Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) (29 page)

Everyone just watched, staring at him in amazement as he and the dog rolled around, he letting her absolutely bathe him with big, fat licks.

“You can’t get away from ‘em,” Rogue finished. “No matter how much you try.”

Everyone laughed, watching the two of them frolic. Nothing but pure, utter joy marked either of the two of them, and although Cleo hadn’t ever been the most trusting dog, and Eighty-Three had not
seen
a dog in his conscious memory, that didn’t matter one bit.

Claire hugged Fury and Stone to her sides, wrapping her hands around their waists. Each of them turned and kissed her at the same time. A surge of warmth crept through her body, making her neck, her scalp, the mark, and even the tops of her feet prickle with electric pleasure.

“Yeah,” she said, as Cleo rolled to her feet, barked, and Eighty-Three did the same thing. “But who the hell would want to get away from
this
?”

––––––––

“Y
ou all settled in?” Fury asked as he put the last touch on a coat of paint. The interior of Eighty-Three’s little row-house, which was nestled in the middle of the Broken Pines cubs’ places, was mostly painted a steel gray color. It made him feel at home. Although he had wanted the kitchen done in bright orange and a bathroom in an almost headache inducing crimson. “Just trying it out,” he had said.

“Think so,” Eighty-Three came back from the back room, where he’d been unpacking. “I really can’t thank all of you enough.”

Claire strolled in with her hair done up in a do-rag printed, fittingly enough, with a bunch of wolf paws. Cleo clomped in after her, and promptly collapsed on Eighty-Three’s feet for another scratching, which he indulged with a grin. “I think we’ve got all the holes from cub wrestling patched. If you find any more, spackle’s in your laundry room.” She turned her back to adjust a couple of tchotchkes on the mantle, and when she turned back, Eighty-Three had stopped scratching Cleo, and was staring at something in a box.

“What are you... oh,” she stopped, as he slowly lifted the gasmask out of the box.

Stone reached for it. “No reason to have that around anymore. I’ll get rid of it.”

Eighty-Three pulled back, keeping the mask in his clutches. “This is all I kept,” he said. His voice was distant. “It’s been a month since I was... fixed. I couldn’t bear to leave this behind. I lost all my other memories, I don’t want to lose this one.”

“But it was so awful, it was—” Claire began, but he cut her off.

“It was part of me. Just like the name. James. It’s all part of me. I don’t want to forget anything anymore. After all, if not for this mask, I never would have met my new family.”

“Might still have the old one,” Fury said.

After he stared into the reflection in the black glass goggles for a moment, Eighty-Three said, “But I don’t, if I ever did. I
do
have you.” Everyone was silent as he put the mask back in the box, even Cleo. “I’ll keep it in a closet, but I’ll keep it. Anyway,” he sniffed, and then smiled. “That’s the past, and I think that name is, too. I think I’m ready to be James.”

Stone regarded him for a moment, squinting slightly. “No,” he said.

Everyone’s head turned at once.

“I think you’re more of a Jim.”

The two former blood enemies, who had been just about to murder each other two months before, embraced. After about three seconds, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, though Fury did his best to pretend.

*

“I
can’t believe it’s over,” Claire said, sitting down on the couch in their new digs. “And I can’t believe how quiet this place is. I figured we’d be able to hear everything through the walls.”

“You mean lovemaking?” Stone said, with an expression befitting his name. “The eager sounds of mates slaking their thirst for one another? Moaning, ecstasy, and finally release?”

Claire was staring at him, gawk-eyed. “Uh, well yeah, something like that. Also holy shit that got me kinda hot in places I shouldn’t feel hot before I take a shower.”

“You humans and your showering,” Fury said with a laugh. “Or I guess, ‘you human-raised bears and your showering’ considering.”

“Okay well, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make you both a deal. I’m gonna go get cleaned off, because I’ve been sweating like a warthog for the past six hours.”

The two bears exchanged a glance. “What’s the deal?” Fury asked.

“After I do that, you’re going to make
sure
that the neighbors hear me. Get what I’m saying?”

For a long moment, Stone and Fury seemed to be processing her request. Finally, in his gravelly, panty-dropping baritone, Stone said, “She means vigorous lovemaking.”

Fury let his head drop, and his shoulders slouch. “That’s... very good. Yes.”

“But I’m right!” Stone protested as Claire took her exit. “That’s what she meant! She meant lovemaking!”

*

T
he steam and the bar of Irish Spring and the built-in music system piping Debussy into the shower were pretty amazing. But stepping out of the bathroom, not bothering with a robe or a towel, and finding herself staring at two guys who would have been right at home on a Hunky Guy Calendar?

Hot damn
, Claire thought.
What the hell did I do to deserve this
?

“Well,” she said. “Looks like you kept up your end.”

Stone, with his golden hair and Fury with his black waves, both came to her at once. Between them, she felt the heat from their bodies, and the ache between her legs deepened. She put a hand on either man’s chest, curling her fingernails against the mark that they all shared. “What is this?” she asked. “You said you’d tell me when the time was right.”

“The alpha’s mark,” Fury answered. “Broken Pines always have two alphas. And their mate is marked with the third.”

“But Rogue and King are—”

Stone shook his head slightly, but not taking his gaze away from Claire’s. The green eye and the gold one both glittered, boring into her soul. “We talked about it. Draven thinks that since we’d been separated for so long, our bodies just... adapted. In case one pair of us was lost, the clan would go on.”

She let her glance fall down Stone’s jaw-line to where his collarbones met. The muscles of his chest rose and fell with each breath. “When we did this before, that really
was
you, right? I mean I know you had that thing in you, but when I looked in your eyes, when you touched me and kissed me, it—”

“Of course it was me,” Stone said softly, kissing Claire’s ear for reassurance. “No one else – no
thing
else – could ache for you the way I do.”

“Well,” Fury said, “there is
one
other person.”

Kisses enveloped Claire, up and down both sides of her neck. A blanket of safety, of security and warmth, held her tight. Her knees shook just a little, but from pleasure instead of weakness or fear. A hand went to each of her breasts, thumbs circling her sweetly aching nipples in exact time with one another.

A soft moan escaped her lips, but not before the kisses on either side of her neck brought up a wash of goose bumps that ran all the way from her neck to her tailbone. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled with the brushing of Stone’s lips against hers. She accepted his kiss, and then turned her head slightly to taste Fury’s lips.

She opened her mouth to accept his second, more urgent and desperate kiss. His tongue swirled against hers as her lip rasped against Fury’s stubble. A hand – she couldn’t be sure who it belonged to – slid up her back, cupping her head and tugged slightly on her hair. The chill that shot down her back at the mixture of pleasure and pain was enough to make Claire’s breath come in shorter, hotter bursts.

As she breathed, eyes closed, awash in the pleasure, Claire held on tight to both men’s backs to keep herself from collapsing. She breathed Fury’s name, and then Stone’s, relishing the way their names felt as they slid down her tongue.

Another kiss came, but it was from Stone. His firmer grip, his harder, more forceful kiss, pushed Claire’s head back against the wall and a moment later, she moved backward just enough to feel the prickles of texture on her bare skin. Fury pushed his tongue into her mouth again, tasting her deeply, and then ran the tip of it down her chin, down her neck, and circled her nipple teasingly before nipping.

“Ah!” Claire gasped, clutching his head to her and urging him. “Suck me, more, oh yes, oh just like that, bite more!”

With a laugh, he pinched her nipple between his teeth and flicked his tongue back and forth over the sensitive tip. As her knees trembled, she slid a few inches down the wall, her skin and her heart both burning with the fire of her passion.

“Your wetness,” Stone whispered in her ear before sucking gently behind it. “Your sex, I can’t control myself.” He was starting to groan a little more gruffly than before. His words were growing deeper, his voice wilder. “Your scent, Claire, I can’t... I want all of you, I
need
all of you right... now... right...”

She felt the hair on his arms grow longer, thicker and coarser. When Claire opened her eyes, she was staring into Stone’s gold and green ones, but they were more feral, fiercer somehow. His power against her sent another trill of excitement from her neck down to her toes.

“I’ve never shifted,” he growled, “without meaning to do it. I’ve never felt like this, never in my—”

“Life,” Fury finished for him. The second alpha’s teeth were suddenly sharper, more wonderfully dangerous when he nibbled gently on Claire’s pink tip.

There was nothing in the world that felt remotely close to what Claire felt right then. Soaring through the clouds in that tiny airplane, the adrenaline of a fight, the rush of danger – none of it was anything like this. She ran her fingernails through the hair on the back of Fury’s head, and the fur growing on Stone’s mighty shoulder. Her nails dragged along their skin, eliciting pleasured moans from both men.

“We’re not the only ones,” Fury said, pulling himself off her nipple for just long enough to grin. “Somebody else is bearing themselves to us, looks like.”

“That was a pun,” Stone growled, apparently unimpressed. “But it was actually a good one.”

“Are you two gonna high five?” Claire laughed. “Because if you are, then just do it and get it over with because I’m about to explode.”

Both of them turned their burning eyes back to their mate at the same time. She felt their heat deep in her chest, felt it constricting the muscles in her belly, and flaring the nerves between her legs. Her sweetest place tingled and ached, her whole body longing for her bears to take her at the same time.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but... is there any way I can have both of you... at once?”

Fury bit her chest, then her shoulder, then her neck. Stone sucked at her ear and then slid a hand down her naked body to cup her ass, squeezing and pressing his thumb into the tendon between her legs. “Anything you want,” he whispered, “we can do.”

That
was all she needed to stop bothering with keeping herself standing at all. Slowly, she slid down the wall into a deep crouch. The prickly texture caught strands of Claire’s hair, keeping it up for a few seconds after she’d gone down. Her bears followed her, hands all over her body, tongues all over her neck. There wasn’t a single desire that went unmet, not a single want that lasted more than a few seconds.

With her legs spread, Fury’s fingers found a way home. Slowly, he trickled them along her belly, then down and over the soft puff of hair above her sex. Kissing her hard and deep, he slid one inside.

“God!” Claire gasped. “Oh... oh my God, yes!”

Slowly, he rotated the finger inside her, stretching her walls around his thick digit. As he did, Stone cupped her pussy, and ground down on her aching clit with his palm. The two bears were moving like they were one soul with two bodies. Every intent they had, they shared, every move they made seemed planned and perfect.

“How does this feel so good?” Claire begged, as she arched her back and skidded gently over her hardwood hallway. “How is this so perfect?”

Fury shoved his finger deep, hooking it against the place just past her entrance that made Claire scream – and she answered the only way she could. Her pleasure dripped out of her lips as her wetness dripped out of her sex. She bit down, hard, on her bottom lip, to try and keep as much of her squealing and groaning muted as she could, but it was a poor effort at best.

Stone’s grinding palm circled on her, pressing down and forcing her to yelp in pleasure. She grabbed his shoulder and opened her eyes to see him staring straight into hers. “Because,” he whispered, as he bent to suck a kiss from Claire’s open lips, “we were always meant to be.”

The burning in her core had Claire shivering, and the pulsing inside her sex intensified until she knew there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do to stop it.

“I’m gonna,” she sucked a breath, bit her lip. “I can’t...”

“Then don’t,” Fury said, curling his tongue around an erect nipple, and shoving a second finger in beside the first. “We
are
all animals, after all.”

The sound that came from Claire’s chest was hardly human. She shuddered, and then rumbled, and before she knew it, let out a growling roar that surprised even herself. The muscles between her legs gripped Fury’s finger, urging him deeper until he couldn’t go any further. Her gripping, pulsing body drew a smile to his lips, and as Claire felt herself give in to the ocean of pleasure washing over her, she was also giving herself up in a way she never had before. No more defensive walls, no more feigned coldness; right now she was completely open, totally vulnerable.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She gasped both of their names, and both bears kissed her neck as Claire’s climax peaked and broke. For the next several moments, the warmth and wetness and tension lapped up her belly before subsiding, like waves licking at the beach.

When she opened her eyes, her whole body was buzzing with anticipation for... more.