12
“Finally,” Elizabeth groaned, when the car pulled to a halt in Ambrose’s driveway. It was after one in the afternoon, and it felt like it was after six. She shoved the passenger door open and practically tumbled out, slumping back against the side of the car once the door was closed again. “This has been the longest day in history,” she declared. “There will never be a longer day than this.”
Ambrose snorted as he climbed out of the car, slamming the door closed with a bang. “Ordinarily, I would say something witty, but in this case, you’re probably right,” he acknowledged dryly. “There will never be a longer day.”
“Besides, you aren’t witty,” Mara informed him as she slid out of the car, only to then immediately declare, “Well, time for me to head home!” before he could try to get any sort of revenge for the comment. A moment later, there was a pile of clothing on the ground beside the car and a very large dog loping into the trees.
Ambrose scowled after her as Elizabeth tried and failed not to laugh behind one hand.
“I mean,” Yusuke mused after a moment, “she’s not wrong.”
Ambrose rounded on him, and with a whoop of laughter, Yusuke turned and bolted. He shifted to his cat form mid-stride, leaving his clothes splayed across the ground as he sprinted away for all he was worth.
“Your friends are weird,” Elizabeth informed Ambrose pleasantly after a moment, finally pushing herself away from the car.
“And to think, you voluntarily let them be your friends too,” Ambrose replied, feigning a mournful tone. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
“Whatever it is, it’s probably your fault,” Elizabeth informed him blandly as she started picking up the clothing scattered across the ground. Considering Mara seemed to have a ready supply of clothing at Ambrose’s house, Elizabeth was going to assume such rapid departures happened frequently.
With an armload of clothes, she headed for the front door, Ambrose’s footsteps trailing after her. He made a slightly affronted noise when she simply dropped the clothing in a pile on the floor just beside the door, but he made no efforts to pick them up himself, she noted. She didn’t feel particularly inclined to point it out just then, though. Mostly, she wanted a nap, and as his footsteps continued to follow her up the steps and into his bedroom, she was willing to guess that he felt the same way. No surprise, she supposed. He had gotten less sleep than any of them.
Elizabeth kicked her shoes off and shoved them towards the wall with her toes, pushing them out of the way. Other than that, she didn’t bother undressing or changing her clothes. She wasn’t so prissy that she would balk at taking a nap in her clothes for an afternoon. The blinds were halfway closed, and she padded over to the nearest window to open them, and the rest of the windows followed shortly after that. Having spent a few hours locked in a pitch-black closet, she was keen on inviting in as much light as she feasibly could.
When she finished with the windows, Ambrose was sitting on the bed, pulling his shoes off and tossing them aside to land a few inches away from Elizabeth’s. She made her way over, sitting down beside him and leaning against his shoulder. She couldn’t help but to laugh when he looped an arm around her and tipped backwards, sprawling back onto the bed and dragging her down with him.
It took a bit of rearranging, but soon enough, they were both comfortable, and Elizabeth took a moment to appreciate how amazing a blanket and a pillow could be.
Ambrose was out like a light almost the instant his head hit the pillow, and Elizabeth couldn’t blame him. He had been awake since the previous morning, and he had been in a fight. She was pretty sure that she would have fallen asleep behind the steering wheel if she had been in his shoes.
She curled up next to him, her head resting on one of his arms, and her thoughts meandered for a little while. She was tired still, but her head was too busy, as if it were filled to bursting to buzzing bees.
She picked the safest topic to focus on.
She was safe. The territory dispute had ended ages ago, and the remaining wolf problem was officially gone. She could officially go home. And despite her fondness for Ambrose—it maybe went deeper than just fondness, actually, but she hadn’t felt too inclined to really scrutinize the feeling under a microscope before—she found herself looking forward to it. The fact remained that she loved her house, and she liked having her space where generally welcome but still uninvited guests weren’t popping in at odd hours. So, if she had her place and Ambrose had his, and there was an easy way to get from one to the other, then it sounded like the best of both worlds right there, since she doubted Mara and Yusuke would come to her house completely uninvited.
She would need to mention it to Ambrose later on. Not to get his approval but just to keep him apprised of the situation, since she did want to go back to her own house again regardless of his thoughts on the matter (she wasn’t so enamored of him to just give up on the things she wanted for herself), and she doubted he would try to stop her or talk her out of it anyway.
Her eyelids were beginning to feel heavy by then, and she shifted on the bed, squirming closer to Ambrose’s side until she was comfortable.
When she fell asleep, she was warm, and she felt safe; it was the best sleep she had managed to have since the very first night she spotted Maxwell outside her bathroom window. Her dreams were gentle and quiet and peaceful, and it was hours before she woke up again.
*
They hadn’t exactly discussed it beforehand, but Elizabeth was fairly sure that when she and Ambrose had lain down, they had both just been planning on a bit of a nap, just something to take the edge off of the exhaustion until they could fall back to sleep at a normal time that night, without any worries of throwing their sleep cycles off. But Elizabeth supposed that at least one of them should have set an alarm if they actually wanted to stick to that plan.
When she woke up, the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of dusty purple and silver. The very first stars were beginning to appear, still more like off white pinpricks against the twilight sky.
Ambrose was still asleep behind her, his arm thrown over her middle and keeping her firmly stuck in place. She squirmed halfheartedly for a moment before she decided that the effort she would need to expend to escape wouldn’t be worth it, and instead she stretched an arm out until she could reach her phone on the side table. She couldn’t just go back to sleep or else she knew she wouldn’t get any sleep that night, and then she would just have to deal with the same exhaustion tomorrow, but she also had no plans on just staring at the wall until Ambrose eventually woke up.
Her phone lit up, casting overly bright, white light across her face, and she set about browsing once she was done squinting at the rectangle of light. She had more than a few text messages to get to, and there were a few blogs she had been meaning to catch up on. She had nothing but spare time just then.
It was nearly a half an hour later before Ambrose woke up, and it happened in stages as he began shifting, until finally he drew in a deep breath and pulled his arm away from where it still rested over Elizabeth’s middle.
Voice groggy, he offered, “Good—what time is it?”
“It’s a bit late to say, ‘good morning.’ We should probably contemplate eating dinner,” Elizabeth replied, setting her phone down. “And the odds of us sleeping tonight are probably already fucked, but if we want any chance of it, we should probably get up.”
“Pass,” he decided after a moment, before he pressed a kiss against the back of her neck.
“What, are we just going to stay in bed all evening?” she wondered wryly, turning over to face him. “You know—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish her statement, as Ambrose pressed his lips to hers, silencing her quickly. “It doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” he said afterwards. “I mean, there are probably worse ways to spend an evening.”
She rolled her eyes, but her tone was fond as she informed him, “You’re incorrigible.”
He didn’t seem even the least bit perturbed by the observation; instead, he simply kissed her again, his hand curling around her hip, fingers slipping under the edge of her shirt in an absentminded manner. As the kiss deepened, his thumb began tracing idle circles against her skin. Soon enough, Elizabeth scooted closer, sitting up just enough to drape herself over his chest without breaking the kiss as it gradually shifted from languid to heated, until their tongues were tangling with each other.
Ambrose drew her as close as he could as the kiss stretched on, until it seemed that it was inevitable and undeniable where the evening was going to go next.
Elizabeth began discarding her clothing first, breaking the kiss and sitting up from where she was draped over Ambrose’s chest. She crossed her arms over her front, wrapped her fingers around the hem of the shirt, and pulled it over her head. It snagged on her hair for a moment, reminding her that she hadn’t been able to brush it in a while, but she forgot about that all over again once she tossed the shirt aside. Her bra followed it a moment later, and then she finally had to shimmy away from Ambrose just enough to squirm out of her pants and panties, and they landed on the floor in a pile with everything else.
Ambrose simply watched at first, enjoying the show as more and more of her skin was revealed. Once she was naked, though, she settled cross-legged on the bed and leaned forward, hunching with her arms folded over her legs, effectively blocking most of the view.
“You don’t get to appreciate the goods until you’re naked,” she informed him primly. “I’m feeling very exposed here; that’s rude, and you should never be rude to a lady.”
“You’re so right,” he agreed, feigning an apologetic tone. He shifted to the side to get to his feet; then, he reached over his shoulders, caught the back of his shirt, and tugged it over his head. It landed on the carpet at his feet, and his hands traveled to the fly of his pants next, popping the button and tugging the zipper down. He shoved his pants and his boxers down his thighs to his knees, where he let them simply fall to his feet. He stepped out of them and kicked them aside, and turned a slow, contemplative look on Elizabeth.
She had about half a second to realize he was plotting something and begin scrambling backward on the mattress before he lunged. She squealed in feigned terror as he pinned her to the bed, sprawling flat on her back as he loomed over her. He captured her hands, one large hand managing to hold both of her wrists, so he could pin them to the bed above her head.
She grinned up at him, toothy and daring. “Something in mind?” she wondered, trying for a tone that sounded innocent, though she missed it by a long shot.
“I might be thinking of something,” he mused in return, and while it wasn’t a complete success, his attempt at sounding coy was at least better than her attempt at innocence. Not that it lasted for very long, as he shifted, stretching her arms farther above her as he bracketed her legs in with his legs, one knee planted on either side of her thighs. He was tall enough to easily stretch over her, and that knowledge always gave Elizabeth a tiny thrill every time she had a reason to think about it. She spread her legs slightly wider in invitation, until her thighs were pressed up against his knees.
“Looks like you’re pretty eager,” he observed with a wry grin before he leaned down for a kiss. He grinned against her mouth when she lifted her head to meet him as close to halfway as she could get, and her fingers wiggled as her wrists strained against his hold to no avail. Even if she had actually wanted to, she wasn’t getting out of his hold. Luckily for her and for him, she had no plans of actually trying to escape, and at that moment, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.
Holding firm to her wrists still, he began trailing lower, pressing kisses along her jaw and neck as he went. He paused once he got to one of her collarbones, and Elizabeth gasped as he bit her. Not enough to draw blood or even to truly hurt, but enough that she would definitely have a mark to remember it by the next morning. She couldn’t say she objected, though, and she rolled her hips slightly to encourage him onwards.
It was only when he couldn’t get any lower without letting go of her wrists that he stopped, sitting back up and taking a moment to simply look at her, as if he was appreciating a masterpiece. His other hand traced absentminded patterns along the side of her ribs, as if he wasn’t fully aware he was doing it but couldn’t bear to stop touching her regardless.
She was getting ready to tell him to get a move on—it might have ruined the moment, but her patience could only be expected to hold out for so long—when he finally began to move again.
He was still holding her wrists, and with his other hand, he got as sturdy of a grip around one of her hips as he could manage, so he could begin rearranging her on the bed, tugging her towards the headboard until her knuckles were brushing against the bars of it. She got his point fairly quickly after that, curling her fingers around two of the bars and then keeping her hands there once he released her wrists.
His hand trailed down one of her forearms, her upper arm, her shoulder, and then along one of her collarbones until it reached the middle of her chest. He traced a line between her breasts with one fingertip, feather light and slow. As she squirmed beneath him, he seemed almost gratified, his smile growing broader and broader as his hand slid further down her body.
She knew where she wanted it to go, and she was even pretty sure it would eventually find its way there. ‘Eventually’ was the keyword there, though, as she had no idea how long it might take him for his hand to make its way to where she very much wanted it to be.
“I feel like you’re getting a bit impatient,” he observed eventually, grinning down at her as he said it. His hand paused on her abdomen, just shy of her belly button. “Is there something wrong?” No doubt, he could feign innocent concern with the best of them.
Elizabeth hitched her hips up off of the bed, so she could press her abs more firmly against his fingers. It worked for only a fraction of a second, though, until he lifted his hand until just the pads of his fingers were once again pressed against her, as delicately as he could manage. With a pout, Elizabeth slumped back down on the bed, limp save for the way her fingers curled around the rungs of the headboard.
He traced his fingers in circles over her skin, trailing them in complex designs across her stomach, waist, and hips, until it felt like she was going to scream if he didn’t actually start touching her, and it left every inch of her skin that he brushed over feeling as if she had licked battery.
She wasn’t going to just ask him, though. He wanted her to do that—she was pretty sure he wanted her to beg, actually—and really, where was the fun in just giving him what he wanted? She couldn’t do that; it would be inconceivable, or at least it would be in that specific moment, and she would most likely change her mind on the matter as soon as the moment passed.
Just then, though, asking wasn’t an option. She could be patient, after all. She could wait it out until he finally decided to simply get it over with and truly touch her. She knew it was inevitable, considering how intoxicated he seemed to get at just the idea of touching her in the past.
Her hips lifted every so often, both to flaunt herself and to try to press closer to his feather-light touch, and she would give her hips a delicate little wiggle before letting them settle back down on the bed once again. She swore she could practically see his patience beginning to fray. Even if she was the one who needed to wait, she was still going to be the one to win.
Granted, thoughts of winning quickly vanished the moment his fingers finally touched her sex, though it was just the lightest graze along the outside of the lips as he dragged his fingertips from one end to the other and then back again. When he allowed his fingers to brush over her clit, it was just the faintest amount of pressure, and even that had her feeling as if she might burst into flames after how long he had teased her. Her grip on the rungs of the headboard tightened, until her knuckles began to tingle, and she could feel her nails digging into the palms of her hands.
She sighed out a breath that was more of a moan as he continued his gentle teasing, and Ambrose’s response was a rumble of laughter. “Just remember to keep your hands there,” he informed her, as if she hadn’t already figured that out, though she didn’t even have time to roll her eyes before he pressed two fingers to her entrance—already warm and nearly dripping after such a prolonged tease—and let them slide in. Her back arched, she moaned, and her grip around the headboard rungs flexed. Her thighs twitched as if to close, to pull his hand closer, but she overcame the urge and kept her knees spread well apart.
After that, he wasted no time with teasing or delicate brushes of fingertips against her skin, and once he began thrusting his fingers, he didn’t stop. He crooked his fingers at just the right angle, so each rapid thrust and each turn of his hand felt as if she was being struck by lightning in the best way. It seemed as if no time passed at all before she was coming, every muscle going taut and her grip around the headboard rungs tightening until she swore she might break them. When she moaned, it was no louder than usual, but it was long, as if it would never end.
Ambrose kept thrusting his fingers, not slowing at all, working her through her orgasm and then past it, until one orgasm seemed to blend seamlessly into a second. She was trembling as he coaxed her through the second, and his movements finally slowed, until each thrust was almost gentle as he urged her towards a third without a sign of stopping. Elizabeth was reduced to wordless sighing at that point, her voice almost entirely robbed of her.
She shook and whimpered as a third orgasm swept over her, and still he kept thrusting his fingers into her, until she was so nearly at the edge of another orgasm. He stopped before she could get too close, though, and finally he pulled his fingers away. He wiped them hastily on the blanket before he cupped his fingers behind her knees, lifting her legs and pushing them towards her chest, practically bending her in half and baring her still dripping sex to him completely as he shuffled closer to her on his knees. Her chest still heaved as she caught her breath, lungs rapidly expanding and contracting, though it seemed to all be for naught as the head of Ambrose’s erection—dark, heavy, and leaking at the tip, and she couldn’t imagine how long he had been hard at that point—prodded at her entrance for a moment before it slipped in.
Elizabeth gasped, her head lolling back to one side. It seemed as if all of her muscles had been replaced with putty at that point, and all she could do was gasp and whimper and cling to the headboard with shaking fingers as Ambrose took a few slow, experimental thrusts before he rapidly began to build up speed, until he was pounding into her, each thrust jarring her towards the headboard and seeming to come faster than the one before it.
She had already been so close when he began to fuck her in earnest, and after three orgasms, her stamina was nearly nonexistent. It was no surprise when her next orgasm came after what seemed to be only a few moments, sending a delicious shudder down her spine. Ambrose groaned quietly as she tightened around him, shivering with overstimulation afterwards as she gradually went limp, until even her grip on the headboard relaxed.
If Ambrose even noticed, he made no mention of it, and he simply picked up his pace, pressing her knees closer to her chest so he could get better leverage. It wasn’t until his own orgasm was nearly upon him that he really began to make noise, huffing out quiet, panting groans with each thrust. His rhythm began to falter slowly, until with a few last, stuttering thrusts, he came, his hips coming to rest against the backs of Elizabeth’s thighs, his cock buried deep within her.
For a short time, neither of them moved, and the room was nearly silent, save for the sounds of breathing.
They stayed tangled together for a long moment, until finally Ambrose rolled aside, his cock slipping out of her as he did. Elizabeth gradually let go of the headboard, fingers aching, and her posture loosened as she sprawled on her back beside him, one arm flopping over his chest.
“Comfortable?” he wondered dryly.
“Very,” she returned, sliding him a lazy, half-lidded glance. “I might never get up again.”
“You’re going to have to pee eventually,” he reminded her, doing his best to sound like he was simply being practical. “Or eat eventually. One or the other.”
“You’re ruining the moment,” she stated simply, “but I guess you’re right. I’m hungry.” With that decided, she rolled to the side until she could sling her legs over the side of the bed and sit up. “You should make me dinner. Be a gentleman.”
“Do I get to put my clothes back on, or should I just go cook like this?” he asked as he rolled towards his edge of the bed, already reaching down to grope around for his shirt.
“That sounds uncomfortable,” she mused, “so I guess you can put some clothes on. I’m sure I’ll be able to live with the disappointment.”
Their conversation continued along a similar vein all the way down the stairs, wheedling and poking and needling at each other the entire way. It was comfortable. It was almost hard for Elizabeth to believe that she had been kidnapped and watched someone die the day before.
Despite everything that had happened, the evening felt almost…normal. Maybe that was strange, given the circumstances, but Elizabeth wasn’t going to object.
It was a good evening, all things considered, even if they didn’t manage to fall back to sleep until nearly two in the morning.
*
Elizabeth stared up at her house through the car window. It felt like she had been gone for months, rather than just a couple weeks. She was supposed to wait in the car until Yusuke finished scouting the place out, but she knew it was safe, and she shoved the car door open and climbed out. She pulled her bag out of the backseat and slammed the door closed, and she stepped over the pile of Yusuke’s clothes on the driveway as she headed towards the porch. She left her bag at the top of the steps before she stepped back down into the yard, where she plopped down onto the ground and tipped over backwards so she could sprawl on her back in the grass, her arms spread out to either side.
She watched the clouds pass overhead, not even bothering to move when she heard paws heading her way. She only acknowledged Yusuke when he looked right down at her, blocking out her view of the sky with his head. His whiskers twitched, and his ears folded back against his head in irritation as the end of his tail twitched.
“I know, I know,” Elizabeth sighed, forcing him to back up a few steps as she sat up. “I was supposed to wait in the car. But it seemed silly, considering we already know the problem’s been dealt with.”
Yusuke rolled his eyes, but he seemed to accept her reasoning easily enough, and he turned towards the house, heading towards the porch at a trot. Elizabeth heaved herself back to her feet and jogged after him, grabbing her bag again in passing as she headed for the front door. She rooted her key out of a pocket of her bag, and a moment later, the door was swinging open as Elizabeth turned the knob.
She stepped inside carefully, and while she was vaguely aware of Yusuke following her in, she paid him no attention.
There was a light coat of dust on everything and the house smelled sort of stale, but she still felt the same as she always did when she walked through the doors. It felt like she was home.
Yusuke left soon enough, leaving Elizabeth to get reacquainted with her house once it was apparent that there was nothing lurking in the darkness or ready to jump out of the corners. It was sort of surreal, in a sense. She had sort of come to think of her stay at Ambrose’s house as…not necessarily a vacation, but something that occupied a rather vacation-shaped space. And so it felt sort of surreal to walk into her house and see everything in as much of a state of disarray as it had been when she left: plates in the sink, mail and newspapers on the table, a laundry basket sitting on the kitchen counter. Had she truly been on vacation, she would have tidied everything up before she left.
She made her way through the house slowly, picking things up and putting them away as she went, until the surfaces were clear enough for her to make a second lap to dust everything off and then a third lap to sweep. She saved the kitchen for last, not looking forward to dealing with dishes that had been sitting in their own filth for days on end.
Soon enough, though, she threw open her windows to let the stale air out, and it felt like her house again. She took a deep breath and let it out, and she meandered from room to room once again just to make sure that everything was as she remembered it and nothing was missing or in the wrong place.
Finally, Elizabeth headed to her bedroom to take a shower and put on some more comfortable clothes. She couldn’t quite keep herself from peering out of the bathroom window as if she was going to see something she wasn’t supposed to, though. The yard was empty, though, and she dragged her gaze away soon enough and headed back into her room.
She sat down on the edge of her bed, the bedding still just as disheveled as when she last left. She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and stared down at it for a moment, before she opened up her contact list and scrolled to Ambrose’s number. A few taps of her finger later, and she started typing out a text message.
Hey. I know I only just left, but do you want to come over tonight? The woods are clear, and the weather seems like it will stay pretty mild if you don’t want to drive.
It took only a moment before a return text arrived, her phone buzzing in her hand.
Sure thing. You owe me a tour, anyway.
But I think I’m going to drive tonight, to at least make sure I’ve got a change of clothes there for when I do just waltz through the woods to come over.
Elizabeth smiled quietly down at her phone and mused to herself that everything had worked out so much better than she had ever expected it to, considering all of the trouble she had found herself in. Her life wouldn’t even look the way it did at that point without the trouble she had stumbled into, even if she had no plans on giving Maxwell any credit for any of it.
She started typing.
Sounds like a plan.
I can’t wait to see you.
* *
Hey sexy. Thanks for reading, you are the best!
This book is from the “Bears With Money” series and all the other available books are listed below.
BOOK 4 – THE BEARS TRIPLETS
BOOK 5 – HER HERO WAS A BEAR..
Go grab a bear with money right now and collect them all!
You are a star!
Amy x