Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

Tyler had finally brought Willow back to his place in Sun Valley. It was a lovely log cabin, with a view onto a piece of woodland. There was another cabin on the other side of a hedge border and Willow was not at all surprised to find that Jesse and Jamie lived there.

  Tyler shrugged as he opened the door for her. “It’s cool to have my big bro next door,” he said. “Saves me having to cook most nights. And I always have someone to watch the game with.”

  “What game?” Willow asked walking into the cabin and looking around.

  Suddenly Tyler swept her up in his arms. “Any game,” he said and kissed her.

  It was a long kiss that drove everything from Willow’s mind. Everything but her hunger for him. She needed Tyler like a junkie needs a fix. Before she knew what was going on, she was pulling his Tee over his head. He grinned at her and began to kiss her neck his hands running over her skin under her shirt, her bra. She began to throb between her legs, wishing his hands would travel down her body.

  Her world contracted until it was just Tyler and her. All she could see was him, all she could feel was his skin on hers and all she could smell was the intense scent of him. He excited her so, that she wanted him now, all of him. She wanted to devour him whole, and come back for more.

  Suddenly she was on her back on the rug in the living room. It was soft and furry. Tyler pulled her shirt off and she removed her bra, tossing it away from her. Tyler grabbed her breasts in his hands and licked both her nipples, sucking first one and then the other. Willow moaned and ran her hands over his perfect body, up into his hair and down to the button on his jeans.

  With a fumble and a strain, she undid the button and then the zipper. He had to help pull them off and soon he was naked sitting in front of her.

  “Your turn,’ he said his voice husky.

  Willow smirked, sat up and coyly undid her jeans, pulling them off.

  Tyler stopped her at her underwear. He kissed her and gently pushed her backwards making her lie down again. His tongue ran along her neck, down in between her breasts, down over her stomach and when it reached her panties, he gripped them in his teeth and drew them off.

  Willow felt his hands run up her thighs. He squeezed them and ran his thumb through her pubic hair. In a moment he slipped two fingers inside her. She groaned and pushed down on his hand, wishing it was all of him. He worked her somehow knowing exactly what would drive her wild. Willow arched her back, and ran her fingers through his hair feeling him grow against her leg. After a while she couldn’t take it anymore and she reached down and took his penis in her hand. He was so hard and big. Willow longed to suck him. So she moved and withdrew his fingers, took him in her mouth and began to massage him. Tyler moaned and knotted his fingers in her hair, rocking gently with the pleasure of her touch.

  Gently he moved her, taking himself out of her mouth. He held Willow to him and kissed her neck. He sat up and drew her onto his lap. Willow straddled him and slowly sat down. As he slipped inside her Willow bit her lip. It was so intense just having him inside her, she thought she might climax right there and then. But then he shifted and she shifted and they were rocking to and fro, clinging to each other. His hands ran down her back and cupped her backside as she rode him.

  It was all coming too fast. Willow wanted it to last and last, so she pulled him out of her and moved away from him panting. She looked at him longingly and crooked a finger at him. Tyler crawled to her and as he reached her she turned around. She looked at him over her shoulder. Tyler smiled. He took her from behind, sliding in with ease. It was a rush. He was so deep, so in her that Willow could only gasp. The pleasure threatened to come and break the spell, letting the world back in again, so once again, Willow moved away. This time she lay down in the soft fibres of the mat and Tyler crawled over her. He started at her toes and licked and kissed his way up her legs. Then he inserted a finger into her vagina and licked and sucked his way around it, working her until Willow pulled him up to her and kissed him deeply.

  Now the game began in earnest. They started slow, the rhythm taking time to build. With each thrust Willow felt herself losing control more and more. Soon there would be nothing left of her, just a whisper on his lips. But Tyler thrust again and again, and soon Willow was a screaming animal, pulling him further and further into her.

  Her orgasm was so intense that she couldn’t do more than make the smallest of sounds, lest she take her attention away from the warm delight that spread through her. Tyler groaned and stiffened and in a moment he was lying next to her. He held her close, nestled his face in her hair and kissed her neck.

  “I think I’ll have to keep you around,” he said.

  “What?” Willow asked breathless and laughing.

  “Well, then we can do that over, and over, and over,” Tyler said.

  “Speaking of doing it over, let me know when you’re up for seconds,” Willow smiled.

  Tyler kissed her then, and the world melted away.

  Spurred Bearback

  Bear Ranchers Book IV

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Valerie Rousseau drove the rental car along the road that would eventually lead out to Sun Valley. It was a pleasant day in fall, with a mild sun trying to break through some lacy cirrus clouds high in the deep blue sky. To say that her job took her all over the country was an understatement. Valerie owned an apartment in New York but spent so little time there that even her cactus had managed to die of dehydration, while things left in her fridge had become sentient and walked out on their own.

  And here she was, away again.

  This time to a small corner in a rather picturesque part of the country. And there was the problem in itself. Picturesque. Born in New Orleans she had a weakness for beauty. After all she had been raised in an old plantation house, with its columns out front and massive windows to let in the wonderful New Orleans sun. It was picturesque and Valerie loved the word and everything it conjured in her mind. It was the reason she had chosen property assessment as her profession.

  New York was a lot of things, but picturesque wasn’t one of them. How she missed the simple beauty of old areas, not marred by commercialism and human madness. Clean, simple, open. You missed things like that in the cities where everything was loud, run by money and no matter what anyone said about going green, cities were primarily dirty.

  Perhaps she had just been on the road too much lately. Perhaps all this thought of home, of Mama’s cooking, of the place she grew up, was just her tired mind and body telling Valerie that it was time to recharge. She should complete this job and then put in for leave. She had vacation days so why not take them? She could go home. Home. The word hung in her mind and ached in her heart.

  Valerie came to realize that she was lost. Google Maps had been telling her this fact for the last how long? She didn’t know, she’d tuned out the noise of the robotic, annoying voice telling her it was recalculating.

  “Shit!” she said and pulled the car over onto the verge.

  The road ahead was heading into trees, a lot of them and then up into the mountains. Was this the right way to Sun Valley? All the signs so far had insisted that she was going the right way. She looked at her phone and sighed. Google was completely lost. It suddenly thought she was in California and not Colorado. She turned the GPS off, what was the point of keeping it on?

  So the last sign had been about a mile back? Maybe more?

  “Dammit Val, why the hell were you daydreaming?” she berated herself, loudly thumping the wheel.

  Maybe she should drive a little way down the road. There was bound to be another sign soon, right? There had to be. Surely people came to Sun Valley all the time. Right?

  Valerie slowly depressed the accelerator and the rental eased back onto the road. She drove along for another twenty minutes as the trees grew up around her. Suddenly the road just ended in a wall of green branches and leaves. To her right she could see something that looked like a little dirt track that was cleared of branches, and to her
left nothing but forest.

  On the right a very small, hand painted sign proclaimed that it was the way to Sun Valley.

  “Oh, but of course it is,” Valerie said aloud to herself and sighed. It was clearly going to be one of those days. The vampire pool at HQ, Valerie’s pet name for the sisterhood of personal assistants and secretaries, that stood guard on all the floors of the massive skyscraper Petersen-Snow called home, had rented her a sedan, not an SUV. So this was going to be a bumpy ride the car would never forget.

  She drove slowly along the track. It was very pretty under the leafy canopy. All around her leaves tinted in red, yellow and orange tumbled lazily to the ground. Under different circumstances it would even be lovely. But Valerie was wound up. She was out here in the middle of nowhere and now she had no cellphone signal.

  The light in the shadow of the mountain under the trees was a little dim, and Valerie was contemplating turning on her head lamps, when suddenly something ran across the road. It was a small something; a flash of fur and then it was gone. But it was enough to make her wrench the wheel and send the car off on a bumpy, uncontrolled ride down the embankment and into the trees.

  The car came to rest, nose first in a heap of leaves and dirt about ten yards from the track. Valerie hit her head on the steering wheel. It was just a bump, so only hard enough to daze not to concuss. The engine died and, for a moment, Valerie was at peace slumped over the wheel. Then she pulled herself upright, brushed back her mass of dark, curly hair and looked around. Her hands were shaking.

  She fumbled with the door mechanism. After a moment the door swung open and shuddered on its hinges. Valerie slid out of the car on weak legs and staggered back a few paces. The car was resting comfortably with its nose in the dirt. It was okay. After all, the secretarial vampires would have taken the insurance option on the rental, so all she had to do was find some signal and call a tow truck. A brief search of the pockets of her jeans reminded her that the phone was still in the car. Gingerly she touched the sore part of her forehead, checking in that stupid human way to see if it hurt, and knowing as her finger depressed the already blooming lump, that it did.

  Finding the phone took a moment. It had fallen from its cradle stuck to the windshield onto the floor on the passenger side. Valerie was in no mood to move around the car and open that side, so she simply leaned into the car and leaving her booted feet hanging out of the open front door, she stretched to reach the phone.

  With her head under the glove box she grabbed the phone and a sound filtered in from outside. It was a snuffling sound. Valerie pushed herself up but she couldn’t see anything, being too low to see out the window much beyond the branches above.

  Suddenly the window became dark, as a snout, followed by the big shaggy head of a black bear, filled the space. Valerie blinked at the bear. The bear sniffed the glass and then set one oddly golden eye on her.

  Oh crap!

  Valerie panicked.

  Valerie moved like lightning. She angled her body so she could tumble into the back of the sedan, and went for it. She landed mostly upside down but righted herself enough to be lying on her back in a fetal position on the sedan’s carpet between the front passenger and back seats.

  Was this a good idea?

  Probably not, she conceded since now she couldn’t move. Oh well, perhaps the bear would move on and not come in through the open driver’s door. Did bears even like to eat people? Valerie had never really been an Animal Planet junkie and now she was wishing she had been. Should she try to run for the road?

  Oh sure, genius, and then what?

  There was more snuffling, this time right outside the passenger door. Then there was a terrible sound, something horribly organic that conjured gross, frightening images in her head. Valerie felt her bladder want to let go. She clenched her muscles and closed her eyes and waited for whatever was going to happen next.

  Silence.

  More silence.

  “Hi!”

  The voice came from right inside the car and Valerie, already twanging with tightly pulled nerves screamed and lashed out. Her hand hit something, as with a burst of athleticism, courtesy of her new friend adrenaline, Valerie righted herself and attacked the noise all in one confused motion. She ended up hitting her head on the roof of the car and sliding back down into her hiding place.

  A voice, male and quite well modulated, spoke to her from the front driver’s seat.

  “Hey! Take it easy!”

  Valerie felt a wave of relief, followed by a new wave of fear hitting her. So she’d swapped a bear for a hillbilly yokel.

  “What are you doing in my car?” Valerie yelled. “I have a gun by the way. And! There’s a bear out there!”

  Uh huh? Well done genius! Now what’s going to happen when he realizes you don’t?

  And then a head rose around the headrest. Topped with dark blonde curly hair, a face rose in the space between the headrest and the roof. Golden eyes regarded her above a smile that had clearly been made to break hearts. Her creole grandmother, Sophie (Fifi for short) would have said it was, “The smile of an angel touched by the devil.” Valerie had never known what she meant until now.

  “Okay,” the man said slowly. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  Valerie was silent. Her blue eyes kept returning to that hypnotic golden stare and then looking away hurriedly.

  “My name is Kyle, Kyle Pierce,” he said. “You look like you need some help.”

  “I’m fine, really,” she said folding her arms across her chest. “I like hanging out in the back of my car like this. Did I mention the bear?”

  “With the nose in a ditch?” he said, ignoring the question.

  “Look, I don’t know you,” Valerie said, “We’re out here in God-knows-where, and you could be a psychopath for all I know.”

  “I’m really not going to hurt you,” Kyle said.

  “Yeah, you and the bear,” Valerie said chancing a brief look out the window.

  Kyle sighed and backed out of the car. From outside he said, “Will you come out now? The bear is gone.”

  He was dressed in jeans and a flannel blue and white shirt. He was broad shouldered and tall. She looked at him and bit her lip.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get in so much trouble with this one,” she said to herself, but she opened the back door and climbed out.

  Kyle smiled at her and said, “Right, so I’m Kyle and you are?”

  “Valerie Rousseau,” she said. What harm could there be in telling him her name? At least when he chopped her to bits he would be able to say who she had been.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Kyle said. He shook her unresisting hand and then turned to the car. “Well there’s no driving it out of that.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she said a little testily. “Look, I’ll just call a tow or something. Must be a number on the papers for the rental.”

  “No need,” Kyle said, “We get this more often than you might think out here. I’ll just pull you out with my truck.”

  Valerie smiled weakly. He has a truck.

  “Oh, you really don’t have to worry,” she said, “I’ll be just fine. I’ll call someone… or not. How can there be no signal?”

  “This is Sun Valley, sweetheart,” Kyle said jovially, “There’s no signal out here. Hell, we’re lucky we have power.” And he laughed.

  Valerie smiled weakly. She really was in the middle of nowhere. So with a great amount of trepidation she let Kyle help her pull the car out of the ditch. By then the shadows were lengthening and the world was turning golden as time slipped away. How long had it taken her to get out here? It was already late afternoon. Valerie realized that her hotel was all the way back in town.

  But then the dying sunlight lit Kyle up with a heavenly glow and he shone with a beautiful halo that she couldn’t pull her eyes away from.