Read Beneath a Spring Moon Online
Authors: Elle Rush Nulli Para Ora Lynn Tyler Becca Jameson
Beneath a Spring Moon (16 page)
She dropped her chin so her mouth was just below his ear and pressed a light kiss on a damp curl stuck to his neck. She moved down the bearded line of his jaw until she reached his lips. She hesitated there. Bear didn’t. He rolled over until he was on top of her, his forearms on either side of her ribs, taking his weight. “Yes or no?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Yes.”
His lips were on hers before she finished the word. He tasted her, tugging at her bottom lip gently with his teeth until she opened her mouth. His tongue slid in, and she met it with hers. Bear slid his hand under her neck and tilted her head until she was offered up to him completely.
The kiss went on forever, their tongues entwined, his lips always demanding more. When they broke apart, Manon gasped for air. Bear slipped his hand to her throat and then drew it slowly over her collar bone and straight down her breastbone. He traced the underside of her breast and then continued his exploration to her waist where he tugged at the elasticized band of her sweatshirt.
Manon bowed her back. Bear slid the material up as far as he could push it. Then she crunched her stomach, and he pulled it over her head and tossed it to the foot of the pallet. While her shoulders were still raised he unsnapped her bra and slipped it off her arms.
She felt her exposed nipples tighten. Then his lips were on one. The warmth of his mouth and heat of his tongue as he sucked drove her back onto the sleeping bag. “Oh, fuck!”
Bear shifted his mouth to her other breast. When the cold air hit the wet, abandoned nipple, Manon bucked. “Bear!”
He covered the wet skin with his palm, and Manon jumped again at the change of temperature as his hot hand began to roll her nipple under his fingers. He alternated his attention until her head lolled and her gasps hit a frantic pace.
“You with me, Manon?”
“Yes,” she moaned. She looked up at him and the thought that he’d slipped out of the coveralls she’d given him slowly made it to her brain. Her gaze travelled down his neck, across his chest and down past his waist. “Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m burning up,” he said. He slid both hands to her waist and unbuttoned the fly on her jeans. He pulled them and her panties off in the same movement and tossed them onto the rest of her clothes.
“Back pocket,” she said.
He disappeared for a moment, and then returned to cover her with his body and pull the sleeping bag back up over them.
Manon trailed her hands along his back as he shifted above her and finally settled his hips in the vee of her legs. She closed her eyes and soaked in the heat he threw off.
He rocked against her, his coarse hair scratching the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.
“Are you sure?” he asked. He nipped at her shoulder when she took too long to answer.
“If you’re with me, Bear, be with me. Quit teasing.”
He claimed her mouth again, demanding more of her than ever before. At the same time, he pressed his erection into the soft flesh of her stomach. Manon curled her fingers and pressed them into his firm ass and pulled herself up against him, grinding into his groin.
Bear ripped his mouth away from her and pressed his forehead against hers. “You’re not going to let me take this slow, are you?”
She bucked against him again.
He braced on one arm and lightly traced the backs of his fingers down her side. When his hand slipped between her legs, she was ready. He slipped his thumb along her crease, spreading her wetness. He raised his hips, positioned himself and moved, not into her but along her. When he did it again, Manon tried to shift so he would be rubbing along her clit. He held her still and moved again.
“Please.”
Bear pulled back far enough that he no longer touched her anywhere. Manon opened her eyes and looked up at him in alarm. “Bear?”
Then he surged. Manon couldn’t breathe as she took the length of him. He dropped his forehead to hers again. She blinked and remembered to exhale. Bear smiled at her and began to move.
He was forceful, but not frantic. She felt the tension and fire building within her. A few strokes in, she locked her feet behind his back and met his rhythm. Her pulse also steadied to match his, and their hearts pounded in time with each other.
She tried to wait for him but with the combination of his heat between her legs and his hot, heavy breath on her neck she couldn’t help herself. Her back arched, and her legs tightened around him as she cried out.
He followed her seconds later.
When she came down, she lowered herself to the sleeping bag and released him. Bear kissed her again, slower this time, but deeper. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“You are very welcome.”
Chapter 6
The chem light was out, but the tent was bright as sunlight shone through the nylon. Bear pressed a kiss on Manon’s ear but he already knew she was awake. “Time to get up. I’m thinking if worse turns to worst, we can ride the snowmobile up to the highway.”
She rolled toward him and kissed his lips. “I like that plan. We’ll get you the hell out of here and back to civilization.”
“Then what?”
“Then we take it as it comes.” Bear liked the confidence in her voice. She didn’t sound like she had a trace of regret after the night before.
And
it sounded like she was planning to be in his future. If he had to start his life over, he wanted Manon to be a part of it. Despite her acceptance of his beast, his new second nature was most definitely a curse. She was a blessing.
Manon pulled her discarded clothing under the sleeping bag to warm them up. He laughed out loud when she hissed and then let loose a grumble of “cold zipper.” He laughed again as she tried to get dressed without exposing herself to the cold air, bucking as she pulled her panties and jeans on while attempting not to dislodge her cover. Bear couldn’t help making her task more difficult by grabbing at her and tickling whatever he could reach.
“Bear, cut it out,” she giggled.
He stopped immediately. Manon huffed beside him as she sat up, letting the sleeping bag fall to her lap, and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. “Bear—”
He clapped his hand over her mouth. “The poachers,” he whispered. “I can smell the meth.”
Manon nodded under his hand. He released her quickly. She dove to the foot of the pallet and yanked on her boots. Just as quickly, strapped on her gun belt and unsnapped the holster. Next came the shotgun; she quietly racked the shells into the chamber. “Stay here,” she ordered quietly.
“What?”
“Which one of us is trained for this?” she asked. “Me. Now stay put.” She unzipped the tent flap just enough to take a peek. She must not have seen anything since she slinked out before he could grab her.
Bear flopped to his stomach and peeked through the flap. Manon was on her feet and racing in a crouch towards the pines at the edge of their clearing. The thick snow drifts slowed her as they caught her boots and pant legs. She wasn’t as fast as he knew she could be but she was still out of sight in seconds.
Manon was only half-right. She had training he didn’t. But the grizzly had advantages she didn’t. His brain caught up with his beast’s decision when he realized he had fully opened the tent flap. Unlike Manon, he didn’t bother to dress. He reached deep inside, found the new part of himself, and willed it to come out.
A shotgun blast boomed through the clearing. The effect was immediate. A man’s scream followed from outside the tent. Bear roared at the thought of a threat so close to Manon.
He didn’t lose his mind when the change came—just as the bear’s senses were with him when he was human. Even in this form, he still thought, still understood. He was capable of planning. Bear did none of those. He didn’t even bother to follow Manon’s tracks. After yesterday her scent was imprinted in his brain.
The drifts didn’t slow him as they had her. He lumbered through them. The tracks led to the snowmobile path Manon had made the day before. The well-packed snow allowed him to move faster.
He did not like what he saw when he got to the clearing by the river. Neither did the bear. There were three figures: one, a male, lying in on the ground, bleeding from his right shoulder. Manon grappled with a second on the ice. Her shotgun was yards away, still sliding towards the open water of the fast moving river. It went over the edge with a small splash.
The man on the ground grunted and pulled himself forward. Bear snarled. The man screamed and then doubled his efforts. He’d pulled a handgun out of a drift before Bear got to him. One swipe of his paw knocked the gun yards away. Another swipe bounced the poacher’s head off the frozen ground. The wounded man stopped moving.
Manon took a vicious blow to the ribs and staggered back a step. Bear moved toward her.
“Stop! The ice is too thin. Stay there.”
Bear roared but held his ground. Manon whirled and took the second poacher down with an impressive tackle. She sat on his back as she pulled a set of zip-cuffs out of one of the many pockets in her cargo pants. Then she grabbed a handful of his hair with one hand, hooked the other under his arm, and hefted him to his feet. They stumbled back to the shore.
Manon threw him face down into the snow beside his partner. Bear padded up to her and growled as she wiped a trickle of blood from her eyebrow. “I’m okay,” she said.
Bear walked over to the handgun now buried in another snow drift. He huffed and pawed at it with his foot. Manon pulled it out and frowned. “That would have been bad.”
She bent at the waist and put her hands on her knees. He nuzzled her neck as she caught her breath.
“Can you watch these two for a couple minutes while I go back to camp?”
He nodded.
Manon patted both men down and left with two hunting knives. Bear sat between the two, put a paw on each back and roared in their ears.
“Yeah, you’ll be fine,” she said with a laugh.
She came back with his coveralls and boots. “They have a truck. It runs.” She set his clothes behind a stand of spruce trees. “If you can get changed, we’re out of here.”
Bear reappeared in a flash. Manon had both men on their feet and was ushering them towards the snowmobile path.
He held the gun as Manon rolled the pair into the bed of their pick-up. She’d unloaded all of their gear into the back of her truck to make sure she had room. It would be an uncomfortable ride back to civilization for them, but it would beat being stranded in the wilderness. “This complicates things. I was hoping I’d be able to say I found you alive. One quick report. No fuss, no muss. Now I have to bring them in and charge them,” she said.
“You can’t. They saw me change.”
“If two meth-head poachers report that a grizzly who turned into a man was working with a ranger to bring them down, nobody would believe them. The story is they kidnapped you and stole your gear. You’d just escaped when I found you. It’ll work. Especially if we find one shred of your gear in their cabin.”
“You called me ‘Bear’ in front of them.”
“I thought everyone called you ‘Bear,’ Bear,” Manon teased.
“It would only take one person to believe them and then I’ll be completely screwed. What if the samples those fringe websites were talking about were people like me? I’m not going to spend the rest of my short life being a lab experiment.”
“You won’t. When I said that NASA was going nuts because this was happening world-wide I meant
world-wide
.
Everybody
is studying this phenomenon. If this happened to you, it must have happened in other places to other people.”
“Great, so the government will have lots of guinea pigs."
“I don’t know. All I know right now is that they won’t have you.”
He trusted her. God knew, he trusted her. “But…”
“We won’t say anything when we get back but we can ask questions. You have friends in the field. Chances are pretty good they’ll have been called in to investigate the other sites, right?”
“Yeah.” They would have. In fact, they would likely be some of the first people on the scene.
“So they would have the highest chances of being exposed like you. You can sniff them out and see if any of them have a brand new wild side. If they are, maybe we’ll be able to help each other.” Manon laid her hand on his cheek. “I promise you that I’ve got your back. Don’t forget about Plan B either.”
“We have a Plan B?”
“There is a whole lot of nothing in Northern Manitoba and I know every square mile of it. If things go south, you disappear up here and we’ll figure it out together.”
Bear’s fingers tightened on the dashboard as the odometer clicked away. Manon flashed a look in the rearview mirror but spent more time watching him than the two in the back.
As they drove farther and farther away from the site, she slowed until she eventually stopped when they hit the main road. “How are you feeling? Are you doing okay? Any problems?”
“None. I feel fine,” Bear said.
She let go of the steering wheel and took his hand. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter if we go Plan A or Plan B, I’m with you.”
He squeezed back. “I know.”
The End
Publisher’s Note
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About Elle Rush
Elle Rush constantly plans warm escapes to palm tree filled destinations but she always returns home to Winnipeg, Manitoba. She and her passport have conquered most English-speaking parts of Canada, the United States and the Caribbean and she is plotting trips to Europe and Asia. Elle loves romance novels, sci-fi TV shows and big band music. She also has a minor obsession with loose tea.
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