Claim the Bear (7 page)

Fear trembled down her spine as the cold desk chilled Breshia’s cheek. She was wearing her favorite skirt, the white one with the coral colored flowers, but Thomas had rucked it up over her hips and any second now, she’d feel his tongue on her wet folds.

“Please don’t do this,” she begged.

“Bre, you know I wouldn’t do anything you don’t want me to,” Thomas said in a strange voice.

The deep velvet tones of his words halted her fear and pooled warmth in her middle. Baffled, she twisted on the desk to see him.

Dillon stood behind her, hungry eyes rapt on her bare backside. He looked like he had the first time she’d seen him—clawed shoulder and dark jeans hanging low. Mortified that he was seeing her in such a vulnerable position, she lurched forward.

“No,” he crooned, dropping to his knees. “You’re beautiful like this.” His hands slid softly down her back, around the curve of her hips, then his fingertips brushed down her thighs to the backs of her knees. “May I taste you?”

This wasn’t scary anymore. Not like it had been with Thomas. She whimpered with need when she felt the soft brush of his breath against her sex.

“I won’t touch you until you ask.”

He was so close to her, she could feel his warmth, and instinctively, she arched her back and spread her legs wider.

“Say it,” he murmured.

God, he was close. This would be so different from her time with Thomas. Dillon was good and gentle. He would breed her slowly, especially for her first time. She pressed back toward him and his hands gripped the backs of her knees.

A warm chuckle filled the air. “No Bre. I want you to ask me.”

“Please,” she whispered.

His tongue lapped her, and his chin bumped a sensitive spot that threatened to buckle her legs. She moaned as a clenching sensation filled her. Over and over he drove his tongue into her. Resting her forehead against the desk, she squeezed her eyes closed as pressure built inside of her. Part of her wished she could watch him as his head bobbed to the rhythm of him eating her out. Piles of genetic paperwork sat in neat stacks under her palms, but she crumpled them in her fists as he drove her toward the edge.

Damn what they said about her people’s future.

Her body chose Dillon.

Her heart chose him, too.

She cried out as his tongue went deeper and something wet bumped her hip.

What was that?

It pressed against her again and she frowned and turned.

She stifled a scream as a giant bear beside her curled his lips over impossibly long teeth.

It was dark in the room except for a single stream of blue moonlight that filtered in through the window. It was enough to illuminate the monstrous grizzly bear astride her bed. Breshia gasped and sat up. From the way her body was still writhing on the inside, she’d been about two seconds away from a wet dream. Did women even get those? Mortification heated her cheeks as she scrambled backward against the headboard.

“Dillon?”
Please, God, let it be him and not some random bear in her bedroom.

The animal shook his head, as if it were confused.

“Dillon, if it’s you, can you please change back?” Her voice came out so small, she was afraid he hadn’t heard her, but he sat back on his hind legs and shrank into his human form in moments.

“Bre?” he asked in a gravelly voice, churning silver eyes almost as wide as the full moon outside. He dragged his gaze down to his open palms, like he couldn’t remember how he’d come to be here.

He was torn up, to be sure, but not as badly as she’d imagined. She’d waited hours for him to come home, but perhaps him staying bear most of the night was to speed up his shifter healing. Already, the claw marks that crisscrossed his torso looked to be half-healed.

Dillon clothed was a beautiful sight.

Dillon naked was about the most mind-altering experience she’d ever had.

Her breathing grew shallow as she raked her gaze over his taut abdomen. The moonlight highlighted and shadowed deep indentations between muscles, and his stomach flexed with every breath he heaved. A flock of what looked like tattooed ravens curved around his ribcage and when she dropped her eyes to his stony erection, full-mast and thick, she clenched the sheets in her palms.

“What did you do to me?” he asked, confusion seeping into every word.

“It’s my heat cycle,” she said as quiet as a breath. “It’s started.”

“You were touching yourself, and—”

“Okay!” This couldn’t get any worse or any more humiliating than this.

Her body still felt like it was writhing, but when she looked down, she was just shaking. His nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth to say something but she shook her head. She knew what she smelled like. Her scent had morphed over night to equal parts cat in heat and arousal. And it wasn’t going to get better any time soon.

“Your animal called to my bear. I was out in the woods behind the house and I could feel her calling me.”

“I’m so sorry. Oh, my God. I’m so embarrassed!” She jumped up and looked down, chagrinned to realize she had stripped off her clothes at some point during her dirty dream. The dream! Her eyes flew wide and she reached for the sheets to cover herself. Now, she couldn’t meet his gaze if she tried for a hundred years.

The sheets touched her sex and she bucked against them, then cried out and backed away until she was crouched in the darkest corner of the room. Tears streaked down her cheeks. She hadn’t thought about this part. About what it would be like to endure another heat cycle so close to a virile male. She’d been sequestered off from them with her others, and it wasn’t so bad, but with this one, her lion was practically purring to get her legs wrapped around Dillon and his ready, twitching cock.

“Hey,” he said, frowning. “It’s okay. This is normal for your people, right?”

A sob left her lips as she bobbed her head once.

“What do I do?” he asked, approaching slowly, then crouching in front of her.

“I need…” Shit, what she needed was to be bred over and over to curb the insatiable burning in her middle, but she wasn’t going to ask Dillon for that treatment in a million-trillion years. He’d made it clear he didn’t want her like that.

“I’m on birth control,” she blubbered. “I started taking the shots when they started doing genetic testing. My pride didn’t know and oh my gosh, you don’t need to know this. Maybe I need to sleep in the shed for the next few days. This is going to get bad.”

His dark eyebrows were lowered, like he was actually concerned with her horny lioness’s plight. “You aren’t sleeping in the shed, Bre. It’s just different for women in my clan so I’m trying to get my bearing here.” He lowered his gaze to her hips, which, to her utter humiliation, had begun rocking against the sheet again.

Another tear slipped down her cheek as she rested her head back against the wall. “I don’t think this could get any worse. Please don’t tell anyone.” She couldn’t help any of her actions right now.

His frown only deepened. “Bre, I think you need to tell me what’s going on so I know what I’m dealing with here. If you don’t, I’m going to have to go find Logan and get answers from him.”

“No! Please don’t tell Logan.” Her throat was closing over the words as she tried to swallow another sob. “I’ll tell you everything, just don’t tell anyone how messed up I am.”

His fingertip brushed her bare shoulder and she closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.

“You aren’t messed up. I just didn’t realize it would be such a big deal for you. I should’ve taken you more serious when you mentioned your heat cycle.” He shuffled closer, elbows resting on his knees. “You’re going to have to learn to talk to me about this stuff anyway. We’re mated, remember?”

“Okay,” she said shakily. Really, she was struggling not to look at his still hard erection, jutting out between his legs like a damned spear. The man was going to kill her with this crouched position. Already, her knees were spreading any time she wasn’t focused on keeping them closed.

Swallowing the cowardice her lion usually adopted, and the urge to run to the bathroom and lock herself inside for the next three days, she took a steadying breath. “When we start our heat cycles, it’s easier if we aren’t around males. It’s hard, but not as bad. It doesn’t feel…impossible. Mine have been getting worse though, because I hit breeding age about four years ago. Thomas tested me yesterday so he could tell my pride when my cycle would begin.”

“Tested you how?”

“He tasted me. I was bent over a desk—”

A snarl left Dillon’s lips, rattling his entire chest. “And you didn’t want him to, did you? Is that when he clawed you?”

“Yes. I didn’t want him to then, but it would be different if I was with him when my cycle started. I feel…desperate. For relief.”

“Relief how?”

She bit her lip. “You know.”

His eyebrows shot up. “It’ll feel less impossible if you have an orgasm.” He said it as a statement, not a question.

Never before had she heard the word orgasm come from a man’s lips, and she’d never in a thousand years imagined one would be so comfortable with the word. Unable to find her voice, she nodded.

“So, if you come, you’ll feel better?”

“It’s not a onetime thing,” she whispered, heat burning her neck and cheeks. “Males cover females in heat multiple times a day. The relief would only be temporary.”

His voice dipped low and he cracked his knuckles. The sound was deafening in the quiet house “How many times a day?”

“Every few hours.” Her throat was closing over her words now and she fought the urge to give into another round of tears. Why was she so emotional? Perhaps it was the hormones surging through her body, but it felt like more. Like she’d just been through too much over the past two days. “I can take care of myself, but I need to have some distance.”

“From me?”

She nodded.

“Is distance what you want?”

She shouldn’t answer. This wasn’t his problem and she couldn’t just foist everything onto him. He was already shouldering so much. But here he was, waiting for her answer with his clear blue eyes so steady.

“No.”

“Do you want me touch you, Bre?”

A nod and a blush for the memories of her dirty dream. Even unconscious, she’d known he’d never force her into something she didn’t want to do.

His jaw clenched once and he stood and left the room.

Frowning, she stood on shaky legs. She’d made him angry, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how. She replayed their conversation as she shifted her weight nervously from side to side.

Her middle was burning up and she looked frantically around the room. She was going to have to help herself if she wanted be able to think straight. She stepped forward to shut the door, but Dillon came back in with a cell phone in his hand.

He hit a few more keys and said, “Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I set my alarm for three hour increments.”

Her heart pounded wildly behind her sternum. He didn’t know it, and she’d never find the courage to tell him, but that was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. Even though he didn’t see her as any more than a friend, he was going to take a shot at keeping her even.

It was apparent that Dillon was about to be the greatest friend in the history of friendship.

“You don’t have to do this,” she breathed as he approached. “I know you don’t see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Romantically.”

He snorted and shook his head. “You don’t know what I see, kitty. I like you fine. It isn’t putting me out to get to serial-bed a beautiful woman.”

She drew up short and froze. No one had ever called her that before. Her skin had always been too mottled, and her hair too wavy. She hadn’t known how to do her make-up right, or match her clothes well enough to look put-together. But here, stripped of every shield she possessed, here was a man she admired deeply telling her she was something she’d never imagined herself to be before.

“It’s my first time,” she murmured, eyes locked on his. Full disclosure seemed important.

“You told me. I’ll take care with you. I’ll open you gently so you won’t be too sore when I need to sleep with you in a few hours.”

A shiver of delicious anticipation snaked up from her tailbone to her shoulders.

“You have to promise me something though,” he said, stalking closer. He hooked his finger under her chin and lifted her face up to his. “When we’re together like this, no apologies. Own this. Own me, but don’t apologize for a single thing.”

Confidence surged through her as his erection brushed her quivering belly. “I promise.”

His finger ran lightly from her chin to the base of her throat, then he cupped the back of her neck and drew her lips to his. His kiss was gentle, and careful, and as her stomach clenched with her need to be closer, she leaned up on tiptoes and braved sliding her arms around his neck. His tongue brushed her closed seam, and she opened for him. He explored her mouth with thorough strokes and she pressed herself more tightly against his hips. Her own waist rocked against him, and that embarrassing purr rattled her throat.