by Selena Scott
Up her thighs to her hips. One and then the other.
“Maxim, what are you doing?” she gasped as his hands slid to her ass, his fingertips feathering across her cleft, up to the dimples of her back.
“I am touching every inch of you,” he replied tersely. “It was only regret of our first night together. That I did not touch you in every place.”
His hands came around her front then, one of his fingers pressing into the shadow of her navel. His thumbs came up her center, the rest of his wide, thick fingers making a cage around her ribs as he dragged his hands upwards. His hands paused at her breasts. Apparently his mouth was gonna do that part.
And he was just as thorough there as he’d been everywhere else. Ivy gasped, her mouth opened and her eyes slammed shut. He sucked one of her nipples straight into his mouth. An orgasm started a delicious tug in her belly but fell away when his mouth moved to the other nipple, suckling at her. It rose again and fell as he released her there as well.
He sucked at her collarbone, leaving a shiny purple mark that made his dick even harder to see it there. She was perfection. Absolute perfection. Her body was a light, silvery blue in the light from the porch. She looked as if she were laying at the bottom of the ocean, anxiously waiting for him to make her come so hard they created another continent.
God, he was happy to oblige.
Ivy gasped again as his hands came up to meet hers, but didn’t stay. His mouth kissed at her neck as his fingers licked past the webs of her fingers, traced her palms, circled her wrists. He reared back and placed a kiss at the inside of each of her elbows. Up her arms, he quickly rubbed his thumbs through her armpits, making her blush and wiggle. But he only grinned, lowering her head and smelling her there in a loud, gusty inhale.
“Maxim!” she admonished, blushing harder.
“Christos,” he muttered, in apparent pain. “I thought you were mermaid, but you are witch. You have cast spell over me.” He leaned down and huffed at the pit of her arm again before he let his hands trace up to her neck.
What was happening? Ivy had never felt more naked in her life. He was just supposed to pin her down and have sex with her on the couch. He wasn’t supposed to be plucking her feelings out one by one, parading them around for the world to see. He wasn’t supposed to somehow hold up a mirror for her to see her own beauty. She shouldn’t be fucking glittering right now. But she was. Oh God, she was.
His hands crested her chin, and his fingertips, light as moths, brushed over her cheekbones, her lips, her slightly big nose. Both eyelids. He danced his thumbs around the shell of her ear and inside for just a moment. His fingers traced every inch of her scalp before they threaded through her hair.
He reached down, fastened her legs around his hips. His eyes were dangerous, smooth whiskey, as his chest rose and fell. He crouched forward, planted a hand on either side of her head, his mouth just a breath away from hers.
“I touch you everywhere.” One of his fingers grazed over the mark his mouth had left on her collarbone. “I mark you.”
“Maxim,” she whispered, gripping hard at the last slippery shred of resolve. “I can’t make you any promises.”
His nostrils flared as his eyes heated with some unknown emotion. “I touch you everywhere,” he repeated. She felt the nudge of his cock head at the entrance of her dripping, aching pussy.
Tightening her legs around him, she drew him forward. “No promises,” she whispered.
“Everywhere,” he said again. And pressed all the way into her in one, confident thrust.
There were no toes dipped into this pool. He didn’t hesitate. Maxim immediately started a rhythm that had Ivy’s mouth pulled open, her hands turned into claws over his back.
He fucked her across the living room floor, his furious breaths warming and cooling the crook of her neck as he took her. Ivy’s hair pulled as it caught in the legs of the coffee table and she was dimly aware of Maxim turning the piece of furniture over as if it were made of matchsticks.
She smashed her hips against his, grinding her clit against his cock on every stroke. He groaned, biting hard on her lip.
“Everywhere,” he said into her mouth, licking over her teeth, under her tongue, every dark, feminine corner of her.
She was rising, tightening, swirling, falling away and rocketing up all at once. Half of her strained away from the fire that built inside her while the other half sprinted.
He was taking her, taking her, taking her. Every thrust was pushing her further and further from who she had been before she met him.
“Everywhere,” he said again, his honey eyes tight and intense on hers. And this time she was certain that he meant more than just her body. He was coming for her heart.
Maxim rode her hard, unrelenting, savage. Her body bucked and bore down when he teased at her clit with his thumb. He strummed and circled and plunged inside her. And then, when it was almost too much, when she was certain she couldn’t take anymore, he fell forward again, pressing that thumb right into her mouth.
“Everywhere,” he growled again. And she exploded.
***
Ivy nodded weakly into his neck, her heart racing against his and her breath like a kiss.
He wasn’t sure if she was nodding in agreement that he’d touched her everywhere, or if she was just generally acknowledging what had happened. But, frankly, that was her business. And he didn’t have it in him to pry.
He barely had it in him to keep existing. She’d positively wrecked him. Torn that orgasm out of him like he’d stolen it from her in the first place.
He could have slept a solid 12 right there on top of her. But he was more than twice her size, and the boy could wake up and discover them at any moment. He rolled away from Ivy but didn’t let her go far. He could sense that touching her was very important right now. He’d made her vulnerable with all the touching from before. And then he’d fucked her fifteen feet across the living room floor. He needed to, how could he put it? Ah. He needed to seal the envelope.
He dragged her across his chest and flipped a blanket down from the back of one of the armchairs. He wrapped it over them and traced a pattern over her back. Whispering to her in Belarusian, he told her everything he wanted to say. No reservations. She wiggled against him weakly.
“What are you saying up there?” she asked, pushing a hank of sweaty hair out of her face.
“I’m saying a little Belarusian poem for your breasts,” he lied easily. “It goes ‘I have many favorite parts of your body/ But there are two tied for first place/ In case you don’t know/ It is your breasts’.” He kissed her laughing mouth. “It is ancient Belarusian poem. Although in my language, it rhymes.”
“You are so full of shit,” she chuckled, reaching across the floor for her underwear and her t-shirt.
He didn’t want her to get dressed. He wanted to lay naked and on the floor with her for the rest of his life. But, he realized, she wasn’t using her clothes for armor. She wasn’t shutting him out as he feared she might. So he figured he could afford to let her do whatever it was she wanted right now.
She found his underwear on the ground, tossed them over to him. “You can’t stay the night, Maxim. And I don’t say that to be rude! I just-”
“I know,” he said; saying the words himself was less painful than hearing her say them. “It is not good for Linc. Yet.”
She ignored his ‘yet’. And stood, in just her underwear and t shirt. She cleared her throat.
“Oh. You are telling me to leave right now?”
She said nothing. He could see some internal battle in her face. He realized that even she didn’t know the answer to that question. She was trying to muster up the words to tell him to leave while her face was asking him to stay.
“It is only 9:30,” he said. “We could watch movie. And then I will go.” He scratched at his stubble. He should be more honest than that. “Well, we will probably fuck again. And then I will go.”
She let out an involuntar
y laugh. Her face a wash of relief that he hadn’t made her choose what happened next. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A few days later, Lana narrowed her eyes at the high def screen that she watched carefully. She slid a hand over her gelled blonde hair. She liked it that way; it kept it out of her face. She lit a slim cigarette and watched Ilya and Maxim Malashovik toss a young boy, 4 or 5 years old, back and forth to one another. The boy giggled and screamed. They stood in the woods out by the Malashoviks’s house.
The image was partially blocked, because, well, she couldn't plant cameras everywhere in the woods and she did the best she could with what she had. She eyed Maxim critically with the smallest tinge of regret. Originally, Navuka had wanted him for their shifter soldier program. And he would have made an incredible soldier with his size. But that day, almost 12 years ago now, it had been Anton that her team abducted for research. He'd been younger, quicker, and so much easier to manipulate. The wisest choice in the long run.
Lana frowned at the image of the two men and the boy on the screen. The fucking Malashoviks had been a thorn in her side for the last fifteen years.
Navuka had suspected they were a family of bear shifters for years before that even. When the Belarusian government had started Navuka, the Malashovik family had been some of the first names on the list of potential recruits.
Well, she stubbed out her cigarette. Maybe 'recruits' wasn't exactly the right word.
She could barely help the hiss through her teeth as she watched the screen in frustration. They’d been most of the way toward converting Anton into a super soldier. The crowning jewel of the Belarusian army. And then his family had raided the lab. Fucked everything irrevocably. Navuka was still recovering from that particular siege. Years of research and time and effort up in literal smoke. And their proudest project, their most valuable pet, in the wind.
Lana wasn't sure what was more frustrating. When they hadn't known where Anton and the Malashoviks were. Or knowing exactly where they were and not having the manpower to take them.
She was sick of waiting for an opportunity to take Anton, no matter what Sergei thought was best. As far as she was concerned, they needed to be done with the Malashoviks. She wanted so badly to just kiss them goodbye and get some new recruits. A new shifter army. But after what happened last year. Losing the first tiger shifter. And then the second - the fucking Malashoviks again - that had been a mess. And the life president had been so angry at them that she'd genuinely been surprised when she and Sergei had woken up the next morning. He wasn't known for forgiveness or leniency. And they'd made a lot of mistakes over the years.
Still, even so. She was tired of waiting on Anton. She didn't think he was magically the answer to their problems.
She wanted to move the hell on and find other shifters in the world. The tigers had been a mistake. Glory was too old when they got to her. She wasn't impressionable or malleable enough for their experiments to take hold. Hell. Anton had almost been too old at 19.
They needed a young one.
She leaned back in her rickety chair and looked around at the crappy old cabin they'd been using as a home base. God, she hated it here. She wanted this to be over. She was a scientist, for Christ’s sake. She was sick of being told how to conduct her research by some politician half a world away.
She needed the thrill of the experiments. Her mind thought back to those days in their lab in Belarus. To his delicious pain. How his body had taken it, how day after day, they’d shaped him into exactly what they wanted. She savored the memory like a square of dark chocolate.
She sighed and looked out the window of the dingy room. She could see Sergei pacing back and forth out on the sidewalk, listening to someone on his cell phone and nodding deferentially every so often. That got under her skin and irritated her. Even when they can’t see him, he’s deferential.
Lana curled her lips back from her teeth. No imagination. That had always been his problem. He was a rule follower. She supposed she could have been stuck on this mission with someone much worse. Someone unattractive or someone unintelligent. Neither of those were Sergei’s problem.
Her eyes drifted back to the surveillance screens she watched. The only one with any activity was still the screen with Ilya, Maxim, and the child. Halfway through reaching for another cigarette, Lana froze, her eyes glued to the screen.
The child had fallen to the ground, curled in on himself in a very familiar way. Maxim and Ilya crouched next to him, hands on his shoulders. The boy bared his teeth, his face getting redder and redder.
Lana had thought that she’d seen too many things in her life to ever suffer from wonderment again. In her eyes, it was ignorance that led someone to be amazed by the things the world had to show them. But there she was, shocked as a child at her good luck. At the gorgeous opportunity the world had tossed into her lap.
A little, unnatural smile curled her lips upwards as she watched the young bear run a paw over his muzzle and sit back on his little haunches.
***
Well. He hadn’t called.
Ivy swallowed against the bitter taste in her throat as she leaned over the steering wheel of her new (used) car. She was sitting in the driveway of Ilya and Katya’s house, glaring at the front door.
Her son was in there. He’d been at ‘bear camp’ all day while she’d gone to her first day at work. So she had no reason to be nervous about walking up to the front door.
But Maxim might be in there. It had been 48 hours since he’d fucked her into the year 3000 and he hadn’t called. She had no way of knowing if he was in there or not.
She didn’t want it to matter.
But it kind of mattered.
Ugh. No way was she letting some dumbass insecurity stand between her and her son. Ivy gathered her hair back into a messy bun, switched off her car, and swung out onto the gravel.
She was a moment away from knocking when she heard her son’s laughter bubbling over from the backyard. Smiling despite herself, Ivy trekked around to the back.
She came around the corner of the house to see her son holding a bright green super soaker, shaking his booty and his tongue at Danil.
Danil laughed, challenge accepted. “You think you’re such a tough guy, kid.” And then he raised his own super soaker and squirted her kid right in the kisser.
Linc flew backwards, skidding in the mud and screaming with hysterical laughter. He clumsily pumped his own water gun as fast as he could, but his chubby, wet little fingers wouldn’t let him get a grip. The gun clattered to the ground and Danil was getting closer. She could see Linc’s frantic, joyful hysteria rising.
“Ace!” Ivy hollered and raced toward her son. Looking up, seeing his mother racing toward him, Linc easily tossed her the super soaker. She pumped it once, twice, three times for him and passed it back. Danil never stood a chance. His nice, button-up shirt was soaked to the bone as he laughed and whipped his hair back from his face.
“Truce!” Danil called to Linc.
Linc looked up at Ivy. “Whatcha think, Mama?”
“Whatcha think, ace?”
Linc considered for a minute, scrunching up his face, his black hair comically slicked back from the water. “Truce!”
The three battlers approached one another and Danil easily bent down, kissed Ivy on the cheek. “Ivy.”
She blinked at the familiarity of it. And also at how frickin’ handsome he was, his hair and eyes just a shade darker than Maxim’s. Jeez, the Malashoviks had good genes.
“Hey, Danil,” she smiled up at him. She’d seen him a few times over the last week; it seemed like he was popping by to see Linc as often as his work schedule would allow. “You’re not exactly dressed in super soaker attire.”
He looked down at his suit pants and dress shirt, all soaked, his typical public defender clothes. “I wanted to come by and see how President Lincoln’s bear training was coming after I got off work. Only to find that he was out here with AJ, read
ing a book. Lazy as a lamb.”
“Oh. AJ’s here?” Ivy asked, refusing to ask about the whereabouts of anyone else. She was vaguely surprised, considering she’d left Linc this morning with Katya and Ilya. At some point during the day, babysitting duties must have been passed off. She was even more surprised that the thought of it didn’t bother her. A little pinch in her stomach told her that she was starting to really trust these people. Something she had never been able to do where Linc was concerned. Because of the whole, you know, bear shifter thing.
Danil nodded. “Yeah, she was just putting the finishing touches on some spaghetti for us. Dora’s working late tonight, so I’m begging a meal off AJ.”
Ivy nodded, following him when he hopped up onto the back deck and starting loading the super soakers back into a little wooden trunk.
“Does AJ live here?”
“Nyet,” he answered in Belarusian. “But practically. We are all comfortable here like the house is our own. AJ lives through the woods, usually alone. But her father came back to live with her this winter.” He turned and unbuttoned his shirt, ringing out a steady stream of water and grinning at Linc.
“AJ!” Danil called through the open kitchen window. “We’ve got two more for dinner!”
AJ popped her head up through the window. “Hey, Ivy! Nothing special, just pasta and red sauce. Is that alright with you guys?”
Ivy waved her hand through the air. “You don’t have to cook for us! We were just gonna head home.”
“No way!” AJ said, her face bright and friendly. “Wasn’t today your first full day of work? You can’t cook for your own self after your first day of work.”
“Come, Linc,” Danil said, considering the matter settled. “We will find you something dry to wear for dinner.”
