A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) (15 page)

Most of the recipients took the envelopes with excitement, then vanished to open them in private. Awesome, do that guys. No need to make a big fuss. It’s just the Fated Mates delivery service on its first and only delivery run. But then halfway through their deliveries, something changed. Maybe one of the first openers had called the others? Maybe someone had posted a message on the town’s Facebook page? Whatever happened, for the last half of the deliveries, the people wanted to open them with Michael and Alison present.
 

It took forever.
 

Michael’s bear didn’t understand why they weren’t enjoying their mate and Michael had to agree. Alison was a complete sport about the whole thing, meeting the Bearfielders as if they were Michael’s extended family, which they sort of were. But even she lost her patience. Driving around with her all day had destroyed all of Michael’s patience. Not because she was annoying—she wasn’t even slightly annoying. But because of her scent. She smelled like his mate and she desired him. She’d been basically wet for him for days, but it was stronger today. Driving around, he had to roll the windows down just to avoid tearing her clothes off. When talking to the Bearfielders, he tried to stay outside their homes, upwind of Alison.
 

And he couldn’t ever touch her. The thing that happened to both of them when they touched—Alison said it was like electricity for her—but for Michael it was like the world grew quiet and far away and she glowed with a golden light and his body became hot and slow and hard. If he touched her in public, even just grazed her finger with his, he’d instantly be sporting a towering erection. And while the people of Bearfield might understand, he didn’t want that to become part of his and Alison’s story.

So it was hours and hours later, after all of the deliveries and polite conversations and crying had been done, that Michael finally brought Alison home.

He waited until she’d closed the door and turned to him before kissing her. No, he didn’t kiss her. He
claimed
her. Michael seized Alison and lifted her into the air, pressing her against the foyer wall, pinning her there with his body. She was soft and yielding and fizzing with heat. He held her up with his hands right under her ass, but the dress she was wearing was on the short side and it rode up amazingly well when she wrapped her legs around him and so through no fault of his own he found himself suspending Alison with his hands pressed against her very wet panties.

His lips found hers and he drank from her, tasted her. She groaned as his tongue licked her lips and his fingers made slow rough circles on her mound. He wanted to remember every sound she made, every complex scent that painted her skin. It was the greatest day of his life—the day he got to finally be with his mate—and he wanted to carve the details of it on his bones.
 

He ground against her, rubbing his achingly hard cock against her sex, and even through her panties and his jeans, he could sense her heat. Their kiss deepened as their tongues touched and fought and made up and fell into a sensual rhythm.
 

His control was slipping. He’d wanted to get her up into the bedroom, to make long slow delicious love to her up there in comfort, like a music video for some slow jazzy song with lots of saxophones. But this thing they were doing in the hallway, it was more raw, more urgent. It wasn’t just Michael who had been suppressing his natural urges, Alison had too. She needed him, needed to find release as much as he did. The smell of her arousal was like cinnamon and vanilla stirred in a pot with pure lust. Every breath Michael took pushed him farther from rational thought, closer to losing it. He wanted to throw Alison to the ground, to rip her clothes off, and to take her hard and fast. And then to do it again. And again.

Two of Michael’s fingers slid under Alison’s underwear, into the molten soft heat of her. She broke off the kiss to moan his name, to look at him with desperately hungry eyes. His two big rough fingers entered her fully then, stretching her, exploring her, stroking her slick walls. She bit her lip and then cried out as he removed his fingers.

“Put them back,” she whispered.

“Tell me what you want,” Michael growled. Her brown eyes shone with need, with that look of beautiful panic that meant she was on her way to climaxing.

“Fuck me with your fingers, please,” she said, her voice low and strong. And so he did, circling her opening with his fingers until she was dripping, writhing, begging for him, and then sliding his fingers into her, curling them in that magic way that all women like, and which Alison definitely liked very much.
 

“You’re so beautiful,” Michael murmured into the curve of her neck as he nipped the soft skin with his teeth. “From the moment I saw you, I had to have you. It’s not just that you’re my mate, and that we’re destined to be together, no. It’s that you are the sexiest damn woman I’ve ever seen.” Michael kept murmuring into her neck, running the tip of his tongue around her ear and fucking her with his fingers slow and steady. Alison had her legs around his waist, her arms looped around his neck, holding on for dear life. But as he licked and nibbled she began to lift herself up, rising, kissing him, and then plunging back down onto his fingers, faster and faster until she was whimpering with the urgency of “yes yes yes” and “almost there” and “oh god I’m so close,” just bucking against him, galloping on top of him, her whole body alive with electricity and fire and sex and love. Her scent deepened as her body sang to him of her pleasure and need.

And then she went abruptly still, every muscle in her body squeezing him, her legs shaking as the muscles in her sex rhythmically squeezed and fluttered and pulsed around his fingers. She broke off their kiss to stare open mouthed into the glowing gorgeous face of infinity. Her climax stretched on and on. Michael didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even breathe. He just watched in awe, in love, at the transformative power of a really toe-curling orgasm.

It broke like a storm, with Alison heaving and crying. She hugged him tightly with both arms. He withdrew his fingers from her and hugged her back, expecting nothing from her at the moment but giving her everything he had. Alison’s breath came in ragged gasps. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Michael kissed the tears away. Did she always cry after sex? There was so much to learn about her. He’d never lived with a woman before. What would that be like? In his fantasies, it meant sex whenever and wherever he wanted, but he knew the truth to be better and far more complicated. The way Matt was now with Mina—domesticated, calmer, deliriously happy—it spoke to more than just sex taming the man.

“I love you,” he said to Alison, kissing each of her tears away.

“I know,” she said, her voice raw. “That’s why I’m crying.”

Michael was surprised to find that each tear he tasted had a different flavor, like they were each old pains or regrets that Alison was shedding, purging, so she could be with him.

The crying did not last long.

“Is it hard to hold me up like this?” Alison nuzzled her lips against Michael’s neck, planting delicate kisses everywhere she could.

“You weigh literally nothing to me. I can hold you up one handed.”

“I love how strong you are,” Alison said, a laugh in her voice. “I know it’s really girly of me and silly, but it turns me on like crazy. You make me feel small and delicate, and those aren’t things I’ve often been able to feel.”

“You
are
small and delicate. Especially compared to me. I’m a moose.”

“You’re a bear.”

“I’m
your
bear.”

“I know.”

“Do you like that?”

“Very much.”

“The shifter thing doesn’t freak you out? I think it’d freak me out.”

“It thrills me. You thrill me. Bearfield thrills me. There’s a lifetime of things to learn here, to do here.”

“You’re going to marry me, you know?” Michael said it without thinking, without realizing the enormous weight of his words.

“Of course I am. But can I ask you a question?” Alison’s voice took on a sultry playfulness.

“Ask me anything.”

“Why aren’t you fucking me yet?”

* * *
 

Alison was surprised as the words left her mouth. Had she ever been so bold before? Had she ever asked for what she needed? No. Never. With Drew, sex had been enjoyable enough, but always tainted by shame. The way he’d looked at her when she was naked—like he’d been served a plate of disappointing food—it hadn’t exactly inspired confidence. They’d been one of those couples that turned the lights off before doing it, one of those couples that didn’t speak at all during sex.

What if Michael saw her naked and that same look flashed on his face? How could she possibly stand that? They were fated—she could feel it with every drop of her blood—but that didn’t mean they’d be happy, did it? The relationship would still take trust and understanding and communication, and what if she fucked that up? Or what if she had so much doubt and such a low opinion of herself, that she sabotaged the relationship before it even began?

Alison blinked and then saw the way Michael was looking at her. His eyes burned with golden fire. His chest heaved with every breath, revealing his rippling muscles. He wanted her. He’d wanted her since the moment they met, since she shot him in the chest with a shotgun.
 

Sliding out from between Michael and the wall—a cock and a hard place?—Alison grinned at him. The look in his eyes filled her with confidence. She was beautiful. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to make love to this indescribably handsome man. His presence was like an antitoxin pushing all of Drew’s poison from her system. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but she could sense the process already at work. In a year she wouldn’t recognize herself, if it all worked out.

“I want you to fuck me, Michael. But not against the wall. In my bed. In
our
bed.”

“Yes,” he growled, taking one step towards her. The wooden floors creaked under his weight.

Alison’s fingers trailed along the wall as she stepped backwards towards the bedroom, never taking her eyes off Michael. She could feel his lust like a fire on her skin, and if she turned he’d pounce on her and take her on the floor. She didn’t want their first time to be on the floor, or against a wall, or in a car. She wanted comfort.

“I want you to fuck me with the lights on. I want to see you and I want you to see me.” She took another two steps backwards towards the bedroom, her heels banging against piles of books.

“Take your clothes off,” Michael said with a smile. “You’ve seen me naked a lot already. It’s hardly fair that you’re still dressed.”

Alison held her breath. Looking good in clothes and looking good naked were two different things. And the cute dress she’d borrowed from Mina was definitely a winner. What if he saw her curvy hips, the roundness of her belly, the thickness of her thighs and flinched? What if underneath it all, Michael was just like Drew? There was only one way to find out.
 

Alison reached back and unzipped her dress and wriggled out of it. Then she slid her panties off and undid the clasp of her bra. The air was cool on her skin as the clothes fell to the floor. She stood naked and afraid before the man she loved.

Michael eyes’s burned so bright they cast shadows on the walls. “Holy fuck you’re gorgeous,” he said, his voice an awed whisper.

Tears sprang to Alison’s eyes. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to work out. He saw her clearly and fully and wanted more. And she was going to give it to him. As much as he could take and then some.

“Come get me, big boy,” she said, and then ran laughing to bedroom with Michael at her heels. She leapt into the bed and rolled over and there he was on top of her, naked. His clothes lay strewn down the hall, ripped off in a blind hurry. Her body was still soaring from the last orgasm, but she could use a few more like that. Maybe four or five. No more than ten. Okay, twenty if she had to.

A constant purring growl rolled out of Michael as he ground against her. It was a mating growl and it felt like feathers on her spine. Alison ran her hands down his muscled chest, almost embarrassed at how turned on his hard, perfect body made her. She’d never been one of those girls that was super into muscles, but maybe until now the muscles just hadn’t been on the right person. Because looking at Michael, touching him, feeling the strength in his flesh as he leaned down and kissed her—she was definitely into muscles now.

She reached down between her legs and found his hard cock, straining up towards her. She grabbed it tightly, shocked at how hot it was. It was the biggest cock she’d ever seen, not that she’d forgotten that. It’d been in the back of her mind since they first met. How would a cock like that feel? Would it be amazing? Would it hurt? But would it be a good hurt or a bad hurt? So many questions, and she was about to get answers.

“Are you always this hot?” Alison asked.

“Are
you
always this hot? You look amazing.” He kissed her gently, his lips just grazing hers. And then with more ferocity, his tongue diving deep into her.

“No, it’s like your cock has a fever or something. It’s really actually hot.”

Michael looked down in surprise. “That has never happened to me before. Maybe it’s a mating thing?”

“Are you going to
mate
me now? Is that what this is?”

Michael looked at her—into her. His eyes now more serious than she’d ever seen. This was important to him.
She
was important to him. This wasn’t a one-night stand or some relationship that would crumble under the first strain. This was the rare treasure you search a thousand miles of wilderness to find. It was alchemy. It was a miracle. It was perfection. It was true.

“I’m going to fuck you now. The mating has to wait a year and a day. But we’ll get to that, too. Trust me when I say it’ll be worth it.”

“Do it, Michael. Take me,” Alison panted.

She stroked his thick cock with both hands, guiding it past her lips and into the tight wet heat of her cunt, letting him stretch her open. There was pain there, but a delicious sort of pain that vanished as she opened for him. As his rock-hard thickness just kept entering her and entering her, the heat she’d felt since meeting him sparked as she engulfed him.