by Selena Scott
She pressed one hand over her mouth for just a second. Great. And now Maxim was going to be haunted by the image of those perfect, little fingers pressing into her gorgeous lips.
“So. Yeah. Thank you. And let me know if - wait.” She shook her head. She was rambling. Off-kilter from the kiss.
And giving him an opening?
“Let you know if…” he prodded.
“Just thank you. And see you soon.” She strode through his house toward the front door, taking Linc by the hand.
“See you soon? When?” Maxim asked. Knowing he was maybe being an asshole but really not caring.
“Um,” she stalled, realizing her mistake. She really couldn’t say ‘never’, right? That was just way too rude. Besides. She was physically incapable of forming those words. Her body wouldn’t let her say that kind of ‘no’ to this man. This gorgeous giant standing there in a purple shirt her son had picked out for him. “Just around town.”
His brow furrowed. “Okay, come by the firehouse if you ever want to slide down the pole, Linc.” It was his last card. And he played it.
Ivy shoved her son out the door, blocking his ecstatic, hopeful face from Maxim’s view. “Ooookay. We gotta go. Meter’s running and all.” She pointed toward the cab that still idled in the driveway.
Maxim kicked himself. Shit. He’d made them linger while the meter ran? His long legs got him there before them, and he opened the door for them. He saw, with approval, that Ivy must have arranged for a cab with a kid seat in the back because she was already buckling Linc in.
“Bye,” she said as he gently closed the door.
“Bye,” he replied, deftly slipping the cabbie a fifty for the fare.
He watched them pull away.
“492 Chalkford Road,” he mumbled to himself. Wondering exactly how far he could stretch his morals in the name of a bonafide crush.
CHAPTER FOUR
All mothers were multi-taskers, Ivy supposed. But this was ridiculous. Ivy’s mind had been in two places for the last week. Half on whatever her current reality had been and half on a certain firefighter. Ever since they'd gone to Maxim’s house, she couldn’t get him out of her head.
She'd be making mac and cheese and thinking about Maxim and Linc coming up out of the ravine. Brushing Linc’s hair, wiggling his pajamas on, and thinking about that moment in Maxim’s kitchen when he’d so easily lifted Linc into a chair. It was haunting her.
Not to mention everything else that was haunting her. Ivy was elbows deep in dish soap suds, Linc plugged into Sesame Street in the other room, when Maxim tangled his hand in her hair in her mind. She'd never forget that moment.
Ivy shivered as she wrapped her arms around his neck, tried to bring his lips to hers. He’d ducked his head, brought his lips an inch from hers and paused. And those eyes, all honey and whiskey, smiled at her. The friendliest eyes she'd ever seen in her life. Clear, like two fresh pools of rainwater. There was no darkness there.
Instead of kissing her, he’d pulled the hair band from her hair and slid his fingers through her hair. She felt the warmth of his hand at her scalp and couldn’t help but let her eyes flutter closed at the touch. He was petting her. And damn it. It felt good.
And then he rolled them. She straddled his stomach, his body so wide that her knees barely touched the bed. She knew he could feel her heat. How wet she was for him, and he'd barely touched her yet.
His hands started at her ankles. He frowned when he realized she still had her shoes on. He slid off one and then the other, tossing them on the ground. And then he circled his fingers around the edge of her socks. Lightly dipping his calloused fingers under the seam. Why was that so hot? They were just socks after all. But his touch was making her hyperaware of that area of her body, her skin becoming superheated. Next, his thumbs tucked under the bottom hem of her jeans, right above the ankles. She shivered.
Confusion warred with pleasure. She'd had a few one-night stands in her life and they usually had the same pace. Lips, tits, pussy. Fast and hot. But this was slow and hot. Like this guy had a week to love on her. He hadn't even kissed her yet and here he was, driving her nuts. For the love of God, she still had her socks on. The pace of it should have been throwing her off, but instead it felt like dipping a toe in a deliciously warm bathtub. One delirious inch at a time.
Meanwhile, Maxim’s eyes bored into hers. He was luring her into the metaphorical tub with him.
Ivy felt herself melting in a way she never had before. From the inside out. A little sound escaped her as one of his hot palms landed on her calf, the strong, steady pressure a shock after the teasing of his fingers.
She moved her hips against him, involuntarily seeking a little relief for the pressure that was building inside her.
“No hurry,” he said, his voice a quiet, rumbling thunder. “We have all night.”
She gulped. Did they? She'd anticipated being in and out in under an hour. She pulled up off him. Tensing a little.
He was flipping the script. And as he was a strange man in a strange house, she was suddenly wishing they could just fuck, scratch her dang itch, and she could get the hell out of there.
“Mermaid,” he said and made her smile. “How about I tell you what will happen. So you don't have to worry.”
He paused, but she just stared at him so he continued on. “I am gonna strip you out of these clothes in a second. And then I will find out what you feel like here, and here, and here.” His accent thickened as his hand first grazed over the back of her thigh, then up over the curve of her ass and finally under the bottom curve of one of her breasts.
“And then I will find out what you taste like here, and here, and here.” His hand slipped up her spine, the side of her throat, gently over the tips of each breast.
She moaned and rocked her hips forward and a little, sexy smile quirked out of him before he continued.
“I'm gonna kiss you here.” A thumb over her lips. “And here.” Her ankle again. Then both of her hip bones. “And here.” The heat of his palm landed between her legs, right over her pussy. She couldn't help but moan now.
"I am going to take time. Because I can already smell how good you'll taste here. And I am hungry for you. ”
His words had one end of a spool inside her that she hadn’t known existed. She felt him unthreading her, maddeningly slowly.
"And after you feel so good you can't see straight," he continued, “I'm going to lay back and let you climb on top of me again. You’re going to ride me. Show me exactly how you like to fuck." His hands tightened over her hips now, and he lightly ground them together, giving her just a hint of friction.
"Oh God," she moaned, falling forward on her hands so that their faces were only an inch apart. One of his hands swirled a tantalizing circle over her back while the other hitched behind her leg, fastening her to him.
"And then…”
Jesus, there was more?
"And then I will show you how I like to fuck."
"Mama? Can I watch another?" Linc called from the other room and Ivy jumped a solid foot in the air. One of Linc's plastic cups slipped through her fingers and plunked back in the suds.
Get a grip! She was losing her mind while she was still on Mom duty. This had to stop. Ivy unplugged the bottom of the sink and let the suds run down. She ran extra cold water over her hands. Splashed it on the back of her neck.
“You’ve already watched two, ace. Go find something to do. Play out back. You’ve barely seen the sun yet today.”
He squinched his face, but didn’t argue. She knew it was partly because she’d used her sternest mom tone and partly because he was still psyched about the little swing set she’d installed back there last week.
“Okay, but I don’t wanna wear shoes,” he bargained.
“Okay, but you have to wash your own feet with the hose before you come in,” she bargained back.
“Okay, but I wanna use your soap, not mine.”
“Deal, ace.”
&n
bsp; “Deal, Mama.” And he was out the door like a rocket.
Ivy sagged against the counter, the lonely drips of cold water sliding down her neck. She needed to get laid. That was the simple solution. She just needed to get a babysitter, head out to a bar, and bang some dude in the back seat of her car.
Her stomach clenched. She didn’t have a car anymore. It was twisted up and smashed in some junkyard somewhere. And she didn’t want to bang some dude because of the firefighter who had pulled her son out of that car.
It was a dumb, stupid crush and she was making it worse by obsessing. So if she wasn’t gonna bang anyone else, she just needed to move on. Think other thoughts. She caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror as she walked back to grab the soap for Linc.
Yeesh. She looked tired as hell. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Her hair needed a touch-up. She was considering taking the color down to a navy blue, but she’d gotten partial to the turquoise. Her dark roots were growing out, but she’d dyed it so that it would look good as they did. It looked intentional against her dark brows, her smudge of long lashes.
She sighed as she looked down at her yoga pants, her long-sleeved t-shirt. Well. Who did she need to dress up for? Linc? Nah. It was better this way.
She grabbed her special soap out of the shower and set it out on the back deck for Linc. He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up from where he swung on the swing set. He was going higher than she would have liked. And he’d just had a concussion. But Ivy bit her lip. He was a kid. Kids swung high on swing sets. She refused to be a helicopter parent. So she swung the screen door closed and stepped back inside.
Maybe they’d go catch a movie tonight. It was the warmest day they’d had yet this season. Only 10 in the morning and already 75 degrees or so. They had the whole summer stretching out before them and it made Ivy want to do something special for her boy. Something that would help wipe away how hard the last week had been. Well, really, how hard the last year had been.
Between getting kicked out of her parents’ retirement community where she and Linc had been illegally squatting in their basement, and Linc’s condition presenting itself, well. They’d struggled a little. But no more, she promised herself. This was the year their penny landed face up.
The drier dinged and Ivy automatically walked back to get the laundry before it started to wrinkle. But she paused halfway there.
A knock at her door? Weird. She didn’t have any neighbors. She’d specifically chosen this house for the seclusion.
She peeked through the peephole, up on her toes, and caught her breath. Of course.
She opened the door but wedged herself in the crack. Not exactly inviting.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Maxim, who stood on her porch, wearing the baby blue shirt she’d bought for him and looking sexy enough to get a woman pregnant at 20 paces.
He raked a hand over his hair. It was shorter than when she’d first met him. High and tight. Brown around his scalp and dark blond at the tips. His eyes were as warm as always, hot honey.
“I come for two things,” he replied, holding up two fingers. “Well, to ask two questions. Number one, do you want me to go away forever? Sometimes you act like you do. But I have crush on you. So I do not want to accidentally misunderstand.”
She painfully ripped her butterflies back into place. They were threatening to choke her. They needed to be dormant, as usual. In an intentionally casual move, she leaned her hip against the door jamb, propped one foot on top of the other. “You can’t have a crush on someone you’ve already fucked.”
Even though she’d had the same thought about him earlier. The crush part.
“Well, we have two opinions on that, then,” he said, patting his chest. “Because I have a crush for you in here.”
Ivy sucked her cheeks in to keep from smiling, but she couldn’t do anything about the blush she was sure was staining her cheeks. “What’s the second question?”
“You haven’t answered the first, but okay. Number two, do you and Linc want to come to a swimming party with me and my family today? We know a swimming hole up in the mountains where only we go. It’s fun.”
Shit. Linc would love that. And hadn’t she just been saying that she wanted to do something special for him today?
But no. Ivy visualized slamming a door on that idea. There was no way she could. She needed to keep her distance. A healthy distance. From everyone, until she got Linc’s condition figured out. It was too risky. And no matter how appealing this blonde giant on her front porch was, she’d never risk her child.
“Sorry. The answer to the first question is yes. And the answer to the second question is no.” The words were like rotten fruit in her mouth. But, you know, band-aids. She’d always been a ripper.
But Maxim’s face didn’t look rejected. In fact, he barely looked like he was listening to her. Actually, he was sniffing at the air, a confused expression on his face.
“Where is Linc?” he asked, taking a step back from her.
“Out back. Why?” she asked, her blood icing over.
“Mama!” Linc’s voice suddenly rang out, panicked and pained. She could hear him clearly through the back screen door. She was sprinting through the house before she could think twice.
“Mama, it’s happening again!”
Oh God oh Jesus not now not now. It was all she could think as she slammed out the screen door and skidded across the lawn toward her son who was curled into a ball on the ground, crying and rocking.
She was hyper-conscious of Maxim who hit the lawn half a second after she did.
“It is okay, Linc,” he said, his voice low and soothing.
“Get away!” she screamed, trying to push him away as he knelt by her son. He couldn’t see what was about to happen. If he did, Ivy’s entire life was going to come crumbling down.
But Maxim ignored her. He gripped Linc by the shoulders and sat him up, stripping the little boy’s shirt right off of him.
“Linc! Listen to me. Go like this.” Maxim bared his teeth at the boy, clenching them together. “It hurts less if you go like this. And yell! Yell as loud as you want.”
The little boy instantly did both, following Maxim’s directions. Maxim ripped off Linc’s shorts and tossed them aside. The little boy bore down, clenching his fists and baring his teeth the way Maxim told him.
“Look in my eyes, Linc. And do it. Just do it.” Maxim’s voice was calm and very clear.
Ivy reached out for her son, but Maxim stopped her.
For a moment, nothing changed. It was just three tense people staring at each other on the lawn. And the next second it was two adults staring down at a little bear cub.
Linc’s skin had sprouted fur, his nose lengthened into a snout, his ears migrated up his head and fuzzified. His teeth were as long as his fingers had been and his paws and claws were the size of Maxim’s human hand. The boy cub fell onto his front paws and immediately trotted to his mother. Scared and relieved and scared.
Ivy covered him with her body. Trying and failing to hide her boy from Maxim’s view.
“You knew. You knew what was happening to him. How did you know?" Ivy's mind was racing a mile a minute. "You're not freaking out. You talked him through it. Jesus Christ. Why aren't you freaking out? You knew. You knew."
"Ivy," he spoke, calm and clear, just as he'd talked to her son. "You have to stay calm. Take a breath."
She did. It felt so good that she took another.
Her son crawled around in front of her, sitting partially in her lap, his fur rough and soft at the same time. His tissues smell intensified by a million in his bear form.
Maxim took a step back from them and stripped out of his shirt, shucked off his shoes and pants.
What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t possibly be doing what she thought he was about to do. Nope. Didn’t happen. Didn’t exist. But why else was he stripping in her backyard?
He stood there in his underwear. “I get naked now, so you do whatever
you need to do.”
Ivy covered her son’s eyes, but allowed herself a small peek. Nothing she hadn’t seen before and g.o.d.d.a.m.n. he looked good in the sunlight.
But it was only a glimmering second of his golden skin before he was a blur of fur and roar and teeth and about twelve feet tall and easily a thousand pounds.
There was a motherfucking full-grown grizzly bear standing ten feet away from her. Snuffling at the air and lowering down to his front paws.
Ivy didn’t scream. Well, on the outside at least. But her arms tightened around Linc’s cub body so hard that he squirmed to get away from her.
Holy Mother Nature.
“You’re a - oh my God - a bear. Man bear. Bear man. You’re a man who is a bear. What in the ASS is going on here?” Ivy felt faint as she scrabbled to hold on to Linc. But, come on. The kid was a bear. He was way stronger than she was.
She grabbed out for him but he was trotting across the lawn toward Maxim. The two bears, one huge and one little, rubbed heads together for a second. And then they were intensely staring at one another. Ivy got the weird impression that they were talking somehow.
Linc sat, one leg cocked to the side like a puppy as he watched Maxim. Maxim’s huge bear body mimed something. His arms flopping for a second. Linc imitated him.
Meanwhile, Ivy’s eyes were starting to water from holding them open so wide and her mouth was dry for exactly the same reason. She dragged a ragged breath in, dimly aware that she was about a half second away from a panic attack if she didn’t calm herself the hell down.
And then the two bears were laying down next to one another. And before her eyes, unbelievably, shifting back to human form.
Linc, naked as the day he was born - she should know, she was there - came rocketing across the lawn to her and into her arms.
His laughter in her ear didn’t stop the tears from running down her face. It was the first time that he’d ever shifted back to human form so soon. Usually, he would be stuck in bear form until he fell asleep and then he’d shift automatically. Ivy hadn’t been sure that he could shift back at will. It was a huge relief to know that he could.