Bear With Me (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance)

by Lynn Red

  “I get possessed by a genie and thrown around like I was in the center of a hurricane and somehow, you make me feel like everything is all right, Rex. How the hell do you do this to me?”

  “Because it’s fate,” he said with a smile.

  “Djinn!”

  The little mandrake man bobbled up beside me. “Genies are much different. Mostly because they don’t exist.”

  Atlas tromped up right afterward and plucked the tiny doll off the ground.

  Jenga sighed heavily, returning to our side. “Barbara Eden certainly existed, you smart mouthed little creature,” he said. “Don’t try to tell me genies are made up. Actually let’s play a little game for a moment.”

  Rex turned to me, with an amused quirk to his smile. We shared a soft laugh and he lay his hand on my chest.

  “You’re a djinn and now you’re a root. You were eaten by a zombie bear, then burped out. Are you really going to play the know-it-all game?” Jenga shook his head, his beard jingling. “Come on, Atlas, get your new friend and let’s get the hell out of here. I doubt these two lovebirds want an old man and a lilac-smelling zombie hanging around. Anyway, we gotta take our new robot and those two girls, check them out to make sure nothing untoward happened.”

  “Li...lac,” Atlas groaned. “Not... Laven...der.”

  Jenga took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah I always get them mixed up. Anyway, you two stop by whenever you want. I’m going to need to change your poultice in a couple days to make sure you recover. “Oh, and Lilah?”

  I turned my head toward the rickety old witch doctor.

  “I’ve changed my mind about Luke and Laura. I think there was more to General Hospital than just those two.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Great writing,” he said with a grin. “Just wonderful storytelling.”

  “Call you later?” Dezzy asked as she and Mitzi climbed into Jenga’s side car. Even with all she’d been through, my tough as shit sister had the left side of her mouth curled into a half-smile. She was thinking. Dezzy thinking? Very dangerous. “I don’t want to get in the way. Monsoon season, huh?”

  Rex gave me a quizzical look, but I just shook my head, blushing and laughing at the same time. “Rex, meet my sister, Desdemona.”

  He helped me slowly to my feet, and when we got there, Dezzy stuck her hand out. For a moment, they shook, but then they both decided at the same time that after all that, maybe a hug was more appropriate.

  My sister more or less collapsed against Rex’s chest, squeezing him so tight she started to shake. “Thank you so, so, so much,” she said, over and over again. He stroked her hair, trying to calm her down, but in the end all that was going to get that taken care of was letting her get it all out.

  “Everything is fine,” he said after a long silence. “The bad guy got his, the good guys won. We’re all still here.”

  “My sister,” Dezzy said, fighting against her own sniffles. “She’s... she’s special. You know that already though. But she’s really special.”

  Every couple of words she had to pause to get a grip on herself, but that just made her words all the more incredible. My sister is not the sort to open herself up like this, even to me. But to someone she just met?

  “She’s had the shittiest life I’ve ever heard of anyone having, and she needs someone. Someone to take care of her and make sure she knows she’s as awesome and great and incredible as I know she is.”

  Rex didn’t take his eyes off her for a second. He was digesting every single word.

  “She’s,” Dezzy sniffed. “She’s never had anyone treat her like she treats everyone else. She raised me, pretty much. My – our mom, she couldn’t handle me a lot of the time and Lyle just took over. It was like she had it in her blood or something. I know she’s nervous and scared and everything about being good enough for your cub but...”

  She laughed nervously. “I sound like I’m giving her a letter of reference for a job.”

  Rex chuckled softly and put his huge hands on Dezzy’s shoulders. With the two of them so close to each other, the size difference was incredible. Rex’s hands went almost a quarter of the way down Dezzy’s back.

  “You’re a wonderful sister,” Rex said when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else. “But that woman over there?” he tilted his head in my direction. “She doesn’t need a reference. She’s made me feel things I thought I’d never feel again. I promise that I’m going to try my absolute best to be what she needs. She’s made me a better man, she’s made me a man who can love again. I’m going to be what she needs, no matter what it is.”

  Dezzy stared at him for a second. I knew the look she was giving him. It was her testing look, her searching look. It was the one she got when trying to decide if someone was lying or not. “I believe you,” she finally said. “Thank you.”

  Rex pulled her in close again and gave her one last massive bear hug. “Besides,” he said. “I’d be scared of hurting her. With a sister like you? I can’t imagine that’d end well.”

  She got a super serious look on her face, then laughed just like he intended.

  “You comin’?” Jenga shouted. “I don’t have a lot to do, but I’ve got a backlog of my stories to watch. I wanna get this exam over with.”

  “One second!” Dezzy yelled to him and turned back to us. “You two deserve this. You’re... well shit, I’m not exactly one for waxing poetic, but I can see how much you mean to each other just from the way you keep looking over at her and she keeps staring at you with those googly eyes. This thing... this is one in a million.”

  She ran off with Jenga, hopped in his side car and buckled in beside Mitzi as he started the bike. Before long, they had taken off and Atlas was running with fairly surprising speed toward town.

  “You heard her,” Rex said, running his thumbs along my cheekbones, then trailing them down to my jaw and painting a slow line to my chin. “You’re one in a million, Lilah. Billion, I’d say.”

  “That means there’s seven of me on earth,” I said with a grin.

  “I can’t be the only man lucky enough to have one of you. I’d feel guilty.”

  “All right, Casanova,” I said. “You’ve got me wishing you’d put the moves on me right here and now, but I’d probably pass out.”

  “Fair enough,” Rex whispered. “But I’ve got a secret. I’m not sure how long I can keep my hands off you. I think maybe you have just until we get back to my house, or your house, whichever one you want to go to. If you’re recovered by then, great. If not...”

  “You’ll maul me?” I giggled, feeling the familiar warmth creep into my belly.

  His answer was just a smile.

  “Dog tags?” he asked.

  “Oh right.” I fished them out of my pocket and handed them over. “I meant to give them back, I—”

  “I don’t need them anymore. They used to make me strong. Used to give me peace, sort of.”

  He made a motion like he was going to put them around my neck, but something struck me. “I’ve got an idea.”

  I crouched down, a little too fast. My head swam for a second, but I managed to steady myself and dig up a little hole. “Here,” I said.

  Rex squatted down beside me and looked at my face, then the hole. “Here?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It’s kind of like planting a tree, you know? We’ve been in love before, but this is... it’s real now, I guess, is what I mean. Burying the past, starting something new?”

  Dropping the little squares in the hole and covering it over, Rex’s face visibly relaxed when they were buried. “Then here’s to new things,” he said. “To the future. To me and you and—”

  “And our cub,” I said. “I promise I’m going to do the best I can. I’m scared, but... but she’s worth me swallowing my fear.”

  A smile crossed his face and Rex helped me back to my feet. “Now,” he said. “Here’s to me keeping my hands off you for another half hour. I’d
hate to end up back in jail after all that.”

  With my hand warm and safe in his, we crossed the field. Walking was slow, but the more I did it, the more my joints and my toes loosened up and the easier it got. Off in the distance, something howled, or... groaned, it was hard to say exactly.

  But right then? There wasn’t another thing in my world except Rex.

  “Fate?” I shrugged as we went. “I’m not sure I believe in fate.”

  He laughed. “Fate’s an easy way to explain things that really? You can’t explain.”

  “Who needs an explanation?” I asked.

  “Not me,” Rex said. “As long as I’ve got you, and I’ve got Leena?” he shook his head. “Who needs explanations when you’ve got love?”

  Laying my head on his thickly muscled arm, the rest of the walk was silent. The ride home was silent too.

  Once we got there?

  Monsoon season, man. Monsoon season.

  -28-

  Lilah

  “If I had two broken legs, a broken tail and a broken head, I’d tell you you’d better take me right this second or lose me forever,” I said as the screen door on Rex’s little house slapped against the wood-shingle siding and he nudged the other door open with his foot.

  “Luckily all you have is what might be, but probably isn’t, a concussion. And don’t worry about anything because it was treated with some kind of tea goo on your forehead.” Rex smiled, turned to face me, and grabbed my hands. “You’ve taught me more in the last month and a half than anyone I’ve known for years.”

  His hold on my hands slid up my forearms, underneath my torn sleeves. Softly, gently, but with a certain urgency, he stroked circles on my upper arms with his thumbs. Outside, the late afternoon sun was starting to glitter. Shades of orange and yellow flickered through the string holes on the mini-blinds in Rex’s living room, dancing on the hardwood floor.

  The second he touched me, even the vague lingering hint of the throbbing pain I’d awoken with just melted away. There was nothing in the entire world except Rex and I, breathing each other in. My sensitive nose picked up hints of grass, dirt, sweat and the faint twinge of blood from Rex’s double header brawls.

  I stared at the little dots of light as they flicked back and forth, trying to think of something to say. There were no words that came to mind. No simple declaration of love or devotion or whatever was going to satisfy me. Not right then.

  “You’re staring at the ground,” Rex said, his voice a soft, gorgeous growl.

  “I was just watching the sunlight and thinking.”

  “Yeah?” he tilted my head back with careful fingers and tested my lips with a kiss. “Want to share?”

  I moaned softly as I tasted him again. When Rex pulled away, I sucked gently at his bottom lip, and let my teeth click together with his escape. “What’s there to say?” I asked. “Everything’s different now. The world, the town. Jamesburg lost its first new college faculty member in the past ten years to a freak summoning accident. This place won’t ever be the same.”

  Rex chuckled under his breath. “Neither will I.”

  The gentle kiss he just gave me turned harder, deeper, and more intense when he returned. Our lips pressed fiercely together. Rex pushed my mouth open with his, and swirled his tongue against mine, tasting me, breathing me in as deep as he could.

  “I never imagined anything could be like this,” he said in a hushed whisper.

  His hardness strained his shredded jeans. In answer, my nipples went stiff and prickly, anticipating his touch. I hardly had time to breathe another breath before Rex walked me backwards slowly, and I felt the rough textured wall scratch the backs of my arms. It was just like the daydream I had once, of him grinding against me, me with nowhere to go.

  “Tell me this is real,” I whispered as he traced the line of my neck with warm, soft, sucking kisses. “Tell me you’re never going away.”

  Rex’s breath hitched in his throat. The warmth sliding out of his mouth, caressing my skin, stopped for a moment. “Never,” he said. “No one has ever made me feel... like I’m just okay, if that makes any sense.”

  As his kisses went down my neck, I snaked my arms in the air, relishing the prickling, scratching sensation of textured walls thrilling my bare skin. “How do you do this to me?” I breathed, waiting for him to give me some other new pleasure, some other unheard of ecstasy. “Who are you, Rex Lee?”

  “I could say the same thing to you,” he paused to kiss my collarbones before pulling the collar of my tattered shirt down just enough to lick, then kiss, then nibble gently down one breast. “But then I’d be copying.”

  Laughing or talking or anything else was impossible the second he turned his tongue in a slow circle around my nipple, soaking me through the fabric of my shirt, through my bra. He nibbled at me, sending tendrils of pleasure down my belly and heating me up from the center out. I let my arms fall down to my sides, scratching against the wall as they went.

  Underneath my wiggling fingertips, I felt Rex’s warm, hard forearms. Trailing my hands up them to his biceps, and then his shoulders, the pleasure of him patiently sucking and biting at me through my shirt had me halfway gone already.

  “God that’s so good,” I whimpered as I slid my hands up his huge neck and grabbed handfuls of dark, curly hair. “I wish there was some... thing I could do to let you mark me forever, or...” I trailed off for a second. “Whatever bears do.”

  Rex tugged my shirt, leaving my hard nipple clearly visible through two layers of soaked fabric as he left.

  That’s not the only thing soaking wet, I thought, grabbing one of his hands and cupping it around my aching sex. My jeans were so shredded that one of his fingers was brushing bare skin on my inner thigh and just the thought of him doing a little more had me in quite a state.

  “With us? It’s easy,” Rex said. “But I want you to be sure this is the life for you. We don’t have a lot, but we have...”

  “Family is what you... what we have.” I finished for him.

  His finger hooked between panties and denim. The rasp of one of his calluses against the soft cloth, wet from my inner heat, made me jolt.

  With a warm, almost impossibly kind smile, Rex lifted my shirt, kissed my bellybutton and then looked back up at me. “If you want to be with me,” he whispered. “If you want to be a Lee...”

  Rex pursed his lips and tried to keep from laughing at his inadvertent rhyme.

  “I mean it,” I said, putting on my best attempt at a serious face even though the finger gyrating against me was about to throw me into a convulsion. “Anybody want a peanut?”

  He looked at me funny for a second and the erupted in laughter so loud it shook the walls. “God I love that movie,” he said as he went back to work, kissing up my belly and working his finger harder between my legs.

  “It’s,” I paused to gasp when he gave me a good hard squeeze. “Also a book.”

  His mouth on my other nipple made me forget all about S. Morgenstern’s classic and brought me back to the here and now, back to the perfect reality where Rex and I were making love and where his...our...cub would be coming home later and we’d all be together and safe and happy.

  This is what it’s supposed to be like, I thought with a smile that warmed me through to my bones. This is what it’s all about.

  Gentle kisses grew hungrier, more desperate, as the seconds ticked by and the prickling sensation running its way down my stomach and up my back with every pulse of Rex’s huge fingers turned into goosebumps.

  From my neck to my toes, I was covered in tiny little pleasure bumps.

  “But no,” Rex said, pulling away but not stopping the intense grinding between my legs for a second. “What I was trying to say is true. With bears? We don’t like all the formality of mate marking and whatever. With us? We mate for life, but we do it on our own terms.

  “You do everything on your own terms, don’t you?”

  His only response to that was a grin, and a pul
se of his finger, as he lowered his head again. Those teeth, gently pulling at my skin, his hand squeezing and his thumb circling my nipple as the gentle breeze from the overhead fan cooled the cloth against my skin all worked together to put me into a place of peace and nearly electric ecstasy.

  “You know me,” Rex growled, tugging the top of my jeans and popping the button that kept him from kissing me where he really wanted to kiss me. “Whatever, whenever I want.”

  He looked up at me with one of those dazzling, enthralling smiles and I felt my knees go a little weak. Whether it was from the kisses or the smile, or the words he’d just said, I’ll never know. But then again, who cares? With him there was no line between his emotions and his actions. What he said, he felt and what he felt he didn’t hide. At least, he didn’t hide them when it was just my Rex and I, alone in the world for a few, precious moments.

  “Relax,” he whispered. “You’ve had a rough day. I’m gonna take good care of you. I promised your sister I would, remember?”

  As he tugged my jeans and my panties down, Rex kissed the little fluff of hair below them. “I don’t think she meant like this,” I said with a giggle. “Although knowing Dezzy? You never—”

  The tongue swirling against my sweetest place took my breath and my voice all at once. With a surprised gasp, then a moan, I let him take me wherever he wanted.

  His thick, massaging fingers slid around me in a ‘v’ shape, one on either side of my sex. In smooth, hypnotizing motions, Rex kneaded the tendons between my legs and gently ground his palm against my clit.

  “God,” I groaned. “These things you do, they make me crazy.”

  Rex’s response was a grunted laugh and then a muffled groan as he dove back in. Harder and deeper and sweeter than before, he pushed his tongue between my folds and slid it up, then down, up then down again. The hand that he’d been letting me grind on he slid up my body in tickling sweeps before settling it on my other peaked, stiff nipple.

  He twirled his and slid it barely into my entrance. He took his hand away from my chest, slid it under my shirt, and forced my bra out of the way so he could get a handful of nothing but me. The touch drew a hot, needy breath from my lips. The sound I made apparently intoxicating him, Rex growled and pushed harder so that the bare skin on my shoulders scratched lightly against the wall.