Page 61 of More Than I Can Bear

“So the snooty bitch didn’t like your mate’s work?” Bjorn said, peering at my phone. “Her loss is my gain. I could sell the shit out of these shoes. Cress!” Cressida always seemed to wear this weird combination of gothic and receptionist clothing, clicking her way over on perilously high patent leather heels. “Whaddya think?”

“This is that chick that was on the news,” Cress said, leaning over to look at the photos. “I told you we should get her work in here. Shitty way to get that exposure, but this girl’s about to blow up. Look at the views on her posts.”

I didn’t know shit about social media, so although the numbers of people who had seen Freya’s work seemed impressive, Cressida’s validation of that helped make me feel a little better. If something good could come from this…

“Maybe we could look at an exclusive arrangement?” she asked me.

“No exclusivity, not without consultation with a lawyer,” I said definitely. “She’s already got her own e-commerce business—”

“One we could boost the reach of, exponentially,” Cressida countered. “We’re heading to that big tattoo show in Sydney within a week. People coming from all over the world to see that. We could feature Freya’s work—”

“And take a cut of sales, the details hammered out before the pieces go anywhere,” I said. “But no exclusivity. She’s building something for herself—”

“And you want to see that grow.” Cress smiled slowly. She was born into a shifter family, so she knew the drill. “Yeah, alright, but we need to pull something together fast. Your girl is gonna want to make new pieces for what we’d have in mind, but that’s something she can work on down the track. The moment is now. People are curious about Freya.”

“And I don’t want to add to that,” I replied firmly.

“So we make it about the work, not the woman,” Bjorn replied. “That’s what you want, right?”

“I want what she wants.” My gaze dropped then, watching the slow slide of condensation down one side of my can. “And she wants to do more with her artwork.” I dared a glance up then. “And if that’s what my mate wants—”

“You’ll do whatever the fuck it takes to make that happen,” Bjorn said with a nod, as the studio phone rang. Cressida clicked away to answer it, her voice a low hum in the background. “We can help you out. You know we would anyway, but Freya is good. Her designs, they’ve got life, y’know? Our clients are into that; something real, something genuine.”

But before we could talk further, Cressida returned with a frown on her face.

“B, that was your brother’s girl.”

Jesse wasn’t Bjorn’s actual blood brother, but his parents had adopted the kid when they were young. He knew about bear shifters, about fated mates, because his birth parents were part of the community, if not especially good caregivers. Jesse was also a bit of a dick. But Maddie, Jesse’s girl? She was a whole other ball of wax. Gorgeous, curvy as fuck and, more importantly, Bjorn’s fated mate.

The big man seemed to transform, all of the laidback cool fading away to reveal the bear pushing hard under the surface.

“What the fuck is going on with Maddie?”

“She said she’s got car trouble and when she called your dick brother, he left her stranded by the side of the road. Said to call you,” she replied.

“Where?”

Bjorn’s voice was more bear than man, his eyes blazing bright blue. Claws dug into his rough hewn wooden table, digging deeper as she gave him the address. When he got to his feet, I was there with him.

“Need some help?”

Other shifters’ mates were precious to the whole community and he knew I’d ride to the rescue, if that’s what he needed, even if Maddie was somehow oblivious to the connection she had with Bjorn and his sleuthmates. A girl didn’t have to accept a bear sleuth to have value to our people.

“We’ve got this,” he told me, grabbing out his phone. “Bring your girl around early next week when shit’s slow, but… I gotta go.”

He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of his chair, barking out instructions down the phone line as he left.

But that desperation, that need? I understood it all too well when I stepped into my apartment.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see as I walked in, didn’t even know if I’d get a warm welcome, but the sight of River kissing our mate out of her mind on my kitchen bench wasn’t one of them. My dick punched hard against my zipper, making clear what my body thought about this.

“So that’s how you kept our mate distracted?” I said, stalking closer, Freya’s sweet scent heady in the air. I licked my own lips as I stared at hers. I hadn’t had to rescue her from the side of the road, but I had something to offer her now, something she wanted, which was good, because she had something I fucking needed too.

Chapter31

River

Kaine and I had talked about how this might go, when we first started the sleuth. At that stage we were just out of school, sure we’d find our mate in the next year or so. We’d talked long into the night about what she’d be like, how she’d be perfect for each one of us, and sometimes, when it was dark, about this. We’d confessed our… predilections, what we wanted to happen, what we wanted to do to our mate to drive her out of her mind with pleasure. And as my mouth hovered over Freya’s, I was reminded of one thing Kaine had mentioned.

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