CHAPTER NINETEEN

After returning to the motel—Soren’s room, for once—Marcella put in a records request to Drea, knowing the Shrew & Company admin probably wouldn’t field the message until morning. That gave her and Soren time to brainstorm a strategy of attack, and Marcella needed to clear her head.

The call at dinner had knocked her off kilter, and she still wasn’t entirely certain how, or if, she’d handle the request. It wasn’t everyday people received calls from Romanian Bear lords asking them to intervene on their behalf because their son was being unreasonable.

Marcella had thought that the Ursus had been the unreasonable ones, but she was becoming less sure.

“I don’t know if this’ll work on the breed of Bears around here, but Peter and I always make sure Tamara has one on hand whenever she’s doing work in woods.” Soren gave her a heavy device that looked like a capped electric razor.

Marcella took off the cap. The device definitely wasn’t a razor. Rather than blade guards at the tip, there were two metal prongs. “A taser?”

He grunted. “Bear strength. You need a lot more volts to put down a made-Bear, but at the very least, they’ll slow down a charging beast.”

She worked her thumb over the switch and twisted her lips. “Would this work on you?”

He made a tutting sound. “Not one of my kinks.”

“Spoilsport.” She put the weapon prongs-down into the pouch at the side of her bag. She didn’t think she’d need it, but she’d never say no to the chance add a unique weapon to her arsenal.

“If you don’t like being electrocuted, what do you like?”

Chuckling, he kneeled in front of his open laptop bag and rooted inside. “Wouldn’t you like to discover that on your own through trial and error?”

Hmm.

She could admit that experimentation held a certain appeal. “I’d still like some hints. There’s an endless list of things you can do to a person that fall askew of mainstream.”

“Perhaps you should print off the most comprehensive list you can find and start working your way down the items.” He pulled a gun out of his bag and opened the ammo chamber.

“Seriously? I can never quite tell when you’re joking.”

“I wouldn’t joke about such a thing.”

Curious, she opened a search engine window on her phone and did a low-level search for kink. Like any openly sexual woman, she already had a list of preferences. She rarely had much time for experimentation, or a partner she trusted enough to cede some control to, but some acts didn’t need time or trust, just skill.

As she’d been pulling up the list, he’d stood and turned to her, lifting one dark eyebrow.

“You told me to get a list,” she said.

“I meant for later.”

“Later as in when?”

“When we’ve found a place to live and have designated some place within to lock that list away.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. You’ll live with me.”

He was nuts. She’d never lived with a man, and in spite of the connection he insisted they had, she wasn’t jumping feet-first into a cohabitation agreement with a man she’d known only for a few months. And she hadn’t given an iota of thought to where she’d be living next. If Dana hired her, of course Marcella would have to find an apartment somewhere, but Marcella had figured she’d cross that bridge when she got to it. She didn’t want to jinx herself.

She scrolled down the list, looking for anything that would catch her eye. They may not have had much time, but she could trust him, and touching him wouldn’t hurt her. Her world of possibilities had opened up significantly.

Something did catch her eye.

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she glanced up at him, and then back down to the screen. “Question.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“Going to ask anyway.”

Grunting, he sat on the corner of the bed and gave her a go ahead nod.

“Do you feel pain on the same level as humans?”

“I have no way of knowing the answer to that. I’ve always been a Bear.”

“But you haven’t always been able to shapeshift, correct?” She let the screen go dark and set the phone on the nightstand. “When you were a child, you were more or less the same as humans?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, when puberty arrived, and my body began to change, some basic biological evolutions made transformation possible, but I don’t know if what I was as a boy was so different from what I became. I can’t say I know what normal feels like.”

“Did you cry when you got hurt?”

“Hmm. I don’t remember.”

“So that means no. You’d remember there being pain. Every child has a memory or two of tripping on concrete and tearing up their knees and palms, or of falling from some piece of playground equipment and bruising or breaking something. You never did?”

“I fell plenty.”

“But you don’t remember pain?”

“The only pain I have a keen memory of is pain inflicted on me by other Bears. Trust me, if Peter were to punch me—it’d hurt.”

“Hmm.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I’m curious, is all. If I took a cane to your ass and thighs, would you form welts or instantly heal?”

His eyes narrowed, and lips flattened.

She twirled her hair. “Well, which?”

He chuckled. “I wouldn’t instantly heal. I’d be pretty bruised for a few minutes at least.”

“But the strikes wouldn’t hurt?”

“They’d probably sting a little.”

“Probably? You mean no woman has ever managed to wound you?”

“No one’s ever wanted to try.” He chuckled and crawled onto the bed, stalking her on all fours more like a wolf than a bear. “What’s it say about you that you want to try?”

There was nowhere for her to go, but onto her back. He loomed over her, caging her body in place with his hands and knees at her sides.

She swallowed and dragged her tongue across her lips, staring at his. “I wouldn’t read too much into the situation.”

“Oh yeah? Hard not to, because you smell like the idea turns you on. You’re wet right now, aren’t you? If I slid my hand into your pants, your pussy would be dripping and greedily gripping my fingers.”

She really hated his nose sometimes.

“You want to hurt me?” He dipped his head, putting his face a few scant inches from hers.

“I don’t know.”

“You know.” He leaned down farther, and dragged his hot mouth down the back of her ear, darting his tongue behind the catch of her earring. “You can’t dominate me physically without being given some advantages, and I think you’d use every one you could if only to make me beg.”

He slid his hand down her belly and inched it closer to her crotch.

“You’d strike me and leave bruises for your own pleasure, and not only that, would mock and tease if that got me hard, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t think you need much to get hard.”

“And I don’t believe you need much to get wet.” He could have learned for sure if there wasn’t a layer of denim and microfiber between his hand and her core as he rubbed her, but she didn’t want him to know that for sure. She didn’t want him to know that he was reading her like a book.

“You couldn’t dominate me, pet, because you give away all your secrets. I know what you need before you move a muscle or say a word.” He rubbed harder, homing in on her clit through her jeans and making enthusiastic circles. “But if striking me would turn you on, I would let you. You could bruise whatever you wanted to as long as you let me lick your thighs clean of your cream.”

Lord, the mouth on him.

Squirming beneath his hand, her eyes rolled back into her head and she tried to stave off the orgasm that was barreling toward her like a train on a greased track.

“Do you ever wear skirts?” he asked, dragging his fingertips up and down her slit while increasing the friction against her bud. “Skirts with no panties? Get a fix with little hassle whenever you want one. I could inch your skirt up in the back and bend you over or push you against a wall. Stairwell sex is fun. There are echoes.”

“You know that from experience, I’m sure.”

He tutted and pulled his hand away, and the orgasm that had been working up, thankfully and unfortunately, ebbed. “We won’t discuss our experiences.” He backed off the bed.

She sat up in a hurry. “Where are you going?”

“Miss me already?”

“No,” she lied. “I can’t believe you’d get me all hot and bothered and then abandon me.”

“Who said I was?” He gripped the bottom of his shirt and yanked it over his head in one smooth, practiced tug.

Her mouth went dry. He made a pretty picture. The muscles of his chest and arms. The dark hair that dusted his chest and down his belly, into his pants. She’d never seen a more virile archetype.

He tugged his belt buckle open, smirking. “Do I have to do all the work, or are you going to undress?”

She could only blink as he let his zipper down and revealed the tip of a prominent bulge behind the flap of his boxer shorts. There was dark spot spreading in the fabric, originating from the head of his cock.

He obviously didn’t intend to draw out the striptease. He dropped the underwear along with the jeans, and his cock sprang up against his belly like a soldier at the ready.

Long, thick, ruddy.

His fingers tightened around the end and nudged back the foreskin, making a pearl of pre-cum bead at the slit.

“My ears are excellent,” he said with a chuckle, “and they tell me you’re not breathing.” He grinned and kicked the jeans at his ankles to the side. “Breathe, pet. I’d prefer to see your skin brown and not the blue of suffocation.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding and quickly drew in a deep one.

“You have to admit that it’s a pretty good cock to get to keep if it’s going to be the only one you’ll ever get again.”

“You’re presumptuous.” Her voice carried the most pitiful whimper of outrage that had ever come out of her.

“Not presumptuous.” He grabbed his wallet from the floor and pulled a short strip of condoms from inside. “Factual. Bears don’t share.”

He strutted around the room, turning on lamps and turning off the overhead light, and she sat in the same frozen stupor, staring at him.

That’s mine?

“If I have to take your clothes off for you, you might lose a few buttons,” he said, crawling onto the end of the bed. “I don’t know what you’ve got left in your bag as far as clothing goes, but most of the Shrews would complain about having a good pair of pants ripped.” He shrugged. “Then again, you’ll likely not be able to get another day’s wear out of those without washing them, anyway, but I could be wrong. To me, you smell like a creature in heat, but I don’t know how you’d smell to humans. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.” He shrugged and crawled closer, his cock pointing at her like a compass needle and she was true north. “But maybe you don’t want to take chances. Beasts like me are attracted to fertile creatures, and if they’re unattached, they may do reckless things to get close to you.”

He tucked his fingers beneath her waistband and yanked her down from the headboard.

“They wouldn’t stand a chance against me, of course. A man should never approach an alpha’s mate. The move would not only be reckless, but stupid.”

His fingers passed over his button. She eagerly anticipated hearing the pop of her zipper as he tore it asunder and the rip of her pants as he forcefully yanked them off her, but logic floated. The rest of her clothes were in another room, and she was too damned old to be doing the walk of shame in a towel.

“Let me,” she said in a strained whisper. She willed her fingers to move more nimbly so that Soren didn’t get as impatient as she was starting to become.

Somehow, she got the pants off along with her soaked panties before he could do anything else to assist, but he was less accommodating with her shirt. He was tugging that off before she’d finished tossing her bottoms onto the floor. He disoriented her as the fabric covered her face, and stayed there for too long.

She reached for it but froze her hands upon hearing the cluck of Soren’s tongue. He pushed her head down and fisted the slack at the side, tightening the cloth around her. His other hand yanked down the cups of her bra.

“You’re fucking beautiful. Every part of you.”

She was thrilled that the shirt covered the flaming of her cheeks so he wouldn’t know how out of sorts she was. She was fresh out of rejoinders, and really, she didn’t want to refuse the incendiary thing he was offering. She wanted it the way she wanted cool water to drink on a hot day.

His mouth latched over her breast, sucking the nipple into a stiff, taut peak. He repeated his attention on the other one, and then pulled away, leaving the wet buds exposed to the air, throbbing and shamefully greedy for another caress.

“Just like that,” he murmured.

Then she heard the sound of rustling fabric and a soft thud as clothing hit the floor. He returned to the bed, spread her legs wide, and crawled up between them.

She heard the crinkle of foil and a grunt. The wet unfurling of latex onto a deliciously stiff appendage. And then his hand was between her legs, rubbing her wetness up and down her slit, fingers probing into her, thumb caressing her clit.

She held her breath, because that way she couldn’t talk. Couldn’t refuse, knowing full well that refusal wasn’t in her best interest. She wanted what he was doing to her, and she didn’t have to be ashamed of that.

“In time, will you ask instead of waiting for me to take?” he asked.

“Ask for you?”

“Who else, pet?” He put his cock into her in one continuous press, and if she weren’t already blind, she would have thought that the lights had gone out in the room. For a moment, there was nothing. Blackness. No sound, no scents, no sights, no feelings—only a quick threat of overwhelming, like the first time she’d lost herself in the water.

Over time, she’d learned to find herself when her body transformed into that liquid state—she developed a kind of consciousness so she could not only be aware but to act.

Apparently, she’d have to do a similar thing when Soren touched her.

“Gods,” she whispered. She grounded herself with the sensation of his hands pressed to her face, his thumbs skating over cheeks. He’d pulled the shirt away.

He wasn’t thrusting so much as stoking her, the tip of him slowly pinioning in and out.

“Is that…is that all I get?” she whimpered, tilting her chin back for his lips’ caress.

“Let me in, and I’ll give you more.”

“So, this is my fault?”

His fangs dragged along the line of her jaw, and breath tufted hotly against her skin in a laugh. “You’re squeezing me as if you think I’ll punish you by taking my cock away.”

“You would, just to spite me.”

“Perhaps some day.” He pushed in farther, pulling a gasp from her and a groan from himself. “But not this day.”

Thank God.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and guided his thrusts, not that he needed any help. His rhythm was fine. His technique was commendable. His size was…obliterating. Already, her eyes were watering from the buildup of pressure low in her body, and she’d hardly had a chance to enjoy him.

She rocked her hips toward him and greedily met his thrusts until he reached down and pressed her hip to the bed, clucking his tongue again.

“B-be still,” he said in a desperate rasp. “Or I’ll be out as fast as I got in.”

“But I don’t want to wait. I want to come.”

“Marcella—”

“Please. I’m giving this to you. The least you can do is not make me beg. My instinct is to flee from intimacy, so make this easy. Maybe next time, I’ll be a better lover. I’ll…give you what you want. Everything you want.”

“I already have what I want,” he said cryptically, but he rolled off her onto his back, pulling her along with him. His hips had never stopped moving during the transition, and he was speeding along, massaging her sheath with a fevered intensity while digging his blunt fingertips into her backside.

“Yes. More of that.” She pressed her face against his neck and breathed him in as she planted her knees beside his hips and rocked back and forth, receiving every desperate stroke with an eager clench.

“We’ll do this pretty…one day. We’ll… Damn.” He lifted her off him for a moment, caught his breath, and then glided her right back down onto his cock with unerring aim. “I’ll be tender and sweet, and—”

“I never said I wanted that.” She reached up and pressed a hand over his mouth. Probably a mistake to try to stifle a Bear, but he was her Bear, and she didn’t think he’d bite her. At least not to leave a lasting mark. She rolled her hips in a figure eight, stretching herself wide with a burn she liked, scrubbing her aching nipples against the hair on his chest in a pleasurable friction that nearly did her in.

“So wet,” he murmured beneath her hand. “Even with the condom, I can tell. Can feel you. Can barely hold on.”

He motioned as if to pull her off him again, but she dug her knees in deep against his hips and held on.

“No.” Not when she was so close. Not when she could feel her heartbeat between her legs and not when every human part of her felt as though she were flickering like Christmas tree lights. That intoxicating build-up, that savage need to claim and mark someone overwhelmed, and so she bit down hard on his shoulder and took what she wanted, what she needed from him. She worked the end of him against that nervous cushion deep inside her and let the panic building up in her touch-starved body build to pleasurable chaos. Fear warred with want in her mind, and trust was the deciding factor.

She trusted him, her stalking Bear who wouldn’t take no for an answer because nature told him that she was meant to tell him yes. He trusted nature. She could, too.

“Yes,” she whispered and nodded conclusively.

“Hmm?”

“Yes,” she repeated. “To this, to…you.”

Her body went slack and boneless as the orgasm rippled through her. The spasms started where she clenched around him and radiated up, down, and out. Like primal energy heating her through—an animal’s energy.

“Fuck.” His thrusts, so rhythmic and rote before, became erratic.

She pulled her hand away from his mouth and covered his lips with her own, parting them in time to taste the breath of his orgasm.

As his shaft pulsed inside her, he ran his hand up and down her back, catching his breath. She was trying to hold on. His body was slick was sweat, and so was hers, but she didn’t want to let go of him. Never before in her life did she want to hold onto someone so much.

But perhaps, no one had truly belonged to her before.