by Cecilia Lane
“Callum,” Leah groaned, arching her back and threading her hands into his hair.
He chuckled against her skin and dragged his palms down her ribs. He planted a knee right between her legs, feeling her heat through their jeans. She rocked her hips against him even as he fluttered light fingers across her waist.
God, it was difficult not to take his cock out right then and there. She looked like some wanton goddess with her wet hair spread across the comforter and writhing against his leg. Giving him a sly smile, she pushed her breasts together and thumbed her nipples.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
“Please,” she answered, adding a bitten lower lip to the tempting picture.
A growl rattled in his chest and he chucked his plan out the window. He needed her nails and her screams, but taking it slow could wait. He would taste her, please her, mark her as his. The sweet, slow cherishing could come later. Maybe the third or fourth time he had her that night.
He ripped open the button and pulled down her zipper. Her jeans clung stubbornly to her body, wet at they still were. She pushed while he pulled, until finally, her delicious package was unwrapped for him to savor.
Callum knelt at the foot of the bed and wrapped his hands around her thighs. One ferocious tug settled her right in front of his face and he buried his tongue inside her.
Leah moaned, and his dick throbbed. She gasped, and he nearly came undone. He sucked and licked, circling her clit and diving back for more. There was no teasing. How could he, when they both needed to put their pasts behind them and make a new life together? He was simply hurrying them along.
He pushed a finger between her folds and hooked the thrust to make her gasp. She clenched around him and he knew she was close. Her cries filled the room with wild abandon and then her thighs clamped hard around him.
Leah pulled at his hair, moaning and jerking her hips against his mouth as her release crashed through her. He groaned through it all, relishing the taste of her climax and wanting more.
Callum was on his feet the moment her last aftershock faded from her body. She threw him a hazy, heavy-lidded look and matching smile. As soon as his fingers touched the waist of his jeans, though, she was at attention.
Her tongue darted between her lips when he shoved his jeans down and freed his cock. He palmed his shaft, ready to be deep inside her. Ready to claim her as his mate.
The need to take his time reared back to life. Then she sat up and reached for him.
“Need you now,” she growled.
If he wasn’t mistaken, her eyes swirled with a tiny bit of silver.
Silver and gold, what a pair they’d make.
He advanced on her, and she crawled backward up the bed, a challenge on her face. Perfect trouble, that was his Leah.
Her legs dropped open for him as soon as she reached the pillows. Wild eyes matched her wild hair, and she leaned up to nip his throat. He groaned and fit the head of his cock against her waiting heat.
“I love you,” he mouthed against her throat as he pushed deep inside her.
Leah gasped, not just from Callum’s sweet invasion. Nerves rasped with him as he seated himself fully in her heat. And heat exploded in her chest from his words. Love. Perfect, unassuming love. True words spoken on beautiful lips. He didn’t look at her expectantly while waiting for her to repeat the words. He simply dragged his shaft out and pushed right back in.
She wound her arms around his neck and dug her hands into his hair. She pressed her nose into the crook of his neck. Something wild and woodsy filled her nose, and she was determined to memorize it. Not because she planned to leave it behind, but because it was now a part of her. He was part of her.
“I love you,” she breathed on his next thrust.
Big, powerful, sexy man. Wide shoulders, solid chest, muscles that flexed with every thrust and shift of his hips. He was made to set her on fire and he did just that. She couldn’t imagine finding anyone attractive again. He ruined her for everyone else and she was entirely fine with that. Why would she need another when she had Callum to satisfy her every desire?
“Mine,” Callum said, claiming her with a single word.
Leah tightened her hands in his hair. That one word filled her with hopes and dreams and washed clean all the worries from her childhood. Callum would treat her right. He would never try to tear her down just to make himself feel bigger.
“Mine,” she told him, claiming him just as surely. The branding in their heads was every bit as important as the marks soon to be placed on their bodies. His then, soon, and hers once she came into her fangs.
He sucked in a harsh breath and expelled it with the next slam of his hips into hers. Whatever tenuous control he tried to keep dissolved away with her single word. She loved breaking him in the same way he broke her. He made her wild.
Desperation and urgency directed their motions. In the way she wrapped her legs around him and how he flipped them over and pulled her onto his lap. His shoulders were tight and his fingers bit into her skin. Air rushed from both of their lungs at the top of each powerful thrust. She dragged a hand down his chest, feeling the flex of his muscles as she did, then back up again, trying to feel all of him at once.
Callum’s eyes glowed gold when she finished her hurried inspection of him and met his gaze. Once again, she was trapped in his look. Once again, he saw right to her very soul. He read her easily, knew they were made for each other, and it only made her want to get closer to him.
On and on, frenzied, hurried, Callum filled her again and again. Pleasure built inside her, curling up her legs from her toes and spread fire through her chest and arms. Her core tightened, and she threw her head back with her scream.
“Mine,” Callum growled, the sexiest sound in the whole damn world.
A sting of pain against her collarbone followed by a gentle kiss, and she knew he’d bound them together. Her heart felt bigger, somehow, and her skin felt tight. She could almost feel the heavens opening above them and some celestial light tying them together more firmly than any laws or paper. He was hers and she was his. Man, woman, bears. Whatever they were, they were it together.
Their releases were found together. He bucked underneath her, dragging her harder onto his shaft, while she pulsed all around him. Heat throbbed inside her, and finally, finally, his roar filled her ears.
His hands smoothed down her hair, down her back, cupping and squeezing and just touching where he could. It calmed the furious beating of her heart and soothed the rapid-fire inhales and exhales of her heaving chest. Close. He pulled her close, right where she needed to be, untangling their limbs and stretching them out so her back tucked against his chest.
She didn’t know how long they lay there and simply recovered. She couldn’t find words for what they’d done. The change was too new and too perfect. It filled her and settled over her mind, but she couldn’t say she felt any different. Arms, legs, heart, mind, all were still her. But there was more. There was Callum.
“Hey, Leah?” His arms tightened around her and she could feel his smile growing.
“Hmm?”
“You do have the best tasting clam.”
“Oh my god,” Leah laughed and rolled her eyes. “How long have you been saving that joke?”
“Since the moment you said you said you can make linguine and clams. I just couldn’t work up to describing myself as the linguine.”
She snaked her hand behind her and wrapped her fingers around his cock. He growled low in his throat and hardened by the second. No noodle there, that was for sure. “I’m never making you that dish,” she promised.
“We’ll see about that,” Callum breathed against the back of her neck.
Callum skimmed a hand up her side and ran light fingertips in slow circles around her breast. His hips rocked against her, but he stayed steady with his tease. She let her eyes slip close and arched into his touch. Every tiny bit of contact only served to tie them more firmly together.
He wa
s perfect and she loved everything about him, bad jokes and all.
Epilogue
Leah drummed her fingers against the arm of the couch and flipped mindlessly through television channels. It’d been three days since Bruce bit her as his bear and Jamin tried to work his blood magic to open a hole in their world to step into the old one. Three days of being under constant surveillance and house arrest. Callum wouldn’t leave her side until she shifted for the first time.
The wait was driving her insane. It gave them both time to learn their deepest secrets, though. Each embarrassing story or heart-wrenching tale stitched another thread in the tapestry that bound them together. Then there were the fantastic, glorious, toe-curling orgasms that made her hot and wet just thinking about when she’d get her next fix.
But by the end of the third day, she wanted out. She’d barely been able to contain herself all afternoon, pacing from one room to the next, devouring everything Callum put in front of her, changing from outfit to outfit when she worked herself up enough to sweat through another shirt.
She wanted to run, but Callum kept her caged inside with promises of soon.
Soon was turning into the worst four-letter word she knew.
She passed through a local news channel that promised the revelation of a lifetime. Shock and anger joined with her antsy fidgeting when she recognized Jamin’s face. She set the remote carefully on the coffee table and called over to Callum without taking her eyes off the screen.
“Have you seen this?”
The reporter stared into the camera for a second longer than necessary. “Now, for our special report. What do Bigfoot, Edward Cullen, and your fairy godmother all have in common? They might be more real than you think. A special report by Arabella Hocking.”
The screen spiraled into a series of images with flashing police lights and crime scene tape before resolving into an interview with Jamin seated across from a sleek looking woman. He smiled pleasantly at the reporter and began speaking. “Along with fae, like myself, vampires and shapeshifters exist. These shifters can turn into a wide variety of animals.”
“But surely they would have shown themselves before,” responded Arabella.
Jamin nodded. “There have been incidents, of course. Where do you think all the great filmmakers, and the storytellers before them, got their ideas?” Jamin smiled again. “But our people have their own defenses built into our magical protectors. This ancient magic allows for barriers to go up around an area. To human eyes, there’s nothing there. But to someone like me, I can see an entire town. Bear’s Den, Montana—sorry, it’s been shortened to Bearden in the last few generations—Bearden, Montana, is one such location.”
Leah felt sick watching him spill all his secrets. Callum drilled the need to keep Bearden and the other enclaves secret and safe into her head. But Jamin’s final ‘fuck you’ to the town was to announce their specific location. It didn’t escape her that he left out any mention of the fae enclave where he recruited all his blood sacrifices.
Callum growled and flicked the television off before the end of the program. “He threatened to burn our protection to the ground.”
“But this? I want to bring him back to life just to kill him again. He’s put everyone in danger!”
“Gideon’s Bloodwings are here. We’ll put them on patrol and up the watchers on the roads. From there, I don’t know what we do. It only takes one person with supernatural blood to out us entirely.”
“We could move, couldn’t we?” But even as the words left her mouth, she knew it wasn’t possible. A family here or a clan there might be willing to uproot themselves, but not the entire population.
Callum shrugged and stared at nothing. “Try telling that to everyone who has roots going back to when the fae and Broken worked together. We shouldn’t have to move. This is our home.”
Her stomach rumbled, and he shifted his attention back to her. “Hungry?”
Leah shook her head. Her skin felt too tight. And she could smell the resigned sadness wafting off her mate. Difficult days were ahead. But more pressing matters demanded her attention. “Not hungry.”
Callum’s face split into a grin. “Enough of Jamin. Outside with you, woman. I won’t have you clawing up my home.”
“Our home,” she corrected on a tight breath. Her stomach cramped and nearly doubled her over.
“The first is the worst, especially for a bitten shifter. You’ll feel your bones snapping and muscles tearing, but nothing is permanent. Try to ease into it.”
Callum’s words grated in her ears. He was too loud, much, much too loud. And his hands on her skin as he helped her out the door rubbed her raw, like sandpaper over an open wound. Ease into it? It was the worst pain she’d ever experienced. There would be no easing or accepting or any other stupid idea he kept repeating.
He tried to strip her down, but an agonized cry bubbled out of her lips. Stepping back, he gave her the space she needed. Clothes to be had elsewhere stood out in her mind. She was unsure if he spoke the words or if a stray thought popped into existence.
Then she was alone. No. Not alone. The pain receded but something else was there with her. Something fierce and strong and beautiful. Oh, so very beautiful. Black fur ruffled in the wind, long claws dug into the earth, and eyes the color of liquid silver stared straight into her soul.
That beautiful bear wanted out.
An image formed in her mind. She and the bear stood together, then she took a step back and let the bear stand alone.
Leah felt the truth of that image and let her eyes close. She imagined erasing herself and leaving the bear. She simply ceased to exist in her human form. She was the bear.
A smattering of pops and an awareness of pain disappeared. She took a cautious step forward and stumbled. Two feet had become four, and she didn’t know how to work them all yet.
“You’re like a drunk toddler,” Callum called out unhelpfully.
Leah whirled, tripped, and fell on her face. But she faced him and that was good enough. She pulled her lips back and snarled.
Callum just grinned. In a quick moment, he had his clothes off and rolled his shoulders. Fur sprouted along his body, and his features changed shape. He dropped to four, huge paws and stood over her, waiting.
She planted one paw in the dirt, then the other. Two more followed, and she stood on shaky legs. Callum swung his big head around and his body followed, then he crossed the clearing. He stopped at the edge of the trees and looked back at her to follow.
Cautious steps became surer by the second and Leah soon found she could look and walk at the same time. She stopped trying to control her movements and just let them happen. That was the moment everything slid into place.
She was a bear. A bear! And it came with even better senses than in her human form. Shafts of sunlight speared through the leaves above her, bugs crawled under the dirt, and her mate lumbered on in front of her.
She chuffed at him and stumbled faster to catch up. A playful swipe of her paw against his side drew a rumble from him. He turned around and rubbed his head along her side, pulling her fur the wrong way. She shook herself and settled every strand back where it belonged.
New sounds reached her ears, and she raised her head to find them. To the left. Voices. Human voices. She took a deep sniff. Men and women, even children. And they all had an earthy scent to them, like Callum. Shifters.
Callum led her on until the trees thinned and her paws touched pavement. Her claws clattered against the hardness and made her wince. She wanted dirt under her paws again, not the hard surface.
Still, her mate called to her. He wouldn’t lead her wrong. And she recognized where he was taking her. She would get to meet her clan.
Callum stopped right behind the firehouse and let his human half step forward again. He dipped inside the door and drew out some clothes, then turned to her and waited.
Leah pictured herself as a bear and a human once again. The bear rumbled in her, not wanting to give u
p control. But she pushed and prodded and poked and shoved until the bear stepped away and she stood in its place.
The second shift was easier, but she still felt a deep ache in her muscles. She crouched against the sidewalk and panted for a long minute before she found the strength to stand and dress in the large sweatpants and t-shirt Callum handed her.
They stepped through the door and found the rest of the clan stuffing their faces. She was certain that was eighty percent of their job, with another ten spent waxing the fire engine and the rest actually putting out fires.
“Guess who just had her first shift?” Callum announced. Pride beamed off his face and clung to his scent. Something else, too. Lighter, almost airy. It overwhelmed her and strengthened when he looked her way.
Love.
Leah didn’t have a chance to do more than shoot him a smile before all forks dropped to plates and the joking and shouting shifted to her. The attention felt good. Natural. Like she’d suddenly found herself several new big brothers and needed to find new ways to torture them all.
They all whooped and cheered. Cole even threw an arm around her shoulder and hauled her into a hug. “About time the little bear showed up.”
Leah raised her hands and made claws with her fingers. “Who are you calling little?”
Sawyer let out a long whistle. “My money’s on Leah.”
The rest of them devolved into bets and threats, punctuated with an elbow to the ribs or punch on the shoulder. Leah grinned and leaned into Callum. “You have a good clan here, Strathorn.”
He nuzzled her neck and her breath caught in her throat when he brushed against the bite marking her as a mated woman. As his. “We have a good clan. You’ll be a good influence on them, I bet.”
She snorted. “Or a terrible one. Just wait until I teach them how to pickpocket.”
“Little thief.”
“Stole your heart, didn’t I?”
The next morning, Leah and Callum had just finished dropped off enough food to feed an elephant or several bear shifter firefighters when Judah stuck his head into the open bay. “I thought I heard you fools in here. Callum, we have a situation on the southern border.”