the color of his eyes intensify somehow. “Good. I want to be the only one who sees you like this.” He ran his finger over the top of her thigh and whispered in a distracted voice, “Perfect. Your skin isn’t even scarred.”

Regret had tainted his tone, so she lifted her knee and rested her injured leg up on the mattress. “I have scars now, too, Ian. We match.”

Pulling his oil-stained T-shirt over his head, Ian murmured, “I want to feel your skin against mine.”

“Wait,” she said as he settled a knee on the bed to lower himself. “I want to look at you, too.”

Ian hesitated for a moment, then stood back up and rested his hands at his sides, clenching his fists, as if being scrutinized made him as uncomfortable as it used to make her. Strong, wide shoulders and a thick neck. A deep, shadowed indentation between his muscular pecs delved down to a defined eight-pack that flexed with every breath. There were scars, but now they’d been explained away. He was a bear, a big one, a dominant brawler who had been born to bear the long, red marks. She didn’t mind them at all. In fact… “I think you’re perfect, too.”