Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance)

by Lynn Red

Rolling over onto my side, I curled my legs around one of my eight body pillows and let my hand settle on my side. My fingers unconsciously curled against the bare skin in the crease of my hip.

  I didn’t need forever. I didn’t need a year or a month.

  At least that’s what I told myself in that single desperate moment.

  I just needed to feel him. Every piece of my heart ached to have him touch me, kiss me, caress my skin with his fingertips.

  Imagining it, my fingers seemed to move on their own, curling gently against my prickling skin. I rolled onto my back, extending my legs and stretching my toes backwards. The first press of my finger against my sex was dry and cold but seconds later, wet heat slid out of me.

  “I need someone worse than I realized,” I said, blushing slightly even though I was alone. I pressed my hand between my legs, and squeezed it with my thighs, laughing to ease the weird case of nerves that struck. “Doesn’t have to be him,” I whispered. “Oh who am I kidding?”

  The scene from the woods replayed on the back of my eyelids. Orion diving out of the woods and saving me – but instead of everyone being around, it was just the two of us. And, instead of my clothes just being a little torn, they were ripped to shreds.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered in my imagination, running his hands from the sides of my face to my neck in a slow trickle. “So perfect.”

  He touched his lips to mine, softly at first and then a second later sucked my lip between his teeth, hungrily devouring me with a kiss. As his hands slid down my back to rest on my hips, he pulled me close and kissed me deeper, hungrier.

  With his body against me, I felt the hardness of his chest, the thick muscles of his arms... and then I felt something else thick, and hard, and long, running down the front of his jeans. His body exuded heat that seemed to radiate through to my bones, making every fantasy of security and safety I’d ever had come true at the same time.

  “Oh God,” I whimpered, sliding my lip between my teeth and biting down. “Oh... oh yes...”

  One finger slipped inside so easily that I added a second. Slowly, patiently, almost like I was teasing myself, I twisted my wrist from side to side, rotating my fingers gently and then dragged them along the sweetest place just past my entrance.

  With my free hand, I first grabbed my breast and pinched my pebbling nipple between my fingers. A surge of electricity from deep inside crawled up my stomach, all the way to my scalp. Goosebumps were first, then a wave of hotness and then cold.

  “Or...ion...” I moaned into the night. “Orion, I... where are you?”

  It felt a little like I was Lois Lane asking where Superman had gone.

  “I never left,” he whispered in my imagination, pulling away from me for only a second. With one hand he gently tugged at my tattered jeans, and with the other he kept me pressed against his rippling abs. His manly heat warmed my stomach, warmed the top of my leg. I’d never wanted anything in the world more than I wanted to wrap my fists around him and welcome him home.

  Because that’s how I thought about it. His home was here, with me, inside me.

  My palm settled against my clit in a slow, rotating grind that matched the pulsing of my then three fingers. In my daydream, I knelt down, letting my hands trail after me. I ran my tongue along Orion’s length, leaving a wet track along his jeans, and hugged my lips around his tip, letting my tongue massage him through the fabric.

  My bear groaned, and clenched a fist in my hair. I grabbed a handful and tugged a little to simulate the feeling. The little tingles and slight pain in my scalp mingling with the warm surge of pleasure between my legs lifted me.

  Breathlessly, I let my mouth fall open as I pushed harder, pushed deeper, swirling my fingers and lingering on all the places that make me crazy.

  In my mind, he let out a growl, put my hands on his fly and then a second later couldn’t stand the anticipation and undid it for me. “Kiss... me,” he commanded as I inhaled his scent, as I let the aroma of his sweat and my sex fill my nose. “Suck...”

  I took him in my mouth, running my tongue patiently along his hardness, exploring every inch of his softest skin. When I reached the tip I hesitated slightly, flicking my tongue along him, and then sliding my lips around his head.

  “Yes,” my bear groaned. “I’ve waited... waited and hunted and looked for you for so long... I can’t believe I found you, mate.”

  A yelp escaped my lips, and I bit down again. The pain where my canine dug into my sensitive lip mixed perfectly with the mounting wave of pleasure between my legs. I went harder, grinding my palm and my fingers and squeezing my thighs tight to milk out as much as I possibly could.

  The sticky, wet heat pulsing out of me filled my palm and then slicked my legs. My eyes fell half open as sweat ran down either side of my face.

  “Take me,” I whispered to no one. “Make me yours, Orion. Make me yours forever, I can’t stand not having you, I can’t...”

  The clenching between my muscles took me by surprise. It never came this fast. Guess that’s the magic of finding the right man. Even if he didn’t know that I found him. Right then, it didn’t matter.

  Nothing did.

  Nothing mattered except the pulsing, the squeezing between my legs and the pounding of my heart.

  Moment by moment, breath by breath, I came closer to the edge that I wasn’t going to come back from. “Orion!” I yelped. “Please come back!”

  It wasn’t even conscious what I was saying, or doing. It was just wild, half-feral, half-crazy lust-filled energy bursting out of my pores. It wasn’t the only thing coming out of my pores.

  The harder I pushed, the closer I got, the more long, yellow hairs slid out of my body. Liam never made me feel like this. Liam never made me sex-shift, and this wasn’t even sex-shifting! It was fake sex-shifting, just a fantasy, but Orion had somehow made me feel ways I’d never imagined possible. I read about them in books, saw them in Meg Ryan movies, but never thought it was real.

  My sex-muscles clenched hard on my fingers and all the rest of me tightened, stiffened, as a wave of hot energy slid out of my core and pulsed from my head to my toes.

  “Come,” he whispered in my mind. “Let go, come for me, come for your mate.”

  I closed my eyes tight. My lips trembled, my fingers shook, both in my imagination and in reality. “So close...” I whispered. “I’m so close... I... Ah!”

  The first surge of tight release slammed into me. I crushed my hand against my pussy with all the strength I could muster, and clenched a sheet in my fist, then stuck it in my mouth and bit down on a finger to keep from screaming.

  I let out a slow, loud, roar that shook me from head to toe. Wetness burst out of me as I massaged myself harder, dug my fingers as deep as I could. The sweet release was only moments away, but I wanted to teeter on that ledge for as long as I possibly could.

  Raking Orion’s imaginary back, I bit into his shoulder, he threw back his head and entered me, hard and fast and urgent. The heat boiling inside me threatened to burst, and then all at once, there it went.

  With my heart racing, I clutched the sheet with my teeth, pinched as hard as I could and let out a muffled scream that was still loud enough for someone to hear if they were passing. I purred as an aftershock coursed through me, and the fur that had appeared prickled up, standing on end.

  The motion of my hand slowed in time with my breathing, and my heart.

  I opened my eyes hoping to find the man of my dreams actually above me, actually breathing the same air, before he collapsed on top of me and we curled up to sleep, but it was just me, alone as always, in my quiet little room in my quiet little house.

  Rubbing my sex-sticky fingers together, I let my hand fall on the mattress and pushed the sheet out of my mouth with my tongue. There were about eight tiny holes in it where I’d been grinding my teeth. Seeing that at least made me chuckle some, because otherwise I probably would have just cried.

  And I promise, I’m not the crying type
.

  My fingers dried as I rubbed them together. The sweat cooled on my face, my neck and my chest under the patient whomp-whomp of my overhead fan, and outside, the wind howled. The chime I had on my outdoor swing tinkled gently, and as it went through the millions of branches outside my windows, the wind wailed.

  Everything was just the way it had been three weeks before, three months before, three years before. Everything was the way it had been since I threw Liam’s stuff out the window and may or may not have lit some of his underwear on fire in a trashcan when I found lipstick on the tighty-whities he made me buy for him because he couldn’t be bothered to go to the store.

  The only difference? For once it didn’t feel like this was the way things were supposed to be.

  For once, I had hope that something was about to change. And it wasn’t just hope – it was a feeling deep down in the pit of my stomach. It was this hunch that settled in my bones that told me Orion wasn’t just saying things.

  The dream I had right before I got up suddenly reappeared to me as I lay in my sweat and my sex, curled up around one of my eight body pillows, and the fur on my back and my legs disappeared.

  In the dream, Orion was waiting outside, not sure what to do. He wanted to come knocking, but he didn’t want to scare me, so he just sat in the swing, waiting.

  The dream came back as my eyes fell closed again, hypnotized by the white noise of the fan and the breeze and the wind chime.

  I dreamt that quietly, I snuck out of my house and went up behind him. When I put my hand on the back of his neck, he groaned softly. He turned and smiled, those pale brown eyes burning into my soul.

  In my dream he was home – he was with me.

  In my dream, I was safe. I had my mate.

  Sometimes, dreams are just dreams. Other times? Hard to say why our brains can be so damn stupid and anxiety-ridden and panicky... but at the same time, so right on the money.

  As I drifted off, I thought I smelled something familiar waft through my nostrils. Leather, sweat, dust. God how I longed to have him against me, to have all those fantasies turn real. Just... to have him.

  What I wouldn’t give to wake up and find out I wasn’t alone.

  -10-

  “The last thing I need right now is to be chased by a sex-crazed zombie she-bear. Wait, what am I even saying? That’s the last thing I ever need!”

  -Orion

  Night time is when Orion always felt the safest. In the dark, no one could see his scars. No one could see the burns, or the way he squinted one eye a little more than the other.

  No one could see him, unless he chose.

  He looked up at the stars, pin pricks of light coming through the canopy, and thought about the woman – Clea – the woman he knew was his mate. He couldn’t explain how he knew, or even what it was he knew, but in the back of Orion’s mind...

  “It was the way she touched my shoulder,” he said out loud, more to keep himself company than any other reason. “She touched my scars and didn’t recoil. She saw all my ugliness. She doesn’t know though. Not about what I am inside.”

  Staring up at the ceiling of stars, he thought maybe it didn’t matter. When he looked in her eyes, peered into her soul, he saw one that had some trials of its own. Maybe they weren’t the same ones he went through, but those weren’t innocent eyes he stared into.

  Maybe that’s why, he thought. Maybe I see some of her pain in me. Or mine in her. Maybe that’s why it feels like this is so... right?

  It didn’t matter why he felt the way he did. He was powerless to stop it. Utterly, completely powerless. The second he’d looked into those slightly elongated pupils, he was hit in the heart with a big dose of reality he’d never even thought he’d have to face. The instant he saw her, his heart sang, his soul soared... he knew he had to have her.

  And there was no way he wasn’t going to have her. Never had he been so possessed by anything, never had he ached so badly for anything else. But Clea? She was his. Already she was his, and nothing else mattered.

  He tilted his head back and smelled the night, remembering her scent, the way her hair and her skin and her hands felt. Remembering the heat from her body and how badly he’d wanted to grab her away, make her his.

  And then he remembered that there were other things that he had to take care of before he could allow himself to be in love.

  Absent mindedly, Orion turned the crank on his dilapidated old radio. Someone fuzzed in, talking about how Bigfoot wasn’t actually an ape man, but was in fact an extra-dimensional being, and the reason no one ever catches one, or finds a dead one, is because they can teleport.

  He scoffed a laugh. “You come to this place, Bigfoot will be about the least weird thing you find. Although... it is a little weird that I’ve never seen one, what with all the time I spend lurking around in forests.”

  Taking a deep breath, he inhaled the night air. Cool, slightly damp, and tinged with aromas of earth and fir sap. The only face he saw when he closed his eyes was Clea’s gentle, heart shaped face, her up-swept eyes, and those entrancing light blue irises. He shook his huge head, laughing. “God, what’s happening to me? I go from street tough biker-gang enforcer to lovelorn teenager in... two weeks? That must be some kind of record.”

  A rustling sound caught his immediate attention but seconds later it quieted. He passed it off as a squirrel, or a rabbit, or a teleporting Bigfoot. Turning the knob on his radio, he scanned the airwaves until the dulcet tones of the BBC’s news hour jingle met his ears. Something was going on in Jordan, stocks in Hong Kong were down, but those in Beijing and Japan were up. There was some kind of controversy about a new energy production method that had to do with burning corn husks.

  It all just washed over Orion’s head as he watched the sky. A meteor streaked from east to west, through the belt of his namesake constellation. For all the shit his father had pulled, at least he got a good name for his pain. Although Orion always kind of suspected his mother had named him, since as far back as he could remember, all his dad called him was college boy, dipshit, or stupid.

  He didn’t need any of that anymore.

  It felt good to be free, to be on his own.

  Even if he had to keep watching his back to make sure he didn’t take a couple slugs, it was worth the sleepless nights and the paranoia.

  “But Clea,” he said, rolling her name around his tongue like a deep drink of ice cold beer on a hot Jamesburg afternoon. “I’ve got to keep her safe from him. I can’t let them find out about her.”

  Dangling his leg along the limb where he was sitting, he slowly moved it back and forth, the bark scratching his calf, tugging gently at the hair. He knew something had to be done, but not what, exactly. He couldn’t take on the entire gang, not unless he...

  Wait a minute. All I’d have to do is take them by surprise. There was a reason I was the chief enforcer, even if I wouldn’t kill, they still relied on me. I’m the biggest, I’m the best... and if I can get the jump on them, I can cut off the hydra’s head before the rest can react.

  But cut one off, and more will sprout.

  He grunted as the jangly BBC intro music played again, this time heralding the beginning of Asian financial market discussion hour. That meant it was two in the morning. Orion could generally get within a few minutes of telling time by the sun, but, he did have every single thing that played on BBC radio memorized by jingle, so as long as he had a radio, he could tell the time.

  “Or I could get a damn watch,” he said, chuckling.

  A snap caught his attention again. This one thicker, heavier sounding, than the one before. This was no squirrel.

  Gingerly, he pushed himself up on his hands and got his feet underneath him, balancing carefully in the crotch of a massive, comfortable sleeping tree. The muscles in Orion’s arms flexed tight and then released as he listened for another sound.

  There it was. He turned his head left and stared into the darkness.

  Snap! Closer this time, the sound
was definitely a footstep, and definitely from a big person or a big animal. Or a big... foot.

  Seconds later, another halting stutter-step sounded through the forest. It was twenty, maybe twenty-five feet from where he was sitting, but whatever animal it was, Orion was downwind. He sniffed the air silently, and then squinted in confusion. It smelled like... something dead? Not the sickening, horrible odor of decay, but just a very faint, musty, earthen aroma.

  It wasn’t a nice odor, but then again it wasn’t especially bad either. There was an odd aspect to the smell. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air again as the top of a head emerged from the undergrowth.

  A pair of pigtails bobbed on either side of a very large, and very... lumpy? head. Orion craned his neck, not really sure what he was looking at, or even sure if he was actually awake.

  Another sniff, and he recognized the mystery aroma. Lilac? Orion shook his head. Jamesburg was weird, sure, but this was...

  “Huhn...?” the visitor groaned. She shuffled out into the open.

  Orion’s eyes shot wide open. The pigtails were just about the most normal thing on the creature he beheld. The face was slightly green under the silver moonlight, the arms massive, powerfully muscled and obviously strong, but also slightly different lengths.

  She took one step, tromping on a branch that had to be at least two inches around, and snapped it right in two. Orion just watched, dumbfounded, as the creature groaned again, bent down and picked up one half of the broken stick, and then stuck it straight in her mouth.

  A line of impossibly straight, square teeth opened as a long tendril of drool ran down the thing’s open lips all the way to the ground where it collected on the leaves at her feet. She opened up, inserted the stick and took a bite.

  “What in the fuck?” Orion accidentally whispered under his breath. Did that thing just...

  And then she took another. The thing groaned like she’d just got a mouthful of perfectly cooked steak. “Go...od,” it said, very slowly. With the third bite, she finished her snack, crunched and crunched, and then swallowed the wood.