Bear The Heat (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 3) (12 page)

“Damn it!” she shouted, reaching for the phone and fumbling it under her chair. “You goddam asshole! Why’d you have to do that! Why couldn’t you fall on the arm rest?”

Muffled laughter from her car’s speakers immediately torqued fear through her guts. “What the f—”

“What’d that phone ever do to you? And while we’re at it, do you kiss your mama with that mouth?”

“
You
son of a bitch!” Rory hissed, then laughed in a mixture that came out in a sort of chortle. “Bluetooth. God, I hate it when I forget about safety features that have been in cars for like five years.”

“I’m just glad you’re pissed at the phone instead of me. If I ever make you that mad, just throw a pan at my head, all right?”

She laughed again.
God it feels good to laugh like this
, she thought.
How long has it been? Ever? If I have, I don’t remember
it
.

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“I love how you laugh,” Breaker said. If she weren’t driving, Rory would have swooned, and she was
not
the swooning type.

“It sounds so honest. So... shit, I don’t know, I’m rambling like a stoned teenager. I need to see you. Now. Where are you? I can’t wait anymore. My heart is burning, every nerve in my body is twisted up and I think if I don’t get to kiss you soon, I’m going to implode.”

“I,” Rory let her breath out slowly, trying to keep from hyperventilating, “don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone need me anywhere that badly, except one time I was
really
late to my shift at Popeye’s. I’m halfway down the Crawton highway, should be to the place you told me to be in about,” she looked down quickly at the handset, which had slid back out from under her seat, “four minutes and twelve seconds.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m counting. Hurry.”

The gruff, growly desperation in Breaker’s voice was something she hadn’t heard from him before. But in the seconds after the line went dead, she realized it was something she
had
heard before—in herself.

“I am too,” she said into her empty car. “And damn it, for once I believe someone actually wants me as bad as they say they do.”

She gripped the wheel, squeezing it until it made a soft squeak under the pressure of her fingers. “I’m going to believe this if I have to force myself every step of the way. For once I’m not going to be afraid. I’m just... not going to let it get to me.”

Swallowing hard, a light streaked across the sky near the horizon as Rory watched. She thought, maybe that was some kind of foreshadowing of things to come. Maybe shooting stars really
are
omens of things to come.

And then in the next breath she laughed at herself for thinking things she knew weren’t true. After all, how many shooting stars had she seen that had nothing to do with
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anything? How many times had she tried to convince herself of the things she wanted so badly to believe about Breaker.

“Left turn in one-thousand feet,” the vaguely pleasant southern woman’s voice she’d programmed her GPS to use intoned.

Rory’s stomach jumped into her throat. If this was real – like really, really real – she told herself she wouldn’t ever let it go. And if she got the first inkling that it wasn’t? She’d just jet as soon as she got the feeling.

“I don’t have time for games anymore,” she told herself.

“Turn right in five-hundred feet. Your destination will be on the right.”

Her headlights splashed across an enormous, two story building. There wasn’t any paint on the front of it she could see.

She pulled in beside Breaker’s truck and scanned the scene with her extremely dark-sensitive eyes. On the roof, she could just make out a figure sitting up on his elbows.

“Destination,” she repeated her GPS. “My destination is right here. Right in front of me. All I have to do is believe it’s real, and here I am. Here he is.”

“Here we are,” Breaker called out, standing up on the top of the building. There wasn’t any way he could have known he was finishing her sentence, but there it was, impossible to deny.

“Here we are,” Rory said, turning off her car, and feeling her lips curl into a smile. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up again. She’d seen a whole lot of shooting stars in her lifetime, and she’d heard a whole lot of sweet talk from guys that turned out to be looking for something she wasn’t.

But those hairs on the back of her neck? The little black ones that only prickled up right before a thunderstorm? Right before lightning struck?

Yeah. Those never lied.

“Here we are,” she repeated, and stepped out of the car into the delicious chill of early fall. The bear just stood there,
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watching her approach. When he turned toward the moon, which she only just then realized was full and fat, she saw that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Destination right the hell in front of me,” she said, a little more loudly than she intended.

“Exactly,” Breaker said. “Bear ears, you know. Ladder’s right there, but don’t worry about it, I’m coming down.”

One second, he was jumping, the next his feet hit the ground, and in the breath after that, she was in his arms. “Destination right the hell here,” he said in the instant before he ran his lips down the side of her neck.

She clutched her bear’s face, his whiskers rasping underneath her fingernails as Rory curled her fingers. Breaker’s arms encircled her, and before she knew what she was doing, Rory threw her legs around his muscled waist, anchoring herself to him. She felt his thickness pulsing against her sweetest place, and for a moment, thought she was going to have an entirely embarrassing climax just from his kissing and the pressure between her legs.

He must’ve felt her urging him to slow down, because he pulled back, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth as if he knew he needed to stop but didn’t want to let her go. Just that last sucking kiss was enough to send a wash of goosebumps down Rory’s chest, prickling her nipples against the satiny fabric of her leopard-print bra.

“Happy to see me?” he finally asked, as he pulled a breath between his lips. “God you smell good. I realize that sounds creepy, but when you’re a bear, smell is one of those things, you know?”

“You do too, you—”

Rory both surprised, and interrupted herself. She couldn’t wait, couldn’t hold off for one second longer than she already had. First she kissed Breaker’s chin, loving the soft prick of his whiskers on her lips. “I don’t know how I know,” she said in
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between hungry, desperate kisses on the big bear’s throat, “but I trust... oh!”

He grabbed the small of her back and turned, pressing Rory’s back against the smooth wood of the building, and then pressed himself against her, once again stoking that fire in her belly.

There was something rising in
his
belly too, judging from how much he’d grown in the last couple of seconds. “Where have you been all my life?” she finally managed.

“Waiting for you, I think. Looking for you, maybe.” The soft urgency of the growl in the back of Breaker’s throat gave Rory a little twist of anticipation in the seconds before her big bear ground himself deeper between her legs. A soft trill of pleasure slipped out of her lips, and she let her eyes fall close as her hair cascaded down the wall behind her, some of it catching in long-ago burned flecks of paint.

“You bring me to a burn house in the middle of the woods and all you’re gonna do is make out with me?” Rory asked with a smile. She was able to see Breaker’s dimpled cheeks in the pale flash of moonlight. He was grinning, too.

“I’m gonna do as much as you’re going to let me. Although I have to be honest, I’m not real sure I can keep my hands off you.

There’s something about the way you look at me that makes me think you’re... we’re...” he trailed off, taking the excuse of a kiss to interrupt whatever he was going to admit. First it was a gentle handful of fluttery brushes of lips against neck that sent shivers running down Rory’s chest, prickling and pebbling her nipples sweetly against Breaker’s hard chest. As hard as they were, she thought with a soft laugh that if she had a thing for tight shirts, there’d probably be a pair of holes in it.

Up her jaw and then down he went, circling his tongue and sucking gently each kiss off of her. When he moved, he always gave her a little nibble. When he finally worked his way to the hollow behind her ear, Rory couldn’t help herself anymore.

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With a groan that turned quickly into a whisper of sweet pleasure, she pushed her hips against him, relishing the thick heat against her sex. Breath that came in hot bursts escaped Rory’s lips, and before she knew it, sweat ran coolly down the sides of her face despite the chill surrounding them.

“How do you know this is real?” she asked in one of those rare moments that both of them quieted to take a breath. “Do you know? Or am I just going fifteen steps too far?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or what will happen when I say goodnight to you. All I
do
know,” he took a short break to kiss her again, this time hungrily behind her left ear, and then took a moment for a long suck on her neck. When he pulled away, he was breathing hard. The steam from his breath ran around Rory’s cheeks, warming her to the core. She pulled him closer, as though she were afraid of the words he was about to say.

“I can’t do this if you’re not with me. If you’re just going to run away, I—”

As though to answer her, Breaker ran his hands up her back, letting his weight pin her against the building. His fingers tangled into Rory’s curly black hair, tugging slightly at her scalp. “I won’t be the one running, Rory,” he said. The soft growl she heard when Breaker said her name set the mink hairs on her neck to stand at attention. “I knew from the second I saw you that you were special and I wasn’t going to take any chances on losing you.

You want the truth?”

“Always,” she said, staring up at him, amazed she felt so comfortable, so at ease, just watching his face in the moonlight.

“I was going to call you before I went to that house to check the fusebox, but I didn’t want to scare you off. Didn’t want to come on too strong.” When she laughed, he quirked an eyebrow.

“What’s so funny?”

“The guy who I didn’t know a week ago, and who has officially charmed the pants off me and who is somehow making
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me want him more than anything in the world, didn’t want to come on too strong. You can see the irony, right?”

It was his turn to laugh. “Is that actually irony? Or is it more just a strange coincidence. I always have trouble with that one, but...”

After he trailed off, Breaker yanked Rory’s hair back hard enough that her head tilted upward. He tasted her lips, drank in her scent with a long, deep inhale. When he pulled back, his eyes had flecks of gold and yellow flame dancing in the irises. “And I’m not just bringing you out here to charm you.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, smiling as she anticipated what he was going to say and staring at those entrancing eyes that took her to another world. “What
are
you going to do to me?”

“Remember what I said on the phone? That I was going to do whatever you’d let me do?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said as he slid the tips of his fingers just underneath the waistband of Rory’s jeans. “Then I’m going to fuck you until you scream. Way out here, we won’t bother anyone.” The growl in Breaker’s voice wasn’t subtle and quiet anymore. It wasn’t even just exciting, it was like a revelation.

“You,” she said, inhaling sharply, “better not be a liar.”

As Breaker’s hands tugged the top of Rory’s tank top down around her shoulders, and she pulled her arms free to maul first his face, then his hair, and then the muscles rippling through his huge neck, she took a deep breath.

It all came together in a pinpoint of light, a singularity of time and space. The scent of his sweat and her sex mingling in the air was slight, but enough that both of them noticed it. The flame in Breaker’s eyes and the black hairs standing up on Rory’s neck were like antennas showing off their animal natures, but what really sent Rory over the edge was the smell of heavy, dark earth, the density of the forest and that chill of fall heading into winter, and the fact that they were out in it.

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He tore her tank top just a little as she shimmied her arms free. “That was expensive,” she said, smiling as Breaker’s lips found their place behind her ear.

“I’ll buy you another,” he said in between desperately hungry, sucking kisses. “Hell, I’ll buy you ten. I never spend much money.

Hell, I’ve never taken many chances. But you? This? This is worth all the anxiety and fear in the entire world.”

She snarled as he pulled her shirt away, and the sweat running down the crevice between her breasts caught the wind and cooled her skin to a prickled carpet. Her nipples pressed insistently on the inside of her bra, but when Rory tried to squeeze a hand behind herself to open the clasp, Breaker shook his head.

He lay her down in the soft, slightly wet-from-dew grass, and went down with her. He pressed his cock against her sex in the instant before he closed his mouth over hers. She let out a soft whimper of pleasure, but that was all she could manage before he kissed her so hard and deep that Rory thought her head was going to sink into the ground. She clutched his head, and scratched the back of his neck when her fingernails started to curl into claws.