She threw off the hot, itchy blanket and rose to stand spread legged, arms akimbo before him. Her beautifully groomed black curls had been tousled into a froth of ragged corkscrews that framed flashing brown eyes and a mouth set in determined lines. Her breasts stood up in all their proud, lush glory and her damp black muff was a neat triangle pointing to her red nether lips and luscious rounded thighs. From the poleaxed expression on Jack’s face she was having the same effect on him as he had on her.
Hannah looked Jack up and down with narrowed eyes. She took note of his gauntness and the various bruises and scratches he had acquired in his duel with the brown male. Her claws had marked his ass and right hip and the five weals still oozed blood. Good. His face had a darkening bruise on one cheekbone, and another on his jaw. His left ear had a notch in it.
His close cropped black hair revealed the bleeding gashes on his scalp. His big shoulders and arms were a mass of gouges and the bite mark on his left bicep was turning purple; blood had congealed in the puncture marks. He looked mean and dangerous and very, very good. She was in so much trouble.
Jack smiled at her and held up his hands before his chest. “I can explain, sweetheart,” he said placatingly.
He was trying to charm her. Damned if she’d let him. Hannah narrowed her eyes and dropped her eyes to his cock. Despite having just flooded her, it stood to attention, quivering slightly in its tangle to thick black curls. From base to tip it was a mass of veins and stretched skin that glistened with spunk. The broad purple tip oozed semen. She could smell his come and his sweat. Testosterone city. There was only one way for her bear to go. He was ready for action, and she had thirty months years of deprivation to make up for.
Hannah launched herself across the room, grabbed Jack’s right arm body checked his hip as her kick boxing instructor had taught her, so that he landed on his back on the mattress. His left arm grabbed her as he toppled and hauled her close to his body and his legs gripped hers behind the knees so that she pressed hard against his body.
“Oh, Baby,” he moaned softly into the top of her head. “I’ve missed you so.” He tightened his legs fractionally so that her belly massaged his stiff cock and he swiveled his hips so the friction increased. He used both hands to pull her up so that he could mate his lips with hers. He murmured endearments between soft kisses before sucking her lower lip hard the way she liked and thrusting his tongue against hers in a mating dance.
Hannah pushed hard against his granite chest and got a handful of chest hair at the same time. She gave a tug as she pushed herself astride his belly. She rubbed her open sex against his happy trail and left it slick with spunk. His big hands reached for her upper arms to bring her back for more kisses, but she shoved his arms away. He was much stronger than her but he let her go at once.
“None of that,” she said briskly, scooting lower so that she sat on his steel shaft. She moved her pussy up and down, bending forward a little so her breasts swayed enticingly over Jack’s chest. Her nipples were hard and stiff and red. They stood out in contrast against the soft pearly abundance of her breasts. Jack captured both breasts in his hands and held them as if comparing their weight and size against some memory. He rolled the straining tips between his fingers and tugged lightly and she came again. The bastard remembered her!
Hannah growled deep in her throat and recalled why she was here. She rose on her knees and positioned him before sinking down so deep the mushroom head of his cock touched her womb. Her slick passage accommodated him easily this time and grew even wetter. She could hear the juicy sounds her pussy made as she slid up and down his cock. Jack grabbed at her hips and held on, moaning and writhing as her vagina contracted around him again and again, wringing him dry.
At last she collapsed exhausted on his chest as he smoothed gentle hands down her back and bottom. He rubbed lightly on the soft flesh of her ample globes and lifted them up and down as if he couldn’t bear to let her go. He sighed with repletion and then the bastard fell asleep.
Hannah got off him and stood beside the bed. She gazed at her erstwhile lover and pondered her options. She ran amazed hands over the supple alabaster swell of her belly and hips. She looked down as if expecting to see some difference. There were red marks from his beard and thatch on her thighs and stomach, and her flesh had plumped up like the desert after a drought. That was plain silly. What she was feeling was the start of new life. Yup, she was preggers.
Hannah examined her feelings. She knew that she ought to feel alarm. She knew that being a single parent of twins or triplets was incompatible with her promotion at work. Her company expected her to work overtime at the drop of a hat and that went double after a promotion. So why wasn’t she panicking? Why was she stroking her belly gently and reverently while she looked at the piece of work that had knocked her up.
She had to remember that she had given Jack everything two years ago and in return for her heart and passion he had dumped her flat. He had left her bereft, grieving and worried for his safety. What kind of an asshole did that? The lies he had told her were unforgivable. No matter how his maleness called to her femaleness she had to be strong and remember his perfidy. She cast one last look at the bed.
Jack’s mouth was open and he snored lightly. His flaccid cock lay against his bent leg dripping spunk onto the stained mattress. His sweaty chest rose and fell with every breath. His belly displayed four wide silver scars that stretched from his navel to his left hip. They had not been there four years ago. It looked as if some massive cat had tried to disembowel him. Her mouth twisted scornfully.
Winnie and Jools had told her all about the big cash prizes shifters fought for in back alley tournaments. Black bears challenged grizzles and polar bears and even mountain lions to combat. Death was not uncommon. Serious injury was almost a certainty. Idiot males. She tried to feel angry but she was overwhelmed with lust and tenderness. Damn hormones.
She shook her head at her own foolishness, picked up the scratchy red blanket and considered covering Jack with it. It seemed appropriate, but her hands folded it tidily instead and set it on one of the stools. Giving herself no more time think, she slowly shifted and backed out of the log cabin.
Hannah followed her nose to the stream she had watered at before, caught a few more trout and started for the women’s hut. It was time to take her bear back to civilization. She passed a number of couples humping amongst the trees, and even more solitary males looking for opportunity, but she wasn’t even tempted to stop. The bear with the grey muzzle who had challenged Jack approached her stomp walking and clicking hopefully, but she snarled at him and kept going and he moved sadly off.
Her purposeful stride brought her right back to cabin twenty-seven. She could smell her mate, and his delectable scent drew her irresistibly. She found herself stalking back into the cabin where Jack lay sprawled on his back still asleep. His right cheekbone had turned dark purple and his right eye had swollen shut. His jaw was covered with black bristles and a blooming bruise. He was a mess. A delicious mess.
His big muscular feet with their long toes hung off the bed. She considered how easily she could remove them with a single bite. But when she set her jaws over his toes her tongue curled out and she licked him tenderly instead of chomping. He tasted of man, and sex, and every fantasy she had ever had.
Without conscious thought Hannah shifted and was on her hands and knees at the end of the bed still tasting his toes. Well, damn. She crawled onto the bed on all fours and crouched above Jack’s muscular shins enjoying the aroma of their matings mingled with his sweat. It made her hungry all over again. She examined his dormant member with a derisive eye. It lay mouse-like on his sticky, semen-clotted thatch. She dipped her head and swirled her tongue over his sleeping baby maker.
Jack’s good eye opened and he smiled and grabbed her waist and lifted her. “Mine,” he growled as he hoisted her into the air. “Mine,” he growled before he kissed her.
By the time he lowered her down onto his shaft
it stood out from his groin like a spike. He let her down slowly as if savoring the feel of her then stopped when the tip reached her womb. He tipped her body back slightly so he could sit up. He pulled up his knees so she could lean against his great thighs.
He kissed her then, his tongue playing leisurely, tenderly with hers as if they had all day. He rocked lightly so his shaft moved gently in her sheath tantalizing but not satisfying. His mouth left hers to wander over her cheeks and down her neck lapping and nibbling and sucking. His hands found her breasts and he plumped them before covering them with kisses that imperceptibly turned into love bites.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. He nuzzled behind her ear where her scent was strongest before sucking the pale pink lobe. He bit down with just enough pressure so that she squirmed on his cock as she shot into orgasm. “Your honey pot was made for me, darling,” he whispered huskily.
Hannah moaned in rapture as she felt the remembered pleasure of his tongue on her delicate pleasure points. She luxuriated in the glide of tongue on tongue, and tongue on delicate tissue. Every lick, every nibble moved her closer to rapture. She relaxed against his legs and let him play with her blissful flesh. How she had missed this. “Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted into his shoulder as he brought her to delight with his hands. He moved his hands to support her buttocks, his fingers massaging the satiny mounds until she was wound even tighter.
As her passion built if felt as if she shared her soul with him, as if they moved as one because they were one. Hannah felt her heart contract as though he had squeezed it with his mighty fist. She still loved the bastard. Tears gathered in her eyes and she dashed them away impatiently. He wasn’t worth her tears. The illusion that their joining was the meshing of hearts and souls was a foolish fantasy. All he was giving her was release and babies.
Suddenly her eyes popped open. She was doing it again. Falling for his lies. Again. This wasn’t about true love or soul deep bonding. This was about making babies. Her pussy was full of stiff cock so she could be filled to the brim with potent shifter seed.
She swiveled her hips and her velvet sheath squeezed him so tightly he moaned and bucked. This was more like it. Hannah moved her feet forward and crouched so she could ride him hard and long with her soles on the mattress, her arms balancing on his broad hairy chest. She twisted her fingers into the thick pad of hair and tugged hard. Hair came out in her hands. Let him have something to remember her by. His thrusts came faster now as he matched her furious rhythm and they moved as one.
She rose and fell using her strong thighs and calves to have her way with this stud. Her head fell back and her thick mass of unbound black curls tickled Jack’s forearms and her bottom. Red flickered behind her eyelids and she realized she had closed them as the pressure in her pussy built. With a shriek she came and her vagina contracted like a fist around his cock and with a mighty roar he filled her once again with his seed. He collapsed backward onto the mattress groaning. “Hannah, you’re killing me!” he gasped.
Hannah swung her leg over Jack’s belly and dismounted from him and the bed in one movement. The light was fading and the room was all shadows. Spunk ran down the insides of her thighs and every muscle ached as she moved. Her skin felt raw and her emotions rawer. Jack’s good eye closed and he fell asleep with a hand across his chest as suddenly as he had woken.
It was time to go. Her entire life had changed but this piece of shifter trash was no further use to her. Her babies didn’t need the kind of dad who could not be relied on. She had to be strong for the sake of those cubs in her womb.
The path to the women’s hut was easy for her bear eyes and nose to locate. And it took her only minutes to get there. She ignored the bachelors she met lurking in the clearing outside the women’s hut. As if. The locker room was dark and empty but she found the light switch.
She examined herself in the mirrors and was appalled. Her face and breasts and belly were solid beard rash. Her hips bore the imprint of giant hands. She gingerly touched the clusters of love bites all over her neck and breasts. The bastard had even marked the delicate undersides. Her nipples were red and sore and distended. She was sweaty and stank of their bouts. Her hair was a frizzy corona around her face. And yet she felt smug and sated. And pregnant. That too.
When she emerged from the showers with soaking hair and squeaky clean skin, her pussy still felt full and moist and she could still smell boar bear on her. But she only brushed her teeth before dressing and heading to her car.
The guard at the gate leered at her and sniffed suggestively, but he raised the barrier without speaking when she curled her lip. Bastard shifter. Damn them all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JACK WOKE UP FROM the deepest sleep he had since he left for Uzbekistan. He opened his one good eye to bright sunshine. Sunbeams angled through the pine trees and shone into the screened windows. It was late. Nearly noon he guessed. But where was his mate? Hannah had no doubt gone looking for food after the heavy exercise of the day before. He grinned remembering their bed sport. What a woman!
He stretched and every muscle protested. He grimaced. He would have fought twenty bears for his woman, but he was glad it was just the one that he had had to defeat. He rubbed a hand over his face, wincing as he felt the bruise on his jaw. He needed a shave too. This much bristle would be like sandpaper on his Hannah’s satiny flesh.
He got up and took stock of his aching body. He had lost condition in the mountains of Uzbekistan and was still not fighting fit. This morning, his head was pounding, he ached everywhere, and his ass throbbed fiercely.
He twisted to look at the mark of Hannah’s claws on his buttocks. The inflamed weals were covered in dried blood and the flesh around them had turned purple. His Hannah had quite a mad on. When had she turned into such a fighter? He recalled how deftly she had tossed him onto the bed and shook his head.
He figured he still had some explaining and apologizing to do. But their instant connection made him optimistic that Hannah would forgive him as soon as he told her what had happened. He was pretty sure she was pregnant. He foresaw a long and happy marriage surrounded by their kids. Life was good.
His shifter genes meant that he healed quickly, but between the brown and Hannah he had taken such a beating the day before that he was going to be sore for a while. Sore but happy. He had enjoyed most of his welcome and his morning erection was an iron spike looking for its lodestar.
Where the hell was she? She couldn’t have gone looking for boar bear, could she? A roar of such jealous fury came from his throat that the chatter of the birds and squirrels stopped and silence enveloped the woods. Jack shifted and went hunting.
He tracked Hannah to the river where she had drunk and fished and bathed himself in its icy depths. He chased a few small trout but gave up before he had eaten his fill. He was desperate to find his mate before she gave herself to some lowdown poaching boar. Didn’t she know she was his mate? He had set his mark on her two years ago and she belonged to him. Forever.
Jack tracked her back to the log cabin and from there into the thimbleberry bushes. He nibbled a few but his quest was more important than his hunger and he set off after Hannah again. The trail ended at the women’s hut. She had not stopped to sniff the brush where boars had scent marked, she had not stopped to mate. And once she had gone in, his nose assured him that she had not come back out. Her scent trail was more than twelve hours old, so she had left him last night.
She had gone home. Without him. This was bad. Not only had she run from her life-mate, but she had taken off with his cubs in her womb. Now he had to find her. He wasn’t giving up that easily.
It took half an hour in the shower with soap and razor before he felt ready to go courting. There was a different guard at the gate than the one who had given him Hannah’s cabin number the day before. It took another huge bribe before this guy remembered the babe in the red SUV who had left the night before. The lecherous look on that bear’s face vanished before Jack’s g
rim scowl and he handed over her tag number without further comment. Pity. It would have been pure pleasure to teach the lascivious bastard some respect.
Hot on Hannah’s trail, Jack headed for Seattle. He stopped at the first truck stop on I-90 hoping she had needed to eat. He picked up her scent in the parking lot which confirmed she was heading for Seattle. The booth she had sat in was occupied by a couple of skinny guys in gimme hats. The tired waitress deflected his questions after one glance at his black eye. Jesus, she thinks I’m a wife beater.
The waitress was still looking warily at him, so with an effort Jack controlled his urge to roar at the insult and ordered breakfast in his meekest tones. As if he would ever hit any woman let alone his mate! Even if he had not been explicitly taught by his father and older brothers that his first duty as a bear was to protect females, he would have absorbed that lesson long before his first shift. His dad treated his mom as if she was spun gold. And Mom in her turn acted as if Pop hung the moon. That was the kind of marriage he expected with Hannah.
Two of his three older brothers were happily mated. They both had found their heart’s treasure more easily than he and Will and Doug had. He sighed. The military had a way of interfering with true love. He had hoped to be heading to Hanover and his clan’s compound to show off his bride. Instead he was driving hell for leather away from his home town and the reunion he had promised Mom. On cue his phone buzzed.
Sam and Tom and Doug and Will each called to tear a strip off his hide. It was great after so long to be able to talk to his brothers again, even if they were mad at him. Only his twin, Will, had any sympathy to spare. The others thought he should haul his ass home and make things right with Mom and then go chase after Hannah. But he couldn’t take the risk. He knew Mom might get mad but she had to forgive him. He wasn’t so sure about Hannah.
Dragon's Treasure (BBW/Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 1) Page 22