Mel, Candace, and Meg sat on the couch, side-by-side, and in another moment, Meg saw one of the room’s shadows Shift. The next thing she knew, there was a huge, yellow cat leaning against their legs.
Mel absently scratched Addy’s back, and Candace rubbed her ears. Meg sank her fingers into that thick, tawny fur and held on.
“Look! Blue lights!” Candace said.
Sure enough, they saw blue lights flashing from down the hall through the bedroom windows. Addy left them, then, and began to prowl around the apartment. She finished in the back bedroom and soon rejoined them as herself.
“I think we’re all clear, now,” Addy told them. “The two big guys are in handcuffs. I saw the police puttin’ them into the back of their cars. I’m guessin’ the driver and your father aren’t armed, on account of they’re not bein’ arrested.”
A few minutes later, they heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the back stair and the deep voices that told them it was the Saint men. Matt opened the front door with his key and flicked on the lights.
“Everybody okay in here?” he asked.
“Just fine,” Mel said stepping into his arms.
Meg followed her example, stepping into John’s arms and holding him close.
Adrenaline carried Meg back to John’s apartment, and she paced restlessly once they were inside. John moved to light the gas fireplace, though it wasn’t cold, then settled on the couch to watch her.
“Anything could have happened out there,” she said. Her hands were shaking and she clasped them together tightly at her waist.
“Not ‘anythin’, Meg.’”
She turned on him in exasperation.
“How can you just sit there after what my father threatened to do to you tonight? And what about tomorrow and the day after and next week? You have to know he’s not going to give up.”
“Actually, I don’t know that.” He leaned forward and reached out to pull her toward him. “He’s gotta know by now that you can’t be intimidated into comin’ back to him. And what’s he gonna do? Kidnap you? You’re no good to him, iffen you’re not playin’ that stupid violin that moron bought for you. And it’s not like he can make you play anythin’, is it?”
“He might be able to,” she said, reaching out to touch his face with trembling fingers, “if he threatens the people I care deeply about.”
John took both of her hands in his, squeezing them tightly. “You’re just gonna have to get used to the idea that we Saint men do everythin’ we need to do to protect our women folk. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be.”
Meg felt tears threaten and closed her eyes tightly. “And you Saint men need to get used to the idea that we women worry about you while you do.”
“That’s good to know,” he said, tugging on her hands until she came down into his lap.
He placed her hands on his shoulders then pushed her legs open until she was straddling him, her full skirt flowing around them both. She wore stockings with her black concert dress, and she felt heat as her thin panties rubbed against the hardness at the front of his trousers. He took her face between his palms and kissed her, his lips soft against hers, until after another moment, she changed the angle and bore down on him, deepening their kiss until he moaned with pleasure.
“Please love me,” she whispered against his mouth, when she finally came up for air. She rubbed herself against him and felt her dampness increase. “I have such a need for you.”
“Oh, darlin’,” he murmured against her ear as he nuzzled her there. “I need to love you like I need to breathe.”
She sat back then, staring into his deep golden eyes. “Then show me,” she whispered, reaching for the buttons on his shirt.
He’d taken off his tie in the car, but his dress shirt had tiny little buttons that threatened to defeat her as she fumbled with them with trembling fingers. Then he helped her finish the job and sat forward far enough to shrug out of his jacket and shirt, which she pulled away and tossed aside. His t-shirt followed, and she ran her hands through the fur on his chest before leaning forward and letting her lips trail her fingertips.
“You still have too many clothes on, darlin’,” he growled, and the next thing she knew, he had slid the zipper down the back of her dress.
The weight of the velveteen pulled the dress away from her shoulders, and he finished the job with quick fingers, baring her to the waist. The black lacy confection beneath was no challenge at all, and in another moment, he grasped both her bared breasts in his big hands, lifting them to suckle. Meg arched back on a soft cry, and she clung to his arms to keep from falling as she continued to rub herself against the now bulging front of his pants.
“Please, John!”
He chuckled. “We’ll get there.”
“Not soon enough!” she complained.
“We can start by getting’ the rest of this contraption off you,” he said, gathering up her skirt and pulling the whole dress over her head so he could toss it aside.
She now sat astride him in nothing but stockings, a garter belt, and lacy panties so insubstantial that he simply tore them away, leaving her bare and vulnerable.
“Now it’s my turn,” she said, as she ran her hands down his belly.
“I reckon so,” he murmured, reaching for his belt. “Lift up a bit.”
She raised herself on her knees while he dealt with his shoes, pants, and shorts, sliding them down and off. Then she lowered herself, rubbing against him and feeling the wetness.
“We’d better take it a little slower this way, darlin’,” he said, taking her waist in his big hands. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But she would have none of it, taking him into her hands and guiding him to her opening then coming down hard on him. She cried out, the pain/pleasure taking her by surprise, but she wouldn’t allow him to control her motion, as she set a fast pace, rising and falling on him like a piston.
“You’re a wild thing, you are,” John said through clenched teeth, but she heard approval in his voice as his hands shifted to her breasts, allowing her to take the lead in their coupling.
She didn’t speak—she couldn’t, for she was too caught up in the pleasure.
Then he suddenly placed his big hands under her arms and lifted her off him.
“No!” she screamed at the loss.
But he only laid her on the floor, pulled her legs up over his shoulders, and entered her in one long, hard thrust. She screamed again at the startling invasion then sank her teeth into his shoulder. He roared his pleasure, flooding her with his seed.
A long time later, Meg stirred, feeling the warmth of the fire on one side and the cool air of the room on the other. His weight had her pinned to the hard floor.
“John?”
She felt him inhale deeply then he rolled to his side, keeping her between him and the fire. In another moment, she felt the afghan from the couch settle over them. He pulled her leg over his hip. He was still deep inside her, and feeling him stir, she squeezed her inner muscles.
John chuckled. “Can’t get enough, eh?”
“What just happened?” she asked, in a tiny voice, utterly shocked by her own behavior.
“I’m thinkin’ we might have made a baby.”
She stiffened then abruptly relaxed. “Do you really think so?”
“I’m hopin’ so, Meg darlin’, ’cause I sure want to give you a reason to stay with me.”
She managed to lift her head far enough to look down at his face. “I don’t need another reason,” she said, reaching out to trace his lips with her fingertips. “I wasn’t planning to go anywhere. I love you.”
He nipped at her fingers and smiled.
“I’m right glad to hear that, ’cause I surely love you.”
“If we did make a baby,” she said, moving her hand to play with the fur on his chest, “it would probably be a good idea for us to get married. Don’t you think?”
He reached up to caress her face. “I think that’
s a really good idea—even if we didn’t make a baby just now.”
“Okay.”
She laid her cheek on his chest with a sigh and heard his chuckle. “’Course, we might want to try again, seein’ as how a baby would be a really good thing.”
“Maestro Campagnone might not think so, losing a second violinist to maternity leave so soon.”
“He’ll get over it,” John said rolling over and covering her once more.
Meg smiled. “I guess he’ll have to,”
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!”
Ian (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 4) Page 89