“Yeah, baby, I want to hear you,” said Dylan.
Amanda slid the vibrator inside of herself and gasped at the sensation. She pumped it in and out several times, her breathing becoming more rapid. She imagined Dylan inside of her, filling her up like he did so many times during her stay at the cabin. Only one more day and they’d be together again.
The vibrator hit that spot that Dylan so expertly had on their first night together. She could feel the pressure of orgasm begin to well up inside of her. She longed for release. She moved the vibrator to her clit and gasped. The buzzing sensations were nothing compared to Dylan’s tongue and the way he worked her over with his mouth, so she fantasized.
“Are you close?” she asked him.
“I’m close, baby,” he said.
“I want to hear you,” said Amanda.
There was something about the noises that he made when he went over the edge that almost sent her into orgasm immediately, and she needed to hear it.
“Okay,” he said.
She heard his breathing accelerate with the speed of his hand. He grunted as he grew closer. Finally, he was near climax.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” he said.
Amanda felt herself begin to roll over the edge. Pleasure rolled through all of her limbs and her abdomen contracted, sending juices flowing out of her and onto the sheets.
“Ugh!” Dylan groaned as he almost came. “I love you, Amanda!” he said at the moment of climax.
It felt like a cold bucket of water had been thrown on her. He’d said, “I love you, Amanda.” Holy shit. He couldn’t mean that.
He finished and began to catch his breath. He was silent and so was she. It was awkward.
“Umm,” she said.
“Uh,” was all he could counter.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked, more of a question than a statement.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Amanda pushed the button to hang up the phone and as she pulled it away from her face, she saw that Dylan hadn’t hung up yet. What was he waiting on? Her to say it back? She wasn’t ready to say that. She didn’t know if she loved him. It had only been a couple of months and she was only twenty years old. Of course, she was crazy about him.
But was being crazy about someone enough to be sure that you were in love with them?
Amanda wasn’t sure. Suddenly she wasn’t sure about anything. The idea of seeing him tomorrow was enough to make her stomach do a backflip, and not in a good way. A sense of dread began to overcome her.
“Great,” she said as she got up onto her elbows. “Just fantastic, Amanda.”
She cleaned up and began packing her things, trying to tell herself that none of that had really happened.
Chapter 2
The next twenty-four hours seemed to drag on endlessly. Amanda had gotten all of the last minute things taken care of and she was ready to go. She and her mother were waiting for her aunt, uncle, and cousins to arrive at their house.
Oh, and for Dylan to get there.
Amanda couldn’t forget that. Just like she couldn’t forget the fact that he’d told her he loved her the day before. They hadn’t texted after that. She wondered if he felt as awkward as she did. He probably felt worse, but she wasn’t going to tell someone she loved them just to ease them from having to feel any sort of awkwardness. That would just be wrong.
Amanda was sitting on the couch when she heard a large SUV parking in the driveway.
She got up and went to the front door. When she opened it, her aunt and uncle were walking towards the glass storm door and she opened it.
“Amanda!” her aunt squealed.
Her aunt Terri was thin and beautiful. She looked like she had once been a model, and maybe she had been. Amanda didn’t know her very well. Terri’s husband, Jim, stepped in and gave Amanda a short hug after Terri was done with her.
Slowly making their way up the sidewalk were the twins, Alex and Emery.
They were about seventeen. Just at that age where they were too cool for almost everything, especially family vacations. They smiled at Amanda from behind matching pairs of Ray Bans. She smiled up at both of them. It had been awhile since she’d seen them if she didn’t count the funeral, and they had gotten so tall.
“Alice!” Terri squealed once more when Amanda’s mother came into view from her bedroom.
“Terri!” Alice said back, though not nearly as enthusiastically.
Terri was Jim’s second wife and the twins’ mother. Though Terri and Jim had been together for as long as Amanda could remember, apparently it wasn’t as long as Amanda’s mom could remember, and it always seemed like there was some sort of awkward tension there between Terri and Alice. Amanda wasn’t sure about it. She wondered what sort of secrets lie buried there, but also wasn’t sure that she wanted to know.
Alice served some snacks to everyone and they all sat down in the living room.
“So, I hear that your boyfriend is coming with us? Where is he?” Terri asked as she munched on some graham crackers and cream cheese smothered in jalapeno jelly.
Amanda nodded.
“He should be here—“
There was a loud knock at the door. The kind of knock that only someone with huge paws could make. It had to be Dylan. Amanda felt both relieved and a little bit of dread.
She walked to the door and saw him standing there, that crooked grin, wearing a gray t-shirt that looked so soft she wanted to cuddle with it. Or did she want to cuddle with him? Maybe both. He held a dozen roses in his right hand. She opened the door.
He handed them to her, looking slightly sheepish.
“Here,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Amanda, surprised by the gesture. She had never been given flowers before. It was a lovely thing to do, she thought. She took in a huge whiff of them, but the smell suddenly made her sad. All she could think of was the funeral home where her dad had been. A frown immediately replaced her smile.
“I’m so sorry, Amanda,” Dylan began even as the sea of eyes watched them.
“No, it’s not—“
“I shouldn’t have said—“
“Well, you must be Dylan!” said Alice, walking towards them. “And look at this! You brought our girl flowers?!” She turned to make sure that Jim and Terri could see.
Apparently there was a lot of discussion about Amanda dying alone, she thought, as she watched Jim and Terri nod in approval. What was this? The Middle Ages?
Amanda walked away from the scene and laid the roses down on the bench beneath the coat rack. She went to her bathroom saying, “Excuse me,” rather quickly.
She hurried down the hall and heard a voice after her. It was Dylan.
“Amanda!” he called.
She went into the bathroom and locked the door. She felt a flood of grief hit her. It came in nauseating waves, sometimes out of nowhere, and in that moment, she felt the loss of her father like a pit in her stomach, like the ache of a hunger that no food could satisfy. It was something she would live with for the rest of her life. She let the tears roll out of her eyes freely.
“Amanda,” Dylan said on the other side of the door.
“It’s okay,” she said, clearly crying.
“Amanda, I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s nothing you did. Honestly,” she said back and unlocked the door.
Dylan came in and hugged her tightly.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said yesterday,” he began. “I just know how—“
“No, it’s not that. It’s the flowers. The smell. It reminded me of the funeral home. It’s not your fault. What you did was incredibly sweet. It was perfect actually. And I ruined it.”
Dylan paused for a moment and pulled away.
“Amanda,” he said seriously. “You didn’t ruin anything. I’ll never bring you flowers again. I promise.”
He hugged her tightly again and her breathing began to slow down and gain a more normal pace. The tears st
opped flowing so freely and she felt herself calming down. She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose, trying to ready herself to step back out into the group of people waiting on them.
“C’mon,” she said, forcing a smile. “You need to meet my family.”
She took Dylan’s hand and they walked out of the bathroom and into the hallway, finally entering the living room where the twins were engrossed by their cell phones and the adults had already moved on to other topics of conversation.
“Sorry, guys,” Amanda said, getting everyone’s attention. “This is my boyfriend, Dylan. Dylan, that’s Jim; that’s Terri; this is my mom, Alice; and Alex and Emery are the twins.”
Dylan nodded to each of the people as he was introduced to them and they nodded back. The twins even did, though they didn’t take their eyes away from their cell phones.
“Well, that went well,” Amanda said to no one in particular and turned around and smiled at Dylan.
He smiled back at her from under his black eyebrows. His smile was that same crooked smile that had gotten Amanda that day in the grocery store. She longed to kiss those lips, and even though the next week was going to be all about her family and they were all sharing one cabin, it was a big one. Plus, she and Dylan had their own room. They would have plenty of privacy. She couldn’t wait.
Chapter 3
“Is everyone ready?” Alice asked at last.
Everyone used the bathroom and bags were shifted from one vehicle to another. They were taking the big SUV that Amanda’s family had come over in. Her mother took the front seat, the twins and Terri took the middle bench, and Dylan and Amanda had the back seat to themselves. While it sounded nice, it wasn’t huge and the bags were piled all the way up to their heads, so there wasn’t exactly much of a view to enjoy.
Just before they headed out, Dylan took Amanda’s hand in his. His seemed to swallow hers up, and she loved that. He was warm, as always. It seemed like his body ran at a higher temperature, and she wondered if that was true of all shifters. She made a note to ask him about it.
The boys were silent, playing on their phones. Probably Snapchatting with girls, Amanda imagined. Finally, Terri turned around to talk to Dylan and Amanda.
“So how long have you two been dating?” she asked.
“A couple of months,” Amanda said, jumping at the question immediately. She wondered how much her mother had told Terri, but Terri only smiled.
“And how did you meet? Alice says it was after your father passed away when you went up to Mountain View.”
“She’s not exactly graceful, is she?” Dylan asked, jumping into the conversation.
Amanda frowned at him, not sure what he was about to say.
“She fell in the grocery store. I helped her up. A little kid almost took her out at the knees,” he said with a smile. He and Terri laughed.
Amanda smiled at the memory though it had been a painful one at least physically.
“Yeah, I fell. As usual,” Amanda laughed. “Which, by the way, who is planning on helping me up every time I fall while I’m skiing?”
Amanda pointed a finger between Terri and Dylan, back and forth jokingly.
“You can’t be that bad!” Dylan joked.
“Oh, Dylan,” Terri said, “You haven’t known our girl very long, now have you?”
Her words held some truth, Amanda thought. Certainly not long enough to know that he was in love with her. That was for sure. She resisted the urge to say that out loud, though. The thought stayed with her for the rest of the drive to Whistler.
The landscapes of Whistler’s Mountain were breathtaking. The mountains were beautiful and seemed to extend on out into eternity. There was plenty of snow for skiing and flurries were falling all around at the lodge.
They had checked into their cabin and gone down to the village to get something to eat. After that, everyone was just back at the cabin, enjoying themselves.
Jim and Dylan had gotten a fire going in the fireplace and the girls were getting a game of Cards Against Humanity going.
Alice had never even heard of it. Terri was trying to reassure her that it was hilarious while Amanda hoped that playing something like that with her mother and her boyfriend would end up being fun and not horrifying.
After the guys got the fire going, they joined the table for cards.
They laughed into the night and even the twins joined in on a few rounds, astonished that their parents knew the meanings of certain words.
After the last round, Jim got himself and Dylan a beer and they stood by the fire discussing Dylan’s old Bronco. Alice decided she needed to go to bed, which left Terri and Amanda unencumbered by anything else.
“So how serious are you about him?” Terri asked right away, like a gossiping high school girl.
Amanda paused. She thought about the question.
“I’m pretty serious about him,” she said.
“You know, your uncle told me he loved me the first night we were together,” Terri giggled. Her openness might have had something to do with the wine coolers she’d been drinking, but Amanda didn’t mind it, especially since the topic of conversation had become so pertinent to what was going on in Amanda’s life.
“Really? What did you do?” Amanda asked, sipping her own drink.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I said it back,” Terri said, and her laughter faded. “I shouldn’t have,” she said with regret.
“But you love him, don’t you?” Amanda asked.
“Oh, of course. I love him now, yes. But in that moment, I didn’t. I didn’t even know him. But I guess you just know when you know, right? And he knew that night. I didn’t though and I shouldn’t have told him I loved him if I didn’t know that I did yet. Have you guys said the ‘L’ word?”
She looked at Amanda with a conspiratorial smile.
“Well,” Amanda began.
Terri motioned for her to continue and took another sip of her wine cooler.
“He said it the other day. By accident, I think. I didn’t say it back,” Amanda spat out.
“I see,” said Terri. “Well, do you love him?”
“I don’t know. I know I’ve fallen for him. So I’m in love with him, but love is such a strong word. And I know that what I’m feeling is strong, don’t get me wrong on that. I just don’t know that I’m ready to jump right in there and tell him I love him.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” said Terri. “You did the right thing. It’s better for him to be a little uncomfortable not knowing if you feel the same than to find out later you never did but you lied to him about it.”
“You’re right,” said Amanda.
“I’m going to go to bed now. Try to get those two into bed at some point,” she said gesturing towards Dylan and Jim.
Amanda smiled and told her aunt that she’d try.
Instead, she sat and watched Dylan talking to Jim. Looking at him in the glow of the firelight, so happily engrossed in conversation that had to do with something he was passionate about was so attractive to Amanda. She sipped her drink, letting the alcohol permeate her blood stream and make her feel like the air around her was warm and buzzing.
She watched Dylan and he caught her staring out of the corner of her eye. He looked at her for a moment and winked. She didn’t wink back but smiled.
He was hers. That was hard to believe. He didn’t belong to anyone else. He had chosen her and she had chosen him, and there was something inherently magical about a thing like that.
Finally, the conversation with Jim came to a close and Dylan beckoned her to take a seat beside him in front of the fireplace.
She joined him, curling into his muscular body and he wrapped an arm tight around her. She watched the flames dance as he placed a kiss on top of her hair and inhaled her scent. She inhaled his, too, and realized just how much she had missed him.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said to Dylan.
“I am, too,” he said to her.
They cuddled in the
firelight, listening to the sound of each other’s heartbeats for several moments. Then Dylan pulled her chin up with his hand. With his warm touch, he caressed the side of her face and brought her lips to his.
In the softest and most tender kiss, he pressed his mouth against hers. He tugged gently on her fuller lower lip with his teeth. He slid his tongue slowly along the line that her lips made when they were pressed together. He asked for entrance. She granted it to him and opened her mouth to his. She sighed into him.
Passion For the Bear (Series 1, 2, 3 Compilation): White Spirit Bear Romance: Shifter, Erotic Romance, Suspense, Paranormal, New Adult Romance (Shifters Book 5) Page 5