She dove into the water and came up laughing. “Sweet” was one way to describe them, but after kissing them both, it was probably not the first word she’d use anymore. Walking time bombs, was what they were. Wasn’t it dangerous for a guy to get so turned on without release all day?
Rolling onto her back, she basked in the starlight, letting the tension out of her limbs bit by bit in the vibrating roar of the nearby waterfall. She simply floated in the darkness, feeling weightless and imagining herself floating among the stars, as remote as a constellation. Would she be Ursa Major or Ursa Minor? She could see both tonight, crystal clear. Impulsively, she said a little prayer.
“Whoever is up there, help me be what I need to be to find happiness here. I’m pretty fucking confused at the moment.”
She couldn’t hear a thing over the constant din of the waterfall. A shooting star arced across the sky just then. At the same moment, she heard a pair of splashes from the shore. She almost groaned in annoyance at the interruption, but her entire body tingled at the idea of being naked with them again after a day of discoveries.
She swam away from the splashes and turned, treading water, to watch them. They laughed together, splashing a little as they swam out into the middle of the pool and murmuring breathlessly together. She couldn’t discern what they said over the sound of the waterfall from that far away.
When they reached the center, the slighter-built body that could only be Sten dove beneath the water and didn’t come up for some time, but Orrick let out a harsh gasp and tilted his head back, struggling to tread water for a second.
Sten burst up a moment later, laughing. “Two minutes isn’t long enough, I guess,” he said, and Jade didn’t have to wonder what had happened while he was beneath the surface.
“Not even close,” Orrick said, snaking an arm out and pulling Sten into a deep kiss that made Jade just a little bit jealous to watch. Their bodies seemed to merge into a solid shape in the darkness, Sten’s slightly smaller form pressed into Orrick’s larger one.
After a moment, they finally pulled apart and Jade let out the breath she’d been holding. It came out in a loud rush and they both turned to look at her.
“Jade,” Sten said, swimming toward her. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“The fuck you didn’t. What was that?”
Orrick swam up and said, “You know we’re a couple, right? Sten and I have been paired for years. This is how it works with us. The males have the option of pairing when they’re young. It ensures less risk of impregnating unmated females if we have another outlet.”
Jade’s eyes widened. Her mother had told her a lot about the place, but in none of her brief lectures had it come up that the males paired up that way. Everything made so much more sense suddenly.
“You still like females?” she asked.
Sten laughed. “You have to ask?”
“Don’t let me stop you from whatever it was you were doing,” she said, half-sulking, but half-intrigued.
They closed the distance through the water, coming together with a kiss that made Jade feel a little uncomfortable to watch. Soon, it wasn’t discomfort, but arousal that made her want to turn away. They were only kissing, but, fuck, they loved it.
They broke apart and looked at her expectantly.
She just waded in the water, stunned beyond recognition.
A glint in Sten’s eyes reminded her of the kiss she’d shared. Did he remember it?
“Jade,” he said, beckoning to her.
Remembering everything her mother had said about ursa mating, she held back. Condoms didn’t work for them—something about the latex simply dissolving when it contacted female ursa fluids. And if they decided to mate, she’d have to mark them. She hadn’t even learned to shift yet, so that couldn’t happen anyway.
Watching them now, she had an instinctive urge to do just that—to make them hers in spite of her wish that just the opposite would occur.
Either way, there was one thing that needed to happen before she could make that decision.
“Will you teach me to shift tonight?” Jade said, moving through the water toward them. She let both men wrap their arms around her, her wet skin brushing against theirs and sending little zings of pleasure through her.
“Does this mean you’re going to choose us?” Sten asked, sliding his hand down her back beneath the water and cupping her full bottom. He simply held her without moving, but the touch made her breath catch in her throat.
“I haven’t decided yet, but I can’t mark you without knowing how, can I?”
“True,” Orrick said. “But you don’t need to rush it.” He moved his own hand down her back and pried Sten’s fingers off her, and she caught him casting a glare at the other male. Sten only grinned.
“Come out of the water,” Sten said, swimming away toward the small campsite they’d set up by the water, illuminated by the pleasant, orange glow of a fire. He climbed out and stood by the flames, their leaping tongues making him look like some kind of wild native, with his long hair hanging in wet tendrils over his shoulders. Dark tattoos she hadn’t seen before adorned both hips.
Jade followed with Orrick behind her. Once out, she grabbed her blanket and wrapped it around her, suddenly self-conscious about being naked with them.
Orrick’s deep voice brushed against her ear as he stood dripping behind her. He tugged at the edge of the blanket. “The first step is being comfortable in your own skin, which I know you are, Jade. You spent half the afternoon naked with us without any sign of modesty.”
Jade let the blanket fall in a pile around her feet. Sten made his way around the fire and her heart pounded harder with each step he took, until he was standing just in front of her, close enough for her to make out the shapes of the two charging bears on his hips. She wondered if Orrick had similar tattoos.
“Like what you see?” Sten asked.
Jade’s gaze shot up and her cheeks heated when she realized she’d just been casually staring at the man’s groin. Irritated by his remark, and particularly by her own embarrassment, she narrowed her eyes and quirked her mouth.
“Do you like what you see?” she asked, squaring her shoulders so that her breasts jutted out farther.
“Very much,” Sten said. “But seeing and being fully aware are two different things. It’s your body that needs to learn to inhabit its true shape. The she-bear that drives your instincts is inside you. We simply need to draw her out.”
As he spoke, Orrick trailed a warm hand down the center of her spine. He paused at her low back and traced a shape just at the top of her buttocks, exactly where her tattoo was. The action was as light as a breath, but lit a heat inside her that began beneath her navel and seeped through her lower abdomen. The most intense ache pooled between her legs.
“What do you feel, Jade?” Orrick asked, his lips close enough to her cheek that his thick stubble tickled her skin.
“You touched my tattoo,” she said. “Why did that do what it did?”
“Tell me what it did.”
“It made me want . . . sex.”
He let out a low growl into her ear. “It spoke to your she-bear, made you want to breed.”
“I thought that could only happen during estrous? And I’m not fertile now, am I?”
Sten chuckled in front of her. “Your she-bear always wants to breed, even when you’re not in estrous. It’s the way your magic works. If she wants it badly enough, then it can happen even if it isn’t your fertile period, but there simply won’t be enough magic for the child to be viable. It would be a waste of your resources to risk it.”
Behind her, Orrick murmured, “But in order to shift, you need to accept that urge, open yourself up to it as though giving into a lover, let it fill you the way he fills you.”
The warmth in Jade’s core grew and her breathing became ragged. The sensa
tion made her feel strangely full in a way she couldn’t decide if she enjoyed or not.
“I don’t know what that feels like,” she whispered, though she was beginning to have an idea.
Orrick slid his hands around her hips and rested them against her belly.
“Lie down,” he whispered. “Let us show you.”
“But you can’t . . . ” she began, shaking her head.
“We won’t fuck you,” Sten said. “There are other ways to bring out your she-bear.”
Jade let herself sink down to the blankets, hyperaware of Orrick’s warm strength behind her. She leaned back against him and looked up into his blue eyes. Her mouth watered as she remembered their kiss. As though sensing her craving, he lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers.
Another pair of hands gripped her knees and urged them apart. She relaxed and let Sten slide his hands up her inner thighs, the soft caress causing the heat in her core to grow molten. This was more than simply being horny, though. She’d felt that before, like a hot little knot that she could easily abolish with five minutes and a bit of privacy. This was akin to that intense pressure just before orgasm, only multiplied by a thousand.
Orrick’s mouth left hers and he cupped her breasts gently, hesitantly. “Gaia, you are beautiful. Is it still all right for us to touch you? You haven’t asked us . . . but this is what you want, right?”
Jade bit her lip as she looked down where Sten’s hands had paused at the tops of her inner thighs, so close to her core, she thrummed with need for him to go farther, to go beyond the boundary they’d set.
She nodded. “I asked you to show me how to shift. That’s what you’re doing, right?”
“Yes,” Orrick said, brushing his thumbs over her nipples. “Let the awareness sink into every cell in your body, Jade. Close your eyes now and feel everything. Let your senses take over.”
She did as he told her, though it took some effort not to simply focus on where they were touching her. It was the shift of Orrick’s hips against her low back, pressing his erection tight against her that awoke everything else. Suddenly his breath in her ear sounded like the wind, and the scent of his desire reminded her of the spring rain. Her own fecund aroma reached her nostrils as Sten’s fingertips delicately parted her folds.
His breathing was just as ragged as Orrick’s when he bent his head and pressed his mouth between her thighs. Impulsively, she reached up and pulled Orrick’s head down again, kissing him savagely.
The need overtook her and her back arched, her hips bucking into Sten’s lapping tongue. The raw, primal power filled her so completely she finally understood what it meant to inhabit her true form, but she held it back, enjoying their touch on her bare, human skin too much to let it stop just yet.
The sweep of Sten’s tongue over her clit switched to a tight, hard swirl. Every sense came alive in a split second and her eyes flew open. Her gaze met Orrick’s just as her climax shook her, vibrating through every muscle. She let out a sound that could not have been human, that she knew wasn’t human, and the world shifted, tilting on its axis. One moment, Jade was in the arms of two gorgeous men, and the next she was on all fours, letting out a roar that nearly put the fire out. Her entire body tingled deliciously and she shook herself.
Jade looked down at her hands and saw huge paws covered in velvety-black fur. A surprised laugh escaped her throat, but came out as a series of deep chuffles. She turned her head and sniffed, found Sten sitting back on his heels with a surprised look, his face still glossy from her juices. She had the strangest urge to kiss him, and without thinking raised her head and swept her tongue over his mouth.
He batted her away with a laugh. “Not kissing a bear, sorry.”
When she looked at Orrick, her mood plummeted. He had such an anguished expression, she went to him with the intention of comfort. Immediately, she felt her shape change and she was kneeling in front of him in her human form again.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
In a strained voice, he said, “If you chose us, that was when you could begin the mating process. You’d mark us with your claws, then we would make love to you and we would seal the marks.”
“I know how it works,” she said, confused by his attitude. “My mother told me, but Emma gave me all the gory details from her own mating. Why do you look so upset?”
“He was hoping you would be ready to choose tonight,” Sten supplied. “The idiot talks about patience all the time, but he’s really the least patient person I know.”
“It’s more than that,” Orrick said. “Your magic is powerful, which we should have known. Your cousin’s was almost too much for us, but she is pregnant, so that’s to be expected. You’re nearly as powerful as she is and you’re not even in estrous yet, much less pregnant. If you aren’t ready to choose, that’s fine, but we can’t behave the way you want us to if we’re going to travel together.”
Jade glanced between them both, then grabbed her blanket and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. “You mean we can’t fool around if I’m not ready to commit to you, is that it? If so, I think it’s bullshit.”
Before she could blink, she found herself flat on her back with her blanket ripped away. Orrick’s huge body hovered over her, pinning both her hands above her head.
“This is what you’re asking for, Jade,” he hissed. He pressed a knee between her thighs, forcing them apart.
Jade’s heart pounded and her core quivered, aching for exactly the thing he threatened her with. His cock hovered above her belly. She tilted her hips up teasingly.
“Yes,” she said, her entire body thrumming with the promise of being filled by him.
Orrick gripped her hip with one hand, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“We have incredible self-restraint when we follow the rules. But there’s a reason we don’t fuck with them. If we make a mistake, it could destroy the Sanctuary. If I fucked you now and you happened to be close enough to your estrous to get pregnant, you wouldn’t have a choice but to follow through with a mating. If you don’t want us, don’t fuck with the rules.”
Jade clenched her eyes shut, ashamed at how little she understood about this place. Slowly, she nodded. “I understand.”
Sten moved close and placed a hand on Orrick’s shoulder. “Let her go. I think you made your point.”
With a harsh sigh, Orrick gently released her and tugged her blanket back around to cover her up.
“I am sorry for that,” he said, giving her a sheepish smile. “If we were mated, you’d be getting what you want as often as we could give it to you. It’s just too big a risk. Servicing your cousin was good practice, but we knew she belonged to Julian and August, so there was no temptation to break the rules. With you, it’s different.”
“Because I’m single.”
Sten threw on a pair of shorts and tossed a pair at Orrick. The smaller male sat down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He still dwarfed her in his comforting embrace. Jade let out a sigh and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Because you’re single, beautiful, you smell like fucking heaven, and you taste even sweeter. It isn’t easy to be around you without popping wood every five minutes. We’re young and still figuring out how to function as mature males.”
“I’m still trying to figure out this whole ursa thing, too. It’s confusing as hell, but I think I can adjust,” she said.
Orrick sat on the other side of her, fishing into his overstuffed hiking pack. “In the meantime, pretty much any other issue can be solved with food.”
Jade laughed. “I think you might be able to change my mind about choosing you, if that’s your regular philosophy.”
A little later, she curled up in her sleeping bag, exhausted but content after the feast Orrick cooked. She slept soundly and woke sometime in the early hours. Gazing up at the crest of the wat
erfall, she simply lay there, enjoying the pinking sky.
She wasn’t sure if she could go back to viewing the two males as substitutes for her absent brother, not when she’d discovered how much she had wanted Orrick to follow through with his threat the night before. But she did know that she wasn’t ready to give them what they wanted, so she supposed she would have to compromise and accept what they could give her, if they were willing to wait for her to figure it out.
A noise caught her attention over the sound of the waterfall and she turned her head toward the other side of the campsite where the two males had laid down in their own sleeping bags after they’d eaten. In the shadows beyond the dark coals of their fire, she saw their bodies entwined, a single sleeping bag draped across the back of Orrick’s hips while they moved. Sten lay beneath him, arms stretched over his head with Orrick’s hands holding him down.
Jade’s entire body flushed with the understanding of what they were doing. Their eyes were locked together, soft grunts of pleasure carrying to her ears. The image was more intimate than any moment she’d experienced and she closed her eyes, not wanting to intrude. Even though they knew she was there, they must have thought she was still asleep.
But she couldn’t keep her eyes shut. She opened them and watched, then slowly slid her hand up her thin tank top to clutch at one breast, teasing her nipple into a hard nub. She pushed her other hand down into her shorts. Only then did she close her eyes, bringing herself off while she imagined each of them taking turns holding her down and fucking her.
Chapter Six
Over the next few days, Jade let herself simply enjoy the scenery. Each waterfall they led her to was more spectacular than the one before it. Each meal they cooked more delicious than the last, especially the ones the males would forage for, finding wild mushrooms, berries, and one day, a nest of grouse eggs which they turned into the most mouthwatering quiche-like concoction Jade had ever tasted.
Nailed (Black Mountain Bears Book 3) Page 5