Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3)

by Becca Fanning

  He turned to her then and took her face in his hands and kissed her. She melted into him as all his friends made the usual mocking noises, but she didn’t care at all.

  It was cold outside, but warm inside by the fire. Kyle had invited Valerie over for a celebratory dinner. She arrived at his cabin at seven pm, having traded in the stupid sedan for an SUV and followed his hand drawn directions.

  “You really should draw better,” she said with mock anger. “I wasn’t sure which one of the bazillion giant trees to turn at.”

  Kyle pulled her into his arms when he opened the door. Valerie felt her jacket slip to the floor.

  “I brought wine,” she said holding up a bottle of Merlot.

  Kyle took it, looked at it and put it on the kitchen counter. The whole cabin, apart from the bedroom and bathroom was open plan and heated by a huge fire roaring in the grate. The night was clear and crisp with frost.

  Closing the door Kyle buried his face in her hair. “You smell good enough to eat,” he said.

  “Well,” she said and smiled.

  It was all he needed.

  Kyle kissed her. Valerie closed her eyes and felt herself sail off on a sea of pleasure. He tasted of salt and something sweet and tangy. His lips were soft and met hers with a hunger that mirrored her own desire to have him.

  The kisses moved, all down her neck and shoulders. Where clothing got in the way it was removed so that the lips could continue their exploration of her. Kyle was in no hurry and although Valerie could smell dinner cooking away merrily on the stove, she felt no desire to eat it. All she wanted was Kyle.

  He lifted her into his arms and placed her backside on the kitchen counter. His lips were finding her again as her shirt and bra fell to the floor. He ran his fingers over her breasts, playing with the nipples.

  Valerie reached up under his shirt and felt the tight, hard muscles of his chest and abdomen. His skin was silky smooth and he had fine chest hair that she twirled her fingers in. The volcano was building again, deep within her and Valerie was afraid it would consume her.

  Then Kyle took one of her nipples into his mouth and his hand slid down her body to her jeans. He undid them and pulled them off her discarding them on the floor. Valerie wanted him so badly she was aching for him. She fumbled his jeans open and pushed them down, her mouth finding his in a blind need to have him inside her.

  Off the counter now he carried her to the bedroom and threw her gently onto the matress and then he was on top of her. Gently he eased her panties down and off and then slid his hand back up her thigh.

  Two fingers slid into her and sent electric shocks through her whole body. Had it really been this long since someone did that? Valerie knew it was. She bore down on his hand rocking back and forth as he slid his fingers in and out of her.

  She slid her hand into this boxers and found him hard and waiting. She took him into her mouth and licked and sucked him, working the shaft with her hand. He groaned and laced his free hand in her hair. They moved and his fingers slid out of her. Valerie felt a pang of disappointment but she kept on pulling sounds of desire from his lips.

  Then suddenly Kyle pulle himself out of her mouth and lifting her up placed her on his lap. She felt him slide into her and all she could do as the joy filled her was hold on to him for dear life. She was sinking in a sea of lust and desire for this one man and it was going to consume her. She felt lightheaded, out of control and it both excited and scared her. There was no telling where she ended and Kyle began in the writhing mass of hair and skin and sweat that they were.

  She was on her back now, him above her. And then she was on top, riding him like a stallion, pulling every groan and moan of pleasure from his throat as she moved.

  But it was all coming to a head too quickly. She was going to explode. Kyle seemed to know this he flipped her over entering her from behind. She felt him deeper than before and it only served to make her more excited.

  And then it came like a volcano erupting. The orgasm leveled cities and laid waste to her mind, tossing her emotions into a choppy sea. Utterly spent they collapsed together on the rumpled bed sheets and panting crawled into each other’s arms.

  After a while Kyle kissed her and then said. “So about that dinner?”

  Valerie laughed, “But we just had desert.”

  “Nope, ma’am we did not,” Kyle said shaking his head. “This was the appetizer.”

  Oh, boy!

  As Kyle rose, naked, and went to get them each a glass of wine, Valerie lay back and smiled. She felt so free and loved, happy in the moment. But she knew it was only a moment and that all too soon the wolf would literally be at the door again. But for now, for this precious moment, the wolf was in chains and she was free to love this man.

  Luke

  Bearly Saints III

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Candace Chance ducked into the alley, just as a black limousine passed a third time. She had no reason to believe the people in the car were looking for her, but she had no reason not to believe it, either. The temperatures had dropped with nightfall, and she had started to shiver uncontrollably. It had been raining off and on all day, and though the precipitation had stopped for now, the streets were wet. The alley smelled horrible—a mix of the stench coming from an overflowing dumpster, oily refuse, and things better left unidentified—but with nowhere else to go, and the limousine continuing to drive by on what seemed like an endless loop, she had no choice but to hole up here and hope things looked up in the morning.

  Happy birthday to me, she thought, as she sank down behind some wooden crates.

  The ground near the wall was littered with flattened cardboard boxes, which, while wet, at least provided some insulation between her and the pavement. It was cold, though, so very cold, and she huddled in her fleece sweater, wishing it were a full-length down coat. She had never had to think about people living on the street before. Raised in a sheltered environment, home-schooled, and protected, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about the outside world. She hadn’t needed to, though she now realized she should have insisted. Much of her schooling had been online, and perhaps she should have looked beyond her lessons. But she’d known her online access had been ruthlessly monitored. She hadn’t thought of the “why” of it—there’d been no reason to—but now she knew, first hand, the “why.”

  Candace had been born in a bordello, the product of her mother’s miscalculation and an unknown, faceless john. She’d often wondered why her mother had kept her, but she’d never asked, and had never been told—until yesterday. The Manager, as he was known to everyone living and working there, was used to paying for abortions for his “girls,” though he resented the need for them, and the girls under his management felt his fury, when they slipped up. Candace’s mother had been too far along for an abortion by the time she’d had to admit her pregnancy, so the Manager had made her a deal. She would be allowed to have the baby in the safe confines of the House, but the child would belong to him.

  The irony of a white woman selling her white baby to a black “manager” had been lost on her mother, or it had at least been ignored in favor of the opportunity to remain in the high-class establishment. If Candace had wondered over the years about why she was treated differently from the other girls, many of whom were only young teenagers themselves when they’d arrived, she hadn’t thought to question it. The Manager had always scared her a bit, in spite of his well-dressed, soft-spoken, polite appearance, if only because all the women in the house obviously feared him. Still, shouldn’t she have questioned the clothes? The comportment and music coaching? The exercise regiment? The schooling?

  Of course, I should have, she realized now, when it was too late. Though in a different way, I was as much a fool as my mother.

  This time when she shivered there was more than the cold behind it. She would never forget that last conversation with her mother. Had it been only this morning? Her mother had come to her at dawn to tell Candace
she had to get ready. She would turn eighteen at midnight, and the Manager would be coming for her.

  Why, Mama, why?

  Because he owns you, baby.

  How could you do this to me?

  Because he owns me, too.

  The deal had been struck the night the Manager had found out about her mother’s pregnancy, but he’d become even more interested when he’d learned Candace’s mother was carrying a girl child. He’d paid for everything over the years—her education, her health, her physical training, her musical training, her dance lessons—everything that would make her a prize worth a great deal of money to a certain kind of man who would be willing to pay top dollar for such a commodity: a genteel young lady, all packaged in a beautiful, untouched body. Candace had begged and pleaded with her mother, but in the end, she had been locked in her room. The sound of a bolt sliding home on the outside of her door had left Candace paralyzed with fear, knowing there was nothing for her to do but run, if she could only find a way out.

  A quick search had uncovered the fact that most of the windows in her room had long been painted shut, but she had found one chance. There was a very small hexagonal window in her bathroom, high in the wall across from the vanity, that could still be opened for ventilation. It was doubtful anyone would have considered the possibility that Candace could fit through it, or would even try, since her room was on the fourth floor, but desperation had lent her both strength and courage. She’d had to wait until after dark, and she hadn’t been able to take anything with her other than the clothes on her back, but thanks to rigorous physical training—which she now realized had been intended to keep her physically attractive—she’d had the strength and agility to squeeze through the tight window and climb down the side of the building. The old Victorian house had had plenty of dormer roofs and decorative trim to hold onto, and her light weight, slender hips, and yoga practice made it physically possible. She’d dropped lightly to the ground just as the neighborhood church bell tower had rung the hour at eleven p.m.

  Ten minutes later, she’d been safely away, but the heavens had opened, leaving her drenched to the skin and wishing she had thought to shove a coat out the window in front of her. She hadn’t dared, of course, because someone might have seen it fall or it might have caught on something on the way down, leaving evidence of her flight behind, but as she shivered in her cold corner of the alley, she wished she’d taken the chance. Could someone die of exposure in the middle of a bustling city? She’d read climate analyses of Nashville as a part of her science studies. Situated where it was, the temperatures were usually relatively mild, even in winter. But Candace was for the first time realizing that “relatively” was a tricky word, when you were worried about more than a higher-than-normal power bill.

  She managed to pull the top piece of cardboard out from under her, leaving her sitting on a slightly less soggy surface. She then wrapped it around herself, and though it was soggy wet, it still managed to block out the worst of the stiff breeze coming down the alley. She crossed her arms and curled into the tightest ball she could manage.

  Now I lay me down to sleep… The words one of the maids had taught her when she was a little girl suddenly appeared in her mind. I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  Not for the first time, Candace wondered if she had a “soul to keep,” and if she did, was there a God who cared? Shivering in the darkness, she prayed it was so.

  “Got her!”

  Candace cried out when a big hand grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. With her mind befuddled with sleep and the cold, it took her a moment to realize what was happening. Then she panicked and began kicking and scratching, fighting for her life.

  “Knock it off, ya little whore!” the man holding her shouted.

  He gripped her upper arm painfully with one hand and had his other forearm firmly pressed across her chest. Without thinking, she bit down hard on the part of his wrist exposed between the end of his sleeve and the beginning of his glove.

  The man cursed viciously and pulled back his fist to strike her, but a second man grabbed the first man’s arm, holding him back.

  “Don’t hit ’er, idiot! You heard the man! She comes back marked up, we don’t get paid!”

  “The little bitch bit me!”

  “Stuff it,” the second man said. “You know where she lives. You won’t catch anythin’ from her.”

  Candace continued to struggle, certain now of who had sent these men after her.

  “Well, I’m gonna cuff the bitch anyway,” the first man said. “We ain’t gonna be able to hang onto ’er iffen we don’t!”

  Candace tried to twist away, but she felt the cold steel snap shut around one wrist as her arms were yanked brutally hard behind her back. It felt like he was pulling her arms out of their sockets, and she knew she’d never be free, if he got the other handcuff on her.

  She screamed.

  “Shut up, bitch!” the second man said, jamming his gloved hand over her mouth.

  Candace was crying now, struggling futilely as the second cuff snapped around her other wrist. She just managed to turn her head to the side and let out another blood-curdling scream.

  “The hell with this!” one of them said, and he slammed his fist into her belly, knocking the wind completely out of her.

  She went down, whimpering, and only managed a squeak when they yanked her up painfully by the arms.

  The rest was all a blur, but she thought she heard a roar, and suddenly one of the men flew away from her. He screamed and landed with a sickening thud against the far side of the alley. The second man pushed her away from him and must have drawn a gun, because a shot rang out, but a third, huge shadow tackled the man before he could get off another shot, and he screamed as he went down. Candace scrambled away, using her legs to clumsily put some distance between herself and the dark moving shadows. Forced to stop when she came up against the wall, she squinted into the dim light, trying to see what was going on. Daylight was just beginning to lighten the scene on this heavily overcast morning, but she could see enough to know the first two men who had attacked her were down, and there was another, bigger, darker shadow standing over them. She heard a low growl then the shadow seemed to change in form. What she might have sworn was something like a bear was suddenly a man. When he turned, he towered over her, and she shrank back in terror.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” a soft, very deep voice said, as the shadow moved toward her.

  She stared at him, though she still couldn’t see him clearly in the dawning light.

  “Come on, now, darlin’,” he said, holding out his big hand. “I’ve gotta get you out’a here, before somebody else comes along or these thugs wake up.”

  Either scenario made her willing, but she looked at that big, gloved hand and swallowed hard.

  “I…I can’t,” she said. “Th…they put ha…handcuffs on m…me.”

  He cursed, sounding furious, but when he turned back to the nearest man on the ground, she was unexpectedly certain his fury was not directed at her.

  He searched the man’s pockets and finally found what he wanted. In another minute, he was leaning over her and unlocking the handcuffs. When they were free, he threw them toward the back of the alley with an angry snap of his wrist.

  “Let’s go.”

  She tried to stand—what else could she do?—but she staggered, and it took his firm grip on her shoulders to pull her to her feet.

  “Easy, now.” he said, his voice a smooth Tennessee drawl. She shuddered once, hard, and he seemed to really look at her for the first time.

  “Shoot, you don’t even have a coat on.”

  He shed his own and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was huge, big enough on her that even as he closed it at the front, she managed to slip her arms into the sleeves. They came down to her knees, and he rolled them up for her, one at a time. Inside the coat was warm and toasty. It smelled good, too, clean
with a scent of something she didn’t recognize but identified as pleasant.