by Red, Lynn
The two bears exchanged a glance. “Not sure,” Fury said.
“Never noticed,” Stone added, a little quicker than was probably necessary. “That’s odd.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
There it is again, Claire thought. That birthmark. What the hell is going on with this birthmark? Once again it was tingling, and once again she had no idea why. “What is it?” she asked again. “What are you trying to hide? Why did I get all tingly back there and suddenly have all that courage and strength? Oh my God, I killed someone!”
It hit her, one thing after another. It was like a landslide of memories piling into Claire’s head and then running down, out of her ear and pooling on the floor at her feet. There was too much to process, too much to think about. And was it all true, anyway? Or was her memory playing strange tricks on her and in a few seconds, she’d sit, bolt upright in her lonely, empty apartment, just like always?”
“I’m the one who killed him,” Fury said. “If it helps ease your mind any.”
Heat flushed Claire’s cheeks. “No! No, it doesn’t. He’s still dead, he was still my boss, and people are going to come looking for me. If I go back, I’ll go to jail or, or fucking prison or wherever it is I’m going to go. I didn’t want any of this,” she protested. “I didn’t ask for it, didn’t dream about it, I just got a call over the PA, and went downstairs. I figured I was going to copy some bullshit off a clipboard and go back up to my desk and back to reading about Kim Kardashian’s sex life and screwing up the thirty-eighth level of Candy Crush.”
Both bears were looking at her with a slightly confused, but mostly concerned expression. “Candy...?” Fury started, Stone put his hand on the other bear’s shoulder as he shook his head.
But her heart was racing as quickly as her thoughts. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked, her hands shaking and her hair hanging limply in front of her sweat-streaked face. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“We had to escape,” Stone said. “And we weren’t going to leave you. After the mess Fury made, the only way out was the way we took.”
With a huge, deep breath, Claire let out a long, trailing sigh. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? And why can’t I stop imagining the two of you naked? I mean, aside from the fact that you are.”
The racing words kept her thoughts on track. “Why can’t I stop thinking about being with you two? I’m not that kind of girl, you know, I’m not the sort who just shacks up with whatever comes her way. Hell, I’m not the sort that even dates anyone more than twice because I can’t stand the idea of settling down and—we have got to get back to town because I have to take care of Cleo, she’s my dog, and—”
Before she could finish her tirade, Fury grabbed her wrist, yanked Claire to him and enveloped her mouth with his. Whiskers rasped sweetly on her lips as she desperately, urgently kissed him back, sucking at his lips and letting his tongue swirl into her mouth, against hers.
“I’ll get your dog,” Fury breathed into her. “But can she wait for a little longer?”
As she nodded, Claire’s breath seemed to come quicker and hotter and shallower, and when she felt his heartbeat reverberating through her body, she almost lost control. She scratched at him, not to try and get him away but because that was the only thing she could think to do to keep her hands busy as this beautiful man ravaged her with kiss after kiss.
The brush behind them scratched at her ankles. Moments later, she felt the rough, crackly bark of an old oak tree scratch her back through her shirt. The cotton hung up on the trunk, her shirt slid up her back. Hands – but not Fury’s – warmed her bared skin from behind. Stone was on the other side of the huge tree, his arms wrapped around it, his hot fingers leaving streaks of heat where he explored Claire’s belly and just a little further down.
She pulled a deep breath through her nose as Fury hungrily sucked at her lips, feeding off her kiss. The scent of man – of musk and earth and sweat and wood smoke – filled her nose, then her lungs. When she finally let out that breath, it trembled from her lips. Opening her eyes for the first time in what felt like eternity, she found Fury staring straight back, his golden eye and green eye both shimmering in the shadows.
“I can’t... what’s happening?” Claire asked. “I don’t do this sort of thing, I don’t—”
When Stone’s fingertips plied underneath her jeans, and he slid his fingers down her body, along either side of her surprisingly wet, tingling sex, her words turned to mush, her knees went weak.
“I don’t know,” Fury said in between another round of increasingly hungry kisses, “what that mark is. I don’t know why we have the same eyes. But I do know that I’ve never felt like you make me feel.”
“Forever, there were only two of us,” Stone said, moving around the tree and taking one of Claire’s hands. He laid her back on the blanket of pine needles and leaves and sheets they had taken from the lab. “I knew there was a missing piece.”
Fury touched her chest, his fingertips burning through the limp cotton of her shirt that was soaked through with sweat. Stone’s finger pushed her apart, and tested her entrance with a tentative gentleness that took her by surprise.
A gasp spilled from Claire’s lips, followed by a groan and she clenched her fist, crushing a handful of leaves and dirt against the palm of her hand before raising it and bracing herself against Fury’s massive arms.
Her entire world was nothing but the pressure between her legs, the gentle prick of pine needles coming through the hospital-quality sheet, and Fury’s hands rasping over her chest, her breasts.
“We don’t always ask for what we need,” Fury said in between breaths, between kisses sucked gently on Claire’s full bottom lip. He traced the curve of her belly and the bulge of one of her hips as she tried to buck against Stone’s hand, which cupped her sex. “But when it comes along, there’s no reason to fight it.”
She nodded, biting her lip and trying not to snort as the big bear’s palm ground against her clit. Claire managed to unbutton her jeans before they got torn, which was good as it was her only pair. With them discarded carelessly to the side, the smell of her sweet sex mixed with the two bears in her nose. She was on a cloud, floating helplessly in a bath of warmth and security. She was wrapped with her favorite blankets, she was halfway through a bottle of Malbec with no intent to stop before she—
“Oh!” she grunted. “Oh my... oh my God! You’re making me... I can’t stop,” her breath came in hard, confused bursts. “Squeeze,” she urged as she grabbed Fury’s massive hand and crushed her breast with it. “Pinch my... nipple... twist...”
A wave of tension pulled every single one of the muscles running from the top of Claire’s neck to the bottom of her feet. Her entire body was, for one split second, completely rigid and stiff, and then in the next, all of that tightness exploded with a wave of sticky, sweet heat.
“Claw me,” Fury demanded, as she did it anyway. Her fingernails digging into his tanned skin, Claire felt her whole body draw up again as Stone pulsed his fingers so deep inside her she could hardly believe it. He turned his hand, keeping pressure on her clit, but at the same time swirling the tip of his finger against the spot right on her front wall. Every nerve flared, every sense she had exploded to life.
She couldn’t see, couldn’t think – she didn’t want to or need to, though. Everything she needed was right there with her, holding her tight, comforting her and kissing her. Lips traced the line of her neck, fingers kept turning, and then when the wave finally broke, and she opened her eyes to see both of the bears staring down at her?
“What the hell,” she took a deep breath, shuddering as it trickled from her lips and her sex cooled on her thighs. “What the hell have I got myself into?”
Fury cocked a smile. Stone nodded sternly, but allowed himself the hint of a smile.
“Whatever it is,” Fury said, “we’re right there with you. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together
.”
She breathed for a moment, taking it all in, drinking in the afterglow and letting it wash over her, through her. As suddenly as the two bears’ ferocious excitement had overcome them, Stone collected Claire’s jeans and tossed them to her.
“But now we have to move,” he said mysteriously. “They’ll track us. They’ll find us. And,” he trailed off.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Fury finished. “We’ll never give up, never stop until we’ve found our kin.”
Claire was just shaking her head. But before she could say anything, or even really formulate any useful thoughts, Fury spoke again.
“And more than that, we’ll keep you safe. I don’t know why, but it feels like something is telling me that there’s more to this than we know.”
“We need to find the others,” Stone agreed. “We find them, we’ll find our answers. But it isn’t just the two of us anymore.”
“Three?” Claire asked, still slightly addled, but starting to come around. “It’s the three of us, isn’t it? And when you get Cleo it’ll be four.”
Fury cracked a grin, and kissed her one last time before gathering up the sheet and kicking the remains of the bed they’d shared into disarray. She turned, but Stone caught her arm in his steel grasp. His eyes, entrancing, dangerous, intense, bore into her soul.
“Three of us,” he growled. “You’re ours, we’re yours. I don’t know what it means,” he took a breath. “But I do know it’s real. That much, I’m sure of, if nothing else.”
-7-
“Why do people insist on wearing so many clothes all the time?”
-King
“Why is it that nothing I do seems to make any sense?” King was standing in front of the open bay windows facing the small-ish back yard with his robe flapping open in the breeze.
“Doing that right there makes sense,” Rogue added. “Feels good to breathe fresh air. You better quit before Jill gets back though. She gets all bent out of shape every time I go out into the hot tub without any clothes on. Something about regular people not wanting to see each other naked all the time.”
With a look of confusion on his face, King took a sip of coffee. He quickly replaced the confused look with one of being overwhelmed by bitterness, and sputtered for a moment before taking another drink. “This is awful,” he said.
“If it’s so awful why do you keep drinking it? Hell, at least put some cream in it or something. You know, I saw on one of those TV shows where someone calls himself ‘Dr. Firstname’ that cream doesn’t have any carbs.”
“So?”
“So you don’t have to worry about getting fat off it. Then again, you keep drinking Steel Reserve pints like you have been, and not much is going to stop that.”
King considered this solemnly for a few moments. “I like the way it makes my head feel like I’ve been running in a circle for an hour.”
Rogue snorted a laugh. “Remember when you used to lecture me about taking my little jaunts into human towns and drinking their beer? At least the ones I drank were good. That stuff isn’t much different from turpentine.”
A couple of seconds passed, again in silence, before either of the bears decided to speak again. “I’m worried about them,” King finally said, admitting what Rogue already knew. “This isn’t the way our kind is meant to live. Not the way we’re meant to be.”
Rogue inhaled deeply. This wasn’t new subject matter, but it never stopped being a sticking point between the two alphas. This time, Rogue didn’t say anything. He just watched his sworn brother’s face, studying him.
“This world,” King continued. “High ways, cars, motorcycles, Steel Reserve, and loud music.”
Rogue wanted to point out how old and out of touch King sounded, but somehow he managed to bite his tongue. If there was one thing he’d learned in the past few months of learning to live in close proximity to two other people, it was when to yap and when to shut his damn mouth.
“We’re out of place. Don’t you feel it? Even you with your love for all things human and worldly, must feel at least a little tug on your heart?”
“Well,” Rogue said, taking a sip of his own coffee, which was heavily laden with cream and not at all bitter, “some things, sure. I miss the quiet, I miss going out into the middle of nowhere and listening to the bats and the birds and the night-things go about their business. But what we gain from being here? I—”
“I know,” King cut him off. “Jill, the cubs’ safety. I can’t help but feel though as if something’s missing. Some vital part of me is gone and quickly being forgotten. Things I don’t want forgotten.”
There wasn’t much to say, at least not without really being irritating, so it was lucky for Rogue that right as the tension was starting to mount, the familiar rumble of Jill’s old Blazer turned both huge heads.
“This is worth forgetting the traditions, don’t you think?” Rogue said. “Knowing that we’ll have a future?”
As the back door swung open and slapped against the brick, King nodded. “It has to be,” he said with a half grin. “And I think it does.”
“Slate! Arrow!” Jill barked at the two cubs. She still hadn’t let them live down their legendary hangovers. And, she still hadn’t gotten over calling Arrow “Grant”, which she happily admitted she probably never would. “Bring all that stuff inside. We’ll split it up in a little bit.”
A heavy thump sounded from the kitchen, probably a hunk of beef, followed by the unmistakable sound of cans hitting the countertop a few seconds later. They always did this – she’d take the two biggest of the cubs along to whatever giant discount warehouse grocery store was two miles down the road. They’d buy a completely improbable amount of food, and split it between the four massive deep freezes – one for each house – that kept the bears fed.
Once a month, this was the ritual. And this time, it sounded like they got more than they had previously.
“Should we help?” Rogue asked King, happy for a moment’s distraction from the morning’s intensity. King, forgetting that he was wearing nothing but an open robe, didn’t bother to answer before he headed off to the kitchen.
The whistle, followed by the laugh, and then the two cubs joined in, asking about where he bought the robe because they wanted one to wear to school when they started.
Taking just a moment to himself, Rogue sipped his coffee, then finished off the steaming cup in one long swallow. He reached for King’s abandoned cup, plucked it up off the window sill where it was sitting, and stared into the murky depths.
“Goodness,” Rogue said, slightly awed that there seemed to be either coffee grounds, or possibly an oil slick on top of the liquid, shimmering in the morning sun. “Well, I mean, it’s still coffee.”
With a heavy sigh, he tilted the cup to his lips.
The first swallow went down like a gob of castor oil. The second like a slightly smaller gob of castor oil. By the time he took the third gulp, then finished the cup, Rogue was... hooked? Something about the slightly slick, slightly greasy liquid did something strange to his mind, even as it was apparently doing something funny to his stomach.
Rogue made a sour face, then belched into his closed mouth, frowned, and decided maybe it was time to help with the groceries, after all.
*
“You’ve got a lot more pep than usual,” Jill remarked, as Rogue returned from the last of the four clan houses, sweat shimmering on his forehead, and a slightly crazed look in his eye. He looked at her for a second, his eyes slightly googly, as though he were trying to concentrate but couldn’t quite manage. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone haul two hundred pounds of beef with quite that much pizzazz before. You take speed or something?”
Rogue quirked an eyebrow in her direction. “Speed? I dunno, but I don’t feel so good.”
From the other room, King bellowed. “You... you drank it all? ALL of it?”
“What’s he talking about? Or, roaring about, I guess?” Jill asked, not paying much
attention to either of the bears, as she put a sack of apples into the bottom drawer of the enormous, extra-wide fridge she’d ordered for the place.
Moving from her completely normal Santa Barbara apartment to these row houses was a little bit of a culture shock for the normally quiet, usually home-bodied Jill Appleton. Signing the lease papers put a lump in her stomach in a way she hadn’t felt since a college pregnancy scare, and then once again when she bought her Jeep. That Wrangler was the first new car she’d ever owned, and if she had anything to say about it, would be the last.
But, once she settled into the idea, and realized that financially there wouldn’t be any hardship – thanks to the secretive help from her boss, who was the only person outside of Tripp, the terrible date who turned out to be a good guy who had seen the bears be, well, bears – everything was fine.
Hell, better than fine. Way, way better. She had Rogue and King, she had her job, and she had her life back. After the terror of running from those GlasCorp mercenaries, and escaping with a dislocated shoulder and a few broken ribs, she was glad for every day she had. She’d even mostly gotten over having shot that mutant bear to death.
Beside her, Rogue started making a sound very similar to that of a cicada rubbing its wings on its sides. Only, the noise was coming from his teeth. And, when Jill turned to look at one of her two mates, she saw his eyes going slightly golden, the hair on his arms beginning to grow little by little.
“Rogue?” Jill put a hand on his trembling shoulder. “Are you okay? Seriously, did you take something? Medicine can do weird things, even to someone as big as you.”
“N...n-n-no,” he finally managed, teeth chattering. “Didn’t take... anything”
“Something’s going on,” she said. “Unless you’re getting wildly aroused by the way I’m putting coffee creamer away, I—”
He lurched forward, gripping the countertop.
Squeezing a little harder on his shoulder, Jill felt the muscles under his shirt harden, thicken, into iron bands, taut with power. “Seriously, I’m starting to worry. Talk to me, Rogue.”
