Page 1 of She's Mine

Chapter One

Bear

“It should be an easy fix, sis.”

“Oh thank God! I was hoping it wouldn’t cause you too much trouble.” I wipe my hands on the towel she hands me. “I didn’t want to say anything to the super about it. To be honest…the guy kind of creeps me out.”

“Creeps you out?” I don’t like the sound of that. “Creeps you out how?”

“He just…it’s not really creepy, it’s more…you know what…I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“Well, you should talk about this with me. I’m the best person to talk about this with.”

“Calm down there, Rambo.” She leans up and kisses me on the cheek.

I’ve been out of the military for six years but my baby sister still calls me Rambo every time she thinks I’m getting too protective.

“Look if you need help with this guy you just let me know. I’m serious Kat. You can always come stay with me even.”

“Thanks B, but I wouldn’t feel right leaving Bea here by herself.”

“Bea?”

I take a moment to say the name over and over again inside my head but all I can come up with is a cute little honey bee buzzing around a flower. “I don’t think I’ve ever met her, have I?”

“No. You haven’t. I met her last semester and we decided we didn’t want to people by living in a dorm and found this place.”

I knew Kat was moving in with some other girl but I didn’t realize I had never met the girl before. I take a deep breath to try to settle my horny ass down. I’m too damned old to be lusting after a baby, which if she’s as old as my sister she most definitely is a baby.

“And where is this Bea now?”

“At work. We work together too.”

I give her a serious nod and run my hands over my chin like our dad does when he’s trying to figure some deep shit out. “So…do you both work at…The Hive?”

“Oh God, that was awful. The worst dad joke ever, Bear.”

I throw my head back and laugh long and loud. I love making my sweet baby sister cringe and I can’t wait to embarrass her in front of her new friend. It’s a requirement.

I start packing the tools away and try to focus on what I need to do to get this job done for Kat. “Okay, I’ll grab those parts and come back to install them and the shower should start working as good as new.”

“Thanks, Bear. I'm not sure how I’m ever going to repay you.”

“I take payment in the form of steak, chops, or any other good food that isn’t a fucking salad.”

She giggles and I wait for her to walk me out. Once the door is closed, my brain starts working right again. The scent that haunted me throughout my sister’s apartment is gone and I feel my body calm down. For the past two and a half hours I’ve had a semi-chub due to the mysterious scent that caught me by the balls from the moment I walked into the apartment. I kept getting hints of it in every room until I was worried I was going to have to track the scent down and make myself at home wherever I found it.

It has to be her roommate, doesn’t it? This Bea. Bea. Maybe her mom was a hippie too and that’s why she is called Bea. Or maybe it’s short for something.

I pull my mind away from that line of questioning. I don’t need to figure out why the girl is called Bea. I don’t need to find out why she smells so god damned good. All that lies that way is insanity and heartache. I’m too damned old to go tripping over some young girl’s panties and getting myself ensnared in what will certainly end in a mess. I’m too damned smart to touch one of my sister’s friends too.

Not only would Kat have my balls but so would our mother. She might be a nature-loving, free-thinking hippie but she’d still have my nuts if she found out I was fooling around with what amounted to nothing more than a kid. Eighteen. What the hell would I do with an eighteen-year-old girl?

When I was eighteen I enlisted and was getting the shit kicked out of me by the United States Army. The shit I’ve seen would haunt any man and I damned sure don’t want to put all that on a fucking kid. I’m not fucking insane or cruel.

It’s best I put that scent out of my head and focus on other things that need my attention. Like work, fixing my sister’s bad plumbing, and maybe finding someone I can release all this pent-up tension I apparently have inside of me. Way too much shit to give into the temptation to find out what kind of woman would be able to haunt a room when she isn’t even trying.

Chapter Two

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