Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,69

the alpha of his own sleuth of Strauss brothers, though there were only four of them. Their parents’ sleuth had been larger, numbering in the tens, all aristocratic bears of Elkswood. But there had been a hundred bears in Lydia’s sleuth. And their numbers gave them power. There had existed, at best, a shaky truce between that sleuth and the Strauss’s. So Eric’s parents hadn’t been exactly thrilled that their youngest son was hanging out with one of those wild girls from up the mountain.

At the time, it had all served to excite Eric. Lydia was a wild girl yet she was sweet and always happy to play games with him when they were kids and, later, happy to sneak off with him to go looking for trouble or to drink the high end booze he stole from his parents’ liquor cabinet before they went on a run.

The bulk of his childhood involved Lydia.

Then one day, when they were eighteen, he’d told her how he felt - that she was more than his best friend. She was maybe his mate. She’d left the next day without a trace.

But they weren’t going to talk about that now.

“What are you thinking about?” Lydia said, as memories of their long past swam in his head.

“Nothing,” Eric murmured and kissed her shoulder again.

This is just sex, Eric told himself as he dressed in his clothes again, having finally left Lydia’s bed.

As much as he would have liked to stay there all day, he had guests to assist. He could already think of four impending requests for VIP concert tickets that were going to take some doing.

“You’ll be here for a while longer, right?” He raised an eyebrow at her as he tied his tie.

Lydia was standing naked in the living room and she looked away, ducking down to grab her robe off the floor, dressing in it quickly and cinching it tight. He couldn’t read her expression.

“Um,” she shrugged. Her dark hair was a mess, tousled and falling over one eye. It made her look even sexier and he sighed as he pulled on his jacket. “I don’t know. I know you can’t hold the room forever-”

“Don’t worry about the room,” he swallowed, fighting the urge to show his entire hand. “Stay a while. We’ll catch up. Maybe even talk about...ya know.”

She chuckled at that, “I doubt it.”

“Well…” He chewed his lip and approached her, reaching up to feel that silky hair between his fingers again. “You have to stay and guard me, right? Make sure I’m safe.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Eric snorted at that and looked around for his shoes, letting go of Lydia to collect them, as well as his socks. He wasn’t looking at her when he said, “If it gets me sex that hot, I’ll believe anything.”

She was different when he looked up at her again and he pretended she wasn’t.

I heard her thoughts, he told himself. It should mean something.

But all he could picture as he combed his hair before leaving her alone in her bathrobe, was Lydia leaving him again and this time, maybe she’d never come back.

A guy had to protect his heart after all.

22

Eric

I heard her thoughts.

It was hard to think about much else when he went back to work, still feeling Lydia’s kisses on his skin. It had been, by far, the best sex of his life. He’d had plenty of decent sex. But this...this had been something else. For a second there, he had thought the two of them were about to ascend to some other plane of existence. And yet, the thought that Lydia wasn’t going to hurt him again seemed impossible.

“May I help you, ma’am?” Eric smiled in his solicitous way as the next guest stepped up to the front desk. She was a bear shifter out of California and she had the big blonde hair and sun kissed skin he saw from all the other bear shifters who came out of California.

“I was wondering if you knew about any good shows nearby?” The guest was… Eric racked his brain. He was good at remembering names, which sometimes meant the difference between repeat business and a lukewarm review online.

But he was so scattered over this Lydia business that his mind was drawing a blank.

“Shows,” he heaved a breath and blinked. This was easy. People asked him this all the time. There was nothing major in Black Bear Lake, but forty-five minutes away in two directions there were