Bought by the Billionbear(10)

He bent to kiss her. “Good morning.”

Raina smiled up at him. “Good morning. I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your office. Lucky it was Friday night, or all your employees would have walked in on us.”

Owen laughed. “No, they wouldn’t have. This is my private office— no one else has the code.”

Raina sat up and looked around. “This isn’t the usual sort of office. I didn’t really notice last night— I had better things to look at— but it’s more like an apartment.”

“It is an apartment, really. I call it my office because it’s where I come to invent things. I don’t work well in a corporate type office, with desks and chairs on wheels and fluorescent lights. It makes me feel caged. Like I’m in a zoo.”

“A zoo for CEOs,” Raina said with a chuckle. “I don’t think that’d be a good tourist attraction.”

As she looked around his office, Owen saw it with her eyes, as if he was looking at it for the first time. There was the sofa, and the door to the bathroom. There was a small but well-stocked kitchen, and a table and chairs. The rest of the studio apartment was Owen’s workshop, with a large worktable and cabinets full of neatly organized tools, mechanical parts, and half-made inventions.

“What do you invent?” Raina asked curiously.

“Gadgets. Tech toys. Sometimes I make things just to amuse myself.” He lifted her in his arms, enjoying her cute little squeak of surprise and the warmth and softness of her body against his. “If you take a shower with me, I’ll show you one.”

She lay back, smiling, as he carried her into the bathroom. “I love that your office has a shower.”

“It doesn’t just have a shower. It has a shower with a view.”

Owen turned as he stepped into the shower, tilting Raina so she got a good view of the window overlooking the city. It was all spread out before them, buildings like Lego constructions, the gray ribbons of freeways and overpasses, and the green woods beyond.

“I bet it’s even prettier at night,” Raina said as he set her down. “All lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“It is, but then you can’t see the forest. I get my ideas hiking in the woods, and then I come here and build them.”

Raina glances around the shower. “So where’s the inventions? Don’t tell me you invented soap.”

Owen chuckled. “No. How hot do you like your shower? And do you like a hard spray, or a gentle one?”

“Pretty hot,” Raina said. “And I like it gentle, but heavy, if that makes sense. Big drops.”

“I know what you mean.” Loudly and precisely, he said, “Heat level nine. Force level three. Size level ten. Shower on.”

The shower instantly turned on, drenching them in huge but gentle drops of hot water. He loved hearing Raina’s delighted laugh.

“How is it?”

“Perfect! Well, maybe a little cooler.”

“Heat level eight,” Owen said. The water instantly cooled.

“That’s amazing,” Raina said. “When is this going to hit the markets?”

“A couple years, probably. We’re still tinkering with it. So you’re the test audience. What do you think?”

“I don’t know how I’ve lived all these years without a voice-activated shower,” Raina said.


Owen laughed, then squeezed out some shampoo to wash Raina’s hair. As he began to work it in, massaging her scalp, she said, “No voice-activated shampoo?”

“That’ll be in 2.0,” Owen said.

Raina leaned back against him with a contented sigh. Owen luxuriated in having her soft curves pressed to his body. He was overwhelmed with happiness. He’d found his mate!

Once they got to know each other better, he’d find the exact right moment to explain to her that he was a bear shifter. He’d make sure she felt completely safe and wouldn’t be scared by the revelation, even if she was shocked. And then she’d know everything important about him, and they could get on with building a life together.

He wondered when he should tell her. He didn’t want to wait too long, but he didn’t want to do it too soon, either. Maybe in two weeks.

They finished showering, dried off, and got dressed. Owen took Raina into the kitchen, where he made her pancakes, bacon, and coffee.

“You cook,” Raina said.

“Sure,” Owen replied. “I mean, sort of. I can’t do anything complicated.”

“How did you learn? From your family’s cook?”

“Raina, I wasn’t always a billionaire. My family never had a cook. My—” He hastily searched for something other than the truth, which was that he’d grown up with a bear clan in the wilderness. As a cub, he’d happily tagged along to dig beehives out of hollow trees and slap live salmon out of rivers. “My parents hunted and fished. We did our own cooking. I’ve only been a billionaire for about five years.”

“Oh, only that long,” Raina said teasingly.

“It still feels strange,” he confessed. “I didn’t start making gadgets in the hope of becoming a billionaire. That just sort of… happened. I’ve just always liked working with my hands.”

That, and that he’d met every young, single female bear in America, plus a bunch of young, single female wolves and coyotes and tigers and lions and eagles and so forth, and not one of them was his mate. He’d finally come to the big city in the hope that he’d run into his mate by chance, among all those people who lived there. And he had!