by Slade James

Making sure other men have a good time is my business, even if it means suppressing my own desires. It’s opening weekend at my clothing-optional campground, guests are starting to arrive, and I’ve got a pool party and a few hundred peoples’ vacations to save while battling Mother Nature’s tantrums.

The last thing I need is a temporary employee who can’t even put up a tent.

Luke Cody’s not my type. He’s too young, too pretty, and too much like my late partner. Another flaky musician? No thanks.

But when a storm blows down his campsite, I can’t just leave him outside and soaked to the bone. Now he’s staying in my cabin, sleeping in my bed, and worst of all, he’s completely ignoring the proverbial sign over my head that says Grumpy Bear: Do Not Approach.

I’m not quite as immune to his charms as I want him to believe, but he’ll only be here for a few days.

Nothing’s going to happen…

Grumpy Bear is a boss/employee, grumpy/sunshine romance set at a gay campground full of bears. (Not shifters; the other kind of bears.) It’s the first full-length book in the Bear Camp series and can be read as a standalone.

All night, watching him dance, watching other men watching him dance, seeing guys touch him and flirt with him, I’d been trying to think of what I would say to him before I broke my rules about hooking up with an employee.

I hadn’t come up with a single thing.

And if he started babbling now to fill the silence…

With an impulse that sounded in my head like a plain old what the fuck, I took away the option for either of us to talk at all.

Talking did not need to happen.

With a single step, my mouth covered his, swallowing whatever he was going to say.

His lips were soft, and the kiss itself was unbelievably gentle, in spite of its intensity. The longer it went on, the faster we moved, the hungrier we became… Salt and cinnamon and whiskey. The stubble of trimmed beard hairs around the mouth. Hard, noisy breaths through the nose…

Still so fucking sweetly soft.

How had we ever not been doing this?

How were we only doing this and not everything?

And why were we still holding water bottles? “Give me that.” I took his from him and chucked them both in the general direction of my kitchenette. “And get out of this ridiculous shirt.”

He chuckled as I dragged it off him with both hands and tossed it over the sofa arm. I stood back to take in the sight of him, backlit by the lamp beside the bed, the escaped hair from his ponytail framing him in a golden halo. He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, conscious of my bold scrutiny.

He stared at me, silently pleading with me like he had lost all ability to communicate outside of telepathy.

I had my own shirt off with a swipe, and I unbuttoned my shorts and let them fall to the floor.

Luke’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Everything,” I demanded. “Now.”

This wasn’t a strip tease. We’d already been naked together in the shower, here after the storm in this very spot, at the swimming hole… I’d already seen him. I needed to get back to that state as quickly as possible.

One summer, not so long ago, Slade James started writing gay romance, turned fifty, and met the love his life. (In that order, in a matter of weeks!)

Slade and his partner, Stevie, live in a magical land in the American Southeast where three states converge. They call it “GeorBamaSee.” They can be found playing disc golf in the parks, hiking in the mountains, kayaking in the creeks, and living in their own real life romance.

Have a chance to won an ecopy of Grumpy Bear!