Bears & Beauties - Complete by Terra Wolf, Mercy May Page A

I had to leave to take my exam, and offered him leeway to whatever he wanted in the kitchen. Then I jotted down that his shorts were in the dryer, and stuck the note on the door so he’d see it.
    With a sigh, I gathered my backpack and sneaked out of the apartment, doing my best to avoid waking him up. Even if he was a shifter, the man still needed rest. Injuries like the ones he had last night were still pretty serious, it didn’t matter what branch of humanity you came from.
    I made my way to the bus stop, my brain still reeling from the realization of who he was. What were the odds that I’d find Kalvin Dare, ultra-rich entrepreneur extraordinaire, bleeding in an alleyway? Slim to none, I’d bet. If I were a betting girl, that is.
    It wasn’t that I’d found him, though, that most surprised me. No, what most surprised me was how human he had seemed. In fact, he’d come across as incredibly pleasant. It was a far cry from how the tabloids and media portrayed him. To the world, Kalvin Dare was a closed-off and often cold tech mogul. He’d built a tech empire that had grown to rival the likes of Apple in virtually no time at all, and in doing so had created some pretty bitter enemies in the corporate world. Kalvin Dare, to the world, was a cold, calculating, and sometimes conniving businessman. Period.
    Except, that wasn’t all he was. At least as far as I could tell, he was just like any other person. If you ignore the shifting into a bear and engaging in some kind of weird underground fight club thing, I mean.
    More than that, I kept coming back to the fact that Kalvin seemed to, I dunno, like me.
    The way he’d kept looking at me last night, with a softness and desire in his eyes, had taken me off guard. And there was no way that he could hide the massive erection under the towel I’d given him. The thought that I’d done that to him had left me more than flustered. It was all I could do to fall asleep without my hand drifting to my own wetness while my mind centered on what was under that towel. If I had even half the courage as my inner goddess seemed to think I had, I’d have either climbed onto the couch with Kalvin, or dragged him back to my bedroom.
    Maybe if he’s still there tonight…
    I stopped myself. I was his caretaker. For all intents and purposes, I was his doctor and he was my patient. Even if I wasn’t licensed to practice medicine yet, I could at least practice basic ethics. And besides, what are the chances that the erection was for me? The guy was a bear for crying out loud. And one who had just survived a near-death experience, no less. His bones were probably jumping at the thought of staying alive, much less getting to know the random curvy girl who’d happened upon him.
    I did my best to shake off the thoughts as I continued toward the bus stop. When I finally reached the stop, I took a seat on the bench and waited, all the time trying to focus on anything but the naked man in my apartment.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Kalvin
     
    My heart sank when I read Megan’s note. I knew that she would be leaving early in the morning, but that didn’t stop me from feeling dejected when I noticed that she was gone. It had been kind of her to start a pot of coffee and leave without waking me, but part of me wished she’d been a tad ruder. The rest of me wished that I wasn’t such a heavy sleeper. The thought of waking up and seeing her face first thing in the morning filled me with a warmth that I didn’t quite recognize, but the reality of waking up with her gone left me feeling lost and more than a little sad. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing her when I woke up.
    Doing my best to get around the overbearing sense of dismay, I clambered around the apartment in search of the washing machine and dryer. I found them stacked in a tiny closet in the rear of the apartment, retrieved my shorts, and pulled them on. Still half-naked, I stumbled my way