by Selena Scott
Before Danil, she’d been into trim guys. Slim waists, lean muscles. But that was shot to shit now. He stood before her, a tank of a man, straining at the very edges of his own body. Yeah. She was pretty sure there was no going back from this.
Well, when you stood at the edge of the waterfall, you could either turn back and swim upstream, or you could take the plunge. Dora didn’t have to stop to consider what her choice was. She had a lot of talents. But she’d never been a strong swimmer.
Dora pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it on the pile of clothes next to him as she stood at his back. Danil turned at the sound.
“No,” she said. “Keep facing forward.”
He hesitated, but did as she asked, his hands flexing at his sides.
Next came her pants. She stood behind him in only a lacy green pair of underwear and a matching bra. She’d had a feeling these might come in handy when she’d put them on today. Stepping forward, she molded herself to his back. He growled when her breasts pushed into him. Warm against warm.
She let her hands reach around and travel the landscape of his stomach, the hair on his chest. And then she indulged herself and let her hands plunge under the waistband of his underwear. He growled more but she ignored him, gripping him tight and stroking the magnificent length of him. God. He really was glorious.
She stroked him again, opening her mouth against the smooth warmth of his back, nipping with her teeth.
“Pandora,” he gritted out through his teeth. “I said that you should use me. For your pleasure. Not mine.” His body strained slightly forward, unable to resist the pump of her hand.
“This is my pleasure, Danil,” she said, smiling at his obvious strain. She pumped him again before she slid around to his front. His eyes widened and then narrowed as he took in her delicate lingerie. His hands reached for her but she batted them away, moving quickly. She tugged his underwear down and fell to her knees in front of him. “And so is this.”
She swallowed him down before he could protest. Well, she swallowed as much as she could, using her hands to pump the part of his cock that wouldn’t make it down her throat. When she looked up at him through the fringe of her lashes, he was staring down at her. Cursing her. Burning for her. Straining, receiving, warring.
She wanted him to let go, to feel nothing but an explosion of pleasure. So she swallowed more, humming and moaning around him. One of his hands tangled in the hair at the back of her head as he gently pushed her down on his cock. If her mouth hadn’t been stretched to the brim, she would have smiled at the victory, but as it was, she merely swallowed him further.
His body started to stiffen and he ripped her off his dick. Lifting her by the elbows, he slammed his mouth to hers. She was pushing him. She knew. And she was about to push him even further. She smashed herself against him, rubbing her nipples through the delicious chafe of his chest hair and tangling one of her legs with his.
She pushed on his shoulders and he got the message, tumbling back with her. She landed on his chest and her mouth instantly clamped to his neck. She felt her passions rising, her body straining. She’d meant to drive him crazy but she was working herself up as well.
“Show me, Pandora,” he growled. “Show me what you need. What is yours.”
She sat up and dragged her hands down his chest, her fingers curled into claws of passion. She might be hurting him. Neither cared. Her heart was racing, her body aching. She needed. She needed.
She stilled as her wet, aching pussy met the side of his straining shaft. She dragged herself up the side of it and pleasure like she’d never known shot through her. This is what he’d meant. He meant for her to use his body for whatever means. For her ultimate pleasure. She took him up on it.
She rode the side of his cock, not quite letting him penetrate her. Her body was rising, tightening at a near historic pace. When the friction wasn’t quite enough, she reared up further on her legs and grabbed his shaft with one hand, using the head to trace circles around her clit.
He groaned in what sounded like ultimate pain as he watched, his eyes glued to the sight.
“Use me. Yes. Show me,” he ground out the words, using every muscle in his body to stay still for her. To let her take exactly what she needed from him. She whimpered, thrusting out her chest and he realized that she needed more.
Danil sat straight up and clamped one of her nipples between his teeth. He bit down and sucked, hard, rudely, brutishly. And it was that that tossed her over the edge.
Dora’s eyes were wide, completely unseeing as her head threw back, her body tensed and she came like fucking Aphrodite.
Danil clamped an arm around her waist and slammed her down on his cock, fully penetrating her and prolonging her orgasm by another twenty seconds. She gasped, panted, begged, but silently, her body very nearly dissolving into the air around them.
“So quiet,” he muttered as she began to come down from her orgasm, her pussy rhythmically squeezing him so tightly he had to grit his teeth. “Always so quiet unless I make you scream.”
Her eyes cleared a tiny bit. She looked down at him. “Make me scream,” she whispered.
Danil flipped them over instantly, rolling over top of her, one hand still clamped around her hips to keep her protected from the hard tile floor. But nothing could protect her from him.
Danil’s toes gripped for purchase as he watched her face and slammed into her. With his free hand he tossed one of her legs over his shoulder, opening her to him. He slid deeper than he had ever been before. And she cried out, a moan coated in so much pleasure he nearly came right then and there. But he leashed himself. Not yet. He wasn’t finished yet.
Danil pushed into her over and over, insatiable. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than making them into one animal. He wanted to be inside her. He needed her. There was no turning back. They were melting together. She had to feel it. She had to feel it.
She moaned with each thrust and Danil knew he was taking her higher than he ever had before. She wasn’t in control of her sounds or her body as she eagerly received him, her nails clawing at his shoulders. But he needed to be sure she understood what was happening to her as he felt every barrier fall away. He needed to be sure that she couldn’t look away from what was happening here.
“Who makes you feel this way,” he grunted, pushing her across the floor and sliding his salty sweat against hers.
“You.”
“Say my name when you speak of me this way,” he grunted. “Say my name.”
“Danil,” she called, her pussy tightening like a vice and taking her over the edge. “Danil.”
She kept repeating his name, like the words were the only thing tethering her to earth. Her breath was in his ear as he collapsed over her and rutted, rutted, rutted. He came so hard he wasn’t breathing and even after it was over, after they were both exhausted, he kept pushing into her, their wetness spreading everywhere, their passion for one another never waning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They lay sprawled on the kitchen floor, panting and tangled. Danil was completely still against the distinctly uncomfortable feeling of every piece of his life being tossed in the air like confetti. He hadn't ever thought of himself as a man made of pieces. Everything in his life had just naturally fit so well together. He'd thought of himself as a whole. But that theory was shot to shit as he held still and felt everything resettle back to earth in a completely different pattern than he'd ever held before. He was a different shape now. A different man.
So, he loved her. And that, he thought as he traced a hand through her short hair, was that.
"After we track the shipments in a few days, we'll fly to Tulsa," he mumbled. Half to her and half to himself.
"What?" she asked, lifting her head off his chest, her cheeks flushed and her eyes still deliciously bleary. He would have liked to beat his chest over the expression on her lovely, precious face, but the racing of his thoughts restrained him.
"Your bio online sa
ys you are based in Tulsa. So we will fly next weekend. Gather the rest of your things. Hopefully we can break your lease. If your landlord gives us grief, I can flex on him as a lawyer. It will be fine. Maybe we'll rent a moving van if you have a lot of things. Do you have a lot of things?" he asked her, as if he'd just remembered that she was there.
Dora sat up straight, wincing a little as some essentials came in contact with the cold tile floor of the kitchen. "What? Tulsa?"
She shook her head as if to clear it.
He tugged her head back down, had her laying over his chest again. "Yes. Unless you want to keep your place there. We could spend time there, too, if you really love Tulsa. Is it nice there in the summer?"
"Danil!" Dora barked, taking his face in her hands. "What are you talking about?"
He looked down at her. "What are you so confused about?"
She opened her mouth and closed it. "You - it sounds like you're asking me to come live here with you permanently."
Danil scoffed. "I'm not asking. It is certainty. A husband and wife live in same house. But like I said, if you want to live here sometimes and in Tulsa sometimes, I do this for you." His accent became thicker in his agitation.
"Husband and wife," Dora repeated blankly. "Are you asking me-"
He waved a hand in the air. "There is no asking. It is already done."
"Excuse me?" Dora popped up again. And struggled when he tried to drag her down again. "No, Danil!" She rolled away from him and stood, her hands on her hips. She pointedly ignored his roaming eyes over her naked body.
"What do you mean 'it's done'?" She threw her arms in the air. "You haven't asked me. We haven't discussed anything about our future. I'm not even your girlfriend! We've just been - been..." she trailed off, searching for a way to define what they'd been doing and coming up short.
Danil merely lifted an eyebrow and pillowed his hands behind his head. "This is fine. You need time to understand that it's done." She opened her mouth, ready to protest, but he kept right on talking. "That I bring you to my home to live. And keep you safe now. That you hold my hand and tell me your secrets. That I take you to meet my mama. That our bodies need each other every day. Just to go on. That maybe we make baby just now."
He gestured between their naked bodies and the truth settled over Dora like a warm blanket. They hadn't used protection. Wow. Okay. Well. Wow.
"You're doing it again," she murmured, sinking to the floor next to him. "That thing where you say stuff and then it instantly becomes true."
"See," he said, nuzzling her ear. "You know it, too. You are already my wife. I am you husband. We will make it legal as soon as we can." He leaned back, looked in her panicked eyes. "But you might need me to ask? It is not my nature, but maybe you need the words?"
"I don't know what I need," Dora said, reaching out to play with his chest hair. "For the first time in my life I have absolutely no idea."
"Ah. Then I am already being good husband."
"How's that?" she asked, dazed.
"Because I know just what you need." He stood her up on her feet and knelt in front of her. "Pandora Katsaros. I will love you until I die. And then probably after that. I am very stubborn man." He smiled at her, lighting a candle somewhere deep in her gut. She couldn't breathe. "And that alone makes me your husband. Even if you didn't want to be my wife, I'd still be your husband. But you do want to be my wife. I see it in your eyes. You love me as I love you. Deep. From the deepest place in your chest. All you have to do is let it out now." He pulled her down into his lap and ran a hand across her breastbone. "It is okay, Pandora, samotna ptuška. You can let it out."
"What does ‘samotna ptuška’ mean?" she whispered, butchering the pronunciation and making him smile.
"It means 'lonely bird'. But I'm cutting off the ‘samotna' part right now. You'll never be lonely again." With that, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with a tenderness that Dora had never once felt in her life. One that spiraled out of him and into her. She'd had family before. She thought she'd been in love before. But this, this was so beyond either. It was the melting of two people in so many ways. In this moment she felt herself step into new territory. One where she let Danil give her everything. Some of those things, trust, caring, protection, only her father had ever given her before. And a whole new set of those things that no one had ever given her.
She pulled back from the kiss, holding his face in her hands to keep him from kissing her into oblivion.
"Wait! Don't steamroll me, Danil."
He eyed her warily.
"So you are determined to fight your feeling for me."
"No, you bossy ass. I'm not. And if you push me around too much then you miss some of the good stuff. Like this." She sat up and went onto her knees, pushing his shoulders back so she straddled him. "I love you, Danishka. And I'm here to stay. And we'll revisit the whole husband-wife thing when I can get my head on straight." She thought for a second, seizing an opportunity for a little leverage. "And after I see you shift into a bear."
Danil immediately stood up with her in his arms, sat her on the counter and stepped back from her. His eyes on hers, he ballooned in size, hair sprouting from every surface. His snout lengthened and teeth the size of dinner knives slid from his mouth. His shoulders were the size of boulders as his light brown fur caught the light and he sat back on his haunches. The kitchen floor creaked with the sudden weight of what had to be at least a thousand-pound animal.
Dora heard an animalistic panting fill the room and realized after a moment that it was hers. Not the bear's.
Danil was a bear.
Yeah. She'd known this for a while. For as long as she'd seen evidence that they even existed. But still. Knowing it and seeing it were two different stories.
Trembling, Dora reached her hand out to Danil's snout and he leaned into the touch. His fur was warm, and rougher than she'd thought it might be. She started to slide off the counter but froze when she realized that he was shifting back.
Seconds later, with a shake of his glossy chestnut hair, he stood in front of her as a man. His brown eyes staring directly into hers.
"Now you've seen it. Now we will be married."
Dora opened her mouth, her head spinning. She'd just received a hell of a lot of information. But Danil was apparently done talking. He grabbed her hand and strode out of the room, tugging her along.
"And now I fuck you on our bed and seal deal."
Dora couldn't help but laugh.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The morning came that they'd all been waiting for and Dora found herself sandwiched in a car with four bear shifters. She sat in the middle seat between Danil and Anton. She was a little nervous around Anton still. After he'd stormed out the other night.
"Listen, Anton, I'm so sorry about how crass I was the other night. I didn't realize what Navuka had done to you."
He stared straight ahead, his shoulder jammed into hers. "This is okay, ptuška. It was not you I had the angry feelings for.”
Dora felt a wave of relief and relaxed a little. Being jammed in between Anton and Danil began to feel companionable.
"Why does everyone call me ‘ptuška’?" she asked the car in general as they crept through the edge of the woods where they could just see the sorting facility. The sun was still a good 30 minutes from making it to the edge of the world.
"It is obvious," Anton answered.
And apparently that settled it because no one else elaborated. Well, the Belarusians certainly had a way of seeing the world.
The car was in position, hidden in the shadows where they would be able to watch the packages being loaded into the truck. That same truck would deliver them to the dummy location. They'd follow the truck to there and then follow whoever picked up the packages to wherever the new lab site was.
But the minutes ticked past and Dora began to get a little unsettled. It shouldn't be taking this long.
She turned to Danil, her nerves getting the best of her,
when Emin's phone started trilling, making all of them jump.
"Jesus, Emin, turn your ringer down!"
He just grumbled and eyed the screen. "It is AJ."
Dora felt Anton stiffen beside her. She risked a glance at his face and saw it set in a taut, tense scowl. Interesting. He didn't like AJ calling his brother. Very interesting. Dora wisely chose to say nothing.
"AJ, you are okay?" Emin asked, his eyebrows pulling tight at whatever her answer was.
Dora suddenly got a very bad feeling. What if they were loading the packages off at the other loading dock? She'd never seen them do that before. But it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. She'd hate to miss it and have to wait another whole week to track the packages to the location. She couldn't take the stress, the anticipation of it.
"Why does she call you?" Anton asked Emin.
Emin plugged his finger with one ear and listened harder to what AJ was saying. Anton leaned forward and slapped his brother's hand away from his ear.
A small scuffle ensued. And Dora took her opportunity.
"I'll be back in just a second," she whispered to Danil.
"Where?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing.
"I'm just going to pee," she replied, knowing that if he knew she was going to check things out back behind the building, he'd never let her go alone. And then all the brothers would want to go and by the time they'd gotten it all sorted out, the delivery might already be loaded and gone.
So she slid out of the car, over Danil's lap, pressing a small kiss to his cheek and disappearing into the woods beside the car.
Dora knew she only had a few minutes. She was sure that Danil would come after her if she was gone too long. And then he would be irritated at her for exploring on her own and it would be a whole thing. All she needed was a glimpse of the other loading dock. Something to confirm that they, for some reason, weren't loading any packages today, and she wasn’t just missing it completely.
Dora rounded the corner of the facility and saw that the other loading dock was shut just as tight as the main one. So weird. She knew the shipment was scheduled to come in today. She bit back a growl of frustration in her chest. Back to square one.
