Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

he’d freak you out. It’s like when you see one of those shows on Animal Planet and a... I dunno, bear or a leopard or something is just kinda hanging out, and then in a terrifying instant of almost unreal violence, she sees some threat coming along and erupts into a ball of rage. Half a second later the only thing left of whatever approached them is a greasy red stain, and—”
    “That might be overstating things a bit ,” Eve said with a smirk. “But not much I guess. You’ve pretty much got it though. After that, I got wary of him, even though he’d never done anything in the entire time we dated for me to think of him hurting me. I just kept going back to that moment. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and then one morning I was watching him as he slept in the bed we’d shared for three years... and I couldn’t do it anymore.”
    Dora watched her old friend, studying the look on Eve’s face. It wasn’t fear – not anymore, anyway – it was more wariness, more of just a detached observation of something that once was. A few moments later, Eve broke the silence. “I don’t know if I can do it again,” she said. “I don’t know if I can even look at him again, more out of my own shame than anything else. I did essentially run him out of town, after all.”
    She had to cut in. “You can’t blame yourself for that. We were all fifteen years younger. Twenty?” she’d never been exactly certain on Eve’s life timeline. “It was before we met, anyway. Even if it was your fault, you can’t dwell on it. But you might be right. Maybe best just to let things lie.”
    “He doesn’t let things lie,” Eve said. “I think it’s against his lion nature. And you don’t know Rake.”
    That hung in the air between them like a limp worm. “That’s true,” Dora finally said. “But, well, you don’t know him either. Not anymore. He could show up with a sweater vest, tweed jacket and a pipe.”
    Eve’s shoulders started shaking with laughter she wasn’t quite ready to release. “If he does, with all those tattoos all over his arms, I’m gonna laugh really, really hard. And then I’m probably going to pee my pants. I’d be less surprised if he showed up in, I don’t know, a Village People biker outfit.”
    Dora scrunched up her face. “And that wouldn’t make you laugh?”
    “Not as much as trying to imagine Rake Dolan some kind of history professor teaching college students about the history of England or something.”
    The two of them sat quietly for a moment, Dora absent mindedly braiding Eve’s hair. It was just one of those things they did. Like some friends finishing each other’s sentences, Dora would just start braiding. Every now and then, Eve said something about how it was her inner gorilla coming out, and if there were any ticks, she’d collect those instead of braiding.
    This time though, there weren’t any jokes. No cute quips or anything else, just two friends sitting quietly in an otherwise empty office and trying to figure out what life was about to throw at them.
    “Listen, you must have your reasons for going on a double, and I think I understand them. You have to promise me one thing though.”
    “I owe you,” Eve said. “Ask and ye shall receive.” She started twirling her own hair. That was Dora’s sign that Eve’s bravado was cracking just a bit.
    “You have to tell me how it is when you get laid,” Dora said, somehow maintaining a deadpan in her voice and face that would have made Bob Newhart proud. “And I mean details. Details , you hear me?”
    Eve exploded into laughter. The tension of the entire past week seemed to explode at once. “After all the times I harassed you about the same thing, and how relentlessly I made you tell me about you and Monte gettin’ it on, I guess I deserve that. Fine, fine,” she said. “You’ll get all the details you want. More than you want, probably.”
    *
    “I ’m nervous as shit,” Eve announced, stepping out of her