Bruins Peak Bears Box Set (Volume II)

by Sarah J. Stone

  She started down the stairs, but when she entered the light, she saw him standing in the middle of the cage. One hip stuck out at a casual angle, and his black eyes registered their usual recognition.

  She pressed forward, set down the basket, and headed for the stairs. She ought to empty his bucket while she was at it, but she had to get out fast. She made it to the first stair when he called out. “Are you just going to walk away from me without saying anything?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder with a sinking feeling. She couldn't walk away. He held her to him with an unstoppable force. Her eyes touched his face and sealed her destruction.

  He took a step forward, right to the front bars. “Don't leave like this, Melody. At least talk to me.”

  “I can't talk to you. I have to go.”

  His eyes turned up to plead with her. “Why?”

  She shook her head, but she couldn't force herself up those stairs. She couldn't move at all. “I can't get near you. It's not good.”

  “Tell me what's wrong, Melody. What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

  “I don't hate you. Don't you see? It's because I don't hate you that I can't come near you. I ought to hate you. I ought to kill you right now. I can't have anything to do with you. You're dangerous, not just to me but to my whole people. You're my enemy.”

  “I'm not your enemy, Melody. You don't know what's it's been like, sitting down here alone all day. I waited for you to come back, and when you walked away without saying anything to me, I thought I couldn't stand it. You're the only thing making my life bearable right now. Please, please don't walk away. Stay with me.”

  “I'm making your life bearable right now, but if you ever get out of here, you'll find something else to keep you going. You'll go back to your people and you'll find some other girl—or maybe a bunch of girls. You don't need me. Talking to you is too hard for me. I have to stay away from you.”

  “Why is talking to me so hard for you? Is it something I said? Are you mad that I kissed you last night? Did I insult you by exposing myself to you?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, but she couldn't clear her thoughts. “Of course not. You know I liked kissing you. You're so attractive and hot, you could never offend me that way.”

  “What is it, then? What's making you turn away from me now?”

  “You're too attractive—to me, anyway. I can't stop thinking about you. I can't think about you like that. You're a different species. Bruins mate for life, and that's not going to happen between you and me. I can't think about you, or I start wanting it too much. It's better for both of us if we put a stop to this right now.”

  “Is that what this is about? You think about getting with me, and you think it can't go anywhere?”

  “You said yourself your people don't mate that way. You change your partners every few days—or whatever you do. You don't have any permanent mates. You just bang whatever you want, whenever you want. That would never work for a Bruin.”

  “What if it could work? What if I said I did want to mate with you for life? Would that make any difference?”

  “What's the point of talking about it? You won't. You won't because you can't.”

  “Who says I can't? I can do what I want.”

  “Well, you won't. You're not made that way. You're fluid and sexual and....and black.”

  His eyes sparkled. “You keep saying that.”

  “It's the only thing that makes sense to explain what you are. Everything about you is black and dark and burning, like magma boiling under the ground. I can't explain it any other way.”

  His eyes bored into her soul. “I want you, Melody. I want all of you. I can't stop thinking about you, either. I think about taking you home and making a life with you.”

  “You could never make a life with me. I would have to turn my back on my people. I would never have children. My life would be over if I had anything to do with you.”

  He took hold of a bar with one hand and extended the other toward her. “Come to me, Melody. Come to me.”

  Her voice cracked in her throat, “I can't,” even as her feet carried her closer to that outstretched hand.

  “You can. Let me make you understand how I feel about you.”

  She took one more step and stopped herself. “I can't. It doesn't matter how you feel about me or how I feel about you. It could never work. If I can just stop thinking about you like that, we can both go back to our own lives. It's better that way.”

  He put his hand down. “I can't stop thinking about you, either, but you're just as much my enemy as I am yours. I don't want to care about you. I don't want to want you, but I do. I want you more than any woman I've ever met. You're alien, but you fit into my arms like you were made to be there. I can't understand it, but I can't walk away from how I feel about you.”

  She peered up into his face. “Really? Do you really feel the same way about me?”

  “I would never turn my back on you to take some other female. I don't care what my people say. I would stay here with you if I thought I could, but right now, the best I can hope for is to get out of here with my life. I don't want to walk away from you. I want to fit you against me where you belong. I want us to come together and never come apart. I don't understand it. Your people mate for life, but my people don't have the words for that. I don't know how to talk about it.”

  “If I ever did it with you, my whole life would be welded to yours. I would never be able to tear myself away from you. If you left or died, I would die, too. That's the way it works with Bruins.”

  He nodded. “That's how I feel, too.”

  “It's not just doing it that would make you my mate for life. In a way, it's already happened. It happened when you kissed me last night. It happened even before that. I sensed it when they first brought you in. In one way, it happened even before that. It happened at the beginning of time. I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense here.”

  He gazed into her eyes and nodded. “I felt that way, too.”

  She threw up her hands. She had to move, but she still couldn't let herself move toward him. She paced back and forth, always making sure to stay far enough away that he couldn't reach her. “This can't happen. We can't let this happen. It's impossible.”

  He put out his hand to her. “Come here, Melody. I need you.”

  She froze in her tracks and stared at him. She couldn't, but she needed him, too. She craved his touch and his presence more than anything. She ached for the madness of falling under his hypnotic spell. She longed to lose herself in the sheer impossible power of it.

  She looked down at his hand. Those fingers touched his prick. They touched her and ignited her most secret passions. She never let herself feel those passions before. She never let herself give them the power to control her life. What would her life be if she let them loose to consume her whole world?

  She would incinerate him and everything else she touched with her smoking desire. She would destroy the whole world to get what she wanted. Her body would consume everything in the wicked ecstasy of unbridled passion.

  She held back, but already her defenses crumbled around her. If she never touched him again, she belonged to him. He was her mate. She couldn't deny that now. Somehow, somewhere in the mystic reaches of Fate, she got herself joined up with this panther shifter. It happened before she was born, before the world came into existence.

  Nothing could stop Fate from playing itself out now. She could walk away. She could get Mattox to find someone else to feed Riley. In that preformed universal plan, her hand already fit inside his. His body already fit inside hers. In so many ways, in a thousand cosmic combinations, they had already done it. They were already mated.

  He lowered his voice to a murmur. She could barely hear him, but the vibration penetrated her very bones. It rocked her to her core so she couldn't resist. “Come to me, Melody. Come here.”

  She took one more step forward. Without really meaning to, she put out her hand
, and her skin touched his. With a flash of lightning, his touch filled every inch of her being. Her blood burst into flame, and her breath caught in her throat. His fingers closed her hand in his big, warm grasp, and he tugged her toward the cage.

  She couldn't stop herself. She couldn't even see where she was going. He pulled her against the bars, and his arms surrounded her in his overwhelming embrace. She closed her eyes and let herself fall, down, down, down into the dark, into the black.

  That black, his black, swallowed her whole and reduced her to nothing but one aching need for him. She hungered and thirsted and slept and dreamed nothing but him and his blackness.

  His hands covered her back. He stroked down her back and up behind her neck and over her cheeks and hair. She clamped her eyes shut tight, but his black invaded the black behind her eyelids. The bottomless craven longing in her soul longed for him and his blackness.

  He pushed her head back. His lips peppered her cheeks, her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her hair with tiny spark-kisses. His palms caressed her skin to velvet excitement. He filled her body and soul with his overpowering blackness. His presence infused her body with his irresistible erotic power. Her knees sagged, and her sweet inner tissues unfurled to suck him into her.

  He murmured into her face, “I gotta have you. I can't live without you. I never want to let you go. I need you so bad. I never thought I could need anyone like this. Don't walk away from me, Melody. I need you too much.”

  She lifted her face and let one of those candy kisses touch her mouth. Oh, what delicious kisses they were! A million enticing dreams danced before her closed eyes. Her hands wanted to touch his chest the way she did last night. She wanted to lick the sweat off his skin and suck the heavenly sighs from his blackest places.

  He tasted her first tentative kiss, and his whole body exploded into a tempest of devouring energy. He clasped her behind the neck and pulled her face against the bars to maul her lips with gobbling mouthfuls. He crushed her lips apart, and his tongue darted in to lick her desires alight. His other hand pressed against her back and slid down to her ass.

  The cold, cruel bars separating them excited Melody beyond belief. The hard pain of them digging into her bones infected her with insane mania for him. She inhaled his kisses as fast as he could deliver them. She snatched at his tongue to draw it into her mouth. She had to have him. The bars only enforced that in her mind.

  One meaty hand grasped her ass and smashed her tender flesh against the bars. Her skin prickled for any touch of his powerful hands. Her breasts stuck through the bars to brush his chest, and her quivering, aching mound ground against the cold steel when he tried to force her against himself.

  He barked between kisses, and his taut crotch touched her through the tiny space between bars. His hand left her ass to grab her breast. He touched and kneaded and prodded all at once at everything he could get hold of.

  He panted into her mouth. “Don't ever leave. Stay here. I need you. I gotta have you.”

  Now that she crossed the threshold and came together with him, the cataclysm passed. She was where she belonged, and she could open her eyes. She found his black eyes gazing into her soul. She beheld all his intoxicating blackness in those piercing eyes, but they caressed her with so much soft affection that she couldn't be afraid. She met him in that black pool, never to come apart.

  “Let me touch you. Let me feel you.”

  Before she could react, his hand dragged down from her breast to her skirt. He tossed it up, and his hand dove underneath it. His fingers grazed her bare leg. Melody froze. She could only stare in shock at the blackness looming large to engulf her.

  Her engorged genitals twitched once before he closed his hand between her legs. She moaned, and her stomach contracted in on itself to flex her body forward, but she couldn't pull away from that touch. He gave her saturated panties one light graze, and his eyes widened.

  “Fuck, baby, you are so wet. Do you want me touching you like this? Does this turn you on?”

  She could barely gasp out the words. “Oh, God, yes. This turns me on so much.”

  He guided her hand down between his legs. “Touch me, baby. Touch me right there. Do you feel how hard you make me? Do you feel how much I want you?”

  She convulsed all down her body. “Oh, don't! I can't!”

  He crushed her hand against his hard prick. “Yes, baby. You want it, don't you? You want that hard cock.”

  She groaned under her breath. She couldn't do this. She shouldn't, but she couldn't get away. He held her in place with his black eyes. That cock swelled so hard inside his pants. It spoke to his fingers between her legs, the fingers digging into her puffy pink petals right now.

  If she tried to get away, she only plowed her lips harder against that hand. She milked the nectar from her to wet his fingers against her panties.

  He bucked his hips forward and mashed her hand up and down his crotch. His lips curled away from his teeth, and he growled low. “Yeah, baby. That's so damn good. You make me so hard.”

  All at once, his fingers ducked under her panties and touched her most sensitive flesh. She moaned and whined. She needed this so bad. At the same moment, he snatched his fly open and shoved her hand down his pants front. Her hand closed around a thick slab of pulsating meat. Riley snarled in her face and pumped it into her hand.

  That thing in her hand wanted her. It hunted her, and when it found her, it would tear her world apart. His fingers sliding into her told her exactly what it would do for her. Her hollow aching channel wanted it there. It wanted him to fill her up and make her complete like she'd never been filled before.

  “I love you, Melody. I love you more than anything. I don't want to be anywhere but with you. I'll give up everything to make you mine.”

  She gazed up into his all-consuming eyes. “We can't. We can't ever be together. It's impossible. You know that.”

  He shook his head, but his voice told a different story. “Just don't leave. Stay here.”

  “I can't stay forever. Where would we go? Neither of our people would accept us. If we left this basement, one of us would wind up dead.”

  His kisses softened. He knew it was all true.

  She never understood afterwards what came over her. The same monstrous power hauling her into the black rocketed her away from him. She scraped her wrist dragging it out of his pants, and his fingers left a slippery film across her thigh when she jumped clear. She had to get away now if she got away at all.

  She didn't hesitate long enough to meet his gaze again. She didn't bother to say, “I can't.” She definitely could, and she definitely would if she stayed one second longer. She bolted. She definitely could, and she definitely would if she stayed in that basement one second longer.

  She wanted him. She wanted that thick snake in her mouth and her eyes and her crotch. She wanted him everywhere. She wanted him to own her the way he already did. She wanted not one speck of daylight separating them anymore.

  Chapter 12

  Melody ran up the stairs and locked the door behind her. She ran all the way out to the marquee and didn't stop running until she burst into the crowd. She gave one glance around and spotted Marla with the usual bevy of admirers surrounding her.

  Melody ran up to them and grabbed Lyric by the arm. She spun her sister around. “I've got to talk to you—right now.”

  Lyric tried to turn back. “Hang on. Just wait until they finish taking the pictures.”

  Melody clasped her sister's arms in a vise. Her voice rose above the tumult. “Now, Lyric! I need to talk to you now!”

  Lyric cast an irritated glance her way, and when she saw the expression on Melody's face, she stopped. She studied her sister. “Okay, talk. What is it? What's so important?”

  “Come with me. We can't talk here.”

  Lyric sighed and let Melody lead her out of the marquee. Melody looked around and dragged Lyric all the way out to the field. She found a deserted place between two SUVs and faced her sister.r />
  Lyric set her hands on her hips. “All right. I'm listening.”

  Melody took a deep breath. “I've got a problem, Lyric. I've got a serious problem. I didn't want to tell you before, but I have to now. I don't know what to do. I can't deal with this on my own.”

  Lyric softened. “Okay. Tell me what it is, and we'll do what we can to solve it.”

  Now that she had her sister's attention, Melody hesitated to put her problem into words. “I think I'm falling for Riley. In fact, I know I’m falling for him.”

  Lyric smacked her lips. “That's impossible. You can't fall for anyone but a Bruin. You've been spending too much time with him. Just leave him alone and forget about him.”

  Melody grabbed Lyric's arm to stop her from walking away. “It's gone way beyond that. I've spent the whole day avoiding him. I went downstairs once at lunchtime. I dropped off his food and left without talking to him, but I can't stop thinking about him even when I'm not with him. I...I've fallen in love with him. He's my mate. I didn't want it to happen, but it did. I can't change that now.”

  Lyric stared at her. “He can't be your mate. He's a panther and you're a Bruin.”

  “I know,” Melody groaned. “Believe me, I know. I can't be around him without…without falling for him. I'm falling for him even if I can't be around him.”

  Lyric threw up her hands. “Well, this is just great. Do you know what Mattox will say when he finds out? He'll lock you up so you can't see Riley anymore. He's got enough to worry about just keeping that kid alive from morning 'til night.”

  Melody stared down at her shoes. “I know, but it doesn't matter if he locks me up. I'm mated to Riley for life. It's already happened.”

  Lyric narrowed her eyes. “Don't tell me you've done it with him.”

  “I didn't have to do it with him. You know this as well as anybody, Lyric. I don't have to do it with him to be mated to him. I was mated to him before he ever touched me. It's Fate.”