Bears of Burden Complete Series Box Set

by Candace Ayers

  My blood rushed through my body and I was slightly embarrassed by how wet I got from what he was saying. “The hood of your car?”

  His grin was nearly feral as my knees hit the bumper and I was suddenly trapped. “I got the image before the race and I haven’t been able to stop seeing it. I want you, Ophelia. I want you more than you know.”

  “Even if someone is watching?”

  He continued forward until his chest brushed against mine. “Yes. By the time I’m done with you, there’s no doubt that they’ll know that you’re completely mine. Let them watch.”

  Feeling wild and a little kinky, I pushed myself back on the hood, thankful that it didn’t cave in under me, and dragged my hands over my thighs. “You don’t mind them seeing your mate spread out like this? Imagine that I was completely naked and someone stood just on the other side of that window. You’d let them watch as you did wicked things to me?”

  He growled and dragged me back to him. Shoving his hands in my hair, he caught handfuls of it and lifted me so his mouth could ravage mine. Sucking and licking his way into my mouth, he kissed me like a man starving for affection, like he needed it more than he needed air.

  I found the zipper on his suit and dragged it down so I could get to his body. All I wanted to do was touch him and drive him as crazy as he was driving me.

  I shoved it off of his shoulders and dragged his shirt up until I could get my hands on his bare abs. I broke away from his kiss and pushed his shirt up until he got the point and reached behind him to pull it over his head. As soon as his chest was naked, I leaned forward and raked my tongue over one of his flat nipples. Hearing his sharp intake of breath, I gently nipped it with my teeth.

  I slid off the hood and sank to my knees in front of him, my hands going to his pants immediately. “Let John Wayne loose, Sterling. Now.”

  He worked down the suit and then helped me pushed his pants down, too. When just his boxers separated us, he growled and caught my hair again. “Ophelia.”

  I grinned up at him before pushing his boxers down. His hard dick sprang up in front of me and I licked my lips. I’d never enjoyed going down on a guy until Sterling. Something about my mate made it hot as hell and fueled me to try to make it the best blow job he’d ever received.

  “I told you I owed you an apology.” I took him in my hand and stuck my tongue out, gently tapping the head of him on it.

  “Fuck, yes.”

  I licked the underside from top to bottom and then took him into my mouth, sucking firmly. I stroked him with my tongue while I sucked and pumped the inches that I couldn’t get into my mouth. Looking up at him, I moaned as the expression on his face hit me. A mixture of pleasure and pain flooded my core with wet heat when I saw it.

  I pulled out until just the tip was in my mouth and sucked it like a lollipop. Cupping his balls, I squeezed gently before taking him in again, all the way to the back of my throat. I did it a few more times before Sterling’s hands dug into my hair and scalp and pulled me up.

  “Enough.”

  I licked my lips and pouted as he yanked my skirt down. “I wanted to finish you.”

  He grabbed my shirt and yanked it over my head. “I will let you, I promise, some other time. I want to come in you this time.”

  Standing in front of him in a red silky bra and panty set, I cocked a hip out to the side and twirled a strand of my hair. “Want to give them a show?”

  Sterling growled and grabbed my waist. “You’re overdressed for the show, baby.”

  I gasped as he snapped the bra from my body and did the same with my panties. Suddenly naked, I put my hands on my hips and frowned. “Those were new.”

  He tossed them behind him and picked me up. Putting me down on the warm hood on the car, he wedged his body between my thighs. “Don’t care.”

  I leaned up on my elbows and watched as his eyes drank me in. Feeling sassy, I grinned. “Well?”

  26

  Sterling

  Feeling like a man who’d just won the lottery, I dropped to my knees and stared up at her. Her core glistened and called to me, begging to be tasted. I kissed my way up her legs, paying special attention to the spot behind her knees that made her moan. When I got to her inner thighs, she shook under me. I wanted to tease her more and make her wait, but I was too on edge. I licked up her seam and growled as her taste filled my mouth. Sweet and just for me.

  Ophelia cried out and ran her fingers through my hair, tugging my head to where she wanted it.

  I spread her folds with my fingers and found her clit with my mouth. Suctioning my lips around it, my cock jerked as she screamed my name. I pushed a finger into her hot center and curled it, stroking the band of nerves that set her off.

  Her body bucked under me but I kept my mouth on her. Pushing another finger into her, I pumped them in and out of her while my lips and tongue worked her clit.

  With a wild scream, she came around my fingers, squeezing them tight. I licked my tongue up her, tasting her. It drove me mad. My vision narrowed and I had to be in her.

  I pulled her off the hood and flipped her over so her arms and face were pressed against it. I shifted her thighs and slid into her in one hard stroke.

  Her drawn out groan sent me spiraling. I watched as her hands balled into fists and dragged across the hood as I slammed into her. Her ass swayed as I withdrew and thrust back in. I slapped one cheek and then the other, giving into the animalistic need I felt to possess her completely.

  “Sterling! Yes, yes!”

  My dick was being squeezed harder and harder as her body milked it, but I refused to give in to the urge to come. I grabbed her hair and pulled her hair back, making her back arch.

  Ophelia’s body tightened almost painfully around my dick and she called my name, begging me to make her come.

  With her neck so close to me, I lost it. I let go of her hair and slipped my hand between her thighs to rub her clit. My thumb pressed farther into her and the sensation was wild against my dick in her. I felt her start to come and gave in to my bear’s urge to claim her. Leaning forward, I sank my teeth into her neck, marking her as mine for the rest of our lives.

  Ophelia screamed as she came apart in my arms. Her body squeezed the orgasm out of me. My balls tightened and I thrust into her once more before stilling and spilling my seed into her.

  Pleasure threatened to take my legs out from under me and I had to lean us forward so the car would hold us up. We both panted as we slowly came down.

  I pulled out of her and wrapped my arms around her, holding her to my chest. “Fuck, Ophelia.”

  She let me support her and looked up at me with a lazy smile on her pretty face. “Sterling.”

  I pulled my sated body back onto the hood of the car and pulled her up with me. It wasn’t the most comfortable place, but I’d just claimed my mate. We were together.

  “You’re perfect, baby.” I meant it. She was perfect. There were things that we both had to work on, my shit and her brother, but she was perfect. Made just for me.

  Her eyes filled with tears and she buried her head against my chest. “I almost messed this up. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost you.”

  I caught her face and tilted her face up to mine. “It’s nothing you have to worry about. You are mine and I’m yours. Forever. There’s no going back.”

  “I don’t want to go back. I want this. I told Kyle that you’re my mate and that I was going to be with you. I have to figure things out with him, but right now I just want to enjoy you.”

  I didn’t let the thought of her brother dampen my mood. No matter what he thought, I had his sister in my arms. “If there was someone in that house, baby, you’re going to get a reputation.”

  She blushed and lightly slapped my chest. “Shut up.”

  I growled and dragged her on top of me. “I want to be in you again. Everywhere. You make me a caveman. I want to fill you and never stop.”

  She shifted and her wetness rubbed against my
already hardening dick. “I want you to do…that. Everything. I want everything. You make me so crazy, Sterling. Is it always going to be like this?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, little bear. Even when we’re old and gray, I’m still going to be chasing this perfect ass around.”

  She laughed and sat up, baring her perfect breasts to me. Cupping them in her hands, she rocked herself against my dick. “We should stop and talk later.”

  I nodded around a groan. “Sure.”

  “Really. There are things we should talk about.”

  I grabbed her hips and lifted her so I could thrust into her again. “Later. One thing at a time and this is more important right now. We’re putting on a show, remember. We wouldn’t want that guy in the house over there to get bored. Don’t want him telling people we’re lame in the sack.”

  Her eyes widened and moved to the house, but her walls tightened around me as a fresh wave of wetness coated me. My little mate was kinky.

  “Ride me, Ophelia. Show him how much you want me.”

  As her body rocked against mine, taking us both higher and higher, I took a second to look towards the sky and thank the heavens for giving me the sexy bear-woman on top of me.

  We’d figure out everything else later. For that night, we were going to be as wild as she wanted to be and enjoy being mates. It was too good not to.

  The End.

  SAM

  1

  Presley

  My new landlord had evidently been grossly understating when she’d said the little house at the end of the lane was old. I stood outside of my new home, mouth agape, fighting tears. Everything the woman had told me had been a complete exaggeration. The “charming cottage” wasn’t charming at all. It was a run-down, falling apart, older than dirt shack. Furthermore, I doubted very much that, even in its better days, it had ever been a charming cottage. Was it my imagination, or did the whole structure lean to the left? I couldn’t find a trace of the vintage appeal I had hoped for. The “sweet little garden” I’d been promised looked more like a threatening tangle of overgrown jungle. No, my landlord hadn’t been exaggerating, she’d been outright lying.

  The white paint on the clapboard siding was peeling in large flakes, desperate to detach itself from the eyesore. The windows were covered with worn wooden shutters, missing more than half of their slats. The roof was tin, from the looks of it, and had rusted into that signature burnt orange hue that tin seemed to navigate towards over time. The front door that may have once been white was a dingy gray with large vertical cracks that did nothing to convince me of its sturdiness.

  I wasn’t even sure it would be safe to approach the front as I studied the porch. The simple concrete slab had chunks of the edges falling off into the yard below. Two columns of crumbling brick tried with all their might to hold up the sagging porch roof. Not an easy task, to be sure, since each was missing several bricks.

  As I took a couple steps towards the dilapidated structure I was to call home, dry dirt swirled up from the driveway with each footfall.

  Shock was keeping me from venturing too far from my old rusty truck that I’d named Bessie. I peeked around the sides of the house, but saw nothing but the sweet little garden, a.k.a. nasty weed jungle. Wild, thorny brush consumed the area in dark greens and browns. It certainly was not the colorful floral garden I’d been expecting.

  I was terrified to go any farther. I stood staring at my new home, my mind grasping for a solution. I’d already put down all the money I had as a deposit. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the shrewd woman I’d dealt with was going to just hand me my cash back when I asked her for it. There was nothing I could do. I had nowhere else to go.

  Up until a few weeks prior, my home had been Macon’s Edge. The family home was a big, old, sprawling beast of a house that I shared with my parents and five sisters. It’d been overly cozy at times, but I’d liked the comradery I’d shared with my sisters and I’d never known anything different.

  At the age of twenty-seven, I could admit that I was stunted. Macon’s Edge did that to people, though. A small community of around a hundred and fifty people, it sat in the middle of nowhere, between Burden and Dallas, Texas. Most people didn’t even know it existed and that’s how the holier than thou bible thumpers of Macon’s Edge liked it, too.

  My bitterness aside, they were good people, if perhaps misguided. Religious to a fault, they liked to keep to themselves, a close-knit community shunning outsiders whose viewpoints and secular thinking might challenge the preachings of their beloved pastor, my father. I suppose I was born different from the others. Even from an early age, I’d always been one to question things. I tried to be good, to follow the holy path, but as hard as I tried, questions popped up that seemed to challenge the ultra-conservative doctrine embraced by my authoritarian father and his congregation, or flock as they preferred to be called.

  The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back for me, was Kyle Barnes, the man who I thought was everything, my hero, my savior, my prince charming. My prince charming, it turns out, was nothing but a frog.

  It was a total nightmare, the whole sordid mess. Kyle was charming, and handsome, and the first man who made me feel, worthy. I sort of knew that my family, under the strict rule of my father, would never accept Kyle unless he embraced our teachings and joined the flock. The way Kyle made me feel, though, I couldn’t resist him.

  When he asked me to be his wife, I was so swept up in the romantic fantasy, that of course I said yes, hoping and praying that somehow, things would work out and either Kyle or my parents would give just an inch.

  Before that could happen though, my world came crashing down around me. I’d learned that Kyle had been deceiving me, a sinister betrayal that had left me reeling. What’s worse, somehow, while I was suffering from the pain of Kyle’s betrayal, word of our engagement had spread to Macon’s Edge. Who had tattled on me or why, I would never know, but father had been so enraged, that when he confronted me, I thought he might actually send me to an early grave. He had called me horrible names, a whore and a filthy slut, and told me that I was a daughter of Satan, hopelessly and eternally damned.

  I was banished from his God-fearing home, which essentially banished me from all of Macon’s Edge. No one in his flock would take me in after father labeled me a heathen and an apostate.

  So, instead of being surrounded by my sisters and other members of the flock, I was standing alone in front of my new dwelling place, that probably should have been condemned.

  Once again, feelings of shame and inadequacy washed over me. I was very aware that I had no meaningful life experience, that I lacked street smarts, as some would say. I was afraid to walk up to the door and open it. What would I do if the house was uninhabitable? I had no clue how to survive on my own outside of Macon’s Edge. I couldn’t even take care of myself.

  Father’s voice echoed through my head. His words extolling what a worthless failure I was, a vain sinner who would come crawling back on her hands and knees begging forgiveness from those who had the strength, unlike me, to look Satan in the eye and say No. Anger bubbled to life in me. I might be useless, but I didn’t have to remain so.

  I desperately wanted to prove him wrong. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need Macon’s Edge. I could survive without the flock. I’d been trying to release myself from religious bondage for years, anyway. I just hadn’t planned on it being so abruptly, or with nothing but a couple hundred dollars and a bag I’d packed in under five minutes.

  All my life, I’d been taught to swallow down any negative emotion, bury it, but right now, I let anger fuel me. I marched through the dusty yard and up the squeaky stairs. I didn’t stop until I was at the front door, my hand resting shakily on the rusted doorknob. The cracks running through the door looked more severe close-up. I turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

  If the outside was a nightmare, the inside was Freddy Krueger. Even with the streams of sunlight beaming behind me, I couldn’t make mys
elf step inside. Cob webs and musty shadows silently screamed for me to run for my life, and I wasn’t so much of a rebel that I could refuse them.

  I turned and slammed the door shut behind me before racing down the dusty driveway to the haven of my Bessie. When I started her, the old girl rumbled and coughed but she started before catching reverse and jerking backwards.

  Not knowing where to go, I headed back towards town. Even though I had nowhere else, I didn’t think I could brave going into that house alone.

  I tried to hold back the tears, but one escaped, and once one escaped, the rest followed in a torrential cascade that quickly became gut-wrenching sobs. It was so bad. I was so out of control that I had to pull over on the side of the road. Bessie sputtered and shook violently before dying. Flopping my head dramatically down onto the steering wheel, I jumped as the horn blared.

  Scared and feeling more alone than I could ever remember feeling, I let myself bawl. It wasn’t something that father had ever permitted. Ladies were raised to be sweet and supportive. Allowing her emotions to show labeled a woman selfish and sour. No man would accept a selfish, sour woman, nor should he. A woman’s role, according to the pious Reverend Gray, was to complement a man, not satisfy her own selfish desires. At home, I’d sucked it up and swallowed so many lumps in my throat over the years that there was probably a permanent section of my stomach chock full of emotional issues.

  Things were happening so suddenly. Life had been on pause for the first twenty-seven years of my life and suddenly I’d had to go and push the play button. I had a lot to learn about how the world worked outside of Macon’s Edge, the real world. I’d had a crash course over the past weeks. Including finding out my fiancé had been serial cheating on me throughout our courtship and engagement, followed by me foolishly being lured into a one night stand with a stranger.