Redeeming the Bear (Trapped in Bear Canyon Book 3)
Redeeming the Bear
Terry Bolryder
Contents
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
Epilogue
Sample of Sheltered by the Bear
Terry Bolryder Reading Order
Copyright © 2017 by Terry Bolryder
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.
1
Ryland couldn’t believe all the things this woman was making him feel.
Looking into Lea’s dark, fathomless eyes as she lost herself to pleasure once more, he felt something stir deep down.
Was it simply the sexual tension of weeks of training sessions breaking free? Was it her curvy but fit body, honed from years of fighting and training fighters but still soft like any alpha female? Was it the way her fingers lightly traced him and then dug in, causing pain that made it easier to focus and stay with her?
Pain was so familiar.
This bonding with another person, the feeling of vulnerability and oncoming oneness, was totally new.
Her pert nose, her full lips, her eyes wide and then closing, tensed in pleasure. Her softly dark skin and smooth black hair—he studied it all, unable to do so as dispassionately as he had with past partners.
Sex was something to keep the animal at bay.
This, whatever was happening between him and Lea, was something much different.
He didn’t question it as he pressed her against the heavy punching bag he’d backed her up to, holding her under her thighs as he thrust into her powerfully, craving each of her moans, every pinch of her nails, the way her legs twisted hard around his back, as if trying to pull him in.
Harder and harder.
Softer and softer.
Her warmth, her body, her touch, her breath, it all surrounded him, grounding him in a way he’d never experienced. And as her lips parted to cry out his name in pleasure, echoing it to the empty gym all around them, he felt another word echo inside him.
Mate. Mate.
But was that possible?
They moved together swiftly, still soaked and sweaty from their workout, trembling, not from tiredness, but from the power of their pleasure. He could find himself getting close to the edge with her. Normally, he would have given her more orgasms. Dozens.
But the word mate, along with the power of the connection between them, despite his best efforts, was working its way into his soul.
Was it possible for a monster like him to have a mate?
A part of him was so overjoyed at the prospect that he nearly came right there. Another part was afraid it was all a joke, a hallucination, a denial of the fact that he was dangerous to get that close to anyone.
But this woman made it different somehow.
He’d never meant to get involved with Lea like this. She’d been a good, if distant, friend while training him. But he understood emotional distance. It had been kind of reassuring to be with someone so much like him. Hiding things. Aloof.
But after weeks of working alongside each other, both alphas in their respective species, opposite genders, sweaty and emitting pheromones, something like this was bound to happen.
And he didn’t regret it, even if it was confusing.
Being buried deep inside her, even with a condom on, felt more like home than anything he’d ever experienced.
Though she said nothing but his name, he felt as if they were soul to soul. They didn’t need words, didn’t need a lot of talking to discuss how they felt. It was evident in every twitch of their bodies, every smooth thrust, every hoarse groan or scream of pleasure.
He moved faster, hearing her gasp and her breathing increase as pressure built higher and higher in his body.
Oh hell, it had never felt like this before, like he was going to explode so hard he was afraid of it. Her soft thighs in his hands tortured him. So precious and warm. She was still spasming around him from her last orgasm, and her pert, bare nipples were swollen from his mouth’s attention and from rubbing against his chest.
He made one final thrust and heard her name leave his lips, which surprised him. But he buried his face in her shoulder as he pumped inside her, jerking and feeling her body release around him one more time in response.
Together they rode the last wave of pleasure, and then he shuddered, lowering them both to the ground, pulling out of her, and then rolling off to lie at her side on the plastic mats.
“Holy hell,” he said, staring up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
“You’re telling me,” she said hoarsely, raising one hand to rest on her forehead, wiping the sweat but then leaving it there. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I liked it.”
The understatement of the century, but Ryland wasn’t good at expressing feelings.
She looked over at him with a grin on her full, dark lips. “Me, too.”
They made an interesting contrast, her with her short, curvy body and him so tall and lean and muscular. He liked it. It brought out the protective instincts in him, which he usually only felt toward his family.
He reached his hand out, wondering if he should touch her, but she quickly jerked back and rolled to her feet.
He wasn’t sure if she’d seen and was purposely avoiding his contact or if she was simply moving on from what was surely an awkward moment.
He wanted to say something. Tell her this moment had meant something to him. Wasn’t simply a physical release. But, staying flat on his back, he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
“Hey…”
She’d been gathering up her clothing, tossed aside by an overeager bear, and paused in pulling it on to give him a stern look over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
He bit his lip as he pushed himself to a sitting position, his body still throbbing from the workout. From both workouts. Or was that his heart throbbing from unknown feelings?
“I… don’t really know what to say,” he said, crossing his arms over his legs, not minding his nudity at all.
She tossed his shorts to him, followed by his shirt. “Well, we got that out of our system. So I guess that’s good.”
He frowned as if someone had thrown a rock at his face. Had he, Ryland Brolin, billionaire and alpha shifter, just been friend-boxed? Was that what it was called? He scratched his head, pushing his brown hair into messy spikes.
“Got it out of our system?” he asked skeptically. “Is that all it was?”
She raised an eyebrow as she pulled her hair back up into a tight ponytail and pinned back her bangs with a bobby pin. “It’s just a release of tension. Common when fighting and training.”
He’d pulled on his shorts but froze when her implications hit. He was against her in a second, pushing her against another training bag and trapping her there.
“So you do this with all your trainees?” he asked, feeling something hard and cold take over him.
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that. Back off.”
He did because he didn’t want to be the monster others took him for. He had
something truly terrible inside him, but despite that, he’d made a pretty good life for him and his brothers. He took care of people.
He just did it with a sense of pathological detachment, relying wholly on logic and an external set of morals and the lack of any emotion.
Today, with her, he’d felt something like closeness, and now he was jealous about the thought of anyone else feeling that with her. He didn’t know what to do with all the foreign emotions swirling inside him.
When he stepped back, she put a hand up to his face and gently stroked his cheek. He flinched away, and she laughed. “I don’t know what to make of you, Ryland. You’re nothing like what I heard.”
“What did you hear?”
“That you were an emotionless robot.” She dropped her hand from his face and folded her arms, still staying close enough that her scent, her warmth was driving him crazy. “I see quite the opposite. Too much emotion. So much that you’ve pushed it down where no one can see it because you don’t think you can control it.”
“Hm,” he said. “You could be right. I wouldn’t know.”
She shrugged, not willing to argue the point apparently. She was already picking stuff up and getting ready to leave the gym, and he began to panic. How could he keep her around so they could talk?
He didn’t know what the mating urge meant, but he knew he needed her to stay close to him. Needed to know she was his somehow. Needed to keep her.
“Anyway,” she said, turning off the first set of lights. “As we talked about, I think you’re ready for anything the shifter world can throw at you. You won’t be needing another session.”
All of their time together flashed through his mind, and he realized how much he was going to miss it.
Coming in, seeing her smiling face, her approval as she held the pads. The lack of judgment when the monster in him rose to the surface and he had to pace to push it down.
She’d become… his friend.
How was she just ready to walk away like this?
She got ready to flip the last light switch, and Ryland felt his body twitch in shock.
Dammit, he could run board meetings, acquire companies, and manipulate his family without breaking a sweat, but now that the woman he actually cared about was about to walk out on him, his head was completely blank?
He put a hand over the place in his chest where his heart was and rubbed it absentmindedly.
As if underwater, he watched her cock her head and saw the moment she gave up on hearing more from him. “Ryland. You seriously don’t need to feel bad about this.”
Bad? She thought he felt bad? He picked up the rest of his things and threw on his shirt, grabbing his gym bag and putting his training gear inside.
“I don’t feel bad,” he said.
“Good, and I don’t either.”
Right. She looked like she felt nothing. He sighed as he followed her out of the gym and onto the street.
She put out a hand for him and he shook it, marveling about how small it was. “Well, best of luck to you, Ryland. Hope you do well at your competition.”
He nodded numbly. Fuck, why was he just standing there letting her walk away and get in her car?
Perhaps because it was clear she wanted to. She didn’t want him. His hesitance was plain, and she was ignoring him.
As she pulled away with a cheerful wave, a growl rose from low in his throat.
This wasn’t over. He was coming for her.
She was his. She just didn’t know it yet.
When Lea got home, it was all she could do to make it to her couch without collapsing in a trembling heap on her floor.
Holy shit, she’d made love to Ryland Brolin, the absolute last person she should ever get close to.
She made it a point to not get unprofessional with clients, but Ryland had been a particular challenge, with his tall, fallen-angel beauty and perfect, muscular body. Not to mention his cold gray eyes that looked like silver or steel or storm clouds, so sensual under long, dark-brown lashes.
When he’d come to her training center a few months back, it had seemed like a huge break of luck and a good chance to study him before putting her plan in motion.
At first, with his stoic, cold demeanor, he’d seemed like exactly the asshole she’d imagined from his pictures.
But the more she got to know him, saw his determination as he fought, saw his work ethic and sheer power, the more she realized nothing was simple when it came to the Brolins.
But she refused to feel bad for any of them. She refused to feel bad for Ryland, who’d looked so baffled as she’d left right after sex.
He’d gotten what he wanted. Surely, the notorious ice king hadn’t been thinking she expected some kind of promise after what they’d done together?
Even if she knew people were wrong, that there was something warm deep under all those layers of frozen hardness, she couldn’t let it affect her. She had a plan and a duty. She would see it through to the end, and she wouldn’t let some hottie with wounded eyes get in her way.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up, covering the mouthpiece out of habit and then realizing no one was around to hear.
“Hey,” she said.
“You got the position,” the voice on the other line said. “You know what you have to do.”
“And what about you? You doing your end?”
“Yes,” the voice replied, giving her shivers.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Then there was a click on the other end.
She hung up and dropped the phone on the ground, feeling cold and numb. Soon, she’d be seeing Ryland again, but in a totally different situation.
And no matter how her body begged, she would have to resist him.
It just wasn’t in the stars for her and Ryland Brolin.
2
“I just don’t understand,” Rock said, leaning against a desk and pinning Ryland with a harsh, penetrating glare. “Why would you even want to do this?”
Ryland had expected this kind of reaction from his two older brothers who’d always run the Brawl with him. That’s why he’d torn out the part of the rule book that specified the consequences for a Brolin losing if they dared to enter.
He didn’t need them more stressed than they already were here running the Brawl while they’d rather be with their mates. Even if they knew Ana and Rosalyn were safe down in the canyon with their friend Francis, shifter males were prone to worry.
Ryland pitied the fool who messed with a Brolin mate, as the brothers were each uniquely fucked up in a way that made them just that much more devastating when you messed with what was theirs.
Speaking of which, Ryland couldn’t stop thinking about Lea and how to find her again.
When he’d called the studio, he’d found she was no longer working at the gym, which was odd because he’d thought she was a head trainer.
And when he’d asked for more info, the cagey male voice on the other end had told him to get lost and stop being a creeper.
If pursuing the one person who could be your mate counted as being a creeper, Ryland would eat his own hair.
He rubbed the back of his neck in frustration as Riker paced in front of him. His short, sandy-blond hair looked good with his tan, and his frown lines weren’t nearly as deep after about a year of marriage to an awesome, feisty woman who had wandered into Bear Canyon in an act of fate during the last Bear Canyon Brawl.
But it didn’t take away from his sheer height and size, his generally gruff, no-nonsense demeanor, and overall disapproving scowl. A scowl that was currently directed at Ryland.
Ryland just raised an eyebrow, waiting for Riker to find his words. He knew what his plans were, and nothing they said could sway him. Besides, he’d already entered, and entry was binding.
“I just don’t see why you’re doing it,” Rock said, shaking his head. His newly shorn dark hair revealed a long scar that seemed to only do him favors with the ladies.
A scar t
hat wrote the family history on Rock’s face.
There was a different kind of mark on Ryland. A shock of white in the midst of his rich-brown hair. That noted another event, one that only Ryland had been privy to. When asked, he often fibbed that it had happened the same night Rock had been attacked.
The truth was much darker.
Ryland ran a hand through his hair, wondering if it was properly short to fight. No one should be able to grab it, but while wandering through camp, he’d noticed a lot of fighters had short or nearly shaven hair.
“Don’t you think this is dangerous?” Riker asked, raising an eyebrow.
“To whom?”
“To everyone,” Riker said. “What if you lose control?”
“I’ve been training. I won’t shift.” Unless I absolutely have to. Ryland was an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of person and completely unabashed about it.
Life had taught him there was no room for mercy when it came to standing up to evil. And if this Brawl wasn’t evil, with the way people were always hurt during it, he didn’t know what was.
“I don’t like it,” Riker said. “I really don’t like it. I also don’t like that I never saw this coming.” He shrugged. “I never took you for the type that enjoyed violence.”
“I don’t,” Ryland said flatly.
“Then why do it?” Riker asked, finally taking a chair and slumping down into it. “You don’t need the money. You’re richer than all of us. What do you stand to win?”
Ryland bit his lip. He didn’t know if his brothers would even approve of his plan to end the Brawl. When it was over, they would probably be grateful, but like anything he’d engineered for them, he tended to know before they did what was good for them.
“I have my reasons,” Ryland said. “After all these years, you should know I go my own way.”
“But this is the Brawl,” Riker said. “Our Brawl.” His grey eyes were dark and stormy, and Rock’s matched. All the brothers had the same eyes, a mix of silver and steel that changed with their moods and the size of their pupils.