“Yeah…” James cast her a wary glance. “Well, alright. So I saw him with a girl.”
“A girl?” Michelle had run around the woods in her bear form for hours just to work off her rage and now it all came flooding back. Her cheeks burned. “What girl?”
“She’s somebody I saw Eric with,” James said. “Pretty. Brunette. She’s a bear shifter. Looked a little, I dunno, put out. But I saw her go into a private dining room with Eric Strauss. Wasn’t too long after you were supposed to meet with him too. Sure looked like a date to me. She was all done up.”
“He’s got someone else,” Michelle bit out.
She thought about it for a moment. He had rejected her because he was already with someone else. That had to be it.
Abruptly, Michelle sat forward and threw her glass against the wall where it shattered.
“Aw geez. Michelle, now the maid is gonna clean that up. Could get back to Eric-”
“I don’t care!” She shrieked as she bolted to her feet. “I’ll kill him! But, first, I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her and make him watch! I’ll-”
“That’s probably not a good idea,” James grimaced, shrinking back a little into the couch. He always got a bit nervous when she was this angry.
Michelle summoned every ounce of her will power to calm down. Despite the no smoking rule in the suite, she lit herself another cigarette. She shut her eyes, still seeing red, and blew smoke through her nose. “I don’t suppose you got a picture?”
She caught her reflection in a decorative mirror on the wall and sighed.
Her blonde hair, even after the run in the woods, looked sexily tousled. She had flawless bone structure and soft lips and rosy cheeks. She had huge blue eyes that looked deceptively innocent when she batted them. She had great boobs.
How had he rejected her? And for a brunette, she thought bitterly.
“I did get a picture!” James had that tone in his voice like he was desperate to be thought of as helpful.
James also had that tone in his voice like he was particularly worried she was going to change her mind and murder him. A valid fear.
Sometimes when she was alone with James she had to leave the room and take a walk, she wanted to kill him so badly. But that would be stupid. Finding a new toady was harder than it looked.
James whipped out his phone and came up beside her as she sucked on her cigarette.
Michelle narrowed her eyes at the slightly blurry picture of the girl without a name.
She had long, wavy dark hair and she was thin in a smart black cocktail dress and strappy heels. She wasn’t prettier than Michelle, of that Michelle was certain. Really, the girl looked a bit sulky. Her face was a little pinched, her brown eyes a little too big.
“She’s an amateur,” Michelle said. “I can tell. Well, this development might change my plans a little.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to try a mind control spell?” James said, he bit his lip and smiled. He did try awfully hard. She had to give him that.
“If I have to,” she said, sighing. “But, first, we have to deal with this bitch. I’ll teach her to mess with my mark. I want you to keep an eye on her. Find out exactly what’s going on between them.”
“Ooh,” James wagged his eyebrows, “a cat fight.”
“You’re such a dumbass, James.”
20
Lydia
That didn’t go as planned, Lydia thought wryly.
The nice part about getting rejected from her (sort of) childhood sweetheart at the Black Bear Lake Lodge was that she had a luxurious suite to herself and endless access to the spa, comped meals, all the amenities. She hadn’t even begun to spend the gift card money.
She would’ve felt some pride about it all, except that she was all too aware of just how rich Eric Strauss was. It was a pittance to him.
Following her fight with Eric, she went back to her own suite in her stocking feet and carrying her shoes. She took off her bra, crawled into bed, and cried herself to sleep.
She was bothered by another nightmare about Eric. The same old thing yet again. He was in his bear form, getting torn apart right in front of her by some unseen monster. Blood gushed from everywhere. It was viscerally real and terrifying, and at this point, the nightmare seemed to be taunting her.
Lydia slept in and when she finally did wake, she stripped, and took a long hot bath in her jacuzzi tub, accompanied by a mini-bar mimosa. The bubble jets and heat were relaxing. She couldn’t say she was happy but, at least, she was physically feeling good.
After her bath, she ordered crab Benedict for breakfast and ate to her heart’s content in her fluffy white bathrobe with the lodge logo of a black bear on the pocket. The food didn’t taste quite right. It was as if her tongue was numb. She ate dutifully and without joy.
When she heard the knock at the door, she thought it must be the maid.
It felt very odd to have a maid cleaning up for her as she’d worked as a motel maid in some much less impressive places than the Black Bear Lake Lodge, more than once.
“Should’ve put up the do not disturb,” she muttered to herself. Rookie mistake, she thought.
She was about to politely ask the maid to come back later, but when she opened the door, there was Eric.
“Oh,” Lydia swallowed.
“Hey.” Eric was in one of his concierge suits. It made her miss the younger version of Eric she had known, the one who wore jeans and sweatshirts. Even if he did look fantastic in a well fitted suit. One lock of his perfect sleek hair had fallen over his eye as if foretelling that something was amiss. Before Lydia could ask why he’d come, he said, “I owe you an apology.”
She could have laughed. There was an original sin between them - her leaving. Even if she’d had her reasons. It was hard to get her head around him apologizing to her.
But she only nodded and said, “Okay…”
She opened the door wider, letting him in, and he nodded curtly, keeping his hands shoved in his pockets. She thought she saw him sniff slightly as he turned his head toward her, as if seeking her scent. She could sympathize. Eric wore just a dash of some fancy but masculine cologne and that combined with his natural bear’s scent that humans could never make out, and just the hint of sweat that her sensitive shifter’s nose could sense, was a sexy combination.
“Look, I know enough about the fates and lore and all that to know that certain kinds of nightmares are no joke,” Eric said slowly. “They can mean something. I guess.” He chuckled, running a hand through his hair.
Lydia felt weak in his presence and drew herself up a little, clasping her hands in front of her. Her hair was still wet from her bath and she was naked under her robe. She hated feeling so vulnerable while he wore his suit and yet it also turned her on a little bit.
But none of this was about that. It was just her bear...her bear who had never been more turned on by anything than by Eric Strauss.
“Thanks,” Lydia said simply, and cleared her throat. “I mean thanks for believing me, at least. Potentially.”
“Well, I mean, if you were so concerned, you could have called,” he said. He had been turned away and he spun on his heel to face her. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here, Lydia.”
She couldn’t tell if he was hinting that he was unhappy to see her after all, or if he wanted to know if she’d wanted to see him. Tricky.
The best play was to be honest.
“I had to see you for myself,” she said in a small voice. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I had to make sure.”
“Did you…” he sighed. “You didn’t talk much about how you’ve been last night. Like your life? You kept changing the subject.”
“I’ve been getting by,” she said tightly.
“Getting by? What does that mean?’
“What do you want me to say, Eric?” Lydia said, sighing. She crossed her arms, feeling defensive. “I was dirt poor when we were kids. Nothing’s changed. I’m just dirt poor in a different town
. Sometimes, it’s easier to live as a bear out in the woods somewhere. You don’t need money. But it gets dangerous. Other bigger predators, hunters, development everywhere… It’s harder and harder and shifters aren’t really meant to live that way all the time as much as we might think we are. We’re people too.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. He turned away and sniffed, cleared his throat. “Did you…Cody said you told him some stuff. That you’ve been working some telemarketing job in Washington and you quit just to come here.”
Lydia groaned. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you. That was just…You make a big deal out of stuff-”
“I mean, did you have a place to live?” he asked. She could hear him trying to hold himself together and it killed her a little. “Were you okay? Were you safe?”
“I had a car I lived in for a while,” she whispered. “I don’t know. I never fully cracked the human thing. I could’ve done better but humans scare me sometimes. Made it hard to get anywhere.”
“Oh, Lydia…”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m pathetic,” she snapped.
“I’m not, I’m…” He walked up to her, stopping just short of coming right up against her. She’d thought he was about to kiss her. “I just wish you’d asked me for help. That’s all you had to do. You could’ve come back. I would’ve given you a job. I would’ve given you…If you’d just stayed in the first place-”
“I don’t want to talk about that!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “Please! I don’t want to talk about the past!”
“You don’t want to talk about anything!” he snapped, growling under his breath.
There was his bear.
She had a sudden desperate urge to rile his bear up, make him angry, make him heated, make that primal bear nature come out and ravish her, if he dared.
So, she pushed him and hissed, “I don’t want to talk at all.”
She saw his eyes flash immediately.
“What are you doing?” he said flatly.
“Do you remember when we were teenagers, how I’d push you into the snow in winter?” she asked. She shoved him again and he stumbled back a step. “It was so easy to rile you up. You’d growl and tackle me. I’d feel you pop wood-”
“Lydia,” Eric said under his breath. “Don’t start what you’re not going to finish. Don’t talk about-”
“I told you.” She walked right up to him, close enough that she could feel the puff of his breath on her neck. She tipped her head, their lips nearly brushing. “I don’t want to talk.”
Eric growled and he clutched her shoulders, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. She would have bruises there later, she thought. But they were bruises she wanted. She wanted him to mark her. At least give her something to remember.
“Be with me,” she whispered. “Eric…”
“Are you sure-”
“Be with me,” she said more fiercely. Her tongue snuck between her lips and she saw his gaze follow. When his mouth finally covered hers, plundering her, she whimpered against his lips and let herself fall against him so that he was forced to take her in his arms. “Take me,” she whispered. “Take all of me. Right now. Please...Why do you think I came here?”
It was a slip of the tongue. She hadn’t meant to admit that much. The nightmares had been a lovely excuse. But she had thought of Eric Strauss every single day since she’d left him. To pretend otherwise seemed absurd.
Eric’s clever tongue explored her mouth. She had dreamed of it so many times - kissing him properly. She would have settled for it meaning nothing. That was all it could ever be. He was a Strauss. She had always been far too aware of what that meant.
Lydia’s hand slid up Eric’s chest and back down again as they kissed, slow and hot. She unbuttoned his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders, scrambling to untie his tie and undo a few buttons.
“Oh God, Liddy,” Eric said against her mouth. “I’ve never wanted anybody so badly…”
“Me either,” she gasped, struggling to control her voice. It would have been nice if she could seem calm and in control. But she was at his mercy and knew it. “Not ever.”
She pulled his shirt out of his pants and when her palms touched the tight, rippling muscles of Eric’s stomach, he growled again. It made her giggle. That growl was somewhat incongruous with Eric’s personality. He had always been pretty assimilated as a shifter, but he could get swept away by the urgent desires and heightened emotions of his bear like any other bear shifter and when he did….he growled a lot. It was sexy and just a little bit amusing.
He bit her bottom lip as he kissed her again, presumably in retaliation, and she whimpered, spreading her fingers along his chest, raking her nails through the dusting of dark hair there.
“You think this is funny?” Eric whispered. He nipped at her lips again and abruptly tugged on the belt of her robe so that it fell open, exposing her naked body. She flushed, swallowing hard, bowing her head so that it rested against his.
“Why don’t you make it not funny?” she murmured.
Eric complied. He shoved the robe off her shoulders and she sucked in a breath, refusing to cover herself at all. They hadn’t seen each other completely naked as humans since… She had to think they’d been kids - maybe skinny dipping in the woods their sleuths had shared.
It had been a long time.
“Be sweet,” Lydia whispered.
Eric nodded. His gaze swept over her body with a sense of awe and reverence and he kissed her softly this time, just a touch to let her know she was okay. His hands rested at her hips and squeezed gently, seeming to perfectly mold to her curves.
“I’m going to make you feel so good,” he said. “And that’s all we’ll talk about. Give me a yes.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please, yes.”
At that, he swept her up into his arms and spun, carrying her determinedly to the bedroom. She hugged his neck and kissed his cheek and his throat as he carried her. Just the thought of what was to come had her wet and her clit throbbed with need. He could likely make out her desire by scent and it was egging him on even further. That was the way with shifters sometimes.
In the bedroom, Eric kissed her once, hot and deep. He nudged up against the bed and laid her down on her back. He spun around and went to the door to flick the lights on and marched back to the foot of the bed just to stare unapologetically at her as she lay there, naked before him.
Lydia raised her hands above her head and forced herself to spread her thighs, to open herself to him without shame. Eric looked wild with desire. His pupils were blown, his hair mussed and falling into his eyes. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on the floor, his eyes always raking slowly up and down her body as he went about undressing. She watched his erection tent his perfectly tailored trousers and smiled at the thought that she had done that to him.
Eric whipped off his belt and then he groaned, palming himself when she tentatively reached to tweak her own nipple.
“What are you going to do to me?” she whispered. She wasn’t scared. Mainly, she was impatient.
Eric took a deep breath. He disposed of his trousers and his socks and in his tight, black boxer-briefs he looked like some kind of modern god. He kept himself pretty chiseled, that was for sure. He wasn’t as bulky as his oldest brother, Connor, or even Nathan, the handyman. He was a little leaner, but he was tight and his muscles were well defined.
Lydia licked her lips and shifted on the bed, squirming. Every naughty thought she’d ever had about Eric was coming to her mind. She thought about licking his abdominal muscles, biting his bicep. Her hand wandered down to her center, and a restless finger crept through the bit of dark, curly hair there to prod at her lips.
“No,” Eric said firmly. He peeled off his boxer-briefs and his hard cock sprung out, bouncing against his belly before he knelt on the bed and crawled up towards her. “That’s for me to do.”
Lydia held her tongue, biting hard on her lip. She was helpless as Eric grabbed her wrist and
gently put it back above her head. He leaned down and kissed her again with great determination, his tongue curling around hers. She gasped when she felt his cock pressing at her belly, and just as quickly he pulled back again.
“Going to take my time,” he murmured. “Thought about this for so long, Liddy…”
I’m not going to cry, Lydia thought. Even if the tears were ones of relief. She bit her lip hard, swallowing the lump in her throat, and didn’t answer.
Sure enough, Eric explored her body as if he were slowly unveiling a long sought after treasure. He kissed the corner of her mouth and worked his way down the delicate line of her jaw to her throat as he tangled his hands in her thick hair. She threw a leg over his, helpless to remain unmoving while he took his time pleasuring her, and she delighted in the faintly rough bristle along his legs against the smooth hairless skin of her calf as their legs rubbed together. It was oddly satisfying.
Eric mouthed at her throat as if it were made of candy. She hummed and squirmed, intent on letting him know he was doing fine and yet she was eager. But he wouldn’t hurry up for her. His hands stayed in her hair for a bit before they finally worked their way down to her shoulders, squeezing gently as he tenderly sank his teeth into her throat, sucking a hickey there and just as quickly licking it better.
Eric’s hands were somehow magic. She felt like a cool stick of butter slowly melting under his palms as they made the journey down her body, stopping to cup her breasts and massage the soft, plump mounds of flesh. He sat back a little, his mouth red and swollen from his attention to her neck. His eyes were wide and wild as he watched her lying naked before him. He tweaked her nipples and she yelped and giggled.
He groaned at the sound of her laugh and kissed her again, his mouth sliding along her skin down to her breasts where he took a bright pink nipple into his mouth, wetly kissing it. He watched it pebble and bit gently and she gasped, her leg sliding along his, urging him on. She hummed, vibrating with aching desire.
It was as if Eric was playing an instrument as his palm slid further down her body and each muscle quivered under his touch. He raked his fingers through the dusting of dark hair at her entrance and she hissed, wanton, as she arched up against his hand.
Billionaire Bear Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset Page 16