Page 17 of Bear's Rejected Love

“Ruin is a pretty strong word. I don’t see anything ruined about your life except for your butthole, which must be mighty stretched to accommodate the size of your head up it.”

He had to make her see. He had to just… get away. He had to keep her away. He’d always had a sense of dread about the future and that had been proved to him to be a very practical feeling. He left his basket and u-turned hard, nearly slipping again on the boggy moss. He stalked away.

“Roan! Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To ask Sam to do what should have been done before I ever left the first time. We’re getting un-mated. Today.”

She flew at him, but she didn’t beat his back or wrap her arms around him to try and stop him. She raced around him and stood in his path. She wasn’t into standing her ground and hurling a bunch of useless words at him, she knew that he wouldn’t listen to them anyway. She did the one thing that she knew would get his attention. She charged at him, which was a dangerous thing to do to a shifter, but he knew she’d never harm him. Everything inside of him knew that. He didn’t even have the slightest urge to let loose one of his many damn forms.

Her hands were velvet against his rough, stubbled cheeks. She didn’t have to tug him down or convince him with force. He was already there, joining her in the worst idea in the world.

Again.

There was something about this woman that could make him lose control completely when no one else and nothing else could. She was dangerous, a bad idea, the worst kind of wrong, and what he desired most in the entire world. His lips moved over hers and he kissed her like there hadn’t been a single day when he’d been spared her haunting him, because he hadn’t.

Not one single day in a decade and a half.

Chapter 7

Tabitha

“I’m sorry.” It sounded like he whispered those words against her lips before he kissed her deeply. It didn’t start out tame and progress from there. The kiss was wild right from the start. She grasped his face, holding onto him like they were two seconds away from becoming completely unhinged. Maybe the whole thing was unhinged. Maybe her coming to Greenacre at all, finding him in the woods, and doing this now was the crazy part.

She loved that he tasted exactly like she remembered. Like potent man and fresh air. He felt like a pillar of strength and raw muscle while she trembled against him.

She licked along his lower lip, craving an entrance. She wanted him to let her in.

He didn’t.

He grasped her arms and made sure she stayed rooted in place when he took a step back. He was still holding onto her. They were joined, but there was a universe between their bodies.

They’d always been fire. They were still fire. But sometimes fire didn’t purify. Sometimes it burned and consumed and destroyed.

Roan dropped his hands. They weren’t trembling, but she was. She was shaking all over, right down to her toes. The utter determination was still there in his eyes. Just to clarify it for her, he walked away, grabbed his basket, and started through the woods.

She snatched up her mushrooms and herbs and chased after him. He wasn’t running, but his stride was so long and fast that she had to run and leap and twist and dodge through the trees to reach him again.

“What are you doing?” she panted. She was out of breath from that kiss and the way it transcended time and space and the borders of possibility and reality. He didn’t stop or even slow down. “Roan? Where are you going?”

“To Sam,” he grunted. “To ask to be un-mated.”

She choked back a noise of outrage. She hadn’t expected that kiss to change his mind. She hadn’t expected the kiss at all, to be honest. “It’s not a problem for me, but it must be a huge issue for you.” She doubled down, charging in front of him. Her basket swung so wildly she couldn’t believe she still had anything left in it. “Everyone knows that people get the surliest when they’re hurting inside, so it must be a big deal to you.”

For a second, he truly did look wounded and vulnerable. “Tabitha, stop. I can’t.”

“I’m not asking you to be real mates again. That hadn’t even crossed my mind as a possibility. But un-mating us? Why would you do that? It’s only going to hurt Corbin now.”

“I can’t do this. I should never have done it in the first place.”

“That’s the thing, you always could. There was nothing stopping you. No one’s opinion, not even my family’s. We were mated in a sacred ceremony, by our clan law. Everyone approved.”

“I went along with it because you came to me, and you told me that it would be okay. You told me that it didn’t have to be anything. That we could just remain as we were. Friends.”

She wasn’t going to feel guilty now because it hadn’t worked out like that. “I did. I did say that, and I meant it.” She truly had. She couldn’t have foreseen that Roan would ever change his mind. She could have kept her longing for him a secret forever. Keeping him safe mattered so much more to her. “I wanted to protect you from more pain. I knew that you couldn’t take it. That anything more would break you. I knew you were tough and strong, but underneath, you were so fragile. I wanted to keep you safe. I thought that when it happened, we were both ready. I thought that the only thing we had to change was our minds. I was never trying to trick you.”

She felt hot, her heart racing.

“I know you weren’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

---