THE FINAL
There were workers in the house. Not a lot of them, true enough, but there were still people going in and out of the house to take measurements for the broken window and the broken door, to remove the broken installations, and to replace them with a window and a door that were obviously not broken.
(The glazier had stared at the broken window and the door being held closed with a chair in open bemusement, until Harry shrugged helplessly and said, “It was a hell of a party. I don’t actually remember what happened.” Luckily, the glazier seemed to accept it without question, and he carried on doing his job.)
It didn’t take long, but even so, it was enough time for the handful of people to stop and coo over all three infants, multiple times.
The girls didn’t seem to mind. They seemed to enjoy the attention, truth be told, and they regarded the entire house and everyone in it with a sense of wonder. Cheyenne sort of hoped they held onto that sense of wonder for a long time to come. The world was a strange and unusual place, after all, and it would be a pity if any of them lost sight of that as they got older.
Lorraine was gone, of course. In a very permanent way. (Cheyenne didn’t ask what Harry did to get rid of the body. She didn’t want to know. So long as it was gone and there wasn’t going to be any trouble for any of them, she told herself she didn’t care, and she was content with that.) The primary issue was no longer in the picture, and it was only a matter of days before Daphne started packing up her stuff to head back to her apartment. True to his word, Harry had been paying the rent on it the entire time. So, it would need to be dusted and vacuumed, more than likely, but it was still sitting there, waiting for Daphne to walk through the doors again.
“It’s going to be so quiet without you there,” she sulked as Cheyenne helped shove her things into her car.
“You could stay here,” Cheyenne pointed out. “Harry doesn’t care.”
“Ugh,” Daphne groaned emphatically, bonking her head lightly against one car door. “No thanks,” she grumbled. “This third wheel can recognize when she’s not needed somewhere,” she added, pouting good-naturedly as she said it. “Besides, I would probably walk in on you two having sex on the kitchen table or something like that, and then I’d never actually be able to eat in there ever again. So, you know. It’s for the best if I just visit like four times a week.”
“I’ll keep the guest room clean for you,” Cheyenne deadpanned in return, rolling her eyes as she said it.
“Much appreciated,” Daphne assured her primly, as she shoved the last bag into the car and slammed the trunk closed.
Cheyenne offered her a hug goodbye, and Daphne nearly picked her up off of her feet, despite the fact that she had already acknowledged that she would most likely be back multiple times each week. Cheyenne wasn’t going to complain, though.
She stood on the driveway as the car pulled out onto the road, and she waved as it started to trek along the street. She waited until it rounded the turn at the end of the block before she turned and headed back inside to liberate Harry from the three small infants that were probably shrieking for food or more attention than one person could feasibly provide without sprouting an extra set of hands or four.
Harry seemed grateful for her return when she got inside, though only two of the girls had started crying at that point, as Dakota was fast asleep. It seemed to be her favorite activity, and Cheyenne had been concerned at first until the doctor told her it was perfectly normal.
Felicity and Annabelle, however, were both demonstrating that they had very healthy lungs and that Harry did not have enough hands to keep them occupied. They only got marginally quieter when Cheyenne plucked Felicity from his grasp and they both had a fully-grown person all to themselves.
“So, is this level of fussiness a were-critter thing?” Cheyenne asked as she bounced Felicity gently against her shoulder.
Harry snorted and picked up the plush lamb that Annabelle had dropped for the fifth time in as many minutes. “I’m pretty sure it’s just a baby thing,” he answered wryly. “Unless you’re Dakota. But I guess that just makes her the exception that proves the rule.”
Dakota carried on sleeping as if nothing was going on. They were pretty sure a bomb could have gone off just upstairs, and she wouldn’t have even noticed.
*
Cheyenne had turned in her notice for the receptionist job. She had no plans on returning. Even so, she showed up with the girls when she knew the office was generally fairly quiet. Her coworkers had never been the problem with that job, after all. She just hadn’t been the right match for the job itself.
(She could have come back, if she had been so inclined. Her boss would have welcomed her back with open arms after maternity leave. But it wasn’t in the cards, and Cheyenne wasn’t going to try to force the matter just to spare her old boss’s feelings.)
She wasn’t surprised at all by the reaction the girls garnered, as everyone crowded around to coo at them as if they were a trio of puppies or kittens. Or bear cubs, even. Though if that was the case then Cheyenne had yet to see any proof.
(She wasn’t sure when she was supposed to know, definitively, if her girls were actually were-bears or if they were human. Harry hadn’t been particularly helpful when Cheyenne had asked him about how she was supposed to tell, considering he had shrugged and said, “We’ll know when or if they transform for the first time.
There isn’t really any way to tell, other than that.” He didn’t seem especially bothered by the ambiguity, though, so Cheyenne supposed she would let it go. They were her girls, after all, and she loved them whether they were human or otherwise.)
Gregg met them too. Of course, he did; he worked at the office building, and Cheyenne had known he would be working that day. There was still some lingering awkwardness between them both, and on the whole, Cheyenne was pretty sure she wasn’t going to remain friends with any of them, save for perhaps in the fair-weather sense. She couldn’t bring herself to feel especially bad about that, though, and if nothing else, she was satisfied that she was getting a very memorable send-off.
*
There was a very strange noise coming from the nursery. It was mixed in with the much more familiar sound of two of the girls crying, but the third noise was an odd sort of yowling noise, like something was trying to scream but wasn’t quite sure how.
Cheyenne sprinted to the nursery as soon as she heard the sound through the baby monitor, only to practically slide to a halt once she was in the room. She had to stare for a moment.
Annabelle and Dakota still looked just as they usually did, squirming in their cribs and crying as if they were convinced they were going to Hell and they were trying to plead for forgiveness. It was their standard amount of crying, considering even Dakota didn’t really have any sort of middle ground once she started crying.
Felicity, however…was a bear cub, crawling around her crib and squalling, tiny claws tearing up the blanket as Cheyenne approached the crib and leaned over it.
Carefully, Cheyenne picked her up, wary of her teeth and claws. She was just as clumsy as a cub as she was as a human, though, so she wasn’t especially threatening, and her waving paws were easy enough to avoid. The difficult part was trying to figure out how to hold a bear cub. She hadn’t exactly been able to take any classes on it, despite the numerous motherhood classes she had seen advertisements for.
She settled for cradling Felicity to her chest and bouncing her delicately, in much the same way she would hold her while she was shaped like a human.
Soon enough, Felicity began to quiet, and as the yowling noise died down, Annabelle and Dakota gradually dropped off to sleep again.
Once the nursery was silent once again, Cheyenne cooed down at the sleeping cub in her arms, “You transformed and scared yourself, didn’t you? You’re ridiculous.”
She could only imagine how ridiculous life was going to be if it turned out that all three of them were were-bears. She was prepared, though. Or as prepared as she could be.
*
As if they were trying to outdo each other, it was only a few more hours before Dakota transformed as well. Cheyenne had been sitting on the floor playing with all three of them when the wind knocked a tree branch against the window with a clatter, and between one breath and the next, Dakota transformed.
All three of them promptly began crying. Of course, they did. Cheyenne couldn’t even be surprised at that point.
It only took a few moments to calm them that time, and while Dakota didn’t change back for almost a solid hour, she was at least still willing to play while she was shaped like a bear.
*
Cheyenne had to wonder if there was some sort of chain reaction. First Felicity. Then Dakota. And by the time she had the girls in their highchairs and waiting for their afternoon snack, as they all squirmed impatiently, she heard that, by then familiar, squalling noise yet again, and she looked over to see Felicity and Dakota staring at Annabelle, who was very bear-shaped and very vocally unhappy about her entire lot in life.
(Granted, babies as a whole didn’t seem to have much of an in-between from “perfectly content” to “torturously miserable.”)
She calmed down once there was food in front of her. Granted, actually feeding her was made a mite more difficult, but Cheyenne supposed that feeding a bear cub was just a skill she was going to have to master.
(She could understand why Harry had been so insistent on her staying with him, though. Even if he could have gone about convincing her in a different way.)
*
Cheyenne informed Harry of his daughters’ newest talents that evening when he got back from work, and he practically cheered. He had done a very good job of hiding how much he had been hoping the girls were were-bears like he was, but Cheyenne supposed she couldn’t blame him for holding out that hope.
She looked forward to getting incredibly embarrassing footage of Harry attempting to teach all three of them how to be bears. She wasn’t actually sure how one went about teaching something like that, but if it was like any other aspect of family, parenting, or growing up, she was pretty sure it would be embarrassing, and considering she was officially a mother, that meant she had to start stocking up on embarrassing ammunition.
She wasn't going to mention that to Harry, though.
*
It was weeks before Cheyenne was ready to do anything intimate again. Weeks of getting rid of the last of the extra weight, and weeks of just letting her body heal. She had been carrying three extra human beings inside of herself for nine months. Their sudden absence had left a few things in flux, and for a while just moving was a chore, as everything was sore for days, and her entire sense of balance needed to readjust.
But of course, the pause in that part of their lives didn’t last forever. All told, it didn’t even last particularly long, though once Cheyenne decided she was ready again, it was rather late at night. They needed to wait until the children were in bed, after all, and even then, until it sounded as if they were asleep deeply enough to stay asleep for some time.
Harry was getting undressed and getting ready to put his pajamas on when Cheyenne interrupted him. Not with words, but simply by clicking her tongue and curling one hand around his arm and giving it a tug. He turned easily, clad only in his boxers, though that was still more than Cheyenne was wearing when he turned to face her.
She was bare from head to toe, not wearing a single stitch of clothing. She let go of his arm, knowing she had his attention for good as she watched his gaze rove over her. She folded her arms over her chest, weight shifting to one side.
“Well?” she asked after a moment. “Are you going to do something other than just look, or am I just going to pretend to be a television all night?”
Harry seemed to snap back into the moment after that, surging towards her. His arms wrapped around her, hands pressing against her back and trailing downwards as their lips pressed together. His fingers traced over the bumps of her spine until they came to the small of her back, and his palms smoothed over both sides of her ass before coming to a halt as they reached the backs of her thighs.
For a few moments, it seemed as if they were rooted to the spot, pressed together front-to-front, lips caressing each other. Harry’s grip against the backs of Cheyenne’s legs tightened, pulling her impossibly closer. They had kissed in the intervening weeks, of course, but not like that. It had always seemed tamer. Quieter. Cooler.
Finally, Cheyenne stood up on her toes, hands sliding up Harry’s sides and along his chest until she could link her fingers together behind his neck. She tugged him down with a slight jerk, until she could deepen the kiss, her tongue probing into his mouth.
As if a spell was broken, Harry straightened back up, picking Cheyenne up with his grip around the backs of her legs, not letting the kiss break for a single instant. She wrapped her arms more tightly around the back of his neck and shoulders and hitched her legs around his hips, giving herself enough leverage to lean deeper into the kiss as he began carrying her towards the bed.
Harry’s knees hit the bed before anything else, and he shuffled forward onto the mattress before carefully setting Cheyenne down, as if he was handling the most precious of treasures. Finally, the kiss broke as he leaned back, balanced over her on his hands and knees. Just long enough to give her another slow once over, taking her in before he fell upon her like a crashing wave.
Their lips crushed together once again, and their hands wandered, Harry’s hands sliding up along her sides until he could knead her breasts in his palms, and Cheyenne’s fingers carding through the hair at the back of his head before dragging her nails down his back, pressing him closer as she did. All the while, they kissed as if they were never going to get a chance to again—as if they were trying to inhale each other, or else they might suffocate. Whatever inspired their fervor, Cheyenne wasn’t entirely sure, but she certainly wasn’t going to argue with the outcome.
She dragged her nails along his back until they came to the waistband of his boxers. She plucked at the elastic with one finger for a moment, before shoving her hand beneath it and giving his ass a squeeze. His fingers seemed to stutter for a second on her breasts, and she gave his ass another squeeze before she set about shimmying his boxers down.
She had the waistband halfway down the globes of his butt before he pulled away from her, sitting up on his knees and tugging his boxers down his thighs to his knees, freeing his cock. It was already hardening, skin darkening as it stood at half-mast. He kicked his boxers away and leaned down again, capturing her lips once again, his cock pressing against her thigh so she could feel the heat of it as it hardened.
When he was grinding steadily against her thigh, she squeezed his ass again, that time with both hands. “Come on, come on,” she urged, pressing her thigh up slightly, just enough to push against his cock. He groaned at the contact, and she didn’t need to tell him twice.
He sat up and tugged at her arm, offering a low, slightly distracted, “Roll over.” With a nod, Cheyenne rolled onto her belly, folding her arms beneath her head, her cheek leaning on them so she could turn her head and peer back at him.
She had that luxury for only a moment, though, before Harry was kneeling between her legs. He curled his hands around her hips and gave them a tug, urging her up onto her knees. She moved easily, rebalancing herself as she did so she was supporting her weight on her elbows, though she was pretty sure Harry was actually holding most of her weight up by himself.
He leaned down and kissed the small of her back before he used a knee to push her legs just a bit farther apart. His hold on her hips shifted as he hitched her up just a bit higher, so he could more easily line himself up with her entrance. He pressed his hips forward once, almost experimentally, and a shiver chased itself along Cheyenne’s spine as his cock slid along the lips of her labia, parting them just slightly. The second thrust was just the same, albeit with a bit more friction behind it, and with a huff, Cheyenne sighed, “Come on.”
Behind her, Harry sighed out a laugh. His hold on her hips tightened, and finally Cheyenne felt the head of his cock pressing at her entrance. It seemed to just prod at it for a moment as Harry shifted his hips, but before she could get impatient again, he pressed forward. Cheyenne’s head dipped forward towards her arms, and her mouth fell open around a moan as the head of his cock breached her, and Harry stilled behind her as she tensed, muscles squeezing around him.
Slowly, Cheyenne relaxed, inch by inch. Behind her, Harry sighed slowly and then pressed forward, his cock entering her gradually. She could feel each inch of it, and every so often she tightened her muscles just to hear him groan, low and deep in his chest.
It felt as if an eternity had passed by the time the front of Harry’s pelvis met the backs of Cheyenne’s ass, and his cocked was fully sheathed within her. He paused again as Cheyenne’s muscles twitched around him, and she breathed steadily, forehead resting against her arms. It took only a few moments before she was ready, though, and she gave one of his shins a clumsy kick. He snorted out a quiet laugh, but he seemed to take her point well enough.
He drew out slowly, though it didn’t seem like the sort of slowness he might use to coddle her, but rather that his slowness was an attempt to taunt her, as she grumbled in impatience and prodded at his shin with her foot again. He didn’t feel inclined to speed up, instead drawing out at a steady speed, until only the head of his cock was still sheathed within her heat.
He paused for a second, but before Cheyenne could make any sort of comment, he thrust forward, his pelvis meeting her thighs again as he sheathed himself completely in one swift move. Cheyenne’s back arched, and the moan that tore itself out of her throat almost seemed to echo around the room, and she was very glad then that Daphne was no longer living in the house.
Evidently considering her well and truly taken off guard by then, Harry drew out swiftly, once again until only the head of his cock was still enveloped within her, just before he thrust back in just as quickly. And that was the pace he kept up, as if he was trying to fuck her straight through the mattress and all the way down to the house’s foundation.
She moaned with each thrust, and as her composure slipped, so too did her ability to hold herself up, until her arms were splayed around her head, holding fistfuls of the blanket. Her face was buried against the bed, and she was fairly sure she was close to drooling as each thrust seemed to vibrate every bone and muscle in her body.
When she came, it happened so quickly that it nearly seemed to sneak up on her. Her back arched, and a sound that was more of a sob than a moan ripped itself out of her as she tossed her head to the side.
Harry slowed to a halt behind her as she gradually went slack, and she knew he was the only thing holding any of her weight off of the bed. He shifted slightly, but before he could draw out, she swallowed thickly and said, “Keep going.”
He hesitated for a moment, and she gave his shin another prod. “Yes, I’m sure.”
She felt him press another kiss to the small of her back, and he started thrusting once again, slowly at first before he began building back up to the same pounding rhythm, until it felt as if Cheyenne had a bass drum in her skull.
It didn’t take long before she could tell that she was going to come a second time, though whether she would hold out until Harry came or not, she wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t particularly concerned with one outcome or the other. For the time being, she was content to let him hold her up and fuck into her as if she was some sort of toy as she moaned into the bedspread. It was cathartic, in a strange way.
Soon enough, though, as Harry’s groans picked up in volume just a little bit and his rhythm began to slow and falter, she knew he was getting close. She squeezed around him, and he groaned a final time and thrust into her, deep and firm, and his hips twitched against her thighs as he came.
For a moment, Cheyenne’s hips shifted as she tried to keep fucking herself onto his softening cock, and she whimpered quietly as he drew out, only for him to lay her down and press three fingers into her entrance. She sighed out a shuddering breath as he began thrusting them into her, twisting them with each thrust, until she was moaning once again, grinding herself back against his hand as best as she could when she felt like she was made entirely of gelatin.
Granted, he was always in the mood to play, and he was always happy to draw things out, so his rhythm paused and restarted, slowed and sped up, until she couldn’t predict what was coming and she could feel herself so close to the edge but just shy of reaching it. For a brief moment, she swore she might cry, and then finally, he began thrusting his fingers into her with renewed vigor.
When Cheyenne came, squirting over Harry’s hand, everything went taut, and her back arched away from the bed. It was uncomfortable for a moment, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. A healing sort of discomfort, she supposed. Presumably, it would fade with more time.
Harry’s fingers kept thrusting, working her through her orgasm steadily, drawing it out as long as he could, until she was clenching her thighs around his wrist and hand. Gradually, she relaxed, muscles going slack in increments, until she melted back onto the bed, trembling slightly. Another tiny, quiet moan escaped as Harry’s fingers slipped out of her.
She felt him laying down more than she saw the movement, and she rolled towards him, burying her face against the side of his neck as he wrapped an arm around her middle. He smelled like sweat and musk, but also lingeringly of his aftershave and the dusty book smell that hung around his office. He smelled like Harry, and Cheyenne burrowed closer. His fingers trailed idly up and down her side in slow, repetitive motions that almost seemed like clockwork. If he was even aware of the motion, she would have been stunned to hear that.
They were content, above all. The room was quiet, curtains muffling any noises that might have otherwise drifted in from outside. The lights were still on, and Cheyenne knew they would need to be turned off, but that was a concern that could wait for a few moments.
Her eyelids were getting heavier, and she could feel sleep pulling at her, and she was all too ready to answer the call.
And then, she heard a squall from down the hall, joined seconds later by two more, until there was a chorus of three voices shrieking in discordant harmony. Cheyenne lifted her head from Harry’s shoulder, and they shared a look as they wondered what had become of their lives. They stayed there for only a second more before they sat up and began pulling the bare minimum of clothing on, and from there, they left the bedroom and headed down the hall to where the girls were supposed to be asleep.
The masters of the house were calling them, after all. Cheyenne and Harry had no choice but to heed the call.
*
It was a fairly ordinary afternoon, all things considered, at least until Harry apparently decided it was too ordinary.
“Are you still thinking about getting a new job?”
The question came from out of nowhere, as far as Cheyenne was concerned, and she looked up slowly from her laptop. The girls were sleeping quietly in their cribs, and their monitor was sitting on the kitchen table just a few feet from Cheyenne’s computer. She was enjoying the time to herself, but she was still prepared for it to end at any instant. She had expected them to be the ones to break the silence.
She blinked at Harry slowly, and it took a second for the question to actually process. “Well, yeah,” she answered. “I mean, I could have gone back to the receptionist gig, but it was always just a temporary patch, and I’d like to find something that matches up to my qualifications a bit more.” Her eyebrows rose, and she leaned one elbow on the table beside her laptop, propping her chin up in her hand. “Is the offer to get me a job with one of your contemporaries still on the table, or did that only apply when you felt bad about replacing me?”
“It sort of applies,” Harry answered loftily, sitting down across from her at the table, folding his arms on top of it.
“‘Sort of applies,’” she parroted back at him. “That’s not vague at all,” she drawled, and her eyebrows rose further.
Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m offering you your old job back,” he explained in a tone that was a blatant mockery of saintly patience.
Cheyenne blinked at him again, her expression going blank for a moment as she processed that statement. She hadn’t seen that coming.
She had known she was qualified to work for him, of course. And they had worked well together before. She had just always expected that to be part of the past.
“Are you sure?” she asked slowly, her tone slightly wary, as if he was going to take it back.
He nodded once, more just a simple dip of his head. “Positive,” he replied. “Assuming you still want the job.”
“It will have to wait for a while,” Cheyenne cautioned him. “Like, a while.” She needed him to understand just how long it might be. She had never seen herself as a stay-at-home mom, but as she thought of the trio of girls upstairs and just how much work it was going to take to make sure they grew up healthy and happy, it was looking like more and more of a tempting offer with each day.
Granted, she also didn’t want a repeat of what happened with Lorraine. So, she supposed she would just think on the offer for a while. “I mean, I can’t really go back to work unless we plan on hiring a full-time nanny, and I don’t know about you, but I would rather not.” A personal assistant had been bad enough. She didn’t want to know what a crazed nanny might be like, and knowing their luck, they would wind up with the craziest.
Harry held his hands up, surrendering the point before an argument could even start. “I’m aware of this,” he assured her. “But the offer is still there. Whenever the girls are old enough for you to be comfortable with it, your job will be waiting for you.”
Everything felt a bit lighter, suddenly. As if the last piece of the puzzle had slotted back into place. Cheyenne still wasn’t sure whether she would take the job or whether she would simply dedicate her time to making sure her girls grew up to be the happiest they could possibly be, but the offer itself was enough for the time being. Just knowing that Harry still wanted her around in that capacity, that he was still willing to admit that she had been damn good at her job, it felt like the earth was settling beneath her feet after it had been trembling imperceptibly for days.
“I’ll think about it,” she assured him, smiling crookedly. And she would, truly, even if it would take her a while to come to a conclusion. In the meantime, she felt as if she was light enough to start floating away.
* *
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.
Go grab a bear with money right now and collect them all!
You are a star!
Amy x
P.S
If you already have the above books then just turn the page and check out the special bonus book I included for you!