Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance)

by Red, Lynn

  “Yeah,” she said, as Cleo rolled to her feet, barked, and Eighty-Three did the same thing. “But who the hell would want to get away from this?”

  -26-

  “It’s weird, but... I feel like I’m home.”

  -Claire

  “You all settled in?” Fury asked as he put the last touch on a coat of paint. The interior of Eighty-Three’s little row-house, which was nestled in the middle of the Broken Pines cubs’ places, was mostly painted a steel gray color. It made him feel at home. Although he had wanted the kitchen done in bright orange and a bathroom in an almost headache inducing crimson. “Just trying it out,” he had said.

  “Think so,” Eighty-Three came back from the back room, where he’d been unpacking. “I really can’t thank all of you enough.”

  Claire strolled in with her hair done up in a do-rag printed, fittingly enough, with a bunch of wolf paws. Cleo clomped in after her, and promptly collapsed on Eighty-Three’s feet for another scratching, which he indulged with a grin. “I think we’ve got all the holes from cub wrestling patched. If you find any more, spackle’s in your laundry room.” She turned her back to adjust a couple of tchotchkes on the mantle, and when she turned back, Eighty-Three had stopped scratching Cleo, and was staring at something in a box.

  “What are you... oh,” she stopped, as he slowly lifted the gasmask out of the box.

  Stone reached for it. “No reason to have that around anymore. I’ll get rid of it.”

  Eighty-Three pulled back, keeping the mask in his clutches. “This is all I kept,” he said. His voice was distant. “It’s been a month since I was... fixed. I couldn’t bear to leave this behind. I lost all my other memories, I don’t want to lose this one.”

  “But it was so awful, it was—” Claire began, but he cut her off.

  “It was part of me. Just like the name. James. It’s all part of me. I don’t want to forget anything anymore. After all, if not for this mask, I never would have met my new family.”

  “Might still have the old one,” Fury said.

  After he stared into the reflection in the black glass goggles for a moment, Eighty-Three said, “But I don’t, if I ever did. I do have you.” Everyone was silent as he put the mask back in the box, even Cleo. “I’ll keep it in a closet, but I’ll keep it. Anyway,” he sniffed, and then smiled. “That’s the past, and I think that name is, too. I think I’m ready to be James.”

  Stone regarded him for a moment, squinting slightly. “No,” he said.

  Everyone’s head turned at once.

  “I think you’re more of a Jim.”

  The two former blood enemies, who had been just about to murder each other two months before, embraced. After about three seconds, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, though Fury did his best to pretend.

  *

  “I can’t believe it’s over,” Claire said, sitting down on the couch in their new digs. “And I can’t believe how quiet this place is. I figured we’d be able to hear everything through the walls.”

  “You mean lovemaking?” Stone said, with an expression befitting his name. “The eager sounds of mates slaking their thirst for one another? Moaning, ecstasy, and finally release?”

  Claire was staring at him, gawk-eyed. “Uh, well yeah, something like that. Also holy shit that got me kinda hot in places I shouldn’t feel hot before I take a shower.”

  “You humans and your showering,” Fury said with a laugh. “Or I guess, ‘you human-raised bears and your showering’ considering.”

  “Okay well, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make you both a deal. I’m gonna go get cleaned off, because I’ve been sweating like a warthog for the past six hours.”

  The two bears exchanged a glance. “What’s the deal?” Fury asked.

  “After I do that, you’re going to make sure that the neighbors hear me. Get what I’m saying?”

  For a long moment, Stone and Fury seemed to be processing her request. Finally, in his gravelly, panty-dropping baritone, Stone said, “She means vigorous lovemaking.”

  Fury let his head drop, and his shoulders slouch. “That’s... very good. Yes.”

  “But I’m right!” Stone protested as Claire took her exit. “That’s what she meant! She meant lovemaking!”

  *

  The steam and the bar of Irish Spring and the built-in music system piping Debussy into the shower were pretty amazing. But stepping out of the bathroom, not bothering with a robe or a towel, and finding herself staring at two guys who would have been right at home on a Hunky Guy Calendar?

  Hot damn, Claire thought. What the hell did I do to deserve this?

  “Well,” she said. “Looks like you kept up your end.”

  Stone, with his golden hair and Fury with his black waves, both came to her at once. Between them, she felt the heat from their bodies, and the ache between her legs deepened. She put a hand on either man’s chest, curling her fingernails against the mark that they all shared. “What is this?” she asked. “You said you’d tell me when the time was right.”

  “The alpha’s mark,” Fury answered. “Broken Pines always have two alphas. And their mate is marked with the third.”

  “But Rogue and King are—”

  Stone shook his head slightly, but not taking his gaze away from Claire’s. The green eye and the gold one both glittered, boring into her soul. “We talked about it. Draven thinks that since we’d been separated for so long, our bodies just... adapted. In case one pair of us was lost, the clan would go on.”

  She let her glance fall down Stone’s jaw-line to where his collarbones met. The muscles of his chest rose and fell with each breath. “When we did this before, that really was you, right? I mean I know you had that thing in you, but when I looked in your eyes, when you touched me and kissed me, it—”

  “Of course it was me,” Stone said softly, kissing Claire’s ear for reassurance. “No one else – no thing else – could ache for you the way I do.”

  “Well,” Fury said, “there is one other person.”

  Kisses enveloped Claire, up and down both sides of her neck. A blanket of safety, of security and warmth, held her tight. Her knees shook just a little, but from pleasure instead of weakness or fear. A hand went to each of her breasts, thumbs circling her sweetly aching nipples in exact time with one another.

  A soft moan escaped her lips, but not before the kisses on either side of her neck brought up a wash of goose bumps that ran all the way from her neck to her tailbone. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristled with the brushing of Stone’s lips against hers. She accepted his kiss, and then turned her head slightly to taste Fury’s lips.

  She opened her mouth to accept his second, more urgent and desperate kiss. His tongue swirled against hers as her lip rasped against Fury’s stubble. A hand – she couldn’t be sure who it belonged to – slid up her back, cupping her head and tugged slightly on her hair. The chill that shot down her back at the mixture of pleasure and pain was enough to make Claire’s breath come in shorter, hotter bursts.

  As she breathed, eyes closed, awash in the pleasure, Claire held on tight to both men’s backs to keep herself from collapsing. She breathed Fury’s name, and then Stone’s, relishing the way their names felt as they slid down her tongue.

  Another kiss came, but it was from Stone. His firmer grip, his harder, more forceful kiss, pushed Claire’s head back against the wall and a moment later, she moved backward just enough to feel the prickles of texture on her bare skin. Fury pushed his tongue into her mouth again, tasting her deeply, and then ran the tip of it down her chin, down her neck, and circled her nipple teasingly before nipping.

  “Ah!” Claire gasped, clutching his head to her and urging him. “Suck me, more, oh yes, oh just like that, bite more!”

  With a laugh, he pinched her nipple between his teeth and flicked his tongue back and forth over the sensitive tip. As her knees trembled, she slid a few inches down the wall, her skin and her heart both burning with the fire of her passion.
>
  “Your wetness,” Stone whispered in her ear before sucking gently behind it. “Your sex, I can’t control myself.” He was starting to groan a little more gruffly than before. His words were growing deeper, his voice wilder. “Your scent, Claire, I can’t... I want all of you, I need all of you right... now... right...”

  She felt the hair on his arms grow longer, thicker and coarser. When Claire opened her eyes, she was staring into Stone’s gold and green ones, but they were more feral, fiercer somehow. His power against her sent another trill of excitement from her neck down to her toes.

  “I’ve never shifted,” he growled, “without meaning to do it. I’ve never felt like this, never in my—”

  “Life,” Fury finished for him. The second alpha’s teeth were suddenly sharper, more wonderfully dangerous when he nibbled gently on Claire’s pink tip.

  There was nothing in the world that felt remotely close to what Claire felt right then. Soaring through the clouds in that tiny airplane, the adrenaline of a fight, the rush of danger – none of it was anything like this. She ran her fingernails through the hair on the back of Fury’s head, and the fur growing on Stone’s mighty shoulder. Her nails dragged along their skin, eliciting pleasured moans from both men.

  “We’re not the only ones,” Fury said, pulling himself off her nipple for just long enough to grin. “Somebody else is bearing themselves to us, looks like.”

  “That was a pun,” Stone growled, apparently unimpressed. “But it was actually a good one.”

  “Are you two gonna high five?” Claire laughed. “Because if you are, then just do it and get it over with because I’m about to explode.”

  Both of them turned their burning eyes back to their mate at the same time. She felt their heat deep in her chest, felt it constricting the muscles in her belly, and flaring the nerves between her legs. Her sweetest place tingled and ached, her whole body longing for her bears to take her at the same time.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but... is there any way I can have both of you... at once?”

  Fury bit her chest, then her shoulder, then her neck. Stone sucked at her ear and then slid a hand down her naked body to cup her ass, squeezing and pressing his thumb into the tendon between her legs. “Anything you want,” he whispered, “we can do.”

  That was all she needed to stop bothering with keeping herself standing at all. Slowly, she slid down the wall into a deep crouch. The prickly texture caught strands of Claire’s hair, keeping it up for a few seconds after she’d gone down. Her bears followed her, hands all over her body, tongues all over her neck. There wasn’t a single desire that went unmet, not a single want that lasted more than a few seconds.

  With her legs spread, Fury’s fingers found a way home. Slowly, he trickled them along her belly, then down and over the soft puff of hair above her sex. Kissing her hard and deep, he slid one inside.

  “God!” Claire gasped. “Oh... oh my God, yes!”

  Slowly, he rotated the finger inside her, stretching her walls around his thick digit. As he did, Stone cupped her pussy, and ground down on her aching clit with his palm. The two bears were moving like they were one soul with two bodies. Every intent they had, they shared, every move they made seemed planned and perfect.

  “How does this feel so good?” Claire begged, as she arched her back and skidded gently over her hardwood hallway. “How is this so perfect?”

  Fury shoved his finger deep, hooking it against the place just past her entrance that made Claire scream – and she answered the only way she could. Her pleasure dripped out of her lips as her wetness dripped out of her sex. She bit down, hard, on her bottom lip, to try and keep as much of her squealing and groaning muted as she could, but it was a poor effort at best.

  Stone’s grinding palm circled on her, pressing down and forcing her to yelp in pleasure. She grabbed his shoulder and opened her eyes to see him staring straight into hers. “Because,” he whispered, as he bent to suck a kiss from Claire’s open lips, “we were always meant to be.”

  The burning in her core had Claire shivering, and the pulsing inside her sex intensified until she knew there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do to stop it.

  “I’m gonna,” she sucked a breath, bit her lip. “I can’t...”

  “Then don’t,” Fury said, curling his tongue around an erect nipple, and shoving a second finger in beside the first. “We are all animals, after all.”

  The sound that came from Claire’s chest was hardly human. She shuddered, and then rumbled, and before she knew it, let out a growling roar that surprised even herself. The muscles between her legs gripped Fury’s finger, urging him deeper until he couldn’t go any further. Her gripping, pulsing body drew a smile to his lips, and as Claire felt herself give in to the ocean of pleasure washing over her, she was also giving herself up in a way she never had before. No more defensive walls, no more feigned coldness; right now she was completely open, totally vulnerable.

  And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

  She gasped both of their names, and both bears kissed her neck as Claire’s climax peaked and broke. For the next several moments, the warmth and wetness and tension lapped up her belly before subsiding, like waves licking at the beach.

  When she opened her eyes, her whole body was buzzing with anticipation for... more.

  “My turn,” she said, biting her lip and standing up on quaking knees. “Come on.”

  With a glance between themselves, Fury and Stone both got to their feet and followed their mate back to the bedroom.

  “We don’t need this thing,” she said, ripping the sheets and blankets off the carefully made, king-sized mattress. Of all the stuff she owned back home, this and her comically oversized television were the only things she insisted on keeping when they relocated to the new Broken Pine territory of Santa Barbara. There wasn’t any reason to keep her half-broken, college-kid-on-a-budget wafer board furniture, and she had serious doubts about being re-employed by GlasCorp at any point in the future, so there wasn’t much reason to bring her work-issued laptop.

  Truth be told, she had her doubts about the bed, too. It didn’t seem to be of much use when she was now the mate of two enormous, beautiful bears who slept in a furry heap in the corner of whatever room they happened to collapse in. She’d brought it anyway, but as soon as she felt the two of them with her in the middle? Fuck all that, she thought. This bed can get out of here. Just need some blankets, and being realistic maybe an egg crate for my back, but it’s all furry sleeping piles for this girl from here on out.

  Ripping the sheets off and throwing them in the floor was something of a long-coming catharsis. Flipping the bedframe and the mattress up on one side was a matter of necessity. If what had already happened that night was any indication, there wasn’t enough room for the three of them and a bed. Plus, it just seemed really unnecessary.

  “She’s certainly vigorous,” Stone said with a barely contained smile. “You think she likes this?”

  “Shut up!” Claire shouted. “Get over here and make me a horrible neighbor.”

  “She means the lovemaking,” Fury said, teasing Stone who just gave him a nasty side-eyed glare.

  “I need this,” Claire said, grabbing both of the bears by their erections, sliding her hands along them, and then leading them to the middle of the room, and the center of the giant pile of furry blankets, and extremely high thread-count sheets. “I need this more than I can possibly explain, more than I could ever imagine. I don’t know what’s happened to me, but if this is the new Claire, then I like it.”

  Before either of them could respond, she had gone to her knees and coaxed Fury’s cock tip into her mouth. She slid her tongue along the ridge underneath his tip for a little tease, and then sucked him wholly into her mouth. At first she went easy and gentle, but when she tested him with a little nibble, he groaned out loud.

  “You like that?” she pulled him out of her mouth and looked up.

  He nodded, but
instead of pleasing him again immediately, she gave Stone attention. Her full lips slid down his shaft. Once his head was in her mouth, she tickled the underside with her tongue, but unlike Fury, Stone grabbed her hair, forcing her to swallow more of him.

  Surprised, but not in any way upset, Claire squeezed both of them with her hand, pumping and twisting from the base of their cocks as she dragged her teeth along Stone’s shaft. She coughed and pulled away for a moment, which made him look at her with tender concern. Claire’s answer was to smile and pull him back between her lips, lashing her tongue around his ridge and tasting the salt of him as deeply as she could.

  Fury’s fingers, tangled in her hair, pulled her toward him. She reached around behind his muscled legs and slid her hands up his ass, squeezing those hard chunks of muscle in massaging pulses as she sucked him deeper. She pulled back, flicking her tongue back and forth across his tip to get her breath for a moment.

  Warmed through to her core, Claire moved one of her hands between her own legs, shoving three fingers in straight away as she tugged at Fury. She took him in her mouth again, thrilling at the taste of his excitement running back over her tongue and down her throat, but all she could think was how badly she wanted them.

  Not one of them, and then maybe the other one later.

  Not in turns.

  “I want you both,” she pulled her face from Fury’s rigid cock, kissing his tip as he left her. “I can’t... I can’t wait. I need both of you at once.”

  With a grin, Fury lifted Claire to her feet, and slid two fingers into her again. She whimpered, she cried out his name, and was almost begging for more – for the rest of him. He kissed her forehead, as Stone kissed the nape of her neck. Fury kissed between her breasts as the other bear caressed Claire’s shoulder blades with a circle of his tongue and a press of his lips.

  Fury came from the front, running his chin tantalizingly along the opening of Claire’s body, inhaling her scent, before teasing her clit with his tongue and then pressing his tongue between her folds. Stone came from the back, kissing along her waist, and then the crease between her ass and her thigh before forcing her legs apart and craning his neck to swirl his tongue into her opening.