by Zoe Chant
The grand front steps had not been refinished yet, but the upper hall had been, and Lee was gratified when Patricia stepped into Clara's room and said with a little gasp, "Oh!"
Lee had spared no expense on the room, and had let Clara take a role in the decoration. She had picked a mermaid theme, one that Lee wholeheartedly approved of. The walls were teal blue and white, with decals of tropical fish, coral, and sunken treasure. The bed had a shell-shaped headboard, and a shimmery bedspread of blue. A windowseat as broad as her bed was cluttered with seashell pillows and an enormous knitted red squid. Short bookshelves lined one wall, filled with books and coloring books and bins of crayons and blocks. There was a dollhouse in one corner, and a riding-size excavator and dumptruck, but the current feature of the room was a battered moving box with a door and several windows cut out. Childish artwork adorned every wall and part of the roof, and a small table (another moving box) was inside and spread out for tea with a lace tablecloth. Across the room, white doors were open to show a walk-in closet and a glimpse at a private bath.
Patricia took her armful to the bed as Lee drew the curtains shut, and she peeled off Clara's boots and laid her down. Lee, watching her helplessly, could only marvel at how perfect and wonderful it was to watch her draw the blankets up over his daughter, smoothing the comforter up around her shoulders as Clara gave a contented sigh and snuggled in. He flipped the light switch, and Patricia padded her way out by the light from a muted blue nightlight.
The click of Clara's door closing seemed to be a changing point, and if Lee had been painfully aware of her nearness in any other way, he was suddenly keenly aware of her as only a woman now–woman. His soulmate. They were alone, in his house, and she was standing close enough that he could smell the delicate scent of her shampoo. His erection was making his utilitarian jeans uncomfortable, and he had to wrestle back the bear who was singing in his head that she was his, and to take her now.
If I make a move now, she'll run, he thought. She needs a... subtle touch. "I could... ah... show you the rest of the house," he offered.
Patricia looked up at him and bit her lip, her eyes shy but steady. "You could show me your bedroom," she said in a rush.
It was all the invitation Lee needed; his heart filled with triumph. He enfolded her into his arms and kissed her.
Chapter Six
If Patricia could bring herself to be jealous of a four-year-old girl, she might have been jealous of Clara. Her bedroom was like walking into a fairy tale fantasy, and filled with things that even grown-up Patricia would have enjoyed playing with. Four-year-old Patricia would have had raptures.
Twenty-six-year-old Patricia was having raptures at the closeness of Lee, instead. He was wearing only a tight t-shirt that hid nothing of his amazing physique, and he smelled like sawdust and sweat and manliness that was deeply distracting. Patricia tucked Clara in and retreated from the bedroom, Andrea's admonition ringing in her mind.
This was an opportunity. This was the opportunity. There would never be another opportunity so opportune.
Was she reading his signals wrong? Was he really attracted to her? She thought she caught his gaze lingering, wondered if he didn't smile at her just a touch more than the conversations they had deserved, but maybe she was misreading the situations.
The door to Clara's room shut with a tiny click, and they paused together. "I could... ah... show you the rest of the house?"
The way he offered, so tentatively and hopefully, gave Patricia the rest of the courage she needed. She made herself hold his gaze and brazenly offered, "You could show me the bedroom."
She had a split second to wonder at her own forwardness, then he was kissing her, pressing against the length of her, his embrace like a bear's as his mouth found her own.
Her doubts vanished with his kiss–kissed her with his whole body and being, and Patricia felt like she was being swept away in a river of passion. His erection was hard against her through the fabric of his jeans. She clutched at his shoulders helplessly, tipping her head to take as much of his kiss as she could. They collided with the wall of the hallway, and broke apart, shushing each other and giggling.
"The bedroom," Lee said breathlessly. "This way..."
They kissed and grabbed the entire length of the unadorned hall, plucking at each other's clothing as they went and running into the walls twice more before Lee opened the door to his own bedroom and they fell inside.
His hands were big and callused, but gentle and nimble, and Patricia's shirt was off before they'd made it halfway to the bed. She had his belt unfastened and was working on his jeans by the time they'd made it to the wide bed, and they paused a moment together, gasping for breath. Lee's gaze could only be classified as 'appreciative,' and Patricia didn't even try not to stare back. If anything, the tight t-shirt had only been a tease, and the physique beneath was even more delicious. His shoulders were thick with muscles, and his core rippled with abs. And as amazing and gorgeous as his body was, it was his face that continued to draw her back. He was beautiful, and his eyes were adoring in a way that made Patricia weak and wet.
"I'm not usually like this," she said, swallowing. She'd made her last boyfriend wait three weeks of dating before she'd taken off her shirt. What was it about this man that made her so crazy?
"I'm not, either," Lee said, and just the sound of his husky voice made her knees tremble.
Then he leaned in and kissed her, and it was a different kiss than the first–less passionate, but more controlled, deeper, and more meaningful. Patricia lost herself entirely in it, putting her arms around his neck and letting him lay her back down onto the silky bedspread.
He released his kiss, only to move it to her neck, which left her writhing in helpless excitement, and resumed undressing her. He unclipped her bra first, slipping it off her with reverence, and then slid a finger into the waistband of her jeans as he kissed the breasts he revealed, toying with her a moment before unbuttoning and slowly– so slowly!–unbuttoning her jeans. Patricia whimpered and clutched at his thick hair and broad shoulders. She wanted to beg him to hurry, but was enjoying the build-up too entirely to truly protest.
He shimmied her out of her jeans with no effort, stroking her thighs and kissing her tummy as he did so. Patricia couldn't help but squirm and screw her eyes shut to try to stem the overwhelming cascade of sensation. She must be wet right through her simple cotton panties–there was no way he couldn't notice how excited she was.
Then he paused, and her eyes flew open as he shifted on the bed. He was suddenly not moving slowly at all, but tearing off his own jeans, and releasing the huge erection she had felt earlier. She was glad that her eyes were open for the reveal– he was magnificent!–but also rather alarmed. It didn't look geometrically possible for it to fit within her. Then he was tearing her panties off and growling like an animal, the weight of him deflecting the bed around her as he straddled her, and she wanted nothing more than to take the entire thing right then.
"Please," she murmured, and he was burying himself into her with one long, slow thrust, filling her with his length and heat.
***
Patricia arched up into his advance, gasping and clawing and begging in a way that lit Lee on fire. His need for her was deep and wild, but he concentrated on her pleasure first, and was rewarded by her blistering orgasm and moan of delight within a few careful thrusts. Her cry was passionate and she tensed beautifully before relaxing in the wake of her release. He kissed her neck and shoulders, pinning her under him on the bed, but had to slow himself to an agonizingly slow speed, or risk cutting off their fun too soon with his mounting need.
She kissed him back, then rolled until she was straddling him, her luscious breasts swinging in rhythm as she took him deep inside her.
She was glorious, riding above him, matching his leisurely speed until he had wound himself into a frenzy. "If you don't stop, I'm going to–"
She only sped up, the vixen, and clutched at his shoulders as she a
chieved another moaning, arching orgasm, and her pleasure was the inescapable catalyst of his own sexual climax. He flung his arms out and clutched at the blankets on either side as she rode him wildly and they both came with abandon.
Patricia collapsed atop him, and Lee continued to thrust slowly in the afterglow of his pleasure until the last ripple of the orgasm was finally played out.
"Oomph," she said finally, voice husky near her ear. "I'm too heavy to lay on you like this."
In response, Lee wrapped his arms around her and held her close. He loved the feel of her curves against him, the silky touch of her skin along the whole length of his body, and wasn't willing to let her go quite yet. She didn't struggle, only gave a blissed-out sigh and snuggled closer.
"I'm not usually like this," she said, as she had earlier, and Lee chuckled.
"I'm not, either," he agreed.
But then, it wasn't every day that he made love to his soulmate, either. He rolled over so that they were side-by-side on the bedspread, and he could look directly into her face.
"This... is terribly unprofessional of me," she confessed.
"Are you sorry?" he had to ask.
Her face took on an impish expression. "Not in the slightest."
He had to cup her face in his hand and kiss her again, to see if he could taste the laughter on her lips. She kissed back with all of her earlier passion, and Lee knew that he could be ready for her again in short order. She was the most perfect armful that he had ever held, and there was a feeling of loss when she slipped away from him and went rummaging for her clothing.
"The bathroom is through that door," he indicated, and he sat up in the bed just to appreciate her graceful pad across the plush carpet.
Then he flopped back across the bed. He had to tell her. He had to explain that she was the one for him–the only one. She was his everything, for all that they'd only known each other a few short months, and he wasn't willing to let her get away.
He'd have to tell her about being a bear.
That was where he tripped up. It was an impossible conversation to have.
"I'm a bear shifter," he imagined himself saying. "I can turn into a grizzly bear." She would laugh and not believe him. Would he have to shift, and prove it? Would she react with terror and flee him? Faint on the spot? He just couldn't imagine Patricia fainting. Shooting him, maybe–she looked like the kind of farmgirl who had handled a gun before.
He'd never told anyone before–not even Clara's mother. Guilt and confusion chilled him, and he found himself rising and going to one of the unpacked moving boxes. A pile of framed photographs were stacked near the top–photos of Angela, and Clara as a baby. He hadn't been able to bring himself to hang them yet, using the state of the rest of the house as some kind of excuse for not hanging things here in the bedroom yet. He tried to tell himself he liked the austere bareness of the off-white walls with the pearly-gray carpet.
Mostly, he couldn't bear to have Angela looking at him from those walls.
This was a new house, a new start. He wanted this to be his house with Patricia, though he hadn't known that until he met her. But wasn't it unfair to Angela's memory to cut her out? Wasn't it cruel to Clara to have her mother excluded from their family walls? It felt like a terrible disservice to his brief years of marriage, and even now, years later, he had difficulty separating his grief and his guilt from his memories of joy.
Chapter Seven
Patricia gave a little gasp as she went through the empty walk-in closet to the master bath. From the little hallway, it opened up into an oasis of marble and chrome. The shower door was pristine, clear glass, and there were two showerheads, one from each side. Beside it was a jetted bathtub in the corner, big enough for several people at once. A counter with two sinks ran the length of the room just opposite, and the toilet was tucked around a discrete corner. Big windows opened out over a winter wonderland of trees and snow-covered lawn.
She turned on the water and watched the windows fog with steam. It was enchanted, magical, like making love to Lee had been.
And just as impermanent.
She would shower and get dressed, then go home and then they would pretend this had never happened. It was the best possible outcome.
She showered swiftly, though she wanted to savor the delicious heat and roomy shower. Lee apparently had only a single kind of shampoo/body wash, and Patricia had no regrets lathering herself in the manly scent.
She dressed as efficiently as she had washed, but left her socks off rather than try to pull them on over her wet feet. She was drying her hair with one of the big plush towels (there was no sign of a hair-dryer and Patricia was loathe to snoop through his drawers) as she walked back to the bedroom and she had to pause in the doorway with her breath caught in her throat.
Lee was sitting at the edge of the bed looking away, his big shoulders bowed. There was a framed photograph in his hands. Patricia couldn't see the subject of the photograph, but she could guess: Clara's mother. Had she been the first since...?
The scene felt painfully intimate, and Patricia wrestled with her desire to go immediately comfort Lee, and the sad understanding that she could not, and that she was simply not part of Lee's intimate sphere. She wanted to be, she realized keenly. It wasn't just that she was irresistibly attracted to this man; she would have admired him with half the looks just for his handling of Clara, and every time they spoke, she found something new to like in him. She wanted him on levels that she'd never experienced before, and always thought she never would. Her friends would talk about true love and settling down, but she had never wanted to, until Lee. Now, unexpectedly, she wanted nothing more.
She chewed on her lower lip, then crept backwards several steps. If she couldn't be his everything, she could be the best for him that she could at least, and that meant letting him keep his dignity. She started humming, and was whistling by the time she came back into the doorway so that he had a chance to toss the photograph back into the box and sit up straight.
"What a shower," she gushed, as if she hadn't witnessed a thing. "That whole bathroom is a work of art. You must have spent a fortune on that room alone!"
He looked uncomfortable–Patricia couldn't decide if it was because he knew he'd been caught in his moment of vulnerability, or because she was talking about money again like an idiot.
She clamped her mouth around her desire to babble moronically and tried to simply appreciate the view. That wasn't too hard–he was lounging in unselfconscious nudity, and his muscles were ripples of masculinity under a layer of perfect, barely-tanned skin. She was sorely tempted to tear off her clothing and go diving back into that bed again.
"I should... ah..." Not undress and throw myself at him again... "Be leaving. Before the snow gets too deep to get home."
Lee was standing up now, and he was as impressive upright as he was reclining across the sheets. "I fear you are too late for that," he said apologetically, with a gesture towards the window.
The snow was coming down in a soft curtain now, too thick to see even to where the driveway curved. Patricia's car was already blanketed in nearly a foot of snow. "Oh gosh, it's pretty," she said. "Like a dream." Lee was close behind her, smelling like sex and forest and wildness, and he was part of the whole crazy dream.
He put his hands on her shoulders–hands, strong hands, sexy hands, and said in a voice like chocolate, "I suspect you are stuck here for a little while, at least."
"Papa! Papa!"
Clara's voice from down the hall had them scrambling apart. Lee dressed himself so swiftly that Patricia was still trying to figure out what to do with her own hands when he was back in his clothing and striding out the door.
"Miss Patricia brought me home!" Clara said enthusiastically when they met in the hallway, her blonde curls rumpled from her nap. "And it's snowing white! It never snowed white at home!"
Patricia chuckled. "It didn't snow white?"
"Only gray! Everything was dirty!" Clara seemed ut
terly nonplussed to find that her teacher was still there, hair still damp from a shower, and took her hand with authority. "Can I need a snack and go play in the white snow?"
"I think that's a remarkably good idea," Lee agreed. "Let's go show Miss Patricia the kitchen."
Chapter Eight
Lee and Patricia walked with Clara between them down the stairs and back to the sprawling kitchen. He couldn't keep himself from glancing over, watching the profile of her smiling face as she entertained Clara's endless prattle.
His mate.
There was bone-deep contentment just being close to her, knowing that she was his. All of his earlier concerns and worries were swept away in the simple peace of her presence.
Her delight in the kitchen was almost (but not quite!) as rewarding as her delight in his body had been. Clara gave her a gabby tour, opening every cabinet in her reach and pointing out all of the others.
"The blender is there, I'm not allowed to touch it and it's very loud. That's a mixer! I'm allowed to play with the plastic things in here."
Patricia was a rapt audience. "Oh, that's lovely! What a beautiful plate! Such soft towels!"
She said more seriously to Lee, "This kitchen is a cook's fantasy, Mr. Montgomery. If I had designed my dream kitchen straight from scratch, it could not have been more perfect." She actually squealed a little when she saw the heavy-duty mixer.
"I've never used it, but I asked our cook to make a list of everything he wanted in a kitchen," he explained, half-apologetically as he stacked up a few dirty dishes from lunch that he hadn't washed yet.
"Your cook had excellent taste," Patricia said, with delight.
"In all things but choosing to stay in the city," Lee agreed. "We'll have a housekeeper in a few weeks, I hope," he added apologetically, aware of his dirty lunch dishes and the sawdust footprints he had tracked into the kitchen.