by Claire Ryann
He sees her there, standing among the berry plants with her basket but he doesn't bother to say hello to her. Not today. Today he needs her. He needs her as badly as she needs him.
Without a word, he covers the distance between them in three wide steps till he's standing directly in front of her, his chest brushing against the tips of her aching nipples.
His hands brace the sides of her face as he tilts her head up to meet his. His mouth descends on hers in a hot rush of passion, his lips perfectly fitting against hers as his tongue pushes into her mouth to claim it as his right.
The basket of berries crashes on the ground as her arm forgets it. The berries roll out of the basket and scatter through the wild grasses on the hillside as she surrenders herself to his grasp.
He bends and wraps his arm beneath her knees, hoisting her up and carrying her to the tailgate of his truck where he sits her on the edge and commands her to lie back while he raises the hem of her sundress and works the skirt up around her waist.
His mouth is hot and hungry as he kisses his way up her inner thighs, pausing when he reaches the delicate lace panties. He inhales her scent deeply, his breath hot against the lingerie before his fingers twist in the waist band and drag the panties over her hips, down her legs till they're forgotten on the ground.
He wants to taste her. He needs her flavor on his tongue so he drags the tip between her creases, adding the moisture of his saliva to her flowing juices as his tongue circles her clit. She's moaning, her legs wrapped around his neck, his massive shoulder muscles flexing beneath the backs of her thighs as she digs her heels into his back and rocks against his mouth as it coaxes her to her first climax.
But it's not enough for him, he won't be satisfied until he's inside her.
Pulling himself away from her, reluctant to leave her sweet taste but needing more, he stands up and looks down at her body, his eyes ablaze with appreciation of what he sees. Her lower body exposed to him, her skirt a wrinkled mass of soft floral cotton bunched around her waist, her breasts heaving with her hard breathing beneath the bodice.
He pulls the t-shirt over his head. His chest is ripped, well defined muscles marking every inch of his body, dark hair running over his pecs and forming a trail that leads downward, pointing the way to the treasure waiting for her just beyond the waistband of those jeans.
His hands deftly unfasten the jeans. The fly falls open and the pants drop to the ground around his ankles along with his underwear. His cock in on display for her now. She lifts her head and licks her lips in anticipation. It's thick and hard, curving upward against his abs, so long it nearly touches his belly button. The tip gleaming in the afternoon sun with a drop of dewy pre-cum.
She moans. Softly calling his name. Knowing what's coming is making her crazy with lust, impatient to feel him inside her.
His hands are rough, callused from working with ropes and thick fishing line. They grab her by her hips, so large that they wrap all the way around from her hip bones to her ass, making her feel delicate and petite by comparison. His grip tightens and her body is pulled downward, bringing her closer to him.
He grins down at her, approving of her eagerness as he rubs the head of his cock along her seam, spreading her moisture, teasing her by pressing against her opening and then backing off to rub against her again until she begs for him.
As soon as he hears her pleading to feel him inside her, his resolve shatters. He takes a sharp breath and pushes into her.
He goes slowly at first, opening her up a little at a time, making room for his size as he pushes into her.
His face is frozen in concentration. His brows drawn together, his eyes glued to the place where their bodies have joined together, his jaw set tightly as he glides into her.
She watches his face, the way the muscles of his arms are tensed as he holds her thighs. The sweat that's beginning to bead on his skin.
Finally, he's all the way in. She moans again and rocks against him. He expels the breath he's been holding, losing his resolve, and begins thrusting. She moves with him, taking him deep, loving the feel of him as he loses control.
Soon she has her heels braced on the edge of the tailgate, pushing against the truck to give her more leverage.
He feels so good. She won't be able to hold her climax off for long and he's right there with her. The sounds of their voices filling the open air. Her soft moans mix with his rough grunts and send the birds flying from their rests in the tree tops surrounding the berry patch.
Her moans become cries, his name fills her lungs as she calls out. Her body tightening around him as she soars overhead with the ravens for a moment before crashing back into her body as it thrashes against his.
He's right behind her, his own climax pulsing inside her as his grip tightens in the soft flesh of her thighs. His hands pulling her against him as his loses himself in her. His voice one long, strangled groan as she feels his seed splashing into her womb.
Finally, their panting subsides and he crawls into the bed of the truck beside her, taking her in his arms and covering her face and hair with kisses as he pulls her onto his naked, sweaty body and holds her tightly against him, whispering words of love and gratitude.
The sound of her own voice broke the spell of her fantasy as her orgasm clenched around her fingers. The beat of the shower massage suddenly too intense as her knees buckled and she let her body slid down the tile till she was sitting in the tub with the shower head dangling loosely in her hand.
She leaned her head against the tile and gave into a self-conscious giggling fit as she struggled to catch her breath.
The first time her imagination had gotten away from her was right after that first meeting. She hadn't meant to give him the starring role in her fantasy life, but by the time she'd found herself being rescued from her shipwreck by the strong and curiously naked fisherman it was too late.
She hadn't expected him to become her go to masturbation fantasy any more than she'd expected to see him in her chair at the salon every two weeks.
He certainly didn't need a haircut that often. Under normal circumstances, she would have thought he was flirting with her but after eight weeks and four haircuts, he still hadn't asked her out.
He liked having his hair styled; root lifters and pomades, having her blow dry it while styling it with the big round brush. She worked her fingers through the dark brown tresses, coaxing the little curls that formed just around the longer ends into soft waves that swept back from his face and then spraying them in place.
Maybe she was misreading him. Maybe he didn't feel the same connection she did. Maybe he was just really that vain. Or maybe he had a girlfriend already.
As many times as she'd seen him, she hadn't really been able to get him to talk to her much. She knew he worked with his cousin on one of the fishing trawlers that went out early in the mornings. She knew he was usually off work before 10 A.M. She knew his cousin owned the brewery down on the Embarcadero and she knew he'd lived in Beartooth Bay all his life.
Other than that, all she really knew about him was his name and that he preferred the products with the herbal scents to the ones with the fruity scents. The pomade with the lavender and rosemary scent was his favorite.
She seriously had to stop fantasizing about him. Her little day dreams were getting more and more graphic and less and less realistic while her real life chances of seeing him naked were looking less and less likely.
Jessica climbed back to her feet and shut the water off. She grabbed the over-sized bath towel from the hook and began drying off.
Visions of Harrison insisted on taunting her, sneaking into her thoughts of what to make for dinner.
It was one thing to have a little crush on a client but this thing she had with imaginary Harrison was bordering on obsession.
Jess slipped a loose tee over her head and stepped into a pair of soft lounge pants. She hung her towel back on its hook and headed to the trailer's tiny kitchen in search of something to
call dinner.
She tried to ignore the growing tingle in her core that would almost certainly lead to another rendezvous with her favorite client before bed.
Sorting through the selection of frozen dinners, basing her decision on which one took the least amount of time in the microwave, she made up her mind.
She was going to call his bluff. If he showed up again in two weeks, and she could ascertain that he did not have a girlfriend already, she would do it. She'd ask him out herself.
Chapter 3
Harris inspected himself in the bathroom mirror, leaning in close and running his fingers through his hair. He brushed it forward and pulled it down to his eyes.
Getting long again, he mused, probably time for a trim.
Never mind that it had been exactly nine days since his last trip to the salon.
He stood up straight and eyed himself from a little farther away. Maybe he didn't need a trim yet. But he could stand to get some decent shampoo. Washing his hair with the same soap he used to get the grime and sea salt off his skin probably wasn't what he was supposed to do.
He frowned at his reflection. Jess should be able to recommend something.
Dammit! He scolded himself as he stopped himself from heading out the door to the salon where she worked. He had to stop this. It was getting out of hand.
He'd gotten more haircuts in the last couple of months than he had in the last eight years. The guys were right-- oh how he hated admitting that, even if it was only in his own head-- he liked this girl.
He couldn't just keep getting haircuts.
Sure, he liked that it gave him an excuse to be close to her. Feeling her tits brushing against the back of his shoulders when she stood behind him or, better yet, the way they hung in his face while she bent over him at the shampoo bowl.
His cock was getting hard just thinking about it. Last week it had taken all his will power not to open his mouth and latch onto one of her nipples as it hardened when it brushed against his cheek.
Jess was so fucking hot, he could barely put words together when she was near him. He just wanted to let his bear out, let it go wild long enough to scare everyone else away and then come back so he could grab her and bend her over whatever furniture was closest. Or throw her on the ground and have his way with her until she begged him to stop. Or...or...
Dammit. He could not think about her without getting a hard-on. He hadn't had this problem since high school. No matter how innocently she came into his mind, she always ended up naked and screaming before he remembered what he'd been thinking about before.
But he couldn't keep making up stupid excuses to go by the salon to see her. He needed to get his act together and find an excuse to run into her outside of her work.
His shoulders slumped and he rolled his head from side to side as he sighed. No. No more excuses. He needed to man up and ask her out.
Grabbing his keys from the table, he headed out the door.
Harris threw the truck in park and set the e-brake.
Grumbling to himself as he yanked his boots off and threw them on the floorboard in the passenger side, he tried to tell himself he wasn't making a fool of himself.
Of course she had days off, he told himself as he pulled his shirt over his head and stripped his jeans off.
Of course she didn't work every single day of the week. Of course she wasn't just sitting around at work all the time waiting for him to show up.
Harris paced off the length of his truck a few times, letting the cool wind off the ocean calm his overheated nerves. He swung his arms back and forth and stretched the muscles that had managed to tense up during the short drive up to the ridge.
He took a deep breath and looked out over the valley and across the Pacific to the horizon.
This was one of his favorite places. The best place to let his bear out while still sticking close to home. Up here on the first ridge of the hills that towered over Osos County. He could leave the truck parked up here for days without anyone even noticing it, while his bear roamed all over the hills.
Even though there were a few hiking trails that switchbacked up to the ridge, he couldn't remember the last time he'd run into anyone up here. The trail to the hill top was steep, even with about a million switchbacks cut into the hillside. Once the trail leveled out along the ridgeline, the wind got cold and mean. Anyone who did tough out the climb ended up heading back downhill almost immediately.
The only way to get a vehicle up here was in four wheel drive along a narrow road that ran up the back side of the hill on private land.
Which meant that no one had ever had an unexpected bear encounter in these parts.
And that was important when he needed some space to run.
Growing up bear in a modern, populated place had its downsides. It could be tough to find a place to stretch and run. Harris had spent most of his childhood wishing his family had lived some place near mountains-- some place where getting spotted wasn't such a major deal.
At least the family had been in the area for hundreds of years. They'd acquired large chunks of land long before it had started getting sold off at the premiums it went for these days.
His uncle owned a good portion of this hill, for example. Mostly the east side, not facing the ocean, with the west side being taken up mostly by state park that petered out when it reached the crest.
Harris let his bear run down the east face of the hill, sticking to family land for a long time before he had to decide whether or not to wander into the thickly wooded Eucalyptus groves that made up the "magic forest" in the state park.
He hated having to keep his human wits about him. He loved being able to hand the reigns over to the bear entirely, let the animal take care of all the thinking so he could let his mind wander, but this close to civilization he still needed to stay on the alert.
Today the important thing was to run. It could be him or his bear doing all the exercise, but one or the both of them needed to burn some energy before the two of them ended up on the same page and did something stupid. Like grab Jess off the street and haul her off kicking and screaming.
Harris felt his lips curl up in the bear's best imitation of a smile.
One of the definite upsides to being a bear shifter was the incredible sense of smell. Not just the sense of smell, but the animal's over all sharper senses all the way around. It had always come in handy when dealing with humans.
He could tell when they were scared, or nervous, or just on the fence about things. He had an advantage when it came to deciding who to trust, and he definitely had the upper hand when it came to women.
No. He knew Jess was unlikely to put up much of a protest if he threw her over his shoulder and took her home. She was interested and not just in his hair. No question about it.
The problem was him. He was the one not making the next move. She made him nervous. She made his bear nervous. Or maybe she maybe him nervous because she made his bear something else. Something he wasn't sure he entirely understood. Something he wasn't ready for.
By the time Harrison's bear stopped to rest, he was feeling better.
He'd convinced himself that Jessica wasn't his mate. He didn't need to worry about that yet. She was just a nice girl that he happened to find very attractive. No need to freak out about that. It had been a long time since he'd dated anyone, he was going to ask her out. The next time he saw her, he promised himself, he was going to kiss her. Even if it meant doing it in front of all her co-workers at the salon.
The bear was tired of running, he walked back up the hill to the truck slowly, shifting before he topped the ridge.
The bear's heat warmed him from inside and made the short walk back to the truck pleasant even without a stitch of clothing on. He looked around the lonely mountaintop, just in case, and wasn't surprised at all to find not a soul in sight.
Just a few yards from the hood of his truck, he froze in his steps. He saw her before her smelled her. That was a downside to coming to trus
t your sense of smell so much, the wind blowing over the hills caught her scent and took it in the other direction from him.
Now he was standing behind her with nothing between them but his truck.
Jessica's hair was swinging wildly around her shoulders in the brisk wind. A little past her shoulders, a million shades of blonde all expertly woven together, looking like they were trying to escape her head.
Her hand moved her hair out of her eyes.
She was leaning against the end of his truck, staring out at the ocean. Waiting for him.
Which would normally have made him the happiest man alive. But he'd just spent close to three hours being a bear running wild across the hills and valleys of the coastal range, and at this exact minute, all his clothes were in a pile on the driver's seat of the truck that the most beautiful woman in the world was leaning against.
There was no way he was going to manage to get dressed before she noticed him.
Harrison squared his shoulders and pulled his spine up straight, owning every fraction of his six foot, five and a quarter inches.
Then he walked confidently toward the woman leaning against his truck.
Chapter 4
Jess huffed and puffed around yet another switchback. She was ready to give up on this climb but looking up, she could see the end of the climb where the trail finally met the top of the ridge and leveled out.
She'd only moved to Beartooth Bay a few months ago. Leaving Ventura in her rear view mirror in search of a smaller, slower, less stressful pace. Not that Ventura was exactly a bustling metropolis, but it had grown a lot in her life time and was beginning to think of itself as part of the southern California cityscape more than the sleepy beach community she'd grown up in.