The Island Of Bears: A BBW Paranormal Romance (5 page)

Irritated, I set my napkin on the table, snorting. “You’ll have to forgive me for not being a bit suspicious as to how it happened that I was strolling through the grounds at Ellis Island one minute, then unconscious the next, then waking up in a completely different place God only knows however many minutes or hours later.

You’ll have to forgive me for being a little skeptical of the explanation that I fell through some sort of supernatural portal just by dipping my hand in a fountain.”

“But that’s exactly what happened. It’s the truth.”

“Right. And I’m sure it’s the truth that you’re really some sort of supernatural shifter creature who has the ability to turn into a bear at will.”

“That
is
the truth. Whether you believe it or not.”

I got out of my seat and began pacing, arms folded across my chest. “Right. That’s the truth. I’m sure. And now since you’re insisting that it is, it’s really making me doubt your assertion that you didn’t somehow drug me and kidnap me. If I can’t get you to tell me the truth about some crazy story about you being half-animal that you’ve somehow gotten Cora to believe, then how can I
not
be dubious when you say that you didn’t kidnap me?”

Heaving a sigh, Holden got up from the table. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but everything Cora and I have told you is the truth. You
did
get here by falling through the portal. I
am
a bear shifter.”

Scoffing, I stopped pacing and looked him dead in the eyes. “Prove it.”

He sighed again, taking a few steps to close the distance between us. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re a bit mentally and emotionally fragile right now, which is very understandable. You’ve been through an awful lot. But considering this, I think it’s probably best that I don’t shift into my bear form right now, right here in the dining room.

I honestly think it would just scare you, and cause you to further retreat into denial. I think it would probably just cause you to convince yourself that you’re hallucinating or something. You’d probably convince me of drugging you yet again, not that I ever actually did even once. I just don’t feel like you’re ready to be faced with me in my animal form at this point.”

The entire time he’d been talking, I’d been standing stock-still, glaring at him with my jaw clenched.

Now, I unclenched it just long enough to speak. “Excuse me.
How
did you just describe my mental and emotional state a moment ago? Did I actually hear you right? Did you actually describe it as ‘fragile?”

“Look. Maybe that was a poor word choice. I just—”

“Is this how you get your new recruits to get with the program? You make them feel like they’re fragile and crazy if they
don’t
get with the program?”

“I never said ‘crazy.’ I—”

“I think you’d better leave. I think I’ve heard just about all the lies and delusions I can handle for one night.”

“Look, Haley, I think you’re just scared. You’re scared because you’re human, and admitting the existence of the supernatural is a scary thing. In fact, I’d be highly disturbed if a person
wasn’t
scared.”

“So, now I’m fragile
and
scared? Sounds as if you don’t think much of me as a woman.”

Sighing yet again, Holden raked his hands over his handsome, square-jawed face. “I think you’re right. I think I should go. You obviously need more time to accept things, and I’m sure I made a mistake in asking you what I did tonight.”

Suddenly exhausted, I began stacking the dishes on the table. “Goodnight. I’m sure you can let yourself out.”

After a long moment, he said goodnight and did just that. As soon as I heard the front door close, I set down the stack of dishes I was holding, promptly burst into tears, and buried my face in my hands, unable to understand why him doing what I’d asked should make me cry.      

*

The next day poured rain. I stayed inside, and Cora, Amy, and little Emily came over for lunch. While we were alone in the kitchen, making sandwiches, Cora casually asked me how the previous evening had gone. Unable to find the words to respond, I just shook my head, quietly scoffing.

Cora gave me a sympathetic look. “That great, huh?”

I could only scoff again, and she continued.

“Well, then, maybe you’ll be relieved to know that Holden and his men have had to go back into the jungle today. More Form trouble. One of them, a wolf Form, seems intent on trying to charge out to our village. Holden and the others have had a heck of a time fighting him off. I know Holden just wants to kill him and be done with it, but this Form is unusually strong. Holden just hasn’t been able to take him out yet, but he will. He’s unusually strong himself.”

I actually
wasn’t
relieved to hear that Holden had had to go back into the jungle. For some strange reason, it made me feel crabbier than I already was, though I tried to hide this during lunch and then after, while playing games with Emily, building a fort with her, and then reading several stories to her. After she, Cora, and Amy had left, I crawled into bed and tried to take a nap, sniffling a little as rain continued to drench the island outside.

Bizarrely, all I could think about was how comforted I’d felt with Holden’s arms around me when he’d carried me to the village, and how I wished I could feel the comfort of his arms around me right then.

But at the same time, I was still mad at him for what he’d said about me being in a fragile state, and scared. I wasn’t fragile or scared; I was simply a skeptic, and rightly so, I felt. Very rightly so. I had every reason to be angry with him, and suspicious of him, I told myself.

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep for a short nap, and mere seconds after I’d woke up, my phone dinged with a text from Holden. It read:
It’s all right for a woman to admit she’s scared, Haley. Men get scared sometimes, too. Everyone does. Being scared doesn’t mean a person isn’t strong; it just means they’re human. I myself was scared today when I was unexpectedly attacked by a Gray Form out of nowhere. I was able to fight him off, but I nearly wet my pants. I felt like such a freak.

Completely unable to help myself, I actually laughed out loud. Then, still giggling a little, I typed out and sent a very brief response.
Ha ha
.

Soon after, I received another text, which read:
PS- And I WAS genuinely scared, though I have to admit, the almost peeing my pants part wasn’t exactly true. I actually wasn’t wearing pants at the time. I was in bear form.

Bristling a bit, irritated, I didn’t respond to this text.

Holden didn’t return to the village the next day, nor did he send any more texts, and by the day after that, my crabbiness and irritation had reached a peak. Despite busy days spent with Cora, Amy, and a few other women, I was sleeping poorly, my dreams filled with images of Holden. Once or twice, I even dreamed of him making love to me, running his hands all over my bare skin.

And actually, I had this dream more than once or twice. Maybe a dozen times might have been more like it. Each time, I awoke breathing heavily, frustrated, and with a dull ache low in my belly. At the same time, I was still irritated with Holden for still insisting that he was actually a bear shifter. I was frustrated and irritated about everything, it seemed.

The evening of the third day since I’d last seen him, I begged off a game of cards and wine with Cora and Amy in order to stroll down the beach alone. I just wanted to think, or not think, I wasn’t even sure which. I just wanted to clear my mind of all thoughts of Holden.

However, after walking along for twenty minutes or so while warm ocean waves lapped at my feet, and while the sky turned from lavender to dark gray-blue to midnight blue, I was no closer to putting him out of my mind than when I’d started out. And in fact, the more I walked, the more I became focused on frustrating thoughts of his face, his deep voice, and his tall, well-sculpted body. Presently, almost against my will, my thoughts turned to what I’d dreamed about, with Holden making love to me.

I was so deep in thought that I didn’t even hear him come up behind me. It was his voice coming from somewhere very near behind me that jarred me out of my reverie.

“I thought I told Cora to tell you not to walk this far down the beach. With as active as the Forms have been lately, and with as few men as I’ve been able to spare to guard the village, it’s just not safe.”

I’d frozen dead in my tracks, and now I whirled around, just itching for a fight for some reason. “So, I’m a prisoner now? I can’t come and go wherever I please? And you can’t even just come right out and say that I’m a prisoner; you have to make up some fantastical excuse for it, like that some shadowy supernatural creatures are going to come to try to kill me or something. Yeah, I actually believe that. About as much as I believe that you actually have the ability to shift into a bear.”

Holden, who was standing maybe four or five paces away from me, now closed the distance between us, scoffing slightly. “You know, all of this is going to be so much easier once you believe. Once you’re finally able to overcome your fear.”

“What do you mean, ‘all of this?’ All of what?”

With his dark hair glinting in the light of a full moon, Holden shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe this.”

He suddenly dipped his head and kissed me, and not a peck, either. He kissed me with intensity, soon parting my lips and exploring my mouth with his tongue. I moaned into his mouth, reveling in the sensation of being kissed so hungrily, realizing that this was exactly what I’d been wanting him to do. I actually hadn’t wanted to fight with him at all.

Before very long, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he moved his hands to the small of my back, and then my rear, pulling me against him, making me moan again. I could feel that he was already hard. I could also feel that he was large, maybe even very large. The thought of finally being filled by him, of finally experiencing what I’d imagined in my dreams, made my insides quake with anticipation. I wanted him badly. I realized I’d wanted him just about from the first second I’d laid eyes on him. I didn’t even care if he was a liar or some sort of delusional cult leader anymore. I just wanted him to take me, right there on the beach. I just wanted him to end my simmering frustration.

Not wanting to waste any time, I broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “I want you. Right here, now. Just undress me. Just take me. Please.”

He seemed all too happy to comply with my request. With a faint growl rumbling in his broad chest, he immediately lifted my dress up and over my head, then removed my strapless bra, then helped me out of my underwear.

He tossed them aside and stood, not taking his gaze from my body for a single second. “You’re gorgeous, Haley. Absolutely gorgeous. Stunning.”

He pulled me into his arms and began kissing me again, soon moving his hands to caress my bare ass. Becoming increasingly turned on and slick, I hiked a leg up on his hip, feeling that he was now rock-hard. When he soon moved a hand to my front, probed my slick feminine slips apart and began lightly stroking my most sensitive spot, I broke our kiss yet again, crying out.

“Please, Holden. I need to feel you inside of me. Now.”

With his breathing fast and ragged, he practically ripped off his shirt, then lowered his jeans and underwear to his ankles and stepped out of them, revealing his full nakedness. And I’d been right. In the silvery moonlight, I could see that he was not only large, but very large. His long, thick manhood pointed straight up, almost flush with his extremely well-defined abs.

Not wanting to wait a moment longer, I hiked a leg up on his hip again and wrapped my arms around his neck, thinking that we might make love standing up. And we did, kind of. Holden remained standing, at least. I was more suspended in the air.

Shortly after I’d hiked my leg up on his hip, he’d put a hand behind my knee, then his other hand behind my other knee, actually picking me up, while at the same time, positioning the head of his thick shaft at my slick entrance even without the use of his hands. Now, he was gently pulling me toward him, groaning, impaling me on his granite-hard pole.

While I slid down the length of it, I threw my head back, my words coming out in a garbled rush. “Oh, God. Oh, God, yes. Yes.”

I locked my ankles around the small of his back, wanting to take every last inch of him inside of me. Once he’d completely filled me, he began slowly rocking his hips with me still suspended, holding me under my rear now. Never in my life had I been witness to a feat of such strength and athleticism during lovemaking, a feat that was especially impressive since I certainly wasn’t a tiny-framed girl.

The action of him rocking his hips had the effect of more or less bouncing me off me off his front, which had the effect of filling me deeper than I’d ever been filled before. The sensation was almost more pleasure than I could take, and I could already feel a powerful climax building deep inside of me.

Several minutes later, shortly after I’d begun lightly stroking myself to increase my pleasure even further, my climax crashed over me so suddenly and powerfully that I threw my head back, both literally and figuratively seeing stars. Bright pinpricks of light from behind my eyelids seemed to join the pinpricks of light in the darkened sky and then merge with them, seeming to cover the deep blue expanse with thousands of twinkling diamonds.