by Elle Thorne
Dunn’s growl was primeval. It came from a place that was untamed, unreached, and completely new to her. She fought to breathe when his hands cupped her breasts, allowing their fullness to overflow, pushing them together while she felt his hardness demanding her touch.
Sheer agony. She needed so much more than this.
He pulled her top up, over her head, and, with one deft move, left her there on the front porch in the cool breeze, completely topless. The wind caressed her body, turning her nipples to hard pebbles.
He dropped his head, taking one in his mouth while his hand hefted the weight of her other breast, thumb making torturous circles around the other nipple. He flicked his tongue, tormenting her. She grabbed his head, holding on, back arched against the railing, eyes closed, oblivious to everything except this man whose sole desire was to give her pleasure. He sucked it in, pulling at it, nipping it with his teeth while he busied his hand, tugging, pulling, pinching, rolling the other nipple between his fingers.
When his hand dropped lower, from her breast to her abdomen, bypassing her navel, and tracing the waistband of her jeans, she shuddered her arousal then sucked in her tummy so he could slip his hand inside her pants. As though knowing exactly what she wanted, or maybe simply wanting it himself, he reached his hand inside, not even unbuttoning her pants. His hand glided lower, until it met the resistance—not much resistance, really—of her panties.
Her breaths coming in loud pants, she shoved his hand with hers, wordlessly telling him exactly what she wanted. She writhed as his fingers breached the elastic and touched the hair just below.
He groaned. She groaned. Both at the same time. He held her against the support beam, mouth moving to the other breast, leaving the wet nipple to harden further in the breeze as his fingers reached her slit. The beginning of the spot where she was certain if he lowered his hand, he’d take her to heaven.
And indeed, one moment later, his fingers slipped into her wetness and threw her into a cataclysmic, back-arching orgasm. She grabbed the railing with one hand, the other digging nails into his forearm as she climaxed.
“Ho-ly—ohmig—” She’d never felt something like this, and he hadn’t even taken her yet. She found her body convulsing in aftershocks that felt more like mini-orgasms.
His hand was soaked. Her body was soaked. Her jeans… God, it was dripping down her legs.
“Fu-ck.” He turned the single word into two syllables as he took her mouth again, murmuring against her lips. “Do you know how much I want you?”
“As much as I need you?” Wait. Did she say that? Was that husky sentence really hers? It came from her mouth? She didn’t recognize her own voice, sounding more like an animal.
Dunn’s bear reacted to the primordial growl in Meri’s words, roaring at Dunn to claim their mate. To make what they had permanent. To make her a part of their world for the rest of their lives. To make her his.
“Let’s go inside,” she whispered. “Just in case anyone comes to check on us. I wouldn’t want them to see us…”
She didn’t say the rest, but she didn’t need to. His cock sprang even further to attention. The need for her painful. The desire to take her, make her his—theirs—was an overwhelming force. He picked her up, shouldered the door open, and placed her on the bed, then peeled her jeans off. She watched him unabashedly from her spot on the bed, perched on her elbows, her breasts thrust forward, beckoning him.
He slid out of his jeans and pulled his shirt off then kneeled next to the bed, pulling her to the edge, then dropped his head, his mouth above her core, inhaling the deliciousness of her sex. Of her climax. She squirmed as he appraised her rosy treasure. Spreading her lips, he dipped his tongue within, then commenced to licking the center of her pleasure. She squirmed and moved her hips in time with his tongue’s thrusts.
He enjoyed watching her as she climaxed almost immediately, her body thrusting uncontrollably. Flushed, her hair a dark messy halo, she sat up, eyes half-closed, sex-heavy. “Dunn.”
“Mmm?” He raised his head, eyes still on her.
“I need you. You. Now.”
The words. The tone. The look. It all slammed into him, driving him to rise from his feasting and join her on the bed. “You got me,” he groaned. His erection straining toward her.
“On my terms?”
A hiss escaped him as his cock filled to a painful, engorged state. His bear was roaring deep in Dunn’s soul and mind. He raised a brow at the sexy expression on her face. “On any terms.”
She pushed him to the bed. “I want to have control.”
His bear snarled his approval. Dunn lay back. He’d let her have some control. Some.
She moved to straddle him, her slickness rubbing him, making him desperate to drive himself deep inside. She leaned forward, her hands on the bed on either side of his chest, her breasts ripe fruit, tempting him. He flicked his tongue at one of her nipples, enjoying the feel of the bud hardening even more.
“Oh, yes,” she groaned, trembling at his touch. He released her nipples, put his hands under her and raised her.
Her control just ended because his self-control was no longer existent. His hardness rubbed at her entrance. He brought her down, feeling her heat and the entrance to her core against his head. His cock and his bear both strained to be free of his restraint.
While driving her down swiftly, he raised his hips with a sudden thrust, piercing her body, filling her with his hardness, stretching her to accommodate him. She gasped then began to move, riding him.
He stiffened, ground out the urge to release immediately. God. She was taking him to the edge. “Slow down. I’m—ahh. Slow, Meri. God. Plea—” He grabbed her hips to still her.
She broke free, moving his hands to her breasts then, using her hands, she raised and lowered herself over and over, impaling her body with his length, sucking him into her wetness, rocking her hips, rolling her body.
“Fuck. It’s—”
She remained impervious to how perilously close she was to driving him over the edge, driving him, riding him like a wild woman. If she was going to push him this way, he’d be damned if he’d go into that heavenly abyss alone.
He reached for the little hooded center housed in her duskiness, exposed the tiny pleasure core, pinched it. Then, laying his fingers on, he moved it in furious circles. She dropped lower on him as her legs spread more and her nails raked stripes down his abdomen, scoring the bullet wounds he’d received.
Desire flaring in the deepness of her dark eyes as she pumped herself on him. More and more. Pushing both of them closer and closer to an apex.
“You have to be mine. Forever.”
“Yes,” she moaned.
“Will you be mine?” He roared the words out.
She lowered herself, her lips close to his. “Forever.”
He flipped her over, and, without bothering to pause, he drove himself deep into her.
Her core began quivering around him, clenching, pulling his passion to the surface.
He knew what he was doing. His bear knew what they were doing. They’d found theirs. Their fated mate. Their forever mate. And it was time to claim her.
When she screamed her release, he yielded to his own, exploding deep within her while he bit into the spot on her neck, marking her as his forever with a shifter couple-bond.
Epilogue
A Few Short Weeks Later
(No Weeks are Short to an Expecting Woman)
Meri rubbed her slightly distended abdomen then moved the ministration to her back, which seemed to ache nonstop.
“I feel ya.” Allegra rubbed her own back. “I’ve been driving Griz crazy every night with requests for backrubs.” She took a sip of the herbal tea Meri’d made for them. “I think you make it better than I do.”
She had laughed, for this was the same recipe Allegra had made for them that first day in the treetop house.
The two of them sat at the table in Meri’s kitchen, in the cabin several of the shifte
rs in Bear Canyon Valley had put together in what Mae had laughingly called a good old-fashioned barn raising. It hadn’t taken them long, what with the strength those shifters had. Meri had stood in awe as the shifters had heaved and carried lumber no mortal man would ever be able to. And after Dunn and Meri’s cabin had been built, it had seemed Griz disappeared. She was surprised to learn he was rubbing Allegra’s back because she’d wondered if he’d been out of town the last few weeks.
In fact, she’d told Dunn she was considering spending nights at Griz and Allegra’s because she didn’t want to be worried about her new best friend. Best friend. Yes, she did consider Allegra her best friend, something she’d never have thought she’d have succumbed to after losing her mother and closing herself off emotionally. Hard to get close to people when you feared they might one day leave—aka die.
When she’d asked Dunn about Griz, saying she thought he was out of town a lot, he’d said, “Why is that? I think Griz is home every evening.”
Meri’d turned the heat down on the stew she’d been preparing. “Has he? Have you seen him? I thought he was out of town all this time.”
“I’ve seen him. Here and there.” But there was a glint in Dunn’s eye. One that told her he was holding something back.
Maybe Griz was building Allegra a crib or something of that sort for her baby. Maybe they didn’t want to put the burden of keeping that secret on Meri’s shoulders, so Dunn wasn’t sharing.
She’d accepted the answer and kept her thoughts and comments to herself from that day on.
The cabin’s back door opened. Dunn and Griz stepped inside. The smile on Dunn’s face told her something was definitely up. That this was a day of reckoning. In a good way. Perhaps whatever Griz had been creating for Allegra would finally be shared.
Allegra rose from the table, stepping close to her mate. “I think Meri was beginning to believe you’d turned into a vampire, as she had not seen you in the daytime since the cabin was built.”
Griz smiled, the expression almost—almost—making him not quite as formidably fearsome. “Had she now?” His tone was cryptic, holding nuances of secrets. “Doc is awaiting us at the entrance to the tunnels. I’ve secured golf carts for traversing the lengths of them.”
“Tunnels?” Meri looked at Dunn for an explanation.
Instead, Griz began explaining as he walked them past his cabin toward a thicket of trees. “Behind those trees is a cave which opens to a tunnel. The tunnel, in turn, leads to a multitude of tunnels which predate us. They predate most everyone in Bear Canyon Valley. They’d been the project of Grant’s grandfather.”
“Grant Waters?” Meri picked her way through the leaves and pine needles, heeding the roots and stones she knew dotted the paths.
“Yes,” Griz affirmed. “Grant Water’s grandfather, Native American, a grizzly shifter. There’s been conflict and death here in the area, on and off, more so in the past than now. Strife between shifters and sometimes with non-shifter types. So, he took steps to ensure the safety of the shifters in Bear Canyon Valley.”
They stopped in front of a cave whose entrance was barely visible for the vines hanging before it.
Griz glanced at his phone. “Huh. Doc’s not going to be here, but no problem.”
After wondering why Doc was going to be there in the first place, Meri pushed the thought aside. “This is it?” She would never have thought this was a cave, much less one that opened up to a series of tunnels.
Griz and Dunn held the vines aside for her and Allegra to enter. Once inside, they found two golf carts, with little trailers attached. Griz took a moment to detach one cart. “Won’t be needing this.” He helped Allegra into the back while Dunn gave Meri a hand to sit next to him.
Moments later, they were coursing through the cave, Griz serving as tour guide.
“All told, there used to be twenty entrances scattered around the mountain. Some were disguised as caves, some were hidden behind waterfalls, others were tucked into tree trunks. Grant’s grandfather hadn’t left anything to chance. We have added more. On several different mountain peaks, cabins have tunnels beneath them.”
Deep in the bowels of the mountains surrounding Bear Canyon Valley, the foursome wended their way deeper under the earth as the cave led to a tunnel, the tunnel led to another one, and a different one. It was as if there was a maze of tunnels.
The walls were rough-hewn stone, electric wires ran down the tunnels, with sconces attached just above eye level. The sconces were all on, casting the place in dim light.
“Reminds me of Razorpeak,” she leaned forward and told Dunn. “Just not as scary.”
“Not scary at all,” he agreed.
They passed storage areas with food and beverages that would keep a town fed and hydrated in the event of a zombie invasion or an apocalyptic event. “Who stocks this stuff? Who keeps up this place?”
“Braden and Dakotah help maintain them.”
New names to Meri, though most of the people she’d met were those who stayed at Mae’s inn. And a few others that spent time there. “Braden and Dakotah?”
“A polar bear shifter and his mate,” Allegra supplied.
Meri was perplexed. “Griz. Why them? Why not you? Or your own blood? Your nephews?”
Griz chuckled. “Funny you say that. I’ve been asked several times. And in turn, one day I asked Jer—Jeremiah Flight of Eagle Over Waters—”
Meri held up her hand. “Hang on, who’s that?”
“Grant Waters’ grandfather. Later, they shortened the name to Waters. That’s way shorter than Flight of Eagle Over Waters. Anyway, as I was saying, one day, I asked Jer the same thing. It was the day he turned the tunnels over to me. He said the tunnels picked me. That his shifter animal—a grizzly, remember?—told him. And the same thing would happen to me.”
Meri was trying her damnedest to understand shifter politics, but there were kinks and idiosyncrasies she didn’t grasp “Isn’t Grant the alpha of Bear Canyon Valley, right? He leads those in the valley?”
“He is. The tunnels, however, are something else. They’re a separate entity.” He shrugged, turning down a fork in the tunnel system. “Not easy to explain.”
“So Grant’s grandfather gave you the tunnels…”
“Hardly.” Griz chuckled. “Jeremiah did not give me the tunnels. He gave me to the tunnels.”
“So, um, Braden and Dakotah? Where do they fit in?”
“The mantel was passed to them. Who knows why the tunnels determine what they do. These are things tied into the Native American lore that I do not know.”
“Okay, so Braden and Dakotah have one of the cabins that leads to the tunnels?”
“They do. Though it seems they like to spend a lot of time in the lagoon. Their little one enjoys the water. He’s an elemental lion shifter.”
“Ohhh.” Except for Mae, Meri hadn’t met any other elementals. Nor had she seen any display of elemental skills, though Mae had promised one day to take her to the clearing and show her. Then, “Oh, you said lagoon? There’s a lagoon in the tunnels?”
“More than one. And a waterfall inside.”
Allegra laughed at that. “I’ve seen it.”
Griz continued, “Though Allegra prefers the one close to her treehouse.”
“Where are Braden and Dakotah now? Will I get to meet them?”
“Maybe one day. Not today. We have other things to do today.” Griz cast a sideways glance at Dunn. “She has questions. Does she do this to you?”
He chuckled, appraising her, slipping a hand back to take hers. “In-cess-ant-ly. I tell you, incessantly. It’s the scientist in her.” He winked at her.
She squeezed his hand playfully. “It is the scientist in me!”
“Stop picking on the pregnant women,” Allegra mock-scolded.
“I was just going to say,” Griz added, “that the surprise we have in store for Meri is perfect then, isn’t it?”
“I think it is,” Dunn agreed.
M
eri practically jumped out of her seat. “Surprise? What? For me? What is it? What do you mean?” Her mind flew to her thought that Griz was making a crib for Allegra. Maybe it was a crib for her baby.
“Oh, it absolutely is the most perfect surprise,” Allegra announced.
Meri whirled in her seat. “What? You knew about this? And here I thought I was keeping a surprise for you a secret, but instead—” She hugged her. “Look at you!” Anticipation had her wriggling. Was it in the next tunnel? Would it gleam oak, or be stained a darker color? What wood did he use? She bit her questions back, lest she be the cause of more mirth, but tears sprang to her eyes at the kindness she’d received from these good people.
“Here we go.” Griz braked the cart to a stop then helped Allegra out.
Meri was too excited to wait for a helping hand. Anyway, who needed one? She wasn’t an invalid. She could handle this just find.
She leapt off the cart and— “Oomph,” came from Dunn—right into his arms.
“You’re an anxious one.” He steadied her. “Easy now.”
“In here.” Griz pushed a door open.
Steel door, she noticed. Stainless steel. Unlike any door they’d passed, as far as she’d noticed.
Griz stood aside as she stepped into complete darkness. She heard him flip a switch with a click.
Light flooded the area.
Meri gasped. She looked at Dunn, stupefied. Then she turned to Griz. “This is a…” She stepped further in. “This is a laboratory!”
“Indeed.” Griz led Allegra in. “She’s surprised. I don’t think she was expecting this.”
“Oh, this is so much better than a crib!” Meri clapped.
They all laughed.
She went from one side of the large room to the other, then around the entire perimeter. Shelves, cupboards, a long bench, a long blackboard and wall-space for the display of pictures, charts and diagrams. A preparation area, terminals, a storage area. Aprons, glass rods of several lengths and thicknesses, balances, beakers, beaker tongs, burners, draying racks, Erlenmeyer flasks, graduated cylinders, funnels, goggles, hot plates, gloves—Kevlar and nitrile—and petri dishes, pipets. And that did not include the equipment, the glorious machinery, including an MRI and an x-ray machine, an ultrasound. And even an eye wash station and a broken glass collector!
