by Lynn Lorenz
“I just want what’s best for you, Lace.”
“I decide. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to spend some time with Rip. Alone.”
“I’ve been here twenty minutes.” Jordan protested. “It was a four-hour drive from Boston!”
“You have a key to the diner. Go have some pie.” Lacey pointed at the door.
“Okay. I love you, Lace.”
“Love you too, Jord. Get out.” She smiled at her brother, and then shoved him through the door. She turned her blue-eyed gaze on Rip, and his knees melted.
* * * *
Lacey studied Rip carefully. There was no arrogance on his face, no cockiness to the spread of his broad shoulders. He smiled, warmth radiating from his features, and he took a step toward her.
When his hand tilted her chin, and he leaned in for a kiss, she stopped him.
“I need a shower,” she whispered. “Then, I’m all yours.”
“Tell me about this shower.” He smiled.
“Strip off those pants.”
In the bathroom, she turned the water as hot as she could stand it, and then pushed a naked Rip inside.
“Nice,” he observed, ducking his head under the water and soaking his beard.
“Very nice,” she agreed, taking in the sight of him fully naked for the first time. Water sluiced over hard muscle. His chest was speckled with fine brown hairs. His legs were firm, well-muscled, even after a hundred-year nap. And his cock … well, generous was a good word for it. She stood under the water with him and reached for the shampoo. Standing on tip-toes, she soaped his hair, enjoying the look of pure animal bliss that stole across his features. He groaned, sliding his hands down her body and tugging her into a kiss.
Heat. She understood now, as her body softened and blushed under his attention, why that word was used. Heat suffused her from head to toe, pinking her skin, puckering her nipples. He took the shampoo bottle from her hands and followed her lead, first soaping her hair. Next, he knelt at her feet, sliding soapy hands over her body, and then kissed his way back up.
“I definitely appreciate the improvements in bathing techniques,” he murmured just before taking a nipple between his lips.
Glorious, delicious heat throbbed with each tug on her delicate flesh. One large hand settled at the base of her spine, pushing her body closer to his. The other stroked through her wet hair with a gentle languor seeming to contrast the persistent erection throbbing against her. Releasing her nipple, he smiled up at her and sank back to his knees.
He crowded her against the wall of the shower, sliding one thigh over his shoulder. Lacey held her breath in anticipation as he leaned close, opening her with his fingers. Oh God… The breath spilled out of her in a rush, and he covered her clit with his tongue and rubbed it in slow circles.
Heat. It licked up her body as he licked and rubbed, sliding two fingers inside her and humming his appreciation of the wetness spilling against his hand. She took a great gasping lungful of air as he rubbed hard against her G-spot, stimulating her from within, all while maintaining perfect pressure against her clit.
“Please…” Her voice sounded strange, ragged and desperate to her own ears as he withdrew his fingers. At her plea, he plunged them deep again, rubbing and licking with his tongue.
She felt the orgasm hovering at her edges, and she claimed it greedily, the heat spilling over and making her shake and sigh and call his name. She had no idea how long they stood under the water while her world teetered back onto its axis. Her breath came in quiet pants, and still she burned.
“I need more.” She stared at him in wonder, turning off the water. He grinned and leaned in close, nipping at her ear.
“We’re just getting started, love.”
They dried each other carefully, teasing and touching. She loved the way he gasped when she took him in her fist and pumped his cock. His eyes closed and she felt sexy and powerful watching his chest rise and fall as his breathing grew ragged. She dropped to her knees on the cold tile floor and took the tip of him into her mouth, running her hands up his legs to cup his buttocks and force him deeper inside. She couldn’t take all of him, but she tried.
“Oh, gods, Lacey.” His voice was a guttural groan as she swallowed around him, taking him as deep as she could. She teased and licked, sucking small kisses up and down his shaft, until he growled and pushed her away.
“Go get on the bed,” he ordered. “Get on your hands and knees, and wait for me.”
A rush of wetness surged between her thighs and she pressed her legs together, trying to ease the sudden ache.
“Lacey…” he growled her name, landing a resounding slap on her ass. She scrambled out of the bathroom, and dove onto the bed, clambering up onto her hands and knees. Struggling to calm her breathing, she suddenly wished she’d faced the door, instead of presenting her ass and pussy to the man to whom she’d promised herself.
But then his sharp indrawn breath spilled a blush onto her cheeks and she knew she’d made him happy.
“You’re beautiful, Lacey,” he told her, coming to stand behind her. He rubbed a hand from her shoulder down to her ass; then he slapped it again, the sting and heat making her clench against the rush of longing to be filled. “There’s no way you could have known how happy it would make me to see you like this, all open to me, however I might choose to make love to you. With my hands…” He plunged a finger inside her, pumped it in and out, making her moan.
“With my mouth…” He leaned close and licked her from asshole to clit, spreading her thighs wide as he did.
“With my cock…” He probed at her with the head of his cock, teasing, but not sinking inside. She whimpered as he withdrew.
His hand landed on her ass again. “You turn so pink when I spank your ass, Lacey. Would you let me turn you over my knee and paddle you until your ass is as hot as your pretty pussy?”
She gasped, blushing at the question, but she nodded. She would. She would let him do anything he wanted, because under his hands and mouth she’d achieved bliss she’d never imagined. He slapped her again, lifting her ass cheek with the pressure of his slap. It stung, sure, but it felt good too, and she could feel moisture seep out of her pussy and spill down her thighs.
“So pretty.” He sighed, slapping her one more time. Then she felt his fingertip teasing at her anus and she stilled. His huge hands spread her ass cheeks wide and he stroked the crease of her ass, lighting every nerve on fire.
“You’re beautiful everywhere, Lacey,” he assured her.
“Please, Rip.”
“Please what, love?” He sat on the bed beside her, tilted her head to look in her eyes. She saw love and understanding, passion and curiosity in his patient gaze.
“Make love to me.”
“Yes.” He leaned in and kissed her again, kissed her until she lifted off her palms and wrapped her arms around his neck. He rolled her breasts in his palms, and then he tugged her close, warming her back with his hands. Suddenly, he pulled back, a strange expression on his face, almost embarrassed. “First … I need to know if you’re in your fertile time. I know it’s selfish, but I’ve been awake less than twenty-four hours. I’m not sure I’m ready to share you with cubs yet.”
“I’m on the pill,” she murmured. To her own ears, her voice sounded thick and slurred with desire.
“What’s the pill?”
“It’s … don’t worry about it. I’ll explain later. I can’t get pregnant. And I haven’t had sex in a long time, not since before my last physical. I’m clean. And you haven’t…”
“In one hundred years. You’re telling me I don’t need to withdraw?”
“Yes, Rip, that’s what I’m telling you. Now fuck me, please.”
“Get back on your hands and knees.”
And just like that, the awkward conversation was behind them and the heat was back. He was right; she burned for him. He kneeled behind her, and then tugged her off her hands, wrapping an arm around her waist.
&nbs
p; “This first time, it has to be like this. But next time, I want to look in your eyes,” he murmured as he drew her up his body and moved her into position. Her back pressed to his chest, she felt the tip of his cock nudging at her sensitive tissues. She spread her legs wider around his and sank slowly down, taking him inside. Inch by inch, he slid deeper, and she could feel from the tension in his arms how much it cost him. She reveled in the strength holding her upright as he surged that final inch to take her completely.
She’d never felt so full, every nerve singing with his intimate possession. He rocked up, gasping her name, and she spilled forward, catching herself on her palms. He fit his hands to her hips and tugged her back, serving her onto his cock with exquisite control, still she burned.
“Harder,” she begged.
He growled a low, animal sound and pressed deep. She’d never felt so alive in her life as something awakened in her and answered the call of his body, of his soul. She felt the moment the thread of his control snapped, and she celebrated it with her own low growl of need. He fucked her, hard and fast, and it was glorious. One of his huge hands slipped between her thighs and he rubbed against her clit, pitching her desire to a mindless, incoherent rush of want. She rocked back against him and let the rush of orgasm swell up inside her.
“Now. Come for me,” he demanded, his voice harsh and rough, his hips pistoning against her. The roughness of his voice, the need she heard there was all it took for the orgasm to explode in her, heat and need, and a feeling of belonging she’d never known before. As the tremors racked her body she felt him stiffen, and he leaned in close, nipping at her shoulder with his teeth before he shouted her name.
They sank to the bed together in a tangle of limbs and sated sighs. He nipped her shoulder again, more playfully this time, and she shrugged, giggling.
“I can’t imagine needing to sleep again so soon, but I could, here in your arms.” He sighed, tugging a blanket over them.
“I could too,” she admitted. “Should I feel different? Now that we’re mated?”
“Are you saying you don’t?”
She thought about it. She did feel different, actually. She felt safe and secure. She felt like she’d just placed the last puzzle piece into a huge jigsaw, and finally knew what the big picture looked like. The thirst for adventure, that air of expectancy, it was gone.
“I do,” she agreed. “I feel like I just found something I didn’t know I was waiting for. My whole life I’ve been looking up every time the door chimed, and expecting something. And nothing ever happened. Until last night.”
“You woke me up,” he said. “I’ve waited one hundred years for you. And you were absolutely, perfectly, incredibly worth the wait.”
* * * *
Rip looked up at the sign over the restaurant. “Lacey’s Place” still shone out in bold red neon over the door, but a smaller sign, in a leaning cursive green added “Rip’s too.”
It looked good. It satisfied him, to see his name there, next to hers. He twisted the gold band on his finger as he glanced in the window. He could see her inside, explaining something to one of the twins with patient hand gestures. He snorted. Good luck, Lace.
He heard the car behind him, and he knew before the door opened and the scent traveled to meet his nose it would be Jordan.
“Hey.” His brother-in-law’s voice called from behind him. Plastering a smile on his face, he turned and held out his hand for the obligatory shake.
“Hey.”
“I have all the paperwork here. I bought out the mortgage so I could transfer the deed to the two of you. Lacey will no longer be a tenant. You guys own it free and clear. Consider it a wedding present.”
“Thanks Jordan.” In the months since his awakening, Rip had offered every olive branch he could think of to the other bear, and a tentative truce had cropped up between them.
“You’re welcome. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“No need to apologize. We’re family now.”
The door chimed, and they both looked up to see Lacey grinning at them from the entrance to the diner.
“What are you guys doing out here? Carrie just pulled the first of the new pies out of the oven and it smells amazing. Jord, did you get ice cream?”
“Vanilla bean, like I promised.”
“Cardamom and pears. No disrespect to Gran, but I think Rip here might have just created the best pie on the mountain.”
Rip grinned. It turned out the twenty-first century was pretty different from the twentieth. For one thing, spices were easier to come by. And it seemed he had a talent for pairing flavors that made Lacey moan that sexy little moan of hers. It made him hard and achy just thinking about it. With Jordan’s marketing firm taking on accounts at one of the big ski resorts, they were hoping for an upswing in tourist activity in the area, and Lacey’s Place, Rip’s Too promised the best pie on the mountain, and service with a sweet, if slightly flaky, smile.
Lacey wrapped her arms around Rip’s waist and looked up at the sign with him. “It looks good, your name on the Place.” She snuggled her face against his chest and then looked up at him. He’d never get tired of looking at her face, beaming at him that way. After a hundred years of sleep, it was possible he’d never get tired again.
“Worth waking up for, for sure,” he teased.
“Worth looking up for,” she agreed. “No more waiting. I want pie. C’mon.”
With a bear-sized grin on his face, he followed her inside.
The End
Publisher’s Note
Please help this author's career by posting an honest review wherever you purchased this book.
About Vanessa North
Vanessa was born in New England, but moved to the South as a teenager. She reads voraciously, writes obsessively, and takes thousands of photos of the people she loves.
She lives in Northwest Georgia with her husband, twin boy-children, and a pack of dogs.
Bear With Me
By Lea Griffith
Blurb
Tyee Clark screwed up bad and he’s been hiding to lick his wounds. The last thing he expects is to find the woman he craves more than anything else taunting him. She should know better than mess with a sullen grizzly. Unless she means it.
Lily Baskins has been hurt bad and she’s been waiting for the right time to institute a whole lot of payback. She’s not about to let sleeping bears lie. Not when she knows what she wants and is willing to face down a beast to get it.
Lily’s had the man. Now she wants the bear.
Dedication
To Team Awesome—you are exactly as the name implies. Lea
Chapter 1
Tyee turned his gaze east and the black silence above him fractured in a multi-colored hue with the piercing scream of a hawk. There was a hint of heat in the orange-pink rays breaking over the horizon just as there was a cryptic message for him in the call of the red-tail. His heart thudded and his body trembled with the promise in the light that crawled over the mountains and cast silver shadows on the land. The sensual whisper of spring shook his soul. His skin rejoiced as the sunlight reached him, rippled in his fur, washed over him and lit the recesses of his mind.
It wouldn’t be long, another few days, a week at most, before winter’s hold was broken. He’d be forced to leave then, walk away from this place of endless cold and darkness, peace, and succor. It was past time he was gone. She’d returned over a week ago and had drawn closer every day. He’d scented her from the first step she’d taken onto Chinook land and he’d followed her trail through the endless high passes that rimmed the Canadian Rockies. She’d finally made her way back down to camp within feet of the lake. He’d remained out of her human range of sight and sound, the soft pads of his enormous feet never betraying him.
He imagined the burnished gold of her hair and the silken ivory of her flesh in the new light of this day. He wanted to roar and rip, rend and tear. She’d set up camp at the lake intentionally to draw him from his winter home
. She’d returned to taunt him.
He lifted his nose to the breeze, sifted through the varying shades of scents until he found hers. Wildflowers on a sun-soaked day, her smell called to everything wild in him. His muscles clenched, six-inch claws digging deep into the moist ground, a grumble he was barely able to control dying before it left his throat. Tyee took deep, shuddering breaths, the air misting with each exhalation in the cold.
She alone did this to him. It was dangerous because she called to the man in him. This was the reason he’d followed her. Tyee knew well the danger his human form represented to the woman. The irony of it was a piercing ache in his heart. She was much safer when he was in the skin of the bear. He couldn’t love her, touch her, fuck her, but she was safe.
The sun had risen above the mountains, a perfect round yellow goblet of fire in the growing blue of the sky. The red-tail shrilled again and Tyee was helpless to resist the temptation the woman presented. He moved like a wraith in the early morning fog. The small creatures scurried to move away from the danger he presented. A deep chuffle, a heavy grunt, and birds took flight. A snort and growl echoed through the trees, muted but carrying as he wanted it to. He didn’t try to contain it now. He stalked her. The warning he’d given her a year ago allowed her ample time to make a decision. She’d chosen to return. So be it.
Her fate was sealed.
*
Lily glanced at her sparse supplies. If nothing happened today, she’d have to venture back to town. She’d come with bare necessities, leaving everything important, like identification and money, with her friend because she didn’t need them up here. But she’d need food to keep her going. She wasn’t a very good hunter.
She stepped out of the tent, raised her face to the rising sun and breathed deeply. Something moved within her, restless and needy, a bud unfurling in the newness of the day, a tendril of smoke wrapping around her soul. Hope was there, buried under layers of pain, but still alive. He’d broken her heart, but she’d discovered it was a stupid organ, never knowing what was good for it until it’d been crushed beneath his paws. She knew he was there, somewhere past the edge of the trees, watching. As she waited for her first glimpse of him, birds burst from the canopy, their angry chirps a testament to the discord of the forest.