Bear Down: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (2 page)

It was hard not to regret the shirt, but once he'd put it on, his broad shoulders strained against the fabric, making her even
more
aware of how built he was as they walked outside together. April wasn't a tiny woman—not by a long shot, as she'd sometimes thought ruefully, looking down at her round hips—but he made her feel very small. He could have easily picked her up, sliding those huge hands around her waist—
Stop it, stop it,
she scolded herself.

"So what's the project? I know you explained to my business partner Lee on the phone, but he didn't pass along very much of what you said."

April firmly dragged her brain back from all the places it was trying to go.
Down, girl.
"I'm going out to count polar bears and compare their numbers to ten years ago, to see how they've been affected by climate change. See, the amount of sea ice is shrinking and that's affecting bear habitat—"

Even as the words came out of her mouth, she found herself struggling not to cringe. Normally she couldn't care less if people judged her for being a biology nerd who was likely to talk a person's ear off about bear populations and genetic drift over dinner. But when she was trying to impress a guy ... well, shit. Nothing said "Hey, I'm totally girlfriend material!" like babbling helplessly about bears.

But he didn't seem bored. "Yeah, polar bears spend a lot of time on sea ice. Less ice means less space for bears."

"Exactly! It's the edges of pack ice, really, where they spend a lot of their time. The sea ice looks terribly barren to most people, but it's actually a thriving ecosystem. The water is full of plankton, which attracts fish that feed on them, which in turn attracts seals—"
oh, God, April, shut up
"—and polar bears, which is what I'm here to study!" she finished brightly, and resisted the urge to stomp on her own foot.

"Not many people appreciate the sea ice properly," he agreed, in that amazing, deep rumble of a voice. "It's nice to meet someone who does."

They stopped at the little red-and-white airplane, and Nathan gave its side an affectionate pat. "She's all ready to go, gassed up and preflighted, so we can leave right away if you want to."

"I'd love to," she agreed fervently. At least once they were airborne, she'd have something to do other than babble like a lunatic.

Nathan unhooked the cables holding down the wings of the little plane. It looked even smaller up close. April had to duck slightly to walk under the wing.

"If you want to land while we're out today, we can," Nathan said. He kicked one of the airplane's tires. It had three of them in a tripod arrangement, one under the nose and two under the cabin. They were disproportionately big and round. "These are called tundra tires. They're soft and bouncy, and they'll let us land anywhere that's flat and dry enough. No trees this far north, so the whole area is one big airstrip as long as we stay out of swamps and mountains. There's even a cooler of sandwiches I stuck in the back earlier this morning, in case we want to stop and have lunch somewhere."

"Wow, that's full service," April said, grinning. "The big airlines don't even serve lunch anymore."

"At Polar Air, we aim to please." He smiled for the first time. She'd been pretty far gone before, but that
smile
, God. Yeah, she aimed to be pleased, all right. "Just let me know where you want to go. We can stick close to land or go out to sea a little ways, whatever you have in mind."

"It depends, I guess." She wrestled herself back to the business at hand, and got her little backpack out of the Jeep. There wasn't much in it, just a long-lens camera, granola bars, a water bottle, and the tally clicker, a handheld mechanical device that she used for her official bear count. "I was hoping to start along the shore and then move further out. We'll fly a regular pattern so we don't risk counting the same bears twice. I was thinking we could go as far as you're comfortable going today, since it looks like the weather's nice, and fly grids closer to town later on."

"The marine weather forecast said there might be a system moving in from the sea," Nathan said. "It's not likely to come our way, though. I'm at your service today."

Oh, if only,
she thought.

Nathan opened the door of the small plane. "Foot step is here," he said, patting it. "Don't stand on the wing struts; they're what keep the wings from falling off, and wings are important."

This made her giggle. She climbed in, which meant brushing right past him. The warmth of his body was like a rush of energy over her skin.

Like a car, the little plane had two seats in front, and she took the one beside the pilot's seat. Unlike a car, there were controls on both sides, because small planes like this one were designed so that a copilot could easily take over from an inexperienced or ill pilot. April carefully positioned her feet so she wasn't touching the pedals.

"Have you been in a small airplane before?" he asked, leaning in her door.

He was
so close
. He smelled like soap and light male musk, tantalizing, making her want to lean closer ... "Er, yes," she managed to say. "A few times, for my job." Actually it was more like a few
dozen
times—she'd just gotten done with a bear survey over on the islands around Vancouver—but having him so close was making it difficult to think.

Especially when he gave her another of those amazing smiles. "Well, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to give you the safety briefing you've probably heard before. You mind? I'll keep it short."

"Sure!" she said, thinking,
No need to make it short. If you can read the phone book too, that'd be grand. Your voice is great and the more you talk, the less I will. Please don't stop talking. Ever.

"Okay," he said, "so this airplane is a Cessna 172. The door you just got in through is your emergency exit. Flip the handle down and push to open, flip the other way to lock it." He demonstrated on the open door. "Now, if you'll just turn around and lean behind the seat for a minute—" and he repositioned her with a gentle but deft touch of his big hand on her shoulder that left her breathless. "The back seat pockets have your emergency gear. There's a life preserver in each one. The one behind the pilot's seat has a first aid kit, flashlight, and emergency radio. Good?"

"Good," she agreed. Better than he knew, actually. If he could just stay
right where he was
—

But now he was reaching above the door to pull down the lap belt.
Oh Lord, stop tempting me.
When he was this close, she could actually
feel
the low rumble of his deep voice. "You've put one of these on before, right?"

"It'd probably be faster if you did it," she said, with perhaps just the tiniest catch in her throat.

He didn't seem to notice. "Sure." She wondered if she imagined the way
his
breath caught, too, before he leaned across her lap to get the other part of the belt off the floor of the plane.
All the way
across her lap. For a glorious instant, her lap was full of firmly muscled torso. Then he came up with the belt; damn, she'd have been totally fine if it'd slid behind the seat and he'd had to grope around a bit. But no.

The Cessna had the same kind of buckled lap belt as a jet airliner—insert the buckle, pull the strap to tighten—and then the shoulder strap clicked into a rather complicated mechanism next to the lap buckle. He buckled her in with brisk, efficient movements. Now that he was out of her lap, he wasn't touching her more than necessary. Was that a hint of a flush on his face? The blood had certainly rushed to a certain part of April, and it wasn't her face.

"Do you want some stuff from your bag before we stow it?"

"Okay, sure," she managed, and took the bag when he handed it to her. Before she could say anything else to him, he'd slammed her door and flipped the handle from the outside to lock it. April clutched her backpack in her lap with both hands, took a few deep breaths, and got control of herself while Nathan bustled around the plane, doing some sort of final checking. Then she got out her camera and the clicker for bear-counting.

Nathan opened the pilot's door. "Here, gimme the bag." He tucked it under a cargo web in the back of the plane, and then climbed up into his seat. His broad-shouldered bulk seemed to fill the cockpit. Whenever he moved, his arm brushed against hers.

"If you take down the headset," he said, pointing above her side of the windshield, "we can talk to each other in the air. And it'll protect your ears from the noise."

She clamped it over her ears as instructed. Her fingers found the little side-mounted mike and flipped it up in front of her mouth.

"Ready to ride?" he asked. April gave him a thumbs up.

The airplane's engine coughed to life, and they began to turn, pointing down the runway. April liked taking off in little planes. It was more exciting than in a big jet, more like being in a race car—the growing anticipation as they picked up speed, scenery racing past outside the windows, then a weightless drop in her stomach as the wheels left the ground.

This time, though, she kept being distracted by Nathan's big hands steady on the controls, by his sure and deft movements as he trimmed the wing flaps. He was a good pilot, she could tell: steady and controlled, no wasted movements. Competent, strong.

Fucking distracting, was what he was.

She'd be lucky if she managed to count a single bear, the way things were going.

The flight was sweet torment.

Nathan took them up the coast, flying lower than he normally would so they could see everything, and doing his best to pretend this was just another flight with a particularly stunning client. He pointed out the white specks of polar bears, the silver flashes of seals. Once they saw a group of whales, their long gray backs like tiny islands in the shimmering water. Another time, he dipped the plane's wing so she could look at a little group of caribou with new spring calves, sunning themselves on a patch of red and gold tundra.

The whole time he was so acutely aware of her presence that he could have said, even without looking, exactly what every part of her was doing. Even with the headphones on, even over the roar of the plane's engine, each tiny rustle told him when she'd moved her arm, turned her head.

She's a customer,
he told himself firmly.
You can't run a business if you go scaring off customers before they can pay you. What's the matter with you? You've never done anything like this before.

His bear didn't understand
customer
. His bear only understood
mate
, and the glorious smell of her, the sheer proximity of her was filling him with passionate, aching need.

"Oh look!" April cried in delight, straining up in her seat and giving him more of a view than he needed (but considerably less than he wanted) of her round behind. "There's two bears down there, a mother and cub!"

And there's one bear in here, who desperately wants to slide his hands down your pants.

"You know, they only weigh about a pound when they're born," April informed him earnestly through the headset. She was still plastered to the window. Nathan obligingly circled so she could have another look, while she clicked away with the camera. "Twins are most common. I wonder if this mom had another baby that died, or if this one was a singlet? No way to know, I guess."

"Nope," he said, only slightly strained.

"Can we go a little farther out? Those open leads of water between the ice floes look like perfect seal-hunting grounds. I would expect to find more bears there."

She had a good eye for bear habitat. Nathan wouldn't have minded lounging on those ice floes himself, if he didn't have a plane to fly. Unfortunately, thinking bearish thoughts just made it harder to contain his bear, and their shared lust for the woman next to him.

They skimmed low over the white ice and open stretches of dark-gray water, finding a few more bears. April's excitement was intoxicating, rather like April herself.

But there was definitely a storm front coming in from the northeast, moving a lot faster than the forecasters had predicted. Nathan tried to keep an eye on the dark, gathering clouds. The forecast had said it was supposed to sweep by the shore without affecting them much, but he knew from experience how erratic the weather could be alongside the ocean. Forecasts tended not to be worth the paper they were printed on. And he didn't like how fast those dark clouds had covered the horizon. A little heavy weather wouldn't hurt the plane, but there were often unpredictable winds in a storm like this, and they were flying awfully low.

"Hey, I'm gonna take her inland a bit, okay?"

"Okay," April said. She didn't sound worried. Then again, she wasn't a pilot and didn't have any reason to pay attention to the dark line of storm clouds bearing down on them.

He turned the plane landward. They'd come out pretty far, and by the time they approached the dark line of the shore, erratic gusts of wind from the leading edge of the storm had begun to buffet the plane.

It was rough and broken country here. Bluffs lined the shore, notched with the craggy teeth of boulder-strewn river mouths. Nowhere to put down safely. Nathan turned the plane and flew along the coast.

A curtain of rain swept across them, spattering the windshield. Another gust of wind made the plane jump and then drop. Nathan really didn't like these crosswinds at this low altitude; it would be too easy for the light, responsive little plane to hit one of those air pockets and jump straight into the cliffs. He tried climbing a bit, but the air was even rougher higher up.

"Sorry about this," he said, glancing April's way.

"It's okay. I don't get airsick, and I'm a pretty experienced traveler." Despite the brave words, she was clutching her camera in a white-knuckled grip. "Is this, uh, normal?"

"It's a little rougher than I was expecting." Which was an understatement; the plane was really getting slammed now, and it was so dark outside the cockpit that he was having trouble seeing the ground. A little plane like this didn't have the full range of instruments that a big jet did. Aside from a handful of basic instruments like a speedometer and altimeter, they were made for visual flying only, which was a really big problem when he couldn't see.

"Hey, I'm gonna start looking for a place to land 'til the worst of this is over, okay?"

"I thought you said we could land anywhere." April didn't seem to be panicking, which was good, but she'd tucked the camera between her knees so she could hang onto her seat with both hands.

"Anywhere flat and smooth. This is pretty rough country down there. I'm gonna try to find a gravel bar or a low stretch of meadow that doesn't have too many hummocks. If a tire snags or goes into a hole, it could flip us."

Though flying into a cliff would be a whole lot worse.

They swept across a river mouth, and Nathan turned the plane and flew inland, following the river's winding course. Rivers were often good places for finding flat sandbars to land on. Unfortunately, fog and rain obscured his view to the point that he wasn't sure if he'd know a landing spot if they
did
fly over one. Maybe he'd be better off risking it on the open tundra—

A warning beeped on the instrument panel. "What's that mean?" April asked.
Now
she sounded like she was starting to panic. Nathan didn't blame her. He'd be panicking himself if he could afford the luxury of it.

"Our wings are icing up," Nathan said grimly. More warning lights were coming on. Oh, this wasn't good.

"Ice? How? It's
June
!"

"And we're above the Arctic Circle." He fought with the controls. The plane responded sluggishly, like trying to steer a barge. "It's making our wings heavy, and the flaps aren't responding correctly. April, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to put her down
now
."

"Okay," April said in a tiny voice.

They were pretty far inland now, and the bluffs along the river had flattened into to gently rolling tundra. He didn't have the option of picking and choosing, so between two sweeping gray curtains of rain, he picked a direction that looked flattish and went for it.

"You've seen people do the crash position on TV, right?" he said to April, pointing the plane as straight as he could. "Bend over and cover your head with your arms."

"Does it help?" she asked, a bit muffled as she obeyed.

"It'll protect your head and neck." In all honesty he had no idea if it did or not, but at least she wouldn't be able to watch the ground come up to hit them, which had to help psychologically at least.

In the dim light and the rain, he could barely see the ground until they were right on top of it, and they hit before he was ready. With a bone-jarring shock, the little plane bounced, skipped into the air and came back down with a crunch that had to be some of the landing gear ripping off. He didn't dare look to see how April was taking it. The plane slewed wildly to the side, and his powerful shoulder muscles knotted as he struggled to keep it from going over. For a minute he thought he had it, but then a wing snagged on brush, and there was a tremendous wrench as the plane flipped to the side. It rolled, tumbled, and finally fetched up slanting at an angle, tipped onto one broken wing with its nose buried in the brush.