Alpha Rancher Bear: BWWM Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 3) (11 page)

When she reached up to wrap her arms around him, a jolt of pain from her wrist made her flinch. Alec stopped and pulled back.

"It's nothing," she said, breathless for want of him. Already her lips felt cold without his warm mouth on them.

"It's not nothing. You're in pain." He took her arm gently and examined the mottled ring of bruises, dark purplish against her brown skin. "You don't heal like I do."

"We can worry about it later—"

"Charmian." He kissed her lightly and looked down at her with concerned blue eyes. "Let me take care of you now."

With that, he laid her back on the blankets, and got up. Charmian rolled over and propped her head on her good hand, watching him walk across the floor. He was limping slightly, but not too bad. It seemed that his leg was healing along with the rest of him.

What I wouldn't give to have that ability.
Now that she was no longer distracted, her wrist was throbbing.

Alec brought the duffle over to the fire and got out the medical stuff. "Here," he said, handing her a bottle of Tylenol and a tin cup of water. "Take a couple of these."

"Thank you, doctor," she said, sitting up.

"Hey, I have extensive cattle-doctoring experience. You got bandages in here, anything like that?"

"There's some gauze and an Ace bandage."

He found the Ace bandage and sat cross-legged next to her on the blankets. Smiling a little, Charmian rested her head on his leg and held out her arm. He took it in a firm but gentle hand, and began to wrap it.

"Tell me if this is too tight, okay?"

"I'll let you know."

She was still wet for him, her body thrumming each time he touched her; she was acutely aware of the solidity of his thigh under her head, and the musky, masculine smell of him. But being taken care of like this felt so good, in a different way, that she didn't want it to stop.

When
was
the last time she'd let someone do something like this for her? She was always the one who took care of other people. She had forgotten how nice it was to lie back and let someone else do things for her instead.

Alec finished wrapping her wrist, securing the bandage around her palm and tucking in the ends. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm above the bandage, a light brush of his lips on her skin. "How does it feel?"

"It feels good," she sighed. She'd closed her eyes; now she opened them and looked up at him. "Everything feels good."

Alec smiled and touched his lips to her palm again. This time, there was a quick wet flick of his tongue. "I can smell that you want me."

This stirred a primal quiver of desire through the pit of her belly. "I do," she said huskily.

"Good." He kissed each of her fingers in turn, then drew two of them into his mouth. The sudden, unexpected wetness made her gasp.

Alec pulled her fingers out of his mouth with a wet pop. "Anything else need to be kissed better?" he asked in a low, rough voice.

"I can think of a few places," she managed.

It was, in part, the awareness of their narrow escape that lit a fire in her. Since time out of mind, men and women had affirmed life with sex. It meant
You are alive, you survived, you are here and safe.

You are loved.

And she had never felt so cherished as she did now, with Alec kissing his way down the soft inside skin of her arm. She stretched her other arm up to caress his bare chest, and he caught that hand as well, kissing the palm and nibbling at the fingers.

"Not bossy today?" he murmured, and kissed the back of her hand, then her wrist. "No orders for me? Nothing I'm doing wrong you need to point out?"

"Just keep doing what you're doing, and don't stop."

"Yes, ma'am," he murmured.

He grasped her gently and pulled her into his lap. Now her body was braced against his broad chest, and her hips were pressed into his groin. His erection ground into her bare ass, but his hands were slow and gentle as he caressed her breasts, thumbing her turgid nipples. Her hips jerked involuntarily. Alec's hand slid across her stomach to brush lightly, teasingly, across her damp mound.

It was warm enough now in front of the stove that she was entirely comfortable. Or maybe it was just the heat of his body and her own arousal, driving away the winter chill. As he curled his fingers over her mound, working them between her folds, she arched back against him. With his other hand, he continued to play with her breasts, rubbing and working her nipples.

"Alec," she murmured. She turned her head to the side, rubbing her cheek against the coarse down of hair on his chest. Her skin was so sensitive now that every touch was heightened. The fire's warmth, the rasp of his hair against her softer skin, and of course the careful touches to the quivering nub of her clit.

"Just can't stop looking at you," Alec whispered into her hair. "So gorgeous. The way the firelight brings out the gold and red in your beautiful skin. Your perfect breasts." His finger dipped into her dripping entrance, making her hips rise. "Everything about you is incredible."

Her breath stuttered as he pushed one finger inside her, joined by a second. It made her think of what it had felt like, their first time, to have him fill her. The sensation of his erection pressing against her was sweet torment, making her hips writhe.

"I want you in me," she gasped.

Alec's chest vibrated with a low groan of arousal. He flipped her over, and she was putty in his hands, loose and wobbly with the heat thrumming in her. Lying on the blankets, she looked up at him, glorious and muscular in the warm light of the fire and the candles. He skinned out of his jeans and looked down at her, teeth flashing in a fierce grin.

"My mate," he murmured, and something in her chest clenched with ecstasy so great it was almost pain. It was more than "girlfriend", more even than "wife"; she understood that instinctively. What the great bears of the mountains gave, they would never take back.

"Charmian ..." Alec knelt over her, his erection jutting between his legs, but made no move to enter her, leaving her shivering with desire. "I want to claim you, as my kind do. Once I put my mark on you, every other shifter will see it and know you're mine. But I won't do it without your permission."

His
. Once, she would have recoiled from allowing any man to claim her as his own. But Alec was different.

And as she looked up at him, into the blue eyes melting for love of her, she understood suddenly that it was not possessiveness that she saw, but vulnerability. Putting his claiming mark on her would also make him
hers
. He needed her as much as she needed him. For Alec to put aside his pride and accept that ... It was not a prison he offered to her, but an open door, leading to their shared future.

And neither of them could walk through it if both of them weren't willing.

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I want it."

She raised her hips, inviting him in.

Alec pushed into her waiting heat and groaned with pleasure. Charmian threw her head back as he filled her. Anticipation only made it more glorious; she was fully aroused, her sensitive tissues at the height of their receptivity. With each thrust, he drove her higher. She hadn't known it was possible to feel this good.

His thrusts matched her rhythm, as if he could sense what she needed—could make it faster or slower, deeper or shallower depending on her desire in the moment. And maybe he
could
sense it. She didn't know how strong their bond was.

Stronger, in a moment.

But she wasn't afraid. Whatever it meant for Alec to claim her as his mate, all she knew was that she had never wanted anything more.

His breath came in shallow gasps, and sweat glistened on his body in the firelight. Charmian's back arched. She was incoherent with the rush of pleasure filling her. She could feel it mounting in her, could feel herself approaching the point of no return—

Alec's head dipped forward and his teeth closed on her neck.

In her current state, she felt no pain, nothing but a rush of orgasmic pleasure so intense that it brought her actual orgasm crashing down on her. Alec jerked, rising to his own climax while his teeth remained latched into the soft skin at the top of her shoulder.

A wordless cry was torn from her throat, a primal expression of pleasure.

Alec relaxed atop her, and released the bite. She felt him let go with a shiver of mingled pain and pleasure. It didn't hurt a lot; it was more like the pleasant burn during hard sex. He settled onto his elbow, with his softening cock still buried in her, and looked down at her with a gentle, warm smile.

"Is that it?" she asked, raising a hand to touch her neck.

Alec huffed a mock-offended laugh. "Is that it? I don't know what that says about my technique."

"No, the sex was amazing. It felt better than I would have believed possible. I was just curious if there's more to be done to ... to bond us."

"Nope," he said, smiling gently. "That's all there is to it."

Charmian felt cautiously around the bitten area. She'd treated human bites in her capacity as a medical professional, but this felt nothing at all like a human bite. It had broken the skin—she felt the stickiness of blood—but, impossibly, seemed to already be healing, exactly as if she were a shifter herself.

"Er, I guess now is really not the time to ask, but this isn't going to turn me into a bear or something, is it?"

This made him laugh—and not one of his quiet little breathy laughs, but a true, full belly laugh. She'd never seen him laugh like that, had never even imagined that he could. She wondered if anyone had ever seen him do that before.

"What, like a movie werewolf?" he asked when he could speak. "No, no. It doesn't work like that. You have to be born a shifter. It's the only way."

"Mmm. Well, that's a relief. I'd make a pretty scrawny bear."

Alec laughed softly and touched the side of her face. "You'd make an absolutely perfect bear."

"You charmer."

She fingered the claiming mark again. It was sensitive to the touch in an oddly pleasant way. She imagined Alec touching it during sex, licking and mouthing at it, and shivered, her nipples stiffening.

"What, ready to go again?" he asked, nuzzling at her forehead. "My insatiable little she-bear."

"Really, I wouldn't call me that if you want to—" Charmian raised her head, almost bashing her forehead on his chin. "Do you smell something burning?"

Alec scrambled to his feet and rescued the pan of soup from the back of the stove. "I'd say it's definitely hot."

Most of the contents of the pan were salvageable. Charmian found some plastic bowls on a shelf, and they ate sitting by the stove, naked with blankets wrapped around them. It was finally warm enough to be comfortable, although the cabin remained chilly around the edges, some of the winter's cold lurking in the corners and around the door.

"We definitely owe the owners of this place," she said, chasing the last of her soup around the bowl with her spoon.

"I know. I'll leave a note and some cash, but I'm also planning to come back pretty soon with my clan brothers. We'll fix the door and cut some more wood. I also noticed the pump squeaks. We can fix that too, while we're at it, and maybe that loose board in front of the door."

Charmian smiled. "You like fixing things, don't you?"

"Heck, a big part of running a ranch is fixing things."

"In a way, I guess that's what I do, too. Except mostly I just let my patients do what feels natural to them. In most cases, their bodies know what to do. I'm there to fix it if things go wrong." She frowned. "I hope Mary Lambert and her baby are okay."

Alec reached out to press his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. "I'm sure she is. Tough farm lady, right?"

"Right." And there wasn't anything she could do about it if not.

"In the meantime, all we can really do is wait out the storm. No reception on our phones, it's dark as the inside of a black cat out there, and snowing like blazes. May as well spend the night in here, and figure out in the morning how to let people know we're not dead in a ditch somewhere."

"Mmmm." The combination of food, sex, and getting warm after fighting her way through the storm was leaving her sleepy. She leaned into Alec, resting her head against his chest. "How soon do you think your brother and cousins will miss you?"

Alec sighed. "Not for hours yet. I left a message for Cody telling him I might be gone overnight. Even if I don't show up tomorrow, he might not get worried. He'll just assume things went well."

"I guess he's not entirely wrong. As much as I wouldn't call this
going well
, we're at least warm and dry, and we have food and a place to sleep. And speaking of sleeping," Charmian murmured, pressing against him, "I might investigate the upstairs beds. It's been a long day."

Alec's hand brushed across her shoulder and neck, not-so-incidentally sending a silvery shiver through the half-healed claiming mark. "Are you sure sleeping is all you want to do?"

She smiled, and stretched into his kiss.