Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  “Chad,” I heard myself breathing, even though I remembered clearly refusing to call him by his name earlier.

  Again, it didn’t seem the time for decorum.

  He made it down to the last rose on the vine — I’d picked up the tattoo in celebration of my acceptance into the Air Force medical program. I was going to owe them time, but when I graduated I was going to have my M.D. and zero debt.

  And that was a hell of a thing to celebrate.

  I’d always thought I would end up overseas, either in the field with the soldiers or in the little pockets of oversea towns where real medical care was lacking. But I was just the beginning, and I needed time under my belt.

  I had never expected to be so thoroughly derailed by a man I was working with. A military man. A Major, no less, who wasn’t even in the medical field.

  But none of that mattered just then, when he spun me back around, so my back was pressed into the stone behind me, and his mouth was on mine, hungry, demanding.

  I was melting into a puddle of desire.

  I’d already taken off his shirt, so it only seemed logical that my hands would drop to his pants. I began to fiddle with his buckle and buttons.

  He was evidently in agreement, because his hands reached for my pants, too. We quickly and fully divested ourselves of any fabric separating us.

  “Your tattoo is beautiful,” he said, as he pressed hot kisses along the column of my throat, across my collarbone, his hand came up to capture my breast and run his thumb over my taut nipple. “It suits you.”

  I arched against him. “I’m glad you like it,” I whispered, already having a hard time catching my breath, grounding myself.

  His touch was confident and warm, and gentle, with the rasp of roughness that comes when a man works with his hands. Just as I had imagined it would be. Better, even. Perfect.

  But I didn’t see why he should be having all the fun, so I let my hands do the same kind of exploring, moving over his chest and down his abdomen, the flat of his stomach quivering as I drew my fingers across the skin there.

  And he had thought I was just a powerless Doctor masquerading as a soldier.

  I moaned against his mouth as he dropped his hand between my thighs and slid a finger through my slick folds, until I was trembling and desperate to have him.

  I wasn’t the only one with power, it seemed.

  He reached around behind me, lifting me until the stone of the wall was biting into the flesh of my back and my legs were wrapped around his hips.

  But, then he was sliding into me, hard and eager, filling me completely.

  I said his name again for good measure, because I knew he would like it and because I didn’t think I was actually capable of saying anything else at that exact moment.

  I rocked against him as he set an easy pace, the rhythm he created driving me wild.

  It had been a long time since I’d been with someone, and when I had, it certainly hadn’t been like this.

  “Christ, Brenna,” he was muttering, his face pressing into the curve of my shoulder, a spasm tearing through him. “You feel good.”

  “Hmm,” I said, bringing my hands back to his head, the short hairs there little more than a peach fuzz, but soft and silky. So much softer than that tuft of fur I knew I hadn’t imagined.

  My first orgasm caught me by surprise as I shuddered against him, cried out his name again.

  But he wasn’t finished with me, and I wasn’t going to complain. Gone were the gentle ministrations from earlier, he was moving roughly against me, looking for his own release.

  Then he was groaning my name, nipping the skin of my shoulder, and I could feel him pulsating inside of me.

  Sending me right over the edge behind him.

  Afterward, he wasn’t in a hurry to set me back down on the ground, and I wasn’t sure I was in a hurry to be placed there.

  “You’re a goddamned bear,” I said suddenly, like I was picking right back up in the conversation we had been having when I had been entirely, epically, distracted by his touch. “And don’t think you’re going to avoid that conversation by having sex with me. What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  If I’d wanted to go on being held like that by him, saying that was probably not in my best interest, because he was disentangling himself from me and setting me back on the ground.

  Now the morning was well on its way, and I had a good view of his body.

  Which meant he also had a good view of mine.

  But I wasn’t going to let that prevent me from enjoying what I saw.

  “I wish you’d stop asking about it,” he all but growled, running his hand over the back of his head and then reaching for his pants.

  I guess the timing had been pretty bad on my part. But it was sort of important.

  I mean, bear.

  “Get dressed. We should be able to see well enough to find the others now. And it will be easier to tell where the problem areas are.”

  Then he turned away from me, and left me to collect my own clothing and hurriedly pulling it on.

  Officially dismissed.

  We walked in silence, which was probably for the best, because every time I opened my mouth I seemed to put a foot in it.

  Only, not talking about it wasn’t doing anything to answer my questions, and I really did want to know.

  Need to know was more accurate.

  As he had said, the sun was up, more or less, though the heavy rain still had us trapped in the fog of post storm. Even so, we were able to easily navigate the mountain side.

  I never would have been able to find it on my own, but Chad seemed to have no problems at all, winding this way and that, turning here or there, moving further and further upward.

  Which, I guess, was exactly why he did what he did and I did what I did.

  We’d been walking about an hour and a half when we came to a little lodge on a level piece of land.

  “How did you —” I began, forgetting that I’d already told myself I wasn’t going to ask him any more questions until he answered the one incredibly pressing question I’d already asked.

  He turned toward me, one eyebrow raised.

  And I was right back there, thinking about the damn bear again.

  “They’re here,” he said, moving toward the door, knocking briskly on it. “Cadets!”

  The door was pulled open immediately, by cadets who looked to be in much better shape than we were. The blonde at the door — the same boy who had reached for that tree in the first ill-fated experience of the night — looked utterly relieved at our appearance.

  Bedraggled as I’m sure it was.

  “Sorry, we’re late,” Chad said, stepping into the little cabin, nothing but a single room on the inside. “We got caught in the rain. And a slide. And by a mountain lion.”

  They responded only with silence, but I was guessing based on how we looked, all of those things seemed plausible.

  Maybe even highly likely.

  No one even ventured a laugh.

  “Anyone have a phone? Anyone find one on the premises? A radio?”

  He was stepping through the room, opening cupboards, waiting for an answer.

  “We were unable to find anything, sir.” A girl from the back said.

  He finished his search anyway, and I knew it was because it would be unlikely to find a cabin this far out without some sort of emergency kit.

  In the end, though, he wasn’t able to turn anything up either.

  “Alright, team, we’re going to have to hoof it back on our own. Keep your eye out for the missing bag full of gear. I’m sure the base is waiting to hear from us.”

  We’d left most of our things in the hurry to escape the storm, but apparently that wasn’t pressing because Chad was leading us down the other side of the mountain, away from the mess we’d left behind.

  Away from everything that had happened in that little cave. Everything I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Chad

  W
e’d made it back unscathed.

  At least, the cadets had.

  I could have used one or two less injuries, but I was on the mend, too.

  The biggest damage done was that Brenna knew.

  I’d done my best to avoid her finding out. I’d done my best to redirect the conversation after she’d put the pieces together.

  And in the end, after we had reached the campus and the cadets had departed, I had been quick to escape her presence.

  I couldn’t be near her and not think about the cave — her body hot against mine, writhing, exploding.

  The thought of her had my dick hard all over again.

  And if one thing was beyond evident, it was that it would never be able to happen again. She already knew more than she should. More than was safe for either one of us

  My solution was juvenile and faulty, but I figured the best thing I could do, at least for the time being, was to avoid her.

  At all costs.

  And that meant no going back to the bar where I’d run into her that first night. Even though I told myself I wasn’t going there to look for her, and it wouldn’t make any difference to me whether or not I saw her car in the parking lot.

  Of course, avoiding her was only going to do me so much good when we still had weeks of classes left.

  I gave the cadets a week off, figuring they’d earned the time after the experience they’d had. I asked them to reflect on it and write me a paper, and I thought that was probably enough to justify the lack of class.

  I knew it was mostly so I could put off seeing Brenna. I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to do that for much longer.

  But, to my surprise, the Monday after the week off, the cadets trickled in.

  And no Brenna.

  I thought at first, maybe she was running late, that she might feel awkward about our tryst in the cave, how I’d touched every inch of her and would sign up to do it again in a heartbeat.

  But, no Brenna. I even dragged my feet, making sure to double check my files and sort through papers that didn’t need sorting. Class commenced, class was dismissed. Still, no Brenna. She hadn’t shown for class that day at all.

  Or the next day.

  Or the day after that.

  In fact, I didn’t see her again until Friday, back on the green where we usually met.

  The cadets had already gone, preparing for their next practical experience — a week-long trip we were hosting next to a lake, in the hopes that we would be able to foster some different kinds of skills in that landscape — when I spied her walking across the field toward me.

  She looked just as good as she had when she’d been naked and pressed against the wall of that cave, her body hot against mine, searching for the same thing I had been.

  Brenna was flipping through a sheaf of papers she had in her hand, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was in them, especially if her expression was any indication of what it might be.

  “Major,” she said tartly.

  “Doctor,” I said, stepping in toward her even though her body language told me it wouldn’t do any good.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “Brenna,” I corrected myself, my voice low.

  She was pressing the papers in to my chest. “This is your blood work. I pulled samples from your clothing.”

  I looked down at the charts in front of me, the vague numbers attached to valued I didn’t understand.

  “And?” I finally asked when it became clear she wasn’t going to provide me with any more information.

  “And, it’s not good. In fact, it’s probably the worst news you could ever get. Because you’re not human. According to these values, you just aren’t human.”

  She was stabbing at something on the paper, something I was to understand must be the defining thing that made me not human.

  I caught her hand in mine.

  “Stop,” I growled, not wanting her to go on, knowing I was in a horrible, vulnerable position with her acquisition of that knowledge.

  “Do you know what might just be worse, though?” she asked, and in the bright day light her eyes were inky and endless, and I wanted to get lost in them, not talk about my deficiencies as a human being. “It’s that you’re a bear.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said flatly, not knowing what else I could do, desperate to end the conversation and find a way to put it all behind us, to wipe the knowledge from her mind. “Do I look like a bear?” I asked instead.

  “No,” she said, her eyes fixing on mine. “You don’t look like a bear. Now. But I imagine sometimes, you do. I’m not an expert on things like that, but Major, I think that makes you a werebear.”

  I froze. I suddenly felt exposed and naked with the truth laid out there like that.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And,” she clipped, “I want to know more. How? Why? I want to ask all the questions and have all the answers.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I have those for you.”

  That part, at least, was true. There were so many unknowns in it, even for me.

  She was reaching out for me suddenly, her hands twisting in the fabric of my BDU. “I need to know, Chad,” she said, and there was a rawness in her voice, a hunger, that had me thinking of that moment back in the cave. “I need to know how I can care so much, want someone so much, when he’s not even human.”

  That, I definitely didn’t have an answer to.

  Brenna

  I waited impatiently.

  To be honest, I didn’t have much of the virtue of patience, and today I was especially lacking.

  I hadn’t meant to storm away from him, not really, but I couldn’t stand to look into those cool grey eyes a second longer. I couldn’t stand knowing what I knew and having him deny it to my face.

  And I didn’t want him to see how much he affected me.

  By the time I’d thought better of it, it was too late to go back. I knew he would be long gone.

  I headed back to the hospital, thinking I might be able to find something there to occupy my time, but there was nothing in my office or in my paperwork that could capture my attention enough to draw it away from Chad Matthews.

  Not long enough, not completely enough, not exciting enough.

  It took just a moment to find his current address in the hospital’s database, and then I was on my way to temporary housing.

  I’d stood outside his door. Walked up and down the hall. Perched on various inanimate objects, waiting for his eventual return.

  I had barely processed his arrival before I was leaping to my feet and moving toward him, the small space that moonlighted as a window seat at the end of the hall, disappearing behind me.

  I knew the minute he saw me, his step faltered, as though he was weighing whether or not he should continue forward, or whether he should turn around and run. Could he could move away from me more quickly than I could move toward him?

  “What are you doing here?” he asked bluntly.

  “I came to see you,” I said with just as much tact. “I shouldn’t have left earlier. We weren’t finished. There’s still so much more I need to know…”

  “Look,” he growled, his voice filled with gravel and laced with angst, his hand reaching out the grab my upper arm, his fingers biting into the soft flesh there, a reminder of his physical strength. “I don’t know what you think I can tell you. I’ve given you everything I have to give.”

  His touch had already sent me back to that moment in the cave, and now with those words on his lips, I was melting into him, a veritable puddle of emotions and desire.

  His mouth came crashing down on mine as he roughly hauled me up against him, his tongue teasing against mine, his hands moving over my body like he already owned me.

  And I was thinking he already did.

  Somehow he managed to open the door to the little suite while kissing me, a feat I was going to have to marvel over later, and we were crossed the room toward the bedroom at the back.

 
I knew exactly where we were going, and I had no qualms about going there at all. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since the first time I’d let him slide his hard cock into my body, and now, I wanted him back where he belonged.

  I was moaning against him, saying his name, because I knew it was something he liked, and something I’d tried so hard to hold back from him.

  But now I was putty in his hands, turning into whatever kind of pliable thing he wanted me to be, desperate to have him.

  “Does it matter?” he asked, his teeth nipping at my lip. “Does it really matter?”

  I twined my arms around his neck, letting him carry me the rest of the way to the bed, moving eagerly against him.

  “No,” I heard myself say, and my voice was ragged, pleading.

  It didn’t matter, I suppose. I thought it had, but the truth was, it didn’t matter at all.

  The only thing that mattered was that I was here with him, our clothing being pulled from our bodies one piece at a time, exploring one another with a sweetness and an urgency and a desperation that reminded me of our time in the cave all over again.

  Would it always be like this?

  And I was certainly going to look forward to finding out.

  THE END

  LOVING THE ALPHA

  STORY DESCRIPTION

  Curvy Kira Bentley is smart, beautiful, frightened and alone. She is a freshly cursed werewolf, and clearly ignorant on the subject of what's happening to her. As if that weren’t bad enough, she can’t seem to avoid her sexy English professor, either inside or outside of the classroom, and not only does Professor Sawyer Donovan have looks to die for, he also invokes feelings in her unlike any Kira has ever experienced before.

  The last thing Sawyer Donovan expected was to find a pretty she-wolf in his English class. A ruggedly handsome young English professor at a prestigious university, the solitary werewolf has enough trouble dodging the unwanted attention of his female students without deliberately seeking one out. Yet, Professor Donovan’s sense of honor demands he shelter and guide his student in the transformation that she’s experiencing.