“I came to see you.”
“Me?” Frederica looked shocked. “But you said that you only wanted one thing, and I can’t give it to you, and –”
“I only want one thing?” echoed Scott. His memory caught up to his mouth a moment later.
Had he – Had she been crying over him? Was he the one who made her cry?
Furious at himself, Scott reached for Frederica. His hand caught her by the back of the neck, and gently, he pulled Frederica into himself. The small tendrils of hair at the back of her neck were nearly as soft against his fingertips as her sleep warmed skin was.
“The only thing I want,” growled Scott, “is this.”
Leaning down, he caught Frederica’s soft mouth with his, and he kissed her savagely. Under his mouth, Frederica moaned and arched, offering him better access to her mouth.
Scott took immediate advantage, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and claiming her as his own. He wrapped his other arm around Frederica’s waist, his rough palm slip-sliding across the slippery fabric of her robe.
Scott pulled Frederica against himself, her smaller body yielding against his larger, harder one. She was soft and warm, and the scent of her fruity bathing products seemed to envelop him, cocooning him in her scent. Scott moaned, the feel and scent and taste of her going straight to that lonely, aching part of himself. It also went straight to his dick.
Tightening his arm around her waist, Scott lifted Frederica off of her feet. He pulled her up the length of his body, making Frederica first gasp and then moan. Her arms went around his chest, her legs around his waist, and Frederica clutched at him.
Stepping forward, into her apartment, Scott kicked the door shut behind them. Turning, Scott pressed Frederica against the inside of the door.
Their mouths twisted together savagely, Frederica’s hands flexed against his back, her nails lightly scraping against sensitive skin through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Using his body to hold her in place, Scott undid his belt and unbuttoned his pants, shoving his jeans and underwear down just far enough for his cock to spring free.
Scott usually liked to take his time. He loved to touch and taste Frederica, loved to watch the sway of her breasts as she rode his cock, but there was no time for that now. He needed her too badly.
Instead of indulging in any more foreplay, Scott yanked the crotch of Frederica’s panties aside and slammed his erection up into Frederica’s body, claiming her again as his own.
Frederica was already wet for him, her channel slick with want and so tight around him that Scott’s burgeoning rhythm stuttered. He groaned, his head falling forward against Frederica’s shoulder, as he struggled not to come like some overeager teenager.
Under him, Frederica moaned and arched, her legs clamped tight around his waist. One of her heels was digging into the top of his ass, her fingernails into his shoulders. The back of her head was pressed against the door, leaving the column of her arched throat vulnerable, and Scott pressed a clumsy kiss to it.
He began to move against her, thrusting up into Frederica with short, sharp snaps of his hips, and she writhed against him, gasping and moaning. The feel of her blunt nails scratching red lines into his back sent sharp frissons of excitement through Scott, driving him to thrust into her harder and faster and deeper.
Scott’s face was pressed against Frederica’s throat, his mouth a snarl, and he gradually became aware of the fact that his lips were moving. Against her throat, Scott was snarling, his words broken, “You’re the – the thing – I want! You’re mine! Mine! My girl. My good dragon girl! Oh – Oh, you feel so – so good. So good!”
And under him, Frederica was gasping, “Yes, yes, yes! Y-Yours! And you’re mine! Oh, oh yes!”
She made a startled sound, her body straining against his, and around Scott’s thrusting length her channel began to clench and twitch magnificently.
Roaring, Scott thrust into her once, twice more and came so hard that the edges of his vision went white.
It felt like much, much later that he realized that he was still pressing Frederica against the inside of her front door. Frankly, he was impressed that he hadn’t dropped her.
Frederica’s legs were still loosely wrapped around his waist, and she was running her fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck. At the feel of her nails lightly scraping against his scalp, Scott shivered. Inside of her, his cock twitched.
Frederica laughed breathlessly.
“Already?” she asked, sounding amused and maybe slightly incredulous.
“I’ve missed you,” rumbled Scott, nuzzling into her neck. He kissed her soft skin.
“I’ve missed you too,” sighed Frederica, making Scott’s heart clench. His cock twitched inside of her again.
“Hey, in the moment, I forgot –”
“It’s fine,” interrupted Frederica hastily. “I’m on the pill.”
“Oh. Good,” said Scott, feeling equal parts relieved, disappointed, and surprised by his own reaction.
Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much he wanted to have babies with Frederica – lots and lots of dragon-bear babies, however that would work. Now, when they were making up and putting their relationship back together, probably wasn’t the best moment to make that baby however. He still kind of wanted it, though.
“Take me to bed?” asked Frederica, and Scott smiled.
“Sure,” he said. Smoothly, he hoped.
He had some ideas of things that they could do together in her bed… and in her shower… and maybe a few other places as well…
Grinning, Scott carried her to bed.
Chapter 16 – Scott
Frederica took the next day off, and they lounged around her apartment, only emerging to eat lunch and dinner at her favorite restaurants around town.
The first time that she had laid eyes on his car, Frederica’s eyes had widened, and she had missed a step.
“See something you like?” Scott had teased.
Frederica had flushed an intriguing shade of pink.
“It’s a very nice car,” she had said demurely, and Scott had grinned.
The next morning, Frederica had kissed him slowly and sultrily, then looked him in the eye and said, “I’m really sorry, but I have to go to work today. There’s some things due today that can’t be put off.”
And Scott had nodded, because he understood.
He didn’t want to hang around her apartment all day by himself, and there wasn’t much to do in Tallahassee anyway, so they said their goodbyes. And then, just before she had rushed out the door to work, Frederica promised to come and visit him next weekend.
It was a very long drive home, but Scott spent most of it smiling stupidly. He hadn’t stayed in Tallahassee as long as he had thought that he might, but he had gotten more out of the trip than he had ever dared to hope that he might. He was reconciled with Frederica, and she was going to come visit him too.
When he got home, Scott found a flyer wedged in his mailbox announcing another community meeting. Briefly, he wondered if that was what Frederica had been working on, and then decided not to ask. They had just gotten back together, and things were going great between them. He didn’t want to rock the boat over something that she couldn’t change, not even for him.
Since he had already given all of his hours away to JC, Scott spent the next couple of days alternately calling around town, cleaning out his house, and surfing. He started getting rid of the stuff that he didn’t feel like packing, and got in touch with one of his previous attorneys to handle the sale of his land.
If he had to give it up, then he was going to follow Frederica’s advice and get the best price possible on it. A new place – hopefully, one that was near his work, the beach, and a patch of wilderness – might not come cheap. And he was considering certain lifestyle changes – namely, marriage and a family – that were also notoriously expensive. Money was going to be tight for awhile, no matter where he ended up.
I could go any
where. And it still might be nice to see some new places and new trees, thought Scott, beginning to warm up to the idea. I could learn a whole new place. Find new secret berry patches.
Scott had thought that retiring from the military and opening his own restaurant meant being tied to one place forever, but maybe it didn’t. Moving wasn’t the end of the world. When he was in the service, he had enjoyed picking up sticks, moving, and living in new places. The new place that he was going to might only be a few miles away, but the ins and outs of it would still be new to him.
And he would have Frederica. That was the most important thing. He had wanted to keep his house and his forest, but he needed to keep Frederica. He loved her. The world was full of interesting bits of forest for a brown bear to ramble in, but he had only the one soul mate.
Scott loved Frederica enough to give everything up and go somewhere else. He didn’t even care if that somewhere else was further down the beach or up to Tallahassee or someplace new to both of them. The important thing was that they would be together.
And wherever we end up, thought Scott, we can build a new home there together.
That thought was satisfying to him in a way that few things were at present.
They had only been apart a few days, and they had spoken every night on the phone since they had parted ways in Tallahassee, but Scott still missed her.
He missed the smell of Frederica in his pillows and on his skin. He missed her laughter, and the way that Frederica looked at him when she thought that he wasn’t paying attention. He missed all the moments that they might have had together if he hadn’t been stupid enough to blow his top at her, and he couldn’t wait to make a whole bunch of new memories with her. A lifetime’s worth, if he was lucky.
The weekend came, bringing with it Frederica, and it left, taking her back to Tallahassee again. She had promised to fly down again the next weekend, but Scott still began missing her almost as soon as she left his place. Scott hated saying goodbye to her.
Business moved rapidly after that, no matter how long the days without Frederica seemed. His attorney was a good one, and within a month, Scott was offered a fat check for his property.
“That was so fast,” he said blankly.
“Well, I’ve been in this business for awhile,” said his attorney. “And truthfully, you aren’t my only client from your neighborhood. I’ve done enough of these cases that I’m on a first name basis with the lawyer up in Tallahassee. It moved things along a bit.”
Scott was on a first name basis with her too, not that he said as much to his attorney.
Never one to dilly dally, Scott had deposited his check, put the bulk of his remaining possessions in a storage facility, and was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his mostly empty house when the next community meeting finally rolled around.
Once again, he arrived early at the community center, this time claiming a seat near the front of the room so that he could keep an eye on his honey.
Frederica was already up on stage in her suit and silks. She had all her glorious hair pinned back and her ankles primly crossed. Looking up at her, Scott felt a throb of want go through him.
Around Scott, other members of the community were filtering into the room and claiming seats, usually somewhere behind Scott. In front of him, people who looked suspiciously like tech support were setting up a laptop and cables in the center of the stage. Occasionally, they went over to speak quietly with Frederica or brought her over to the laptop to show her something. Over the stage, a couple of enormous white screens had been erected.
The last time that Scott had seen those screens, he had been politely sitting through a community production of an Italian opera. The big screens had been mounted over the stage to provide English translations of the dialogue spoken and the songs sung by the actors. It hadn’t made the opera any more interesting to him, but at least he had been able to follow what was going on. Afterwards, he had politely thanked the person that had given him two tickets to the performance and lied about how much he had enjoyed it. Opera, it had turned out, just wasn’t his thing.
Scott didn’t think that Frederica planned to sing at them in another language, but he couldn’t imagine what she thought she needed those jumbo screens for either.
Overhead, the lights flickered, signaling the imminent start of the community meeting. Around Scott, everyone began to quiet down.
Like last time, the mayor made the opening remarks, welcomed everyone in the audience, and reintroduced everyone sitting on the stage. When he offered the podium to Frederica’s boss, the man stood and said, “Most of this evening’s speaking will be done by my colleague, Frederica Hale. I only ask that you save any questions or further concerns for the time set aside for Q&A at the end of the evening, so that we can answer all of the points brought up by the last community meeting before we expand on or begin considering any new areas of interest. Frederica?”
Rising, Frederica took the podium. Over her head, a slide popped up and filled the jumbo screens. Scanning it, Scott realized that the slide was basically an agenda of her talking points for that evening. The last point on the bulleted list was titled ‘Preserving the Natural Appeal of Area,’ and at the sight of it, Scott’s interest perked.
That can’t mean what I think it does, decided Scott. He couldn’t help but hope, though, that it did.
At the first community meeting, Frederica hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to speak at length in front of the group. And frankly, Scott’s emotional reaction to her presence on the stage had been so strong that he probably wouldn’t have noticed anything short of a sixteen wheeler barreling through the wall of the auditorium.
This time, however, he was calmer and almost content with how things had shaken out. This time, he was in a position to appreciate the way his girl practically shone up on stage.
Frederica was really, really good at her job.
Point by point, Frederica summarized each of the concerns raised at the last community meeting, and then briefly explained the steps that her office had taken or was in the process of taking to address them. As she spoke, she keyed through the appropriate slides, graphs, and maps, illustrating her points as she made them.
Finally, she said, “At the last meeting, many of you seemed to be worried about how built up the area might end up becoming as a result of the university.”
Scott snorted. That was certainly one way of phrasing it. Another might be to say that the local shifter community was worried about where they would go on full moon nights, now that their current bits of forest were scheduled to be bulldozed.
“We heard you, and we took two actions to address what seemed to be the root of your concerns,” continued Frederica, apparently unbothered by his cynicism. Above her, the jumbo screens shifted to a map of the county. Several patches – the already existing parks and greenways, Scott realized – were colored dark green.
“Overhead is a map of the county. The already existing protected spaces are the solid green patches on the map,” said Frederica, echoing his thoughts.
She tapped a key on the laptop and a few small, slim patches of land between those dark green areas were shaded in with widely spaced pale green lines.
“The lined areas that have just appeared on the map are lands that we are working to acquire on behalf of the county as new greenways. Linked with the previously existing park areas, they will help to form a nature corridor for the local wildlife.
“Additionally, we have tweaked the new university’s legal foundations so that forty to forty-five percent of its total area will either be set aside for long term preservation or protected by perpetual conservation easements. This will protect the endangered species discovered on the property during the initial environmental impact survey, as well as their unique habitats and the biodiversity of the area.
“The university won’t ever be able to build on those areas, but for having them as well as for how it will interact with them the university will receive certai
n grants and funding from both the state and federal government that would have previously been unavailable to it before now. This will also open up many new local jobs related to managing and protecting those areas.”
Frederica paused there to take a sip of water, and Scott realized that his silly heart was pounding in his chest.
She had listened to him. And somehow, impossibly, she had found a way to save his forest for him.
While he had been streamlining his life, giving up the things that mattered less to him, and focusing on the things – or rather, the person – that mattered most to him, Frederica had been working to protect those lesser things so that he didn’t really have to give anything up to be with her. He could have the woman that he loved and the forest that he loved to ramble in.
Scott’s heart swelled in his chest.
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to leap up on stage and kiss Frederica senseless. In fact, Scott had to clutch at the arms of his seat to physically prevent himself from doing just that.
He just loved her so much. Scott hadn’t thought it possible to love Frederica any more than he already did, but he had been wrong. He loved her so much that it hurt.
His Frederica was just so smart and kind and so very, very sweet to him. It was an agony to sit through the rest of the community meeting, instead of immediately carrying her off to show her just how much he loved her and appreciated what she had done for him.
Frederica had made the greenway corridor and protected all that land for him, because he had been hurt by her original plans. She hadn’t had to lift a finger to help him, and if things had been different, he never would have even known that she had chosen not to protect his forest for him. But Frederica had wanted him to be happy, and she had worked so hard to make him happy. When he thought of all the late hours that she had worked, all the meals that she had skipped, and all the hours of sleep that she had missed, Scott marveled that she had been willing to work so hard to give him what he wanted.
Scott ached for all of Frederica’s love and care and devotion, silently given and entirely unappreciated at the time. She had been so wonderful, and he had been such a short-sighted, short-tempered jackass.
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