Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) (13 page)

Blake kept looking down at the map, and then back up into the woods, taking a place about a half-step in front of Lexie. He hadn’t noticed he was doing it, but taking the lead and protecting her from whatever snake or mole hole, or whatever it could be that would hurt her was an unconscious thing to do for him.

At first, she didn’t notice, but when a branch that would have clipped her right in the middle of the forehead was instead held back until she passed, it hit her like a train in the torso.

“Are you taking care of me?” she asked. “This is really like a dream I keep waking up in the middle of.”

Blake didn’t bother to look back. “I’ll always take care of you as long as I can,” he said without a second thought. How easily he’d said it made it seem second nature, like he’d been thinking the same thing for long enough that when the chance came to vocalize it, it was just a natural reaction.

She didn’t say anything. Nothing really needed to be said, after all, so she just smiled, hugged against his arm, and gave him a playful pinch on the ass.

Blake let out a laugh, and then stood still.

“Uh oh,” Lexie said. “Are you gonna punish me for being naughty?”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, but that’s not why I stopped.”

“Wait, why did—oh my God.”

Before them, the most unbelievable clearing opened up. There was a hole in the canopy overhead that let the moonlight from the pale, silvery disc that hung in the sky above stream through.

“This is incredible,” she said. “Oh and look! What a cute little table.”

There in the middle of the clearing was a wicker-topped table, set with a bottle of wine, two glasses, two plates and a bucket, presumably for oyster shells. Alongside the place settings were all the accompaniments any normal person—man or bear—could ever want for oysters. Some garlic, some hot sauce, some olive oil in a bottle that looked like a tiny whiskey decanter.

Lexie took the olive oil off the table, plucked out the stopper and took a whiff. “Oh wow,” she said, groaning almost sexually as she sniffed. She put her finger on the open end of the bottle, and upturned it. Before she could take a taste, Blake intercepted her finger, sucking the amber liquid off.

“That is
not
cheap,” he said with a smile. “Here, your turn.”

He took the bottle from her, put a drop on his fingertip and let her lick it off. Another groan shook Lexie to the core. “That is absolutely, positively, not cheap at all,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever even had olive oil that tasted like... well, like that.”

“I’m used to the stuff that is pretty much clear, and comes in a plastic jug,” Blake said with a grin. “I’m guessing that’s not the top quality stuff?”

Lexie smiled and exhaled slowly, letting the flavor and scent of the oil drift out through her nose and over her lips. “Still,” she said, “it doesn’t taste as good as something else I can think of.”

Exactly on cue, Blake gripped both of Lexie’s arms and enveloped her in another kiss that sunk right into her core. First she tasted the fruity, slightly sweet olive oil, and a split second later, her nose filled with Blake’s scent. She tasted the oil on his tongue, and then a moment later felt nothing but his warmth fill her from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes.

“That was,” she exhaled again as he pulled away, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth for just a brief second.

“Incredible?” he finished for her.

Before she could react, she heard a cracking sound. “How do you like ‘em?” Blake asked.

“Big, hard and—wait, what?”

Laughing deep and loud, he slid his other hand down her back and let two drops fall from the oil decanter onto the oyster. “You’ll get the big, hard thing,” he said with a smile, “but we should at least eat a little bit. Terrible idea to do a bunch of exercise on an empty stomach. You’ll get all light headed and woozy and...”

“Oh my God,” Lexie moaned after craning her neck and claiming the shellfish. “That’s...”

Instead of continuing, she instead took the oyster knife off the table and opened one for her bear. Topping it with the oil, she offered it to him, and when he went for it, pulled it away playfully and sucked it down.

“Hey!” he protested, laughing along with Lexie.

“Too slow, Charlie Brown,” she said with a wry grin. “Try again.”

She cracked another one while Blake patiently waited, plotting his revenge. As soon as she drizzled the oil, the big bear snagged Lexie’s wrist and lifted it to his mouth. He nipped her gently just below the bend of her elbow, and then kissed all the way down her forearm to her wrist. When he sucked on her wrist, she felt her entire soul quail.

Tingles of electric pleasure worked away from where he kissed, and prickled the skin along her inner arm as they went. Her nerves flared, fuzzing to life and then warming out, like she hopped out of a cold stream and jumped right into a hot tub.

Her entire being warmed through, Lexie slid around behind Blake, wrapping the arm he kissed around his neck and draping the other over one of his huge shoulders.

She let out another soft moan, this one of complete relaxation.

“Are you ever gonna eat this oyster?” she asked, kissing him behind the ear, in the hollow where his jaw started. “I need my hands free.”

“Yeah?” Blake asked, smiling and turning his head halfway around as he did. “What for? You gonna open another oyster?”

“Gonna open something,” she said with a seductive lilt to her voice. Blake grabbed her wrist, kissed her palm, and then sucked the oyster out of its shell.

“Yeah?” he asked, holding her hand as she dropped the shell and kissing back to her elbow. Her other hand slid down the front of Blake’s shirt, and dipped below the waist of his jeans. “What are you planning on opening with just one hand?”

“You’ll find out,” she said, sucking on his earlobe again.

She felt the heat of his pubic hair against her fingertips as she stretched them out. As she found him and slid her fingers around as far as they could go, Blake let out a long, slow breath. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, sucking air through his nose and then a split second later, warming Lexie’s wrist with a slow circle of his tongue.

“I’m thinking about opening something of my own,” he said. “But I’m having a tough time moving just now. Somehow, I don’t want what’s going on to end.”

Even as he was speaking, he turned around quickly, and pulled Lexie’s hand free of his jeans before pinning her back against the nearest tree trunk.

He pressed against her, so that his heat pressed hungrily against her sex. When she lifted her legs to wrap them around his waist, she could almost feel him inside her, he pulsed so heavily. With each breath he drew, the muscles of his chest flexed and relaxed. With every breath
she
took, she worked her ankles further around her bear.

The rough rasp of denim on denim sent a chill racing up Lexie’s belly and prickled every inch of skin between her neck and her hips. Her nipples stiffened into sweetly aching peaks that slid against the fabric of her bra. Another torrent of electric chills shot through her, but that time she grabbed two handfuls of Blake’s muscled ass to anchor herself.

Another gentle thrust of his hips gave her a nearly painful longing to have him—all of him—right then. When she tried to kiss him again though, he had other ideas.

Sliding down her chest, he dragged his lips over her shirt, leaving heat and anticipation all the way down. When he was kneeling, he looked up at her, ran his hands up underneath her shirt and cupped her breasts with a soft moan. He circled her nibs with his thumbs, leaving her areolas pebbled and aching for his kiss, or at least a circling of his tongue.

“Please,” she whispered, “this is like torture.”

“Only the best kind, I hope,” he answered with a sly smile in the instant before he kissed between her navel and her waistband. “I get the feeling we’re gonna have plenty of time to do this, but I want this first time to stretch on forever.”

Instead of responding, Lexie just relaxed her head against the tree trunk and let her hair fall in a cascade around her face. He nibbled gently, making her gasp in pleasure, and then unhooked the button of her jeans with his teeth.

“How on earth did you do that?” she asked.

“I’ve got a weird tongue,” he answered. “Genetic thing.”

“Can you do that thing with—unh—cherry stems?” her gasp came as he kissed again and then warmed her skin with the tip of that tongue. “The knot thing?”

“I’m allergic,” he said. “No I’m not, that’s a joke. And yes, I can. But I gotta tell you, there are things right now I’m a lot more interested in than cherries.”

His words disappeared as Blake lowered his head and he kissed her lower, lower, and then swirled his tongue against her sex. Somehow, the heat from his breath and the hunger from his desperate, sucking kisses passed through denim and warmed her to the core. Tendrils of snake-like pleasure worked up her back this time, making sure every inch of Lexie was ready for... whatever was coming next.

“You keep doing that,” she said in between whispered groans, “and I’m gonna throw you on the ground and start doing the work myself.”

Enveloping in her mouth, he breathed heavily against her once more and then grabbed the waist of her jeans, roughly yanking them down over her hips. They fell just enough to let him kiss her between the legs, and when he did, he drew in a huge breath, then shuddered as he exhaled.

“Something about you,” he whispered, “your scent, the way you taste, the way you make my insides burn... I can’t say exactly what it is, but I can’t handle not having you.”

He turned his eyes up toward her again, and when he did, she saw they were faintly brighter than before. The golden flecks in his irises danced like tiny sparks coming off the top of a campfire and dying against the blackness of the night. Lexie looked down, her eyes relaxed in a half-closed position and her mouth hanging slightly open. “You can do whatever you want,” she whispered. “I couldn’t stop you even if I wanted. And trust me, I don’t want to.”

A growl from deep inside his chest vibrated through Blake and into Lexie. The caress of his breath, the heat slightly mitigated by the chill in the night air, had her turning loops inside her brain. Her nerves all seemed to be taking turns alternating between hot and cold, and a few moments later when his fingertip tested her entrance, through the soft cotton of her panties, Lexie’s knees joined in the game.

First they went weak, then they caught her weight before wobbling again.

When his tongue slid along her button and Blake pushed her panties aside and pushed his finger into her wetness, there wasn’t anything stopping the fall.

Except
him
.

With the arm that had been massaging her breasts, Blake caught Lexie as she slumped, and then he kissed her deeply, enveloping her mouth, as he helped her to the ground.

“How about that blanket?” he asked. She could taste her own scent on his lips, which drove her somehow crazier than she already was. “Not that I care about leaves getting into places they shouldn’t—”

Lexie interrupted her bear with a kiss that pushed
his
head back. Their tongues swirled against one another, and then just before she thought she’d faint from lack of breathing, he pulled away, sucking a kiss off her bottom lip.

Sparks flooded her vision, and her nerves twinkled underneath her skin. “Shirt,” she said with a gasp. “Take yours off.”

Her halting words were enough to get the point across. Blake shrugged out of his tee and laid his weight gently against her body. He moved his fingertip back inside her, hooking it and rotating gently against her sweetest spot. With his palm, he ground on her button, sending a shiver, and then a gasp, running from her lips.

“How are you doing this to me?” she managed to eke out before having to take another deep breath.

Blake’s answer was to push his finger deeper, and join it with a second. The exquisite stretch Lexie felt sent a trill of excitement, chased by the longing of anticipation, running through her from scalp to feet. She arched her back against his hand, her body begging for him to push harder, deeper, than before while her brain was still swimming in helpless pleasure.

“Because you do it to me,” he answered, lifting his lips from her belly just long enough to reply. He withdrew his fingers from her just long enough to move around and start to flutter kisses on her sex. Up and down he ran his tongue, and then when she was just about to start begging him for more, he gave her what she wanted without her having to ask.

A finger dipped inside, and then his tongue danced a tango on her clit. He paused just long enough to exhale a single breath against her softest skin, cooling her even through the surges of heat that were shaking her outward from the core.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but when she did the only thing that came from her lips was a moan, then Blake’s name, whispered like the fading memory of a dream, that lingers in the air before vanishing. She chased her moan with her lips, and as she did, Blake came up for air and slid his tongue along her naked belly to the hollow of her throat.

“When are you gonna give me what I want?” she pleaded.

“As soon as you’re begging.”

With that, he disappeared again, sliding sweet kisses, and sucking gentle nips off her chest, her belly and each of her thighs before going in again. His tongue ran a hot lap up and down, his finger danced around her entrance and then inside. She yelped in a mixture of surprise and ecstasy as his finger slid deep, rotated slowly, and he pushed again.

Each of his entrances were matched with a flick of his tongue across the tip of her button, and before long, Lexie felt herself edging closer and closer to an orgasm she never saw coming. Calling out Blake’s name in another breathy, desperate whisper, Lexie’s fingernails curled into tiny claws, and her ears prickled to life. Every single sound in the forest filled her ears, and it seemed to her that it all stopped in the moment when her nerves flared and the cords in her neck, her back, and between her legs tightened.