Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (15 page)

“I wish I could have seen that,” he said. “I want to watch your face. I want to see your eyes flutter and your lips tremble. I want to make you feel just like you make me feel.”

He kissed underneath my breast and then swirled his tongue around my bellybutton slowly before going further down. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first time I saw you,” he whispered. “You smell... the way you smell, the way you,” he flicked his tongue out, sliding it across the top of my sex, and then he moaned a husky, rough moan. “God, yes, you taste just as good as you smell. There’s something about you – something magical – something that I can’t name, but...”

His words turned into kisses that circled me. Down one side of my folds and then up the other he went. Gently, he nestled the little puff of hair at the top, as he pressed down with his chin. The prickly hairs bit a little, gave me a little bit of a sweet, rough feeling that crept up my belly.

Warmth pushed out of me, made every pore up and down my stomach ache for him, for another touch, another kiss, for...

The fingers that pushed inside me.

“Oh my God,” I moaned. I opened my mouth partway to say something else, but the words failed me. “Oh... it’s just so... yes...” was all I could manage.

Ash’s tongue painted a slow, patient, almost teasing rhythm around my clit as he curled two fingers gently inside me, instinctively finding that place that I thought only I would ever touch.

“That’s it,” he whispered, pulling away and sucking on me a little harder than before. “Show me how good it feels. All those muscles tightening and relaxing. Let me see your face when you...”

Just like he said, the tiny muscles inside me gripped at his fingers, pulling them deeper, and then relaxing as he stroked down me. He pushed deeper, and I let out a soft, surprised gasp. A half-breath later, he turned them, spreading them out in me slowly and patiently.

Ash closed his mouth over me again, enveloping my sex and sliding his tongue along the part in my folds. He let out such a deep, rumbling moan that I could hardly contain myself. I grabbed his hair, and pushed my hips up against him, grinding my button against his upper lip.

I got hot, I got cold, but I never stopped getting wetter or aching for him. “More,” I whispered. “Deeper, faster, more...”

Just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, right when I started to feel those sweet muscles inside me clench up and milk at Ash’s fingers, he froze. “Wait,” he said. “Maybe...”

He stood up, and I pushed myself up on my elbows. “What is it?” I asked. My breath was coming hard and fast. My heart thudded heavily in my chest, and the cool air licked me, cooling and drying all the places I had got all wet and sweaty. “Is something wrong?”

“Take ‘em off,” he said. Grabbing one of my hands, Ash put it on his fly button. “The way you were pawing at me, I can’t get my mind off having those hands wrap around me... that mouth, those perfect, beautiful lips...”

It didn’t take any prodding. I popped the button on his jeans, and almost instantly, Ash’s erection pushed the zipper down. Gingerly, I tugged down at the same time that I fished him out, and when he stood at attention, I wrapped my hands eagerly around him, pulling, and then guiding him into my mouth.

I slid my tongue around his tip, relishing his heat, and pumping up and down as best I could.

“So good,” he moaned. “Just... just like I dreamed.”

For a few, blissed moments, I tugged and kissed and sucked and tasted, but then he pulled away from me. I was able to get one last kiss, right on the tip of his cock, as he retreated. “I can’t keep myself away,” he said. “I’ve got to have you. C’mere.”

Sitting back on his haunches, Ash pulled me on top of him. His heat felt so good where it hit me, going up my back, that I wanted him worse than ever. I reached back and grabbed him, but he stopped me.

“Not yet,” he said. “I want it to be special. I want to do that
right
.”

“But,” I protested. “This, this is right, this is perfect.”

“The longer we wait,” he whispered, “the better it’ll feel when...”

I was going to argue more, but I was too hot and bothered to try. I needed him – somehow, some way – right then and it didn’t matter how. “Well,” I said, “if you’re going to make me wait to feel this huge thing inside me, I can at least...”

I turned and straddled his beautiful face. The instant I did, I felt that tongue strike out and push into me. I knew he understood.

Two fingers stretched into me again, and his tongue tickled my clit, then massaged it slow and deep. I took him in my mouth, rolling him and sucking and tasting every inch of his thick hardness.

We moved, just like that, with each other for what seemed like eternity, but knowing me was about eight seconds.

I breathed harder, and Ash
got
harder, swelling in my mouth.

“I can’t...” he groaned. “Oh my God, I can’t believe this. You’re doing horrible things to me.” There was a laugh at the end, but then I felt what it was I was doing. Ash’s legs were getting hairier, the teeth I was grinding on bigger.

“Me... me too!” I cried out. “I am too!” Red hair was poking out of my pores. Thick, hard, golden-tan hair fur was coming out of his. The harder he sucked, the deeper I took him, the more both of us lost control.

The smells of everything around us, but mostly of him and me, got stronger in my nose. My fox senses were taking over and making everything feel more intense, more unbelievable.

“I’ve never had this happen before,” I whispered. “I feel so... so...”

“Right?” he asked, thrusting his hips upward. “I can’t... I’m almost there, Violet,” he said in a halting, raspy voice.

“Me...”

Before I could add the ‘too’ part, my muscles and tendons all tightened up at the same time. Tension ran up and down my legs, my arms, all the way to my fingers. I gasped with pleasure, and moaned with the way it felt to have him so deep in my mouth.

I wanted more, I wanted him all, but in that one moment, when everything broke, when it felt like we were becoming one for just a second – I forgot about all that. I had no desire, none at all, except for him.

We vibrated together, our muscles fluttering, our bodies crying out. And then as the heat slid down my legs around his face, and he grabbed at me, pulsing with his climax, the cool air – the whole forest really – seemed to fall dead silent.

I closed my lips around Ash, sucking until he didn’t have any more to give. He enveloped me, churning those fingers until all my trembling was through.

We breathed together for a few seconds before I rolled off him and curled up underneath Ash’s huge arm. “Do you think we could maybe sleep together?” I asked. “I just want to know what it’s like to wake up next to you, to feel you holding me all night long.”

“Can we do it in your apartment?” he asked with a little smirk. “It’s kinda cold out here, even for a bear.”

––––––––

A
week and a half.

A week and a half of utter hell, utter loneliness and longing, since Ash pulled up outside my apartment and made me feel like I’d never felt before.

That week and a half since I felt Ash’s hands on my back were just about to kill me.

He had left early the next morning, just after the sun came up. When I woke up that morning, I was all curled up in his massively furry, massively warm embrace, and aside from a little bit of an sniffle from the fur in my nose, I’d never been happier in my whole life.

Ash kissed me so earnestly, so deeply that I thought he might break me, and then he was gone.

I’d been playing a celibate monk for a while before our little hookup, but honestly the physical stuff isn’t what got me hooked. It was the way he talked, the way he smiled, the way he made me miss him.

Don’t get me wrong though – I couldn’t forget the way the leaves felt scratching my back with every urgent thrust. I’d
never
forget how he felt moving underneath me, how he took my breath away with a kiss, and then stoked a fire so hot inside me that I’d almost gone insane before he gave me what I wanted.

Good God
, I thought, chiding myself.
One weird encounter, one instance of being chased through the woods, and one date-plus-fling and now I’m head over heels for another bear. Great. That’s just great.

Even though I knew I shouldn’t, even though I knew I needed time to get over all the damage Reid did, all I could do was think about tonight. The night I was going to see him again.

“It’s a Jetta,”
he had said.

I laughed about one of the first things he said to me. Just a dumb joke that I laughed at way, way too hard. And then, moving past the joke, I remembered his hands on my skin, his breath on my neck.

I shook my head to clear some cobwebs. I knew I was nuts. Well, there was another option – I may have been deliriously tired.

Yeah I guess that was possible.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Our little tryst was just a lapse in my plan. That’s it, that’s what it was, I told myself. It was just a little bit of weakness. I wasn’t gonna let him win though, not that easily. That one knee-trembling, heart-wrenching ecstatic explosion of incredibility might’ve been a fluke.

It might have all been an accident. He turned on every ounce of game he had, and that was it. He was spent. Next time I saw him, he’d be as much fun as a... well, as a Eustace.

Or whatever that guy’s name was.

So, yeah, that’s what I told myself. For one thing, he might just be a big ol’ stick in the mud when I actually got to know him. I wasn’t going to let myself go that easy.

But then there was the other thing. The thing I kept talking to Henry about, and the thing I kept remembering for every single, stupid, ridiculous waking moment I had – how super, amazingly good it felt for someone to chase
me
for once.

My phone rang a loud hip-hop tune and startled me so badly I slipped off the yellow-painted concrete. With one leg going out from under me, I got a hand underneath myself and sprang off it, back to my feet.

Hey, I might be twitchy, but at least I can recover in style.

I’d almost forgotten my phone ringing is what had me reeling when it happened again.

“Hello?” I asked, without looking who it was.

“Someone’s chipper this morning,” Henry said, sounding like she’d just been walloped by a truck. “How are you so damn happy?”

“I dunno,” I said, smiling to myself. “I was just having a... uh, a good morning.” I desperately wanted to tell her how excited I was for later that night. Hell, I still hadn’t told her what
actually
happened between Ash and me.

I tell her everything. Like, everything. She’s my therapist friend, and I’m hers. Whenever we get into something, or get down about something, or get dumped or whatever else, we go to each other. Always have, probably always will.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Ash. She’d think I was stupid or impulsive. She’d never say it of course, but she’d think it, and worry about me. The time just didn’t feel right. I wasn’t in any mood for a lecture about danger.

“Listen,” she said. “About this date you have, I—”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “How did you know? I didn’t tell you. I mean, sorry about that, but I just... how did you know?”

Henry let out an impatient sigh. “Well for one thing, that fighting promotion is back in town. Or rather, they’re back in Clinton. Also, and more to the point probably, Lex told me.”

“Huh?” I cradled the phone between my head and my shoulder. I went for my keys before realizing I stuck them in the right pocket – the side I had the phone on. Letting out a sigh, I contorted my arm, fished out the keys and somehow ended up in my car without spraining anything.

Henry sniffed, and then sneezed. “Are you running an obstacle course?”

“No,” I said, “just had to get my keys out of my pocket.” I heard her laugh.

“Anyway,” I continued, “what did you mean? Don’t tell me you found out some deep, dark secret about Ash.”

She whistled. “Did I ever. Listen, Lex called me this morning, which was a little weird, but—”

A car horn went off, some jackass’s alarm, two spaces from me. It wouldn’t stop. I shut my door, trying to drown it out.

“Car alarm,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“What? Oh,” Henry said. “All I said was that he’s in some trouble with this promoter of his. Lex didn’t know the details, but he sounded like it was serious. This guy... I don’t know. I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I think you better be careful before you end up getting yourself caught up in some super crazy stuff.”

“I’m just playing around,” I said. I was trying to make myself believe it. “After Reid, I just need some time to figure myself out... and what better way than letting a hot guy chase me? I know it sounds stupid, but I think I need this. And anyway, he’s leaving tomorrow.”

I backed out, still listening to that car alarm, and getting a little more pissed every second. “Again,” I added. “He’s leaving again. They’re going off to New York or someplace in the morning. So even if I wanted to get serious about him, I,” I took a deep breath through my nose, steadying my nerves. “Anyway, there’s nothing going on.”

“If you’re sure,” Henry said. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“By Ash?” I asked. “He won’t hurt me. That last night he was here? Oh my God, hurting me was... you know, I’m going to stop right there.”

As I was talking, I remembered his cologne stinging my nose in all the right way. I remembered his rough hands on my back, the way his lips tasted.

A shudder went through me.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think he’d do anything like that. I meant you, Viola. You have this way of falling for guys and...”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I know what you’re going to tell me and I’ll head it off by saying first of all, you’re right. I do that all the time – hell, I did it with Reid. But that’s not the way this is. We’re going to go out, have some dinner, and if he plays his cards right, maybe a little fling. What’s the worst that could happen?”