Reign: A Royal Military Romance
Page 69
In one fluid motion, Jake pushed all the way inside her. Ariana gasped and then moaned with the sudden feeling of perfect fullness that threatened to completely overwhelm her. Above her, Jake groaned, his eyes squeezed shut in pleasure as he stayed inside her, all the way, for just another moment.
It felt perfect.
Then, slowly, he pulled out and began thrusting, slowly, and Ariana moved one leg to wrap around his waist, her way of keeping him as close as she could.
Jake moaned softly, and then the sound deepened and his thrusts got harder and harder, almost as if he were possessed by some animal instinct. He threaded one arm under her, grabbing her by the shoulder, pulling her down into him, and Ariana gasped in pleasure, arching her back again, trying to let him as deep inside her as possible. She was gripping his shoulders in her hands, so hard she was afraid she’d leave marks, but everything felt so incredible that it was all she could do.
Ariana knew she was about to cum again, improbably, but there it was. Jake ran one hand up her body, pausing at her breast, and pinched her nipple, just slightly.
She was so turned on that that was all it took and she was tumbling over the edge again, lost to the pleasure of having Jake inside her, of having him back after she’d thought he was lost. This time she screamed his name, the only word that she could think of, over and over again until she’d finished, the waves of pleasure no longer moving through her.
Jake grunted, once, and then said, “Ariana,” in a half-moan, half-whisper and she felt him cum inside her, pumping his seed deep as he held her tight to his chest.
For a few minutes they just laid there, naked on Ariana’s kitchen table, their breathing and heartbeats in rhythm. Finally, Jake stood, slowly, and Ariana sat up.
He took her hand and kissed her on the forehead, gently.
“I think you’ve got your cable bill stuck to you,” he said, and carefully peeled it off of her back.
Jake woke up the next morning to a knock on the door and sat up. It took him a minute to remember where he was, and then it came rushing back to him: Ariana’s apartment, in Boston.
She wasn’t in bed, though. Through the bedroom door he heard her thank someone and then shut her front door. Quickly, he pulled on jeans and his shirt and opened the bedroom door, still buttoning his shirt.
Ariana was in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. “Well, good morning, handsome,” she said.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said.
They kissed, again. Jake didn’t think he’d ever get enough of this.
“Did you go grocery shopping?” he asked.
“I got them delivered.” He must have look confused, because now it was Ariana’s turn to laugh at him. “A benefit of city living. We can’t all shift and go eat grubs.”
“Okay, smartass,” he said, swatting at her butt. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Blueberry pancakes. Coffee’s over there,” she said, pointing to the pot. “Real coffee.”
Jake took half a cup and then filled the rest with cream and sugar. Ariana rolled her eyes at him and drank the rest of it, black.
Thirty minutes later, the pancakes were gone, and they were still talking, drawing patterns in the blueberry gunk on their plates with their forks.
“Do you like Boston?” Jake said. “I could move here. I don’t think I’d mind.”
Ariana leaned on one hand and thought about it. “I’m not sure I do,” she said, slowly. “It’s expensive, and it’s a pain in the winter. Most of my friends moved away after college.”
“But your job is here,” said Jake.
She shook her head, slowly. “I don’t think it needs to be,” she said. “There’s no reason I can’t telecommute, and my parents are in California, anyway.”
Jake looked down. He felt like he couldn’t quite ask the question, whether she’d move to Evergreen permanently. Or, for now, at least. It didn’t seem fair to trap Ariana in a little town almost in the middle of nowhere, not when she was so young and had so much she had yet to do.
Instead he took her hand and held it.
“I wouldn’t mind moving to Evergreen,” she said, answering the question he hadn’t asked.
“Really?” Jake said.
Ariana laughed. “Really,” she said. “I don’t want to promise I’d live there forever, but yeah, I’d try. If I don’t like it, maybe we could move to Seattle in a few years, or....”
She paused, and Jake realized what she’d just said: in a few years.
“Yeah,” he said, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. “Maybe in a few years, we could.”
Epilogue
It was after midnight, and the Skagit Valley Hospital was very, very quiet. Only a few doctors and nurses walked around the halls, so nobody really noticed the woman wearing scrubs.
She walked through the hall, looking down, studying a chart intently. Then she stopped at a room, checked the number against something on her clipboard, and went inside.
Inside was a man with light brown hair and long sideburns, lying unconscious in a bed. The woman closed the door quietly and stood over the man, tears filling her piercing blue eyes. She took a few deep breaths, seeming to steady herself, and then took a pillow from behind the man’s head.
He didn’t move. His cheeks looked hollow, like someone who hadn’t eaten properly.
The woman swallowed, tears falling down her face now, her hands gripping the pillow so tight it looked like she might tear it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Then she pressed the pillow to the man’s face and held it there, tightly, until the machines connected to him began a cacophony of frantic beeping.
By the time the night nurses got there, the man was dead and the woman was gone again.
Forests & Fate, Part 3: Grizzly Country
Prologue
The streetlights were on but the moon was brighter, shining through the thick trees in jagged lines, spilling onto the quiet Main Street. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and nothing and no one in the little town moved. The two stoplights in town blinked from red to green in unison, bathing the street in different light.
The grizzly bear walked down the center line of the road. She moved slowly and deliberately, not at all afraid that she might be seen, making no attempt whatsoever to hide. The light blinked green to red, not that there were any cars, not that it seemed she would care if there were.
She walked the a few blocks of the little town, past antique stores, coffee shops, a bar, the library, restaurants and stores that sold wooden carvings of grizzlies.
Then, after she’d passed, a door opened and for a moment the sounds of a bar spilled onto the street: music, a couple of people talking too loud. Two people stumbled out of the door and into the street, both laughing at something.
The bear turned her head, and then, slowly, her whole body. The two drunk people were holding each other up, still laughing, trying and failing to make it back to the sidewalk, falling into the wet street.
They didn’t see the bear until she was about five feet away.
“Cut it out,” one of them said, waving a hand at the bear. He had shaggy, chin-length hair and a goatee. “Man, that’s a terrible bear costume.”
The other guy, who also had shaggy hair but was clean-shaven, just stared at the bear.
The bear closed the gap between her and the two young men.
“Seriously, quit it,” said the first guy.
“Greg,” said the other one. They were both sitting on the ground where they’d fallen, and the clean-shaven one groped for his friend. “Greg, dude, that’s a bear.”
Greg kicked one foot at the bear, lazily dismissing it. “There is not a bear on Main Street,” he said, his words slurring together. “It’s probably Justin. You hear that, Justin, you prick? I’m not falling for it.”
As if interested to see how this played out, the bear sat on her haunches, watching the two men.
“Oh shit,” said the second guy. �
�Oh, shit. Um. Hey bear! Get away! Shoo!”
He leaned in and clapped his hands at the bear, hollering at the top of his lungs.
Greg began laughing hysterically again.
“Shoo!” he echoed between drunken giggles.
The bear just watched them. She tapped one claw on the pavement. One of the young men, the clean-shaven one, began to get to his feet.
“Man, get up,” he said. “There’s something wrong with this bear, we should go.”
“What’s wrong with it is that it’s a BEAR COSTUME,” he shouted, his voice rising on the last two words.
And then, he leaned toward the bear and grabbed her ears in both hands.
Before the other man could blink, the bear had Greg’s throat in her teeth and she’d ripped it out, nearly severing his head from his body, tossing him back and forth like he was a rag doll.
“Shit!” shouted the other man, and he tried harder to scramble to his feet, but the pavement was slick with rain and he couldn’t quite make it.
The bear tossed Greg’s lifeless body aside and advanced on the other man. He scrambled backwards, scooting himself across the pavement, a stream of gibberish coming from his mouth.
“No no no please just leave no oh god no bear no...”
She swatted at one leg, catching him on the calf with her claws, and the man howled. He clutched his leg and rolled onto his side, instinctively curling into a ball, covering his head with his arms. He sobbed in terror, and it almost sounded like he was praying.
The bear gave him one more swipe, raking her claws deep into his back. He howled in agony again, ducking his head, on his side in the middle of the street.
Then the bear walked away. She entered an alley, came out the other side, and quietly made her way through a few residential blocks.
In one yard, a dog started barking as she passed through, but she ignored it and kept on going until she was in the cover of the deep woods.
1
Ariana
The cable guy presented Ariana with a clipboard and pushed his hat back on his head.
“Just need you to sign here, ma’am,” he said.
She looked it over before signing, mentally sighing. It had cost an arm and a leg to get cable internet out to Jake’s cabin in the woods, and she still felt terrible that he’d insisted on splitting the costs, but he had. He didn’t even own a computer, a fact that had boggled her mind before she remembered that he’d spent nearly five years straight as a bear.
“Everything’s set up?” she asked, scrawling her messy signature at the bottom.
“Sure is,” the guy said.
“Let me test it before you leave,” Ariana said, handing the clipboard back. The two of them stood in the living room of Jake’s cabin, the front door open to a nice breeze. “I’d hate to have to call you back.”
The man shrugged. “Sure,” he said.
Ariana walked over to her desk, sat, and opened up the wireless settings on her laptop. It was the moment of truth: how well would the internet out here work?
Could she really live with Jake, or might she run screaming for the hills — the hills in this case being the city?
The cable guy didn’t seem to notice her slight internal turmoil, looking around instead at the interior of the cabin. Jake had built it himself, years before, and it felt like the perfect little cabin in the woods: cozy, warm, everything made of wood.
“You all ever see bears out here?” he asked. “Must see plenty of wildlife.”
Facing away from the man, Ariana smiled at her computer.
All the time, she wanted to say.
“I’ve seen a couple of black bears,” she told him. “Nothing too exciting.”
She opened her wireless, selected the only available network, and entered the password: werebear1. She didn’t know if Jake would find it funny, but she did, and it was her wireless network anyway.
Chrome loaded flawlessly.
“Looks good,” she said. She nearly stroked the screen: she could watch movies again, get email, google whatever she wanted. God, she’d missed the internet.
The cable guy put his hat back on and picked up his tool case. “Give us a call if you have any problems,” he said. “You have a good night, now.”
As he walked out, Ariana heard Jake’s truck driving up the driveway, the gravel crunching beneath his big tires. Through the window, she watched all six-foot-five of him get out, greeting the cable guy as he drove away, then grab something out of his truck before he walked into the house. She heard his keys hit the kitchen table and his footsteps come to find her in the storage closet that she’d turned into an office.
For some reason, the storage closet that was now her office had a window, even though it barely fit her little desk. Since he’d built the cabin himself in his twenties, it had a lot of little eccentricities. Ariana hadn’t gotten around to asking Jake about most of them yet.
She stood from her desk and stepped out of her office-slash-closet, meeting him coming down the hallway.
“Hello,” she said, smiling up at him. He put one arm all the way around her, drawing Ariana to him and kissing her firmly on the mouth. For just a moment, she lost herself, feeling like she was spinning uncontrollably through the universe, totally unmoored from her feet, still standing on the ground.
She wondered again when she’d stop feeling that way. She hoped never, but she also prided herself on being realistic.
“I missed you,” he murmured.
She poked him in the side, blushing. “You were just at work,” she said. “I’m sure you survived it.”
“It was rough,” he said. “They had to revive me twice.”
Ariana rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling.
“Well, you’ll be seeing too much of me from now on,” she said.
“Can’t happen.”
“You just wait,” she said, laughing, her arms still around him.
He kept his other hand behind his back. Ariana narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“What’s behind your back?”
“I got you something,” he said. “Kind of a ‘welcome home’ gift.”
Ariana had moved in with him two days ago, and her boxes were still all over his cabin. On paper, she knew, it would have looked crazy: she’d met some guy in a little town, fallen in love while she was there on business, and then decided to move in with him a month later.
Oh, and he shifted into a bear sometimes. Oh, and also, some of his former bear shifter friends hated her and wanted both of them dead.
Jake leaned down to kiss her again, and despite her curiosity about whatever was behind his back, Ariana surrendered herself to those warm, firm lips again. She didn’t think she could ever really get enough.
Finally he pulled back and stood up straight again, making Ariana look all the way up.
“Okay,” she said. “What is it?
He moved his hand around. From it hung a fancy little gift bag, tissue paper sticking out the top.
Ariana took it in her hands and held it up.
“You did this?” she asked, skeptically. She was a little surprised by the nice presentation, to be honest — since when did he know how to put tissue paper into a bag to make a gift look nice?
“I bought it,” he said. “I got some help wrapping.”
Ariana walked to the kitchen table and put the bag down. She took out the tissue paper, then reached inside.
She pulled out a French press and two pounds of coffee.
Ariana gasped and hugged the French press to her chest. “Oh, thank god,” she said. “This morning was rough.”
“Here’s to no more rough mornings,” Jake said. He leaned down and kissed her, again, letting his hands wander down her back, putting his arms around her.
Ariana loved it when he held her — he was big and strong and wide, totally covered in hard muscle. Every time he took his shirt off she marveled at him again, always a little bit embarrassed when he caught her peeping at him.
Jake’s house phone rang. She’d made fun of him for keeping it, but then he’d pointed out that living in the middle of nowhere, cell reception wasn’t always the greatest.
“I should get that,” he said, his voice muffled in the top of her head.
She pushed herself gently away from him. “Go,” she said, and he picked up the phone.
Ariana ignored him to check out the French press. She was relieved that he’d gotten her one — she’d spent her whole day waiting for the cable guy, not even able to do her job without internet, so she hadn’t been able to run out and buy a coffee maker. She hadn’t been lying about that morning, either — Jake only had atrocious instant coffee in the house, and even though she’d had three cups of it, she still didn’t feel like she was quite awake.
Jake took the phone to the doorway that separated the kitchen and living room. “How many?” he asked quietly into the handset.
Ariana looked up at him. There was a definite note of alarm in his voice, and he glanced over at her. For a moment, they locked eyes, and then Jake looked away.
Something is wrong, Ariana thought, an uneasy feeling starting in her gut. Jake disappeared into the living room, a habit he had any time he was on the phone — he tended to pace back and forth or wander. She wondered if it would drive her crazy some day, but for now, she found it charming and adorable, just like the rest of his little quirks.
“...Certainly unusual...” she heard from the next room.
Then, “We don’t have any confirmed sightings...”
Ariana stood and leaned on the counter, close to the door to the living room. She didn’t want to snoop, but this sounded bad. She instantly flashed to the grizzly reports that had happened a couple of weeks ago — never substantiated, but the entire population of Evergreen had been a little bit on edge ever since.
She knew that, technically, it hadn’t been a bear — it had been Brock, the alpha of Jake’s former pack. He’d come from Alaska down to Washington state to try to get Jake to obey him again, but instead Jake had fought him and won. Brock had been far less worried about being seen by people than Jake and his tiny pack of castoff shifters were.