Melted By The Bear: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (16 page)

When he broke our increasingly passionate kiss after maybe a minute or so, his deep voice was incredibly husky.

“Fully distracted yet? Or should I lose a few other articles of clothing, too?”

At this point, I couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to be trying to distract me from.

“Yes. Yes, I want you to take off all your clothes. I’m nowhere even close to fully distracted yet, and that might help.”

With his eyes glinting and mouth curving in the hint of a sly grin, he complied with my request, taking off his boots, socks, jeans, and boxers, allowing me to see him in all his naked glory. And it
was
a glorious sight. From his powerful, muscular thighs, to his six-pack abs, to his well-defined chest, I feasted my eyes on his body and bare skin, though I focused on one area in particular, which was the area I was most impressed with.

Standing high and proud, his erection was a thing of beauty. Thick, long, and from what I could see in the dim light, rock-hard already, it could not have possibly been a more perfect male member. It fact, it was a male member I’d fantasized about my entire life, but up until just a few nights before, had never actually experienced. And now, to my extreme delight, it was all mine to experience once again. But first, I had to get out of my own clothes. And I wanted Cormack to help me do it.

“Please undress me.”

Eyes twinkling, he spoke in a low growl. “Oh, so you’re fully distracted now?”

I lifted my gaze from his thick pole to his face with difficulty. “What? Oh. Oh, right. I guess so. But still not quite distracted enough. I have a feeling that you helping me out of my clothes might help, though.”

“And it’s not too cold out here for you?”

“No. I’m actually a little hot.”

With our kissing having worked me up to the point of actually perspiring a bit, I really was. The autumn evening felt like it had gone from sixty-something degrees to eighty-something within minutes.

After I’d kicked off my shoes and peeled off my socks, Cormack lifted my sweatshirt above my head, then flung it aside, gaze on my chest. I was wearing a black lacy bra that displayed my cleavage to its best advantage, but not for long. With his breathing accelerating, Cormack had it off in about three seconds, then just looked at my breasts with his breathing accelerating further still. When he cupped them in his large, long-fingered hands, my own breathing became fast enough to match his. When he began kissing me again, using his thumbs to toy with my stiffened nipples, I couldn’t hold back a long, low moan without even breaking our kiss.

Soon I’d lost my jeans and underwear; I wasn’t even sure how. Between Cormack’s hands and my hands, my jeans and underwear had almost seemed to fly off of their own accord. After this, our hands continued roaming, but now over smooth, bare skin.

Presently, Cormack broke a passionate kiss to look at my naked body in the moonlight, his gaze roaming from my face to the tips of my toes. “So, so beautiful, Aria. Gorgeous. You could make a grown man weep with desire.”

Or lose his voice
, I thought. Cormack’s voice was such a husky croak that it was just a degree or two from laryngitis, which served to heighten my desire to know that his was so great. As if I already couldn’t tell from the rapid rate of his breathing and the extreme hardness of his male member.

When he pulled me back into his arms and began kissing me again, I hiked a leg up on his slim hips, wanting to feel his hardness against my most sensitive spot, which was now throbbing with need, but I wasn’t quite tall enough to make what I wanted to happen, happen. Seeming to realize what I was trying to do, and where exactly I wanted to feel his hardness, Cormack took his long shaft in hand and began slowly running the thick head of it between my slick feminine lips, gliding it over my most sensitive spot with each upstroke.

The pleasurable sensation was almost more than I could take, to the point that my legs became rubber, feeling as if they wouldn’t hold me up much longer. As if intuiting this, Cormack moved a hand to the small of my back, supporting me while I moaned into his mouth, rocking my hips ever so slightly at the same time.

It wasn’t long before I needed more, more meaning all of him, every last granite-hard inch of his manhood. But, considering that we were in the middle of a forest, with rocks and sticks littering the dirt trail beneath us, I wasn’t quite sure how we might be able to make love without sustaining a few scrapes and bruises, and without getting incredibly dirty. Not that I’d mind too much; I was becoming so desperate for Cormack to bring me to release that a few scratches and some dirty skin would be well worth it.

Panting, I broke our kiss and spoke in a voice nearly as husky as his. “Please. I want to feel you inside me. I don’t care if we even have to lie down on the ground; I just want you. Maybe we can put our clothes beneath us like a blanket or something.”

“Or... we can just stay upright, like how we are. I can hold you up the whole time.”

“But I’m not a teeny-tiny woman, you know.”

“No, but I’m a shifter, so to me, holding your gorgeous body is almost literally like holding a feather. Let’s try my way, and see if you like it.”

I said okay, and he lifted me up, hands beneath my rear. I hiked my legs up, locking my ankles behind his back, reveling in the feel of his hardness against me and thinking that I was going to like “his way” an awful lot, even though I wasn’t quite sure how he was going to get himself inside of me, since my arms were around his neck, and his hands were needed beneath me so I wouldn’t fall. But I should have known that a shifter would have some hands-free entrance trick that an average person would think impossible.

With very gentle movements, he began bouncing me against his hips, groaning, until he’d somehow positioned the head of his thick shaft at my entrance. Then, after a brief pause, he gripped my hips and slowly pulled me toward him until every inch of his stiff pole was buried deep inside of me. Moaning, I threw my head back, literally seeing stars as they twinkled in the dark, velvety sky above us.

It turned out that I
did
like Cormack’s way of making love without us having to roll in the dirt. I loved it, actually. Swaying his hips so that he bounced me away from himself before sliding me back down his considerable length, Cormack apparently loved it, too, if his frequent loud grunts and groans were any indication. Making a few loud noises of satisfaction myself, I was soon lost in a world of pure pleasure, glancing into his eyes every so often while he did all the work.

It wasn’t long at all, maybe only a few minutes, before the sensation of being completely and totally filled, repeatedly, sent me tumbling over the edge. While Cormack picked up his pace of bouncing me off his hips, seeming like he was about to tumble over the edge himself, I cried out, clinging to his shoulders as wave after wave of ecstasy crashed over me. Just before my rapture was complete, he reached his own climax with a growl so loud that an owl somewhere nearby suddenly took off in a frenzy of flapping wings and hooting, as if startled.

A while later, back at the house, Cormack and I discovered that our appetites weren’t yet fully satisfied, and we lost our clothes for the second time that evening, though this time in his bed. A long while after that, I fell asleep in the warmth, strength, and safety of his embrace, miles beyond
distracted
.

Several days passed. Cormack and I shared dinner together every night, and two more moonlit walks through the woods, becoming even closer every single day. I twice brought up my wanting to help against AntiCormack, and each time, Cormack did a thorough job of
distracting
me, once so well that I enjoyed two climaxes during a single “distraction session” in the woods.

I continued practicing my power, becoming better and better at it, learning how to flip my mental anger switch on and off at will, and quickly. I became so good at zapping that I actually zapped a hole in one of Abby’s metal book carts.

She herself wasn’t doing very well, after one day thinking that she might be pregnant, but then having a pregnancy test at the hospital come back negative. When telling me this disappointing news before story hour at the bookstore, she’d at first tried to be upbeat about it, saying that she and David would just continue to have fun trying. She’d even smiled, but then, almost immediately, she cringed, eyes pinking, and buried her face in her hands.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be a big crybaby, but David and I just wanted me to be pregnant again so badly. I just don’t understand why it seems like I’m just not destined to become a mother, despite the fact that that’s the whole reason I was frozen.”

Feeling terrible for her, I ended up doing story hour that day, so that she could go home and have a little time to herself. She’d said she wasn’t sure she was up to being around the kids that day, and not because they weren’t usually well-behaved, but just because they reminded her of the only thing she felt was missing in her life.

At the end of the week, Cormack’s spies returned with information they’d stealthily gathered. Enraged by the loss of a quarter of his men, and mystified as to why the prophecy hadn’t come true, AntiCormack planned to attack Blackthorn City again, once his remaining men were all healed from their injuries, probably within a couple of weeks.

AntiCormack had actually been so enraged by his defeat that he’d killed one of his three common-law wives in cold blood when she’d dared to suggest that maybe he should just abandon Stonywood, move their group somewhere far away, and accept that Michiana was Cormack’s to rule.

With a chill dancing along my spine, I asked Cormack how AntiCormack had killed his wife, praying that whatever he’d done, it had been quick and as painless as possible. However, Cormack’s frown told me that it hadn’t been even before he spoke.

“Unfortunately, in bear form, AntiCormack slashed this woman’s throat out, but she didn’t die right away and tried to flee, so AntiCormack just let her run, knowing she’d soon bleed to death, which she did. I don’t think we should feel too awful about this, though. Years back, this same woman drowned the newborn son of one of AntiCormack’s other wives, simply because she was jealous that she’d never been able to give AntiCormack a baby herself.”

Horrified at how anyone could drown an innocent baby, now I
didn’t
feel bad about the way the woman had died.

A short while later, before I could ask him what he intended to do about AntiCormack’s planned second attack, Cormack was pulled away by a phone call from David. Apparently, AntiCormack had some spies of his own out and about, and one of them had just been spotted to the east of town, trying to eavesdrop on a conversation between two of Cormack’s men who’d been taking a break from patrol duty. Cormack had to go, saying we’d talk more later. However, he didn’t return that evening, still not home by the time I went to bed around eleven.

The next day, he was out leading his men on patrol, and I was busy practicing my zapping power, helping Abby at the bookstore, and then with story hour, and then with singing lessons. In addition to Natalie and her friend from school, I now had three new students. Courtesy of Natalie, word had traveled fast that I was a “super awesome” teacher. The mom of one of the new students had told me that, smiling, which had made
me
smile. This particular mom previously had only glared at me.

I refused any money for giving singing lessons, because I really only did them for the joy of it, which was considerable. I loved teaching kids, and I was beginning to feel like I was realizing the dream I’d been aiming to achieve when I’d went on hiatus from the band not long before the nuclear disaster. All I’d ever wanted to do was teach music to kids, regardless of who could pay, or who was good at it, or whatever, and now it was happening. I had ideas that at some point in the future, I’d add piano lessons and guitar to my lesson offerings, too. There was only one problem, and that was the uncertainty of AntiCormack and what he might do hanging over the entire town. With each day that passed, my desire to see him gone grew and grew. As did my determination to help see it done.

I planned to bring this up, yet again, with Cormack at dinner that evening, and I was happy when he showed up exactly on time at seven, despite the fact that two more spies had been spotted that day and he and his men had had to deal with them, meaning, track them down and kill them.

Knowing he was probably starving, I planned to wait until Cormack had eaten to say anything about my continued resolve to help. I also wanted to know if he’d yet decided on a plan of action now that he had intelligence about AntiCormack’s plans. All this could wait until dessert, I figured. I knew that Cook had made a pumpkin spice cheesecake, one of Cormack’s favorites, and I hoped that once he was tucking into a slice of it, it might make him receptive to some of the things I was planning on saying. Quite a long shot, I knew.

But well before we got to dessert, well before we were really even into our dinner, Cook came flying through the swinging door into the kitchen, ladle in hand, as pale as if she’d seen a ghost. Her speed and her appearance, with face chalk-white and eyes wide, was so alarming that Cormack flew up from his seat with his own eyes wide.

“Cook, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Having come to a sudden stop by the table, she just stood panting for a few moments, clearly trying to catch her breath, before speaking. “The prophecy. Everyone’s had it all wrong. It was never interpreted correctly in the first place.”