26
Hutch
Mate. My bear was roaring his happiness. Hell, I was tempted to shout myself. I claimed her. She was mine and I was hers. I licked the new mark on her neck and moaned as her body clenched around my still hard dick.
“You okay, V?”
She turned her head to the side so she could look at me and the content grin on her face tugged at my chest. “Better. You marked me.”
“Of course, I did. You’re mine. I want to spend the rest of my life showing you how special you are to me.”
I wanted to spend the rest of my life making love to her and fighting for her and making everything up to her. She deserved to never again have to doubt my feelings. I’d been such an idiot. I kissed her forehead and held her even tighter. I knew without a doubt that I loved her.
“What do you like to do for fun?”
Surprised by the question, I didn’t know what to say. There were so many things I hadn’t done.
When I hesitated for too long, she moved off of me and sat up next to me. My body instantly missed her warmth. She pulled a blanket around herself and tilted her head as she stared at me. “What would be sadder than dying and leaving your family nothing, would be dying and not having lived, Hutch Mallory. We’re going to make sure that if and when you go, you go out with a smile on that handsome face of yours.”
I laughed. “Want me dead already?”
She cupped my face in her hands and gave me a serious look. “Never. Not in a million years.”
I sat up and rested against the cab of my truck. I grabbed her and pulled her into me. “This is fun for me, being with you. Don’t think that you have to do anything for me, V. I want to make up for all the time I could’ve been holding you and making love to you.”
She ran her fingers over my knees. “I’ll tell you things I want to do for fun and you tell me which ones sound fun to you. I want to skinny dip. I want to try out role playing. I want to sky dive. I want to maybe play around with more spanking and stuff like that.”
My dick pulsed as I realized what a wild card life had handed me. Half of her list was sexual. I didn’t know how I’d ever worried about having a mate that was a nerdly little bookish librarian and having to sit around reading stuffy textbooks all the time. Life with Veronica would most certainly never be boring. “Stuff like that?”
She giggled. “I don’t know. Stuff like…toys. I have a whole box of sex toys we could have fun with. You know. Oooh, my fuzzy handcuffs!”
Her giggle was the most erotic thing I’d ever heard. “We were supposed to go back into town. I had a movie set up on the back of the bar. Everyone was going to be there and it was supposed to be this big thing, but I think I’d rather stay here and get started on your fun stuff.”
She turned to face me and pulled the blanket over our heads as she sank herself slowly onto my hard dick again. Resting her head against mine, she bit her lip. “Can we do that movie thing some other time?”
I flexed and watched as her eyes fluttered shut. “Yeah. Maybe after a couple of months of this, we can go out in public again. Right now, I want you all to myself.”
“Hutch, shut up and fuck me.”
“Did you just say the F-word?”
Her hands gripped my shoulders and she started a rough rhythm of riding me. I gripped her short hair in my hand and tugged her mouth to mine. Just before I kissed her, I whispered against her mouth. “I love you.”
Her gasp was followed by a cry of surprise as her body started wiggling around me. She was responsive in every way, and I knew that finding ways to make her body sing would be more fun than I ever imagined.
THE END
STERLING
1
Ophelia
Big and furry, I clumsily stumbled through the parking lot and away from the back door of the bar with one foot stuck in a bucket. My bear grumbled and toppled sideways landing in a pile of leaves. Leaves and twigs stuck to my fur. I tried to sit up, but the massiveness of my midsection fought against the action. Tumbling to the side, I rolled onto all fours and forced myself to stand up on my back legs. Just because I was a bear didn’t mean I had to be undignified. Well, actually, I was beyond dignified at this point, really.
I tossed one look back at the bar and shook my head. Yeah, I was way past displaying any semblance of dignity. I jerked my stupid stalker head away from the door where I’d been listening, and tried to watch where I was going as I stepped over logs and mud puddles. It’d been raining for days and everything was soaked. I wasn’t a fan of mud. As human woman and female bear, I didn’t like having to clean mud from all my cracks and crevices.
I came to the swollen creek and roared. I didn’t want to get wet. Frustrated at myself for my obsession that had driven me to the bar in the first place, I cupped my big head in my hands and rolled my neck back gazing skyward. Why couldn’t I just let him go?
One way or another, I needed to get my big furry butt home, so I scanned the creek and spotted a few rocks farther along down the river bank. If I could step from one to the other, I might be able to leap the last bit of distance. That way, I could stay dry.
I was a complete basket case. Certifiable. There was no other way to view it. Take today, for instance. I’d been minding my own business heading home from work, what little work I had, when I caught his scent around the bar. I knew what he was doing inside there. I knew it, and the thoughts fueled my anger, which threw me into an uncontrolled shift, shredding my clothes in the process. Now, instead of being able to walk home along the sidewalks like any normal woman, I had to cross the creek as a bumbling idiot bear, hoping I could maintain enough balance to keep myself from falling in the creek and getting soaked.
I held my arms out to the side and snorted out a rough breath. I stuck my bucketed foot out and grunted. That wouldn’t do. I stuck my other foot out and stepped on the rock. Gingerly putting my weight on it, I wanted to roar a cheer. I wasn’t going to get wet!
Luck disagreed. My weight pushed the rock into the mud and the motion startled me. I lunged forward, trying to catch myself on the next rock, but the slipperiness of the water along the moss-covered rock sent me sliding into the cold creek. Water swallowed my growl as I went under and was swept downstream in the swift moving creek.
I didn’t even know if creek was the right word for the damned thing, anymore. It was so swollen from all the rain that it was more like a river. I came up sputtering, my clawed, furry mitts slapping at the water in frustration. I found my footing and stood up, looking around to make sure no one was watching the shit show that had become my life.
How had I sunk so low? I used to have it together. Now, here I am stalking men, stepping in buckets while stalking men, falling in rivers with a bucket on my foot while stalking men, and trying to make it home as the clumsiest, most awkward bear in existence. Hell, until coming back to Burden, my most embarrassing moment had been the time I interviewed a popular country singer while unknowingly sporting a milk mustache on my upper lip. Once upon a time, I had my shit together.
I waded to the other side and dug my paws into the bank to try to heave my oversized body out of the water. I ended up basically rolling in the mud. I stood up and kicked my leg out to shake the bucket loose. When it didn’t budge, I roared loud enough to empty the nearby trees of any and all wildlife.
I would have shifted back to my human self, but I didn’t want to risk getting caught so far from home naked. That would be slightly worse than roaming around the woods as a frickin’ bear. Slightly.
I shook off as best as I could and lumbered homeward. After a few steps, I stumbled and caught myself on a sapling, taking it down. I plopped on my butt next to the broken thing and snorted at it. I’d killed a growing tree. I considered just staying there, until I looked up and noticed a bee hive in the distance. I groaned even as my bear took over, rolled to its feet and hurried towards it.
As human Ophelia, I knew better than to mess with bees. Bear Ophelia didn’t care that
human Ophelia knew better and was struggling for control. I tried to fight the urge that drove me towards the hive. I was allergic. Not terribly, but enough to swell up painfully and look like a total alien freak show. I had very little practice controlling my bear, though, so she ignored me.
One big paw swipe took the bottom of the hive right off. Honey leaked out and along with it, swarms of bees. They attacked, as I swatted and growled, finally giving up the honey, before dropping to all fours and running back to the creek as fast as my thunderous legs could move. I did a nose dive, and let the cold water sooth the stinging.
My bear grumbled angrily at being deprived of honey as I muttered to myself about the curse of being a bear shifter. I climbed back out when the bees were gone and stomped the rest of the way home. There was some tripping and another roll in the mud, but I finally made it, leaving a dripping trail of muddy water behind me.
Kyle’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, so I shifted back to human right outside of the backdoor and finally shook the bucket off my foot before I let myself in. Kyle never locked his door. No one in Burden, Texas ever did. It was slightly unnerving to me after having lived in a big city for so long.
I resisted the urge to inspect the perimeter to make sure no one had broken in before tracking mud and leaves all the way up to my bedroom. It was the same bedroom I’d had as a girl growing up in good ol’ Burden. From birth to the fragile age of seventeen, I’d made a sanctuary inside these four Pepto-Bismol pink walls.
I slammed the bedroom door behind me and headed to the adjoining bathroom. Climbing into the shower, I scrubbed myself until my skin was raw. Bee stings marred my olive complexion, and I could barely see out of my swollen eyelids by the time I turned the water off.
I avoided the mirror when I got out and dried off. I slipped into underwear and a nightgown that was from my youth. It looked more like a granny nightdress than something a twenty-eight-year-old savvy, independent woman would wear, but I had no one to impress. Ever.
Taking the stairs carefully, I made my way to the kitchen and dug around the medicine drawer until I found Benadryl. I popped three before retreating to the living room to watch an episode of My 600lb Life.
I was asleep before the introduction finished playing. Nightmares of my mate flirting with other women plagued me and I woke up later that night, as a 600lb bear, on top of the severely bent couch frame.
2
Sterling
“Sweetheart, I will rock your world.” I flashed the pretty blonde in front of me one of my signature cocky grins, and once again bit back the growl my bear tried to release. My bear didn’t like this at all. Now that we’d found our mate, his instinct was to frighten away any woman I tried to callously and rudely flirt with. I’d be inclined to do the same if it weren’t for the fact that nameless, faceless women were the only thing that filled the gaping hole in the center of my chest. And only temporarily at that.
“Aren’t you sure of yourself?” Her face scrunched up like she smelled something bad and she took a step back, away from me.
“You’re not gonna walk away from the best thing to ever happen to you, are you?” Inwardly, I cringed. Maybe I’d start to dig a little deeper into my arsenal of cheap pick-up lines.
Her eyes rolled practically to the back of her head and away she went.
I retreated to the table and sat down next to my older brother, Hutch, and our buddies. Three of them were recently mated. Only Sam and I remained single, and once Sam found his mate, it would be me. Alone. I would be the last single bear in our close-knit group of shifters, of that I was sure, because I’d already found my mate. She hated me.
“Ouch, that looked painful, bro.” Sam grinned at me and cupped me on the shoulder. “I’m going to have a go at her.”
I watched him saunter off and tried to keep my face neutral. The impression I was going for was the goofy, slightly moronic, happy-go-lucky younger brother of Hutch. I was keeping up a pretty good act. Still hitting on women, still pretending to leave with them, still acting like a jackass. I was fooling everyone—except Hutch.
Hutch looked up from his beer and shook his head. “What are you doing?”
I chugged my beer and stood up. “Boys, I’ve had my fair share of striking out tonight. I think I’m going to take a dip in the creek and head home.”
Wyatt stood up. “I’ll join you. Maybe, by the time I do that and head home, Georgia will be home.”
Thorn’s eyes were on his mate while she worked the bar. “I think it’s time Allie’s shift ended.”
Hutch finished his beer and grinned. “I think it’s time I fetched Veronica from her meeting. She should be done with her dirty book sharing by now, which means good things for me tonight.”
Wyatt laughed. “Hell, I’ll skip the swimming and just head over with you.”
I forced a grin and fit my baseball cap on my head. “Ya’ll have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Hutch caught my arm and raised his eyebrow. “You okay? We still need to talk.”
I shrugged his hand off and felt the strain in my grin. “I’m good, brother. I’ll be at the shop in the morning. The car needs some adjusting before the race tomorrow night.”
I slipped away and headed out to my truck. I backed out of the lot and revved the engine before speeding off towards home. On the outskirts of town, my house sat near the top of a relatively small mountain, overlooking the creek that ran through town.
It was a dark, starless night, and all I could see were shadows as I stripped out of my clothes and left them in a pile on my back porch. No matter, I knew the land like the back of my hand. I shifted and ran down the hill splashing into the full, cold water. I dunked my head and came up with a big splash. My mind strayed, as it usually did, to Ophelia.
Thinking of her seemed to materialize her scent out of thin air. It flooded my senses until my bear growled for her, hungry for more than sweets for a change. I listened, but there was nothing but the sound of the creek running and the crickets singing. I was just haunted by her scent.
I tried to distract myself by catching fish, but nothing worked. Having a mate, and knowing that she was nearby but didn’t want anything to do with me, left me with a bone-deep empty ache that pervaded every aspect of my life. It was worse than any pain I could imagined. A year earlier, I would’ve sworn that finding a mate would be fantastic. Settling down, having someone to wake up to, maybe little cubbies running around. I was wrong. Turns out that for me it meant one more person to disappoint. Hah! Not even to disappoint. I wasn’t even being given the chance to disappoint. What I’d give to have her care enough to find me disappointing.
Surrounded day in and day out by my closest friends, as I watched them settling down, one by one, felt like the turning of a knife in my heart. My chest ached whenever I saw them with their mates, and I hated the jealousy I felt. I wanted to be happy for them. They deserved their happy endings. Yet, jealousy ate me alive.
The thought of spending the rest of my life carrying around this ache was a very real and constant fear. I’d spent more than a few nights staring at my ceiling, consumed with anxiety-driven insomnia as I contemplated how I wanted to shower Ophelia with compliments, with kindness, with gifts, with love. But, I didn’t even know how to begin. It was all so fucked up. I’d messed up so badly without even trying.
My carefree, youthful, okay—slime ball ways had caught up with me big time. I didn’t think of them as slimy until I started seeing myself through Ophelia’s eyes. I still put on a show for the sake of hiding my pain, but the thought of bringing a woman home who wasn’t her made my skin crawl.
I climbed out of the creek and flopped over onto the bank. I hadn’t meant to make such a mess of things. I didn’t even know I had a mate when I’d fucked up. The kicker was, at the time, I hadn’t considered myself doing anything wrong. Sure, it was a dick move, but Kyle Barns was truly an asshole. Fuck, I’d considered myself doing the whole town a favor by hitting him below the belt
.
Sleeping with his fiancée, uh, ex-fiancée, a few days before their wedding was to have taken place had completely blown up in my face. Kyle was the only family Ophelia had left, and the two of them were tight. Even though he was a giant dick stain, she loved him and I’d managed to humiliate him in front of all of Burden. Who knew his little sister was my mate? Before I’d even found out Ophelia was the one for me, I’d managed to not only alienate her, but also convince her that I was the lowest bear in the entire lone star state.
Tossing a furry arm over my eyes, I groaned. Even as a bear, the sound was clearly a pained one. I needed her to be happy. I wanted her more than anything. I wanted to make her happy, but I’d fucked it all up. By being me.
3
Ophelia
The Burden Gazette was a two-page paper that could barely scrape together stories enough to fill front and back of its pages. In a town the size of Burden, a reporter had a hard time fabricating enough news to warrant a paper, but one of the old-timers insisted on keeping it going, and for that, I was thankful.
It wasn’t the exciting journalism career track I’d been on in Nashville, and it certainly wasn’t anything worthy of adding to my resume, but it was a job. Karen, an old hippie throw-back of a woman, the one who had insisted on keeping the newspaper alive, hired me straight away after I’d wandered into the tiny office to talk to her. She’d been doing all the research and writing herself and she was relieved to be offered a break.
I was paid a penny a word, and on a good week, I’d make up to a hundred and fifty dollars. Normally, though, I made closer to a hundred. It was a mere fraction of what I had made in Nashville, but, again, it was a job.
Bears of Burden Complete Series Box Set Page 30