Stranger Creatures 2: Bear's Edge

by Christina Lynn Lambert

  “YOU SURE YOU’RE ready?” Grant wouldn’t push. He wanted inside her so bad his balls had practically been blue since their first kiss. Maybe taking the next step wouldn’t be such a big deal or mean so much if he didn’t care for her so deeply. Nothing he could do about that, though.

  Shay rose on her tiptoes and kissed him, drawing his tongue deep into her mouth. Grant felt his shirt being unbuttoned. He hated to stop kissing her, even for a moment, but he needed to remove all the barriers that prevented skin-to-skin contact. He took off his shirt and set it to the side. The next part would be tricky. He pulled his cotton undershirt over his head, making sure to stay facing her so she couldn’t see his scarred back, as if she’d be able to read his past and all his secrets in the lines and indentions that marked his skin. He couldn’t give her the same old tired lie he gave everyone else when they asked about his scars. Shay whispered his name, calling him back to the present.

  “My turn,” he murmured against her neck. Grant pulled her soft, lace-trimmed shirt over her head. Shayla’s creamy skin spilled from the cups of her aqua bra, and he took that off too. She pulled back the covers of her bed and sat on a soft pale-blue cotton sheet a few shades lighter than the walls of her bedroom. Her favorite color was undoubtedly blue. Did blue diamonds exist? He could… Don’t go there, he warned himself.

  Silently, he watched her undress. Good thing Shayla wasn’t the type to ask him what he was thinking—she’d probably send him out the door if she knew he was having down-on-one-knee, diamond-ring-in-a-little-box-type thoughts. They hadn’t been together long enough for that. But he’d been falling for her since the day he’d met her. He couldn’t stop. And if he wanted her to want him, he needed to focus on her body and giving her so much pleasure their first time together that she’d ask for more and more. He came down over her, the heat and silk of her hips between his thighs making him growl, and he had to force himself to breathe, to calm the fuck down.

  Such pleasure and anticipation filled him that he nearly let go of all restraint. He eased his body down hers and ran the tip of his tongue around the smooth pale skin on the underside of her breast, basking in her hands stroking his hair. Grant licked all around her cherry-sweet nipple, teasing, enjoying, until Shay got impatient and pulled tight on his hair, forcing him closer. Grant fought himself and the bear to just hold on.

  “Oh, Grant, that’s incredible.” Shay sighed while he kissed and sucked and savored first one breast, then the other. She tilted her head back and cried out. He grinned, and she met his gaze, looking at him as though he were the answer. The only answer he could give her at the moment was to slide his hand between her sexy legs.

  Grant remembered overhearing a dirty little conversation between Shay and a couple of her girlfriends at her birthday party after she’d let the word spread that Grant had started his own company so he and Shayla could be together. One of Shayla’s friends had joked about Grant’s height, and the ladies had all giggled at the possibility of Shay needing stitches after a sweat session with Grant. She’d confided in her friends that it had been three years since she’d had sex with anybody. Three years. He had to be gentle. Gentle or she won’t want us anymore, he warned the bear.

  Grant pressed one finger inside her waiting pussy and let her adjust, working her slowly, pressing farther and farther, until she whispered his name. Grant pushed in another finger, loving how her warmth squeezed him. Shay made small, soft sounds and thrashed against the bed. Knowing he wouldn’t be stopping with just his fingers inside her made Grant’s dick jerk and pulse in anticipation. He choked back a moan. Shay’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes closed, and her head angled back. Grant’s whole body ached and shook with the need to take her, but he had to make sure she was ready.

  If he didn’t enter her just right, or if he moved too forcefully, he would hurt her. He was a big man, and that meant he needed to be careful. The bear scoffed at him, telling him he wasn’t a virgin, that he had been with a few ladies and he knew how to work his big dick into a small place. Fine—Grant was probably being stupid or worrying too much, but he still wanted everything to be not just right but perfect for their first time.

  The bear pendant around Shay’s neck caught Grant’s gaze, the light glinting off the bear-and-heart charm. She wore his heart. Reassured, Grant kissed her belly and the ruby stone at her belly button.

  “I want to taste you, baby doll.”

  “Yes. Please.” She drew out the word in an adorable, begging whimper. Grant sucked her clit, flicking his tongue across the tip until she cried his name, then pushed his tongue inside her, and she cried his name louder. He fucking loved that she wasn’t shy about letting him know what felt good to her. The pulse at her neck was wild and her breaths quick and shallow. She was close. Good. He needed her crazy for him.

  GRANT LOOKED READY to devour her as he stood and faced her. Shayla unzipped his pants and pushed them to the floor. Those sheet-crumpling orgasms from imaginary Grant and Mr. Ever-ready, the world’s best vibrator, would be nothing compared to what flesh-and-blood, sweet-and-sincere Grant could do to her. She’d already experienced one climax from him, from just his long, thick fingers. She still got wet at the mere thought that he’d torn off her panties and come across her chest. Having his extra-large cock inside her might push her to a whole new level of need and want. Should I enjoy the fall or fight it?

  She took a minute to admire Grant in nothing but his tight black briefs that he filled out so nicely. Broad shoulders, rock-solid chest and abs, and oh my God, she was nearly panting with lust at the thick muscles of his arms and legs. He was huge. Everywhere. The man could do underwear commercials. He probably wouldn’t, though. He was shy. She liked that about him.

  It didn’t matter that she didn’t know every little detail of his past or what could bring a shadow to his eyes out of nowhere—Shayla knew him. She knew Grant was a good man, that he’d never be cruel or careless with her. She decided to enjoy the fall and have faith that he would catch her. In a frenzy, she pushed his underwear to the floor. His socks and shoes were abandoned on her flowery carpet, and Grant climbed into her bed, naked and waiting. She sat next to him and stared some more. Dark hair, trimmed and neat, surrounded his gorgeous package. Beads of slickness covered the thick head of his huge cock, making her reach out to touch him.

  His sharp intake of breath showed her he needed more than her light caress and he needed it badly. Gliding a hand along his hard length, she looked at him. His lids, half-open, showed his dark, dark eyes looking back at her so full of desire and something else, something deeper, that she nearly came right then. The tight fists at his sides revealed a man trying not to lose control, which kind of made Shayla want to push him, to see what happened when he did.

  Grant caught his lush bottom lip between his teeth, so she reached over and traced the line of his mouth before pulling his whole naked body against hers for a mind-blowing kiss. He tensed up when she pressed her palms against the scarred flesh of his back.

  He’s ashamed of those scars! And that thought hurt.

  She stroked his back and whispered, “Whatever happened, I’m glad you made it out alive.”

  He jerked in a breath. “I love…I love the way you touch me.” The deep, raspy groan of his voice made the hair on her arms stand up. Things had changed. A storm was coming, and she wanted to be right in the eye of it.

  GRANT WAS NERVOUS as hell as he opened the foil packet and rolled the latex over his shaft. He hadn’t expected the sweet, needy sounds Shay made as he slid inside her. He tried to go slowly, but damn, the way her pussy gripped his cock, as though it was just as possessive as he was… That tight feeling had Grant hanging on for dear life. Slow and easy. Slow and easy.

  He kissed her soft mouth and groaned out a curse when she grabbed his hips, pulling him farther inside her. She shouldn’t push him. Didn’t she understand what would happen if he couldn’t keep himself under control? He wasn’t even all the way in yet and could barely keep from
unleashing every dirty thought, wish, and fantasy he’d ever had about her. Her kiss was wild, no hesitation or uncertainty. Shay wanted him, and knowing this for sure drove his desire higher. She was here, and she was real, and he needed her so fucking badly. Grant drove into her all the way before he could stop himself.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You feel good inside me, like you belong there.”

  The bite of her nails sinking into his hips wasn’t helping him to be the chill, gentle Grant that he needed to be for their first time together. He was too close already, his muscles taut to the point of snapping. He pulled Shayla over on top of him, then imprisoned her wrists and trapped them behind her back. Her eyes lit up.

  Could she actually enjoy me holding her arms behind her back? He gripped her wrists tighter, and she moaned. Her excitement must just be the heat of the moment, not me holding her wrists, he rationalized. Regardless, he couldn’t let her go. Her gentle touch, her sighs, her nails raking his back—it had all been too fucking good, and he needed to stop her before he lost his mind and all control. Grant seized one of her hips with his free hand, trying to slow the pace and rhythm. Shayla nipped his neck and angled her hips to take more of him.

  The sound of his name at her lips, as if he had what she needed—damn; it pushed him further than he meant to go, and he rammed into her. She cried out, and he let go of her wrists. Grant couldn’t get deep enough and wanted to go faster, so he did the only logical thing he could think of—he held back and on to his sanity with every shred of control he had. He even promised the bear he would let him tear up the whole interior of his truck later if he could just help Grant keep himself under control. The bear grunted something that didn’t sound like a yes or a no.

  Shayla held on to him as her back bowed and her pussy clamped around his throbbing flesh, tight and tighter. The look of absolute pleasure on her face when she came was more than beautiful. Grant jerked in a breath when the pressure coiling in the base of his spine built into something he couldn’t contain. A rush of something indescribable blew through him, and he exploded inside her. Each pulse of his cock took him higher until he nearly went insane.

  “I didn’t know it could be like that,” Shayla confessed in a breathless, sexy voice.

  “Nobody ever made you come?”

  “Not like that. Not even close.”

  Grant pulled her down for a kiss before he got up to dispose of the condom. He lay back down and tucked her against him. He wasn’t much of a talker, not even on a good day, but right then, when he knew he needed to say something sweet, something nice, or just…something, he couldn’t speak. He settled for kissing her cheek and holding on to her. If he were just a normal, everyday guy who’d grown up middle income or better with no screwed-up past and no screwed-up desires, not to mention being a bear shifter, he could fall asleep knowing he was good enough for her. He could only hope that she would want him anyway.

  “Just don’t give up on me if I’m not exactly what you wanted,” he whispered against her ear.

  “I want you the way you are,” she answered.

  Grant pretended for a moment she might mean that, and he surrendered to the exhaustion that had worn him thin over the last week.

  Chapter Eight

  So it seemed Baron, aka Ms. Bat-Shit-Crazy-Pants reporter, had found a way to screw with Shayla’s life after all. On Sunday morning when Shayla had woken up deliciously sore and relaxed with Grant sound asleep in her bed, she’d just known her day was going to be a great one. Their first time together had blown her mind, but an e-mail that morning from Baron had stolen some of her euphoria and replaced it with dread. Baron had informed Shayla that the human-interest story on disaster survivors had been edited and would air a week ahead of schedule, during the nine p.m. showing of Simply Entertainment that evening. Weird didn’t even begin to cover what Shayla and Grant were watching.

  The story wasn’t about disaster survivors putting their lives back together after tragedy, loss, and injury with a little bit of Baron’s conspiracy crap mixed in. Baron went from weird theories to blatant unsupported, unproven accusations that the survivors she interviewed were superhuman or that they had received revolutionary, top-secret medical care. Before Shayla’s interview played, four other disaster survivors were shown being interrogated and forced to look at pictures of horrific scenes of the death and destruction they had managed to escape.

  A clip of Baron interviewing Hunter got Shayla simmering mad. He was adamant that Shayla had also been severely injured in the robbery they had experienced ten years ago. She rolled her eyes, caught somewhere between feeling sorry for Hunter because he remained confused and delusional about the events of the crime and exasperated that he couldn’t leave it behind and realize the trauma had messed with his mind. Grant held her hand tightly while they watched Hunter, sharing his delusions on-screen with Baron. Shayla sniffed back tears, and Grant tensed.

  “Do you still love him?” He sat motionless, expressionless.

  She took his hand in hers. “No. I promise you I don’t have any kind of romantic feelings left for Hunter. I just feel sorry for him and so sad that he hasn’t gotten better.”

  Grant pulled her up against his chest. His heartbeat hammered against her back, but his lips were soft and soothing at her neck.

  For too long Shayla had fooled herself into believing Hunter had gotten help, that his brain and mind had continued to heal and he now lived a normal life. But no. Hunter remained adamantly delusional. That story didn’t have a happy ending.

  Next, Grant’s image flashed on the screen, in all his tall sexiness. The cameraman had managed to capture footage of Grant yelling at Baron and telling the crew to get the hell out of Brass Cat before he broke more of their equipment. On screen, his eyes shone that black-as-onyx color she’d seen them turn sometimes, usually when things got hot or intense between them, but the film editor had used special effects to make his onyx eyes look glowy, and they’d made his incisors become sort of vampirish-looking when he stared the cameraman down. Okay, so he did look that way sometimes, but the camera was just taking it out of context, making it worse, or stranger. Or something other than what it was.

  Baron next asked the question, “What does this scary, Incredible Hulk-looking hottie not want you to know about the town of Great Oaks where Shayla Patrick now resides?” Baron finished her pathetic, cheesy fake-news story by saying, “I’ll leave it to your imagination, viewers.” She gave the audience a wink. “But if you want a little more information, visit the Weird World website.”

  On an impulse, Shayla grabbed her computer tablet off the coffee table and typed in that website address, expecting to find a hokey, bologna-filled site full of Loch Ness monster and Yeti sightings, which she mostly did. A couple of mentions of shape-shifters and how to kill a wolf with silver made her laugh. Grant seemed less amused.

  “That’s some messed-up shit the Weird World crew’s trying to find. They better hope it doesn’t find them first.” The low growl of Grant’s voice sounded kind of homicidal. That should not make her panties wet. But it did.

  At the bottom of the home page, she saw the words This site powered by HJK Webmasters.

  “HJK. Hunter Jacob Knowles,” she gasped. Could it be? A web search showed that HJK Webmasters was indeed Hunter’s company.

  His business-page profile picture showed an incredibly handsome man, but the puppy-dog sweetness of his eyes and thoughtful expression she’d fallen in love with were long gone. Gone also was the pained, fearful expression of the Hunter he’d become after being stabbed, beaten unconscious, and waking up angry and traumatized. In the photo he looked hard, confident, and…cold. In the interview with Baron, he’d looked confident, certain, but the still shot of him showed such an ugly coldness it gave her chills.

  He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I will never let him get close enough to hurt you,” he promised. She nodded. She tried for a moment to convince
herself that she and Grant were overreacting, and that she saw on Hunter’s website nothing more than a simple posed business-profile picture of a man who ran a company. Maybe he looked so cold because there’d been no one to smile at except the photographer. Creating the website for Baron could have simply been a job opportunity for Hunter. Maybe she’d paid him for his interview too. He might have thought Baron hot and wanted to do whatever she asked.

  Shayla wanted to believe those possibilities, but she needed to do a little more digging before she could write the whole thing off to Hunter being a harmless, angry conspiracy theorist who used an opportunity of convenience to work with Baron. A few more keystrokes took her to Hunter’s personal blog.

  Finding Hidden Truths was the blog’s title. Not very creative, but she supposed it got the point across. She scrolled down to read some of the older posts. What she found were some strange and interesting theories about government experiments on humans. One post titled Peculiar creatures and how they got that way had two hundred thousand replies, several of them including attached articles and links to writings that suggested everything from divine intervention and government experiments to simple genetic mutation that could possibly be replicated. An icon at the top right of the page showed his blog had over five hundred thousand followers.

  The newest post, dated just a couple days prior, was bad news. In it Hunter spoke of a partnership with Kendall Baron. They would be working together investigating phenomena for the Weird World segment of Simply Entertainment and for the sake of information itself. First investigation on their list? Whether scientists were actively building and creating superhumans. There was an updated link that took her to the Weird World disaster survivors’ story Shayla had just watched.