“I’m busy,” he snarled at Rick.
Rick frowned down at him. “Hey, bud, don’t take it out on me.”
“Take what? Hand me the wrench, damn you.”
Rick sighed and handed him the utensil, and Mike returned to work. “Everyone knows you haven’t seen her in days,” Rick said. “It’s starting to make you a jackass.”
“I’m not a jackass. You’re the jackass. Can’t one of you bastards be bothered to learn how things work around here? This machinery ain’t gonna fix itself.”
Rick’s jaws ground together; Mike wasn’t looking at him, but he could hear it.
“Watch your tone, bub, or I’ll make you wish you had,” Rick said.
Mike smiled, but it felt more like a snarl. “You wanna go?” His bear growled violently inside him, ready for some carnage. It had been cooped up too long, and being denied access to Jess had only made it unruly and cantankerous. “We could give these tourists something to blog about.”
“Damn it all,” Rick said, “we don’t have time for this. Connor has something special planned. It’s that big announcement he’s been hinting at.”
Finally Mike glanced up. “The one that has something to do with Jess?”
Rick nodded. “That’s right. Now fix this damned thing. I’m supposed to run the lift while you’re away. Then I’ll go. Half the crew goes and half stays. Then when the first half comes back, the second half goes. We all get to see it.”
“Whatever ‘it’ is.”
“Right.”
Mike smeared oil from his hands onto his jeans. “I may need to put on some clean clothes. Jess is gonna be there, right?”
For the first time, Rick smiled knowingly. “That’s the story goin’ round. But I don’t think she cares about some oil stains. Meanwhile, you’re keeping everyone waiting.”
Mike grunted. “I’ll have this fixed in five minutes.”
Five minutes later he relinquished control of the lift station to Rick and ambled down to the inn, where Connor was gathering the first group in the parking lot and loading them into the two vans the crew used. Connor was grinning and smiling, which annoyed Mike, but when Connor noticed Mike’s agitation he only grinned wider.
“What’s so damned amusing?” Mike said.
Connor grunted a laugh. “Just get in.”
Mike climbed in, surly and swearing under his breath, and the other shifters gave him room, obviously recognizing that he wasn’t in a social mood. His bear growled inside him, just as irritable as he was. What was all this mystery about, anyway? Why hadn’t Jess seen him in days? What the hell was going on?
He scowled out at the town as Grant drove them through it. To Mike’s surprise, they passed the outskirts of town and kept going, making their way down the mountain. They passed Abe’s Bar, where Mike and Jess had met, and kept going still further.
“Where we goin’?” Mike grumbled.
“Hold your horses,” Grant said over his shoulder. “You’ll see soon enough.”
A few minutes later he turned off onto a small road, and the van behind them followed. Mike grumbled and snorted as the van bumped along the rough road, which wasn’t paved and didn’t seem to have garnered much use. Tall conifers clawed the sky to either side, crowding the road, and he peered through the dark trunks into the depths of the forest. His animal longed to run free, with Jess by his side.
At last the van passed through a high wooden archway with a sign above it: GRAYWOOD PARK.
“What the hell?” Mike said.
The van pulled into a subdivision comprised of stately log cabins. Mike stared around, shocked and full of wonder. Slowly a feeling of warmth filled him, along with incredulity. This was the place where he, Jess and Suzy had hidden from Bryce’s pride that first night after leaving the bar. This was the place where he and Jess had really gotten to know each other.
Grant braked the van, and the shifters climbed out into a central plaza in the subdivision, a little park right before a particular log cabin. A couple of shifters had gone ahead of them, and they were grilling hamburgers and hot dogs on an open pit while an old woman with a kind face watched on.
Jess was there. Talking with the old woman, she looked gorgeous, curvy and sexy and awesome. Mike’s bear growled in longing to see her. Her gaze immediately locked onto his, and her conversation with the old woman lapsed.
“Jess!” Mike said, lumbering over. “What’s all this about?”
She threw her arms about him. He was so surprised he almost didn’t embrace her back, but then he reached around her with both arms and brought against him, enfolding her in his huge arms. When Jess at last pulled back, tears were in her eyes.
Concern ripped through him. “Jess! What’s wrong?”
She smiled tremblingly, and he could see they were not tears of sadness but joy. “Don’t you see?” she said. “It’s done.”
Mike blinked. “I don’t get.”
She patted his chest, letting her fingers linger there. “You told me your people were scattered throughout the town, that they didn’t have a common home. Well, I thought, why not this place? It was perfect, and beautiful. And ...”
“Yes?”
She smiled again, a secret sexy smile. “It’s where we kissed for the first time.”
The memory of that kiss flooded back to him. He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her against him, then crushed his lips up against hers and plunged his tongue into her mouth. She met him, eager and questing.
“Hey now,” Connor called. “Save that for later.”
The alpha was gathering everyone around the barbecue pit. “This is going to be our new home,” he said, as the scents of the food filled the air and made Mike’s mouth water. “From now on Graywood Park is our territory, every bit as much as the mountain is. This is our home.”
The bear shifters glanced around, most of them smiling.
“A damned nice home it looks, too,” said Mike.
“I think so,” said the old woman. Attention shifted to her, and she offered a smile. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Abigail Benson, and my husband and I built this place. It’s yours now, but one of these cabins is mine.” She inclined her head to the cabin behind her; smoke curled up from its stone chimney. “It was one of the conditions of the sale.” She indicated Jess. “Jessica Quinn arranged all this.”
“She did good,” Connor told Jess. “Our people needed a common home. Jess, thank you, from all of us.”
She beamed. “It was my pleasure.”
Mike felt his chest swell with pride. Looking at the old woman, though, he frowned. “You realize what we are, right? Livin’ around us won’t be easy.”
She smiled, a strange small smile. “I’ll manage.”
“Let’s eat!” Connor said. “And drink!” He gestured to a keg sitting near the barbecue pit, and he didn’t have to do it twice. In moments the shifters were congregating around the food and drinks.
Mike turned again to Jess. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “I mean, why? Why do all this? It couldn’t have been easy.”
She shook her head, letting her auburn hair tumble about her shoulders. Mike longed to run his hands through it. “It just took a few phone calls, really,” she said. “I’m a real estate agent, remember. But I knew I had to do it.”
“But why?”
She smiled and kissed his chest, right below his left pec. “For you, silly bear man. Don’t you see? I wanted us to be together, badly—”
“Me, too.”
“—but I didn’t want to be one of those women that just hop from man to man like they can’t exist without one. You know what I mean?”
“I ... think so …”
She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him as far as she could go. “I had to stand on my own two feet, be my own woman. I couldn’t just be your girlfriend, not if I was going to hold my head up among your crew. I had to be something else.”
He nodded, starting to get it. “Now you can be the one
that brought us together. That made us a home.”
“Exactly!” She tilted her head up for a kiss, and he obliged, feeling his manhood stiffen in his jeans. He could smell her grow wet, too.
She grabbed his hand and tugged on it. “Come on,” she said, throwing him a mischievous smile.
“Where are we going? Don’t you want to eat?”
Her smile widened. “Oh yeah. I’m starving.”
But instead of taking him to the pit, she pulled him away from the others and down an aisle between cabins, shortly arriving at the same log cabin they had broken into on that first night. To his surprise, smoke rose from the chimney.
“What do you think?” she said, stopping before the cabin.
He stared at it, perplexed. “About what?”
“Silly bear! It’s our new home.”
Chapter 20
Sudden worry made Jess frown.
“I mean, if you want to live together,” she added, and held her breath. I jumped into this too soon, she thought. I shouldn’t have sprung it on him like that. We should have talked about it, come to this decision together, as a team. Instead I went from zero to a hundred and fifty in less than a second.
Instead of arguing, however, a huge smile split Mike’s face. He surprised her with a booming laugh. “My God, woman, when you make up your mind you really make up your mind!”
She breathed out. “So you like it? I mean, you like the idea of living together?”
“Woman, I love it!”
He turned to her, and she rejoiced at the heat in his eyes. Her own loins burned.
“You know,” he said quietly, “you are my mate.”
A giddy thrill ran through her. “I know you’re mine,” she said just as softly.
She tilted her face up for a kiss, and he swept in like a shot and kissed her passionately, his lips shoving against hers as if he were famished and she were the only thing that could feed him. She smiled against him and grabbed him by the belt of his jeans, pulling him into the cabin.
“I thought I was supposed to carry you,” he said.
She laughed. “Silly bear.”
She turned and they kissed again. He slammed the door shut with one hand while he tore at the buttons of his shirt with another.
“Hold that thought,” she said, and tugged him some more, this time down the hall to the master bedroom. She hadn’t had time to furnish the house much, only a few odds and ends for the kitchen, for the most part, but she’d had the time (and motivation! That was key) for one particular piece of furniture, and Mike’s eyes widened when she took him into the bedroom and he beheld the massive four-poster bed dominating it. She’d had drapes installed over the windows and a handsome lamp rose from the bedside table. That was it.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I think it’s perfect.”
He pulled her to him roughly and planted his lips on hers. She grew wet instantly as he parted her lips and thrust his tongue against hers. She let out a soft sound and pressed her body against him, delighting in the feel of his hardness. My man. My bear. This was it, she thought. This is what they’d been fighting for. Him and her and this. As his hands raked her body, she knew this was right, this is what she’d been wanting all her life. To heck with Andrew and the dark times. This was a new life. Her real life. And it was starting now.
She kissed him back, passionately. She bit his lower lip and he sort of growled, his whole body vibrating. The tremor passed through her, and she smiled, her lips still against his. She loved that feeling, like the purr of a big cat coursing through her. But not a cat. A bear! A big strong bear.
She dragged him down to the bed on top of her, and as she kissed him her hands unbuttoned his jeans and tugged them down from around his waist. His thick fingers took care of her jeans, and she grinned at the rasp of the denim as it squirmed free of her buttocks.
His huge erection shoved at her crevice, but her panties held it back. Bad panties! With her legs curled up to the side, she pulled them off, and he stepped back and yanked them the rest of the way, sending them sailing over his shoulder to the floor. He was wild, like an animal, and his eyes blazed with heat, their colors shifting. Heat flushed through her, and when he came back against her she tore at his shirt, and he maneuvered himself to allow her to pull it off him and toss it aside.
“Ready, sailor?” she said, giving him a wicked smile.
He grinned. “I was born ready.”
She still had her blouse on, and she shucked it off, then tossed it in Mike’s face. He laughed and swatted it away.
“Bad mate,” he said.
“I’ll show you how bad I am.”
She stretched out her legs and hooked her feet around his muscular ass, then pulled him to her. He growled in ardor and stepped forward. His giant cock found her crevice but didn’t enter it. He slid along it, going up, then down, rubbing against her clit, and she whimpered in pleasure. She was wetter than she’d ever been before.
“Tease,” she accused.
“You know it.”
Gazing up at him, she basked in the sight of him there, this big confident manly bear shifter with his wide shoulders, deep chest and laughing blue eyes. His cock huge and throbbing. A pearly drop of white gathered on the tip there. She reached down, gathered it on her palm, then stroked his shaft, lubing him up. Not that he’d need any help upon entry. Hell no. But she loved the feel of his cock pulsing under her fingers.
“Ohhh,” he grunted.
“You like that?”
“Damn right.”
He bent to cup her breast, flicking her nipple with a thumb, and she gasped and arched her back, surrendering to his touch. Her hand fell away from his member. Devilish amusement flickered in Mike’s eyes. Oh what he could do to her!
He bent further to suck on her other nipple, his hand still playing with the first one, and she grabbed a bed sheet and bit down on it as Mike’s tongue made circles around the nipple, then began caressing it. His cock slid up and down her seam, his huge swollen balls smacking up against her crevice with every thrust. She wanted him inside her right now, but at the same time she wanted this to last. This was the first time they would make love in their new home. There would never be another first. She wanted it to be as special and memorable as possible.
Not that there was any way it couldn’t be, really. This was hot.
Smiling wickedly, she pushed him away, just a bit, then sat up.
“What’s … ?” he started, but he shut up when she leaned forward and kissed the head of his cock. He had such a handsome cock, so long and thick, and she admired it for a moment, then stuck out her tongue and ran it all around his head. He moaned, long and loud, and she smiled around him, making an O with her lips around his head, then bobbing up and down. She had never really given Andrew much head, but that would be different with Mike. Much different.
He groaned as she slid her lips further down his shaft, taking him deeper into her. He filled her mouth, and she liked the slightly salty taste of him. He was so warm. She slid her mouth back up, then bobbed down, then up again, faster. A sigh escaped his lips, and he ran his hands through her hair. His hips rocked slowly, and his hands guided her. She bobbed up and down, faster and faster. His shaft throbbed inside her mouth, than again. She tasted his pre-cum and grinned wider around him.
With one hand, she reached around and grabbed his tight, muscular ass. She used the other to cup his balls and squeezed gently. They were firm and swollen. When she tugged on them, she could feel his whole body tremble. She moved her hand to his lower shaft, encircling it and jerking it up toward her mouth, then down, in time to her head’s movements. His dick pulsed inside her mouth again, more strongly this time, and a low sound rattled up from his chest past his lips.
“No,” he said, and it sounded like a gasp. “Not … like this …”
She stopped moving and just held him in her mouth, feeling his big vein throb against the roof of her mouth. Slowly, she pulled back, le
tting him escape. His cock stood up, proud and hard, red and wet.
Ready.
She couldn’t take it anymore.
“In!” she panted, leaning back and spreading her legs for him. “I want it in!”
“Are you sure?” he said, still breathing heavily. “I don’t know if you can take it.”
“I can take it.”
He laughed and poised the head of his cock against her opening, and his eyes sparkled as he seemed to drink in the sight of her, naked and writhing to his touch, then he slowly, savoring it, shoved himself in. She cried out as he filled her, delicious waves of joy radiating through her. He pushed in halfway, then pulled out, then shoved in again, deeper this time. She was ready for him and bucked against him, forcing him in even more.
It was his turn to gasp. His eyes mashed shut, and his face turned serious. She loved that look, that expression that said he was in total thrall to her, that she had complete control of the pleasure that she and only she could give him. She moved against him, moaning as his cock stretched her, and she could feel it throb inside her. It pulsed stronger. Stronger.
“Oh no,” she said. “Not yet.”
She pulled him down to her and kissed his sexy lips, and he ran his hands through her hair. He gripped it tight and angled her head back, then planted kisses along the tender flesh of her throat. One of his hands cupped her breast and played with the nipple, which was so hard it hurt. But it was a good hurt.
She moved against him, taking him deeper. She was greedy. She wanted all of him, every last inch and millimeter. Her pulse hammered as he drove into her and she bucked against him, faster and faster. Sweat drenched her hair. The bed creaked under her and slammed against the wall as it tilted sideways, driven that way by the fury of their lovemaking. Of their fucking. Somehow this was both. It was more intense and wild than anything she could ever have imagined.
She bit at his shoulder and raked her fingers down his back, unable to help herself in the frenzy. Pressure built and built in her.
Bear Love Page 11