by A. E. Grace
In his long years, Liam was no stranger to love. But love could grow, could blossom out of compatibility. In this case, it was different. With Terry… could she be his one true mate?
He knew that he wanted her physically, of that there was no doubt. His loins stirred at the sight of her presently, wearing a light summer dress, white and long that hugged her curves. She looked fantastic in it, and Liam tried not to look too much, because the trousers he was wearing could not hope to conceal his bulge should he become tumescent.
“The photos on my phone don’t capture all the detail,” she said, handing the small device over to Liam across the dinner table. Their candle flickered in the warm wind. He took it, looked at the screen, frowning.
“You’re right, it’s a bit blurry. But you don’t need this,” he said, holding up the phone. “You don’t need a photo. You’ve got it all up here, in your head.”
“Yeah,” Terry said as she took the phone back from him. “But photos are nice. You never take photos?”
“Never,” he said.
“That’s so weird.”
“You think?”
“Yeah,” she said, grinning, sipping from her gin and tonic. “Everybody takes photos.”
“I don’t even have a phone,” he told her, laughing. “God, I must seem from another century to you.”
“You are from another century, remember?”
“I’ve tried to keep up with the times, but it all loses its relevance when you know you’ll outlive it.”
“It must be so weird,” she whispered, “Living for so long. How do you not get jaded? How do you not… lose hope?”
“Many shifters do, I’d imagine,” he said, and hated that it was the truth.
“Lots of bad things to see, right?”
“Plenty of good things, too, Terry.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, playfully. “Like what?”
“Like the cave.”
“And…?”
“The river we paddled down.”
“And…?”
He grinned. “The lovely drive back here, as we rode into the sunset like it was the ending to a movie.”
“And?!”
Liam laughed. “And you.”
“Took you long enough.”
“But seriously,” she said, though Liam did not miss the small blush that had warmed her cheeks. “It must be hard.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself its bad.”
“You know, maybe I kind of am.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m jealous.”
“Of shifters?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding sadly. “I want that. I want to be able to change into an animal. I want to be able to live for centuries, watch the world as it changes, learn new things. Imagine all you could do with all that time.”
“Imagine all you could lose,” Liam said quietly. “You fall in love, get married maybe, watch your spouse wither away while you stay exactly the same.”
“So that’s why you held me at arm’s length? That’s why you made it more difficult than it had to be?”
“Not only,” he said.
“The hunter.”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t know for sure if he’s followed you here.”
“I expect him to.”
“And yet you still let yourself be with me?”
“I tried not to,” he told her truthfully. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fate?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
She pushed her lips together. “I don’t know that I do, either. I want to be in control.”
“That’s my thinking.”
“But you’re putting me in danger right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes. You said you’d take that risk.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” she said to him. “I’m just… worried that it’s still holding you back.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But it is a worry always on my mind.”
“Are you even sure the wolf will target me?”
“No. But the risk of it is too big. Which is why,” he said, leaning forward. “Which is why you must do what I say if we are found. You must run when I tell you to, where I tell you to. I will protect you from the wolf, of that I have no doubt. But I need to know you’ll trust me, you’ll listen to me.”
She paused, sucking on her lower lip. “You know, I wanted to say: ‘How could I trust you? We’ve barely just met.’”
“And?”
“But that doesn’t feel right somehow.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Like we’ve known each other for a lot longer.”
Liam nodded, and he once again started to wonder at the word ‘mate’.
“I’ll listen to you,” she said. “But let’s stop worrying about what we can’t control right now. Let’s enjoy dinner.”
*
“What did the shifter carpenter say to his customer?”
Liam grinned. “I don’t know. What did he say?”
“I built this with my bear hands.”
“Oh God,” Liam said, shaking his head. “These are unbearable.”
“How did the bear get elected into office?”
“How?”
“He was a pander bear!” Terry giggled, and she held onto his hands which he had wrapped around her waist. They had walked lazily back to the guest house after dinner, and were now lounging on the sofa, watching television they couldn’t understand. It was some kind of game show where contestants had to perform a variety of different dares to progress to the next round.
“Wait, I’ve got another one. What was the brand of the bear shifter’s PDA?”
“No idea.”
“A Blackbeary! One more, just one more. Hmm hold on, let me think.” She shook her hand in front of her, trying to conjure up yet another pun. “Here’s one I think works. What did the bear shifter critic say about the Hollywood blockbuster?”
“Here it comes.”
“The plot was too bear-bones!”
“Ha,” Liam said, laughing. “That’s not bad. You come up with them fast.”
“I used to edit for magazines, you know,” she said. “If we ever all had lunch together, it would always devolve into a competition to see who could come up with the best pun.”
“Sounds fun,” Liam lied.
“Don’t be such a sour puss.”
He kissed her neck, and she shivered, and he saw goose bumps prick up there.
“I had a great day, you know?” she whispered, pushing her head back into him. He brought his head over her shoulder, and bit her earlobe.
“Me, too.”
“Tam Coq was amazing. Are there more beautiful natural things like that to see in Vietnam?”
“You better bear-lieve it,” he said.
“See!” she said through a grin. “You’re getting it.”
“You like scenic stuff?”
“Oh, love seeing natural wonder. I imagined Tam Coq was like the Grand Canyon, just smaller and all green instead of orange.”
“It’s much smaller than the Grand Canyon.”
“There’s a place I’d like to go.”
“You want to travel around America?”
“Oh, yeah,” Terry said, nodding. “I mean, I want to do more of Asia first, you know, because it’s cheaper and probably a little more varied. But America is on my to-do list. Back in the sixties and seventies, it was a very English thing to road trip the United States. I don’t know if I’d want to drive everywhere, but I’d love to visit all the major attractions.”
“When I was last in America,” Liam said, “I went to northwest Montana, and it’s beautiful there. The mountains are just breathtaking. Beautiful lakes. Just picturesque.”
“Why did you go?”
“There’s a small population of brown bears living in what’s called the Northern Continental Divide E
cosystem, and, well, I wanted to experience life as my bear for a while.”
“You lived with other bears?”
“Bears are solitary, usually, unless it is a mother and her cubs. So not really, but I shifted, spent my time as a bear all my waking hours.”
“God, that sounds amazing.”
“It was interesting. But it only reinforced the fact that I am a human who can change into a bear, not a bear who can change into a human.”
“Did you run into any other bears?”
“Sure, I tracked one down.”
“How did it respond to you?”
“It knew something was different about me. It would not approach me, but did not leave, either. We sort of just looked at each other for a while.”
“It knew you weren’t the same? Not a true bear?”
“I think so, yes. My pheromones may be different, my scent, my mannerisms. Or maybe there’s just an instinct.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You know,” she said, rubbing his knee. “You’re getting more talkative.”
“I’ve been riding solo for so long,” he said, “Avoiding attachments.”
“So you’re just out of practice, huh?”
“Maybe. But I was never the life of a party.”
“Ha!” Terry cried, and she reached up and touched his chin. “You’re too broody for parties. But I don’t like parties, either, so I guess we’re good. I’m going to go wash my face and take a shower, yeah?”
“Okay.”
She got up off the sofa, and flicked him a smile before disappearing into the bathroom. He could hear the sounds of the sink faucet running, and then a short while later, the hiss of the shower.
He went to the bathroom, stood in the doorway and peered inside. The shower was the standing sort, with a glass divider, and it had all fogged up. Terry’s luscious figure was a blur, and she had her arms up over her head as she shampooed her hair.
Liam swallowed, and felt a tightness in his chest. He quickly pulled off his clothing, and Terry yelped when he stepped inside the shower, his manhood already at attention, and wrapped her up from behind, planting small kisses along the tops of her shoulders.
“Who said you could come in here?” she said, turning around in his arms.
He kissed her, claimed her lips in his. It was a slow, loving kiss, and their tongues danced and his heart raced and his mind whirled.
“I can leave if you like.”
“Leave if you want to.”
He grinned. “I don’t want to.”
“Then stay. Shower is big enough for both of us.”
She turned around again, this time massaging conditioner into her hair, and Liam took the opportunity to run his hands across the undersides of her upper arms. He came to her armpits, and then moved his hands to her breasts, caressing her slowly, loving the feel of her soft skin.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he said. “Do you feel what you do to me?”
She reached behind her and grabbed onto his cock, and hummed. “Yeah, I feel it.”
His hands grew hungry, and he pulled one down her sides, appreciating her sexy body, and then he went to her ass and he grabbed a fistful and squeezed.
“Hey,” she said. “Not so hard.”
But he ignored her, and he groped her, and with his other hand he pulled and tweezed at her nipples, kneaded her heavy breasts, rubbed the insides of her thighs.
“Liam,” she whispered. “I’m not finished showering.”
“Shush,” he told her, pulling her head to the side and kissing her hard. He sent his tongue into her mouth, demanded hers in return, and then sidled his hand around to her front, running his fingers through her soft fuzz of pubic hair.
“I love your body,” he said. “You really have no idea how sexy you are.”
“Lia—”
She was silenced when he ran his hand over her sex, cupped her, held her. He pressed two fingers into her outer lips, spread her, massaged her, and he felt her body tighten, felt her lean her head back into the nook between his neck and his shoulder.
He teased her, massaging the soft flesh around her womanhood slowly, plucking from her lips soft exhales and light hisses.
“Come on, you big tease,” she said after a while. She still had a hand behind her, was still holding onto him, and she gave him a hard squeeze.
He dipped a finger into her slit, and she moaned. He pulled it up, touched her clit, and her body jolted in his arms. The steam from the hot water surrounding them reminded him of the jungle, and he felt an animal lust within him begin to grow.
“Touch me,” she panted. He didn’t need to be asked twice. He began to massage her pearl, slowly in circles, and she shut her eyes, dropped more of her weight onto his body, and spread her legs a little more. With his other hand he plucked at her nipple, caressing its stiff top to the same rhythm.
He touched her until he felt her body grow tight, and then slowed down, and she grinned, biting a lip. “What are you doing?” she asked playfully, squeezing his cock again.
“Loving you,” he whispered, and he ringed her entrance with a finger, and she shivered in his arms. He dipped his finger inside her warm and wet velvet canal, and she squeezed around him. He pushed a second finger in, and angled his hand so that as he penetrated her with his fingers, his palm rubbed on her clit.
“Oh, God,” she said, nodding. “Like that. Like that.”
He continued to finger her, and she moaned in his arms, and each sound of pleasure he pulled from her throat only turned him on impossibly more.
“Bend over,” he said when he couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed her up against the bathroom wall, slapped her thighs apart, and pulled her hips out so that she was at an angle.
“Not so hard in this posi—”
He slid himself all the way inside her, and she let out a strangled gasp. He started to fuck her, drive himself into her, bottoming out over and over. His pubic bone slapped her ass, and his balls swung upward to slap her sex with each thrust.
“Liam,” she groaned, curling her knuckles against the bathroom tiles. But her voice was snatched away as he fucked her harder still, as he pistoned into her.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, found her clit and began to rub it. He had to take her right here and right now. He couldn’t hold back. He needed this woman, needed to finish inside her.
“Slower,” she gasped, but he fucked her harder still. The sounds of their sex slapped off the bathroom tiles, and he gripped her hip hard with his free hand, pulled her into him with each thrust so that he penetrated deeper.
“No,” she mewled, eyes shut tight, head pressed against the tiles. “No, no, no, no.”
“Come on my cock, Terry,” he growled, fingering her clit faster. “I want to feel you come.”
She cried out in pleasure, punched her hips backward to meet his thrusts, and he felt himself nearing the edge, felt that he could explode at any minute.
“God, you’re so tight,” he said through gritted teeth. “You feel so good. I can’t get enough of you.”
“Don’t stop!” she rasped, her voice throaty and lust-laced. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
Liam fucked her for all he was worth, buried himself inside her tight womanhood, filled her up with his girthy manhood. He saw her get to her toes, and she slapped a hand back frantically, trying to find his. He gave her one hand, and she gripped onto it hard, and still he fingered her, and still he fucked her.
“Oh, shit,” he groaned, feeling himself teetering on the edge. Pleasure was already washing over him. This woman made him feel so great. He had never wanted a woman more than he wanted her, and it was now, right at this moment, that it clicked for him mentally.
She was his mate.
His one true mate.
“Fuuuck!” she cried, her voice reverberating in the bathroom. He felt her whole body tense, tighten, a rigid snapshot of pleasure, and then her orgasm exploded, and she cried out her crisis, and she shook and s
huddered as pleasure tore through her.
He let himself go. He thrust into her like his life depended on it, and soon he dove off the precipice, and he climaxed hard, grunting his pleasure as he fired off inside her.
“Shit,” he snarled, throwing his hips against her, driving his twitching cock as deep as he could inside her. The pleasure he felt was potent and pointed, so intense it nearly hurt.
And then he was coming down the other side, panting, having emptied himself inside his lover. She held her forehead in the nook of her arm, was heaving for breath, and she was still squeezing around him, cloying at his manhood.
“Shit,” he said, taking his hand off her pearl and rubbing it on her lower back. He ran a thumb down into the cleft of her ass, before pushing his hand up to her shoulders, moving them to her breasts and squeezing. The hot water poured down around them.
“I still haven’t rinsed all the conditioner out of my hair,” she said, her smile growing into a laugh. “God damn it, Liam.”
He slapped her ass.
*
“Will you shift for me again? I want to see you in the light. I want to… touch you? Is that okay?”
He smirked, and nodded at her. “Of course. You want to watch the whole thing in the light? It’s pretty gross.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do it slow.”
“You really do like to watch, don’t you?”
Terry laughed, and felt her cheeks redden. “It’s a recent development, actually.”
Liam got up off the bed, and dropped into a crouch on the floor. She moved to the end of the bed and sat there, waiting for what she knew was going to be a loud crack.
It was loud, shook his whole body, and she grimaced, trying to imagine which one of his bones had just broken. More bones broke, and his legs were beginning to lose their shape, melting down into what she could only describe as a red-and-white goo. It pooled on the floor, a gag-worthy puddle of biological matter, and the rest of his torso seemed to melt downward into it. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his breathing stopped altogether.
Only his limbs and head remained, and on his face his snubby bear snout punched outward, and his nose became button-like and black. His teeth grew longer, sharper, and his eyes morphed into two black beads.