by Amelia Jade
“Not fair,” she said in protest as he grinned wickedly.
“Would you like me to stop?” he asked innocently.
“Not at all,” she told him, and then it was his turn to grunt in surprise as she flexed, her walls tightening around his cock, threatening to make him explode immediately.
“Damn, woman,” he said through gritted teeth, his breath a near hiss as he pulled back, before savagely thrusting into her once again.
“Oh fuck,” she swore as he didn’t pause this time. He even leaned forward slightly, so that his weight was on his hands above her head, allowing his hips to move freely without destroying his knees on the rough carpet. This gave him the ability to not only move more fluidly, but also to hit a different angle within her.
His abs flexed as he held himself aloft, moving up and down into her as fast as he could. Victoria seemed to like it all, urging him to go harder and faster any time he showed signs of slowing down. It was rigorous without being draining.
“Take this,” she said, shoving her ponytail at him as he flipped her over onto all fours.
Although he was nominally in charge, Evan didn’t know of any man who would say no to pulling on his woman’s hair if she asked for it.
And there was no doubt Evan and Victoria were quickly establishing that she was in fact his woman. Though she made no hesitation to claim him as her man either. There was nothing derogatory about it, simply a proclamation that they wanted nobody but each other, and others had better understand that.
Victoria turned her head back to look at him, her cries subsiding for a moment. “I want to fuck you now,” she said, her voice almost a purr.
Grasping her arms behind her back, he used them to pull her upright. He was still deep inside of her as they both rested on their knees, but now her face was closer to his.
“Say please,” he teased wickedly.
“Please sir, may I ride your hard cock now?” she asked, dropping instantly into the submissive role, even though he knew she was anything but.
Still, the savage thrill of being in charge, of dominating her, ran through his system and he nodded his approval. But instead of allowing her to mount him normally, he wrapped one hand around her waist, lifting her off the floor while he used the other to lower himself down.
Victoria leaned forward slightly, and just like that, she was atop him in reverse, her hands planted between his legs. Without waiting for him to get comfortable, she lifted her hips and then brought them back down. The motion gave him a perfect view of her ass, and he didn’t hesitate to give it a solid smack. Although Victoria cried out slightly with the pain, he saw a grin spread across her face as her head turned slightly to look at him.
“Turn around,” he commanded her after a short while. It had been too long since he’d looked upon her face. Or kissed it, for that matter.
“Is this the view you wanted?” she asked, batting her eyes at him while running her hands up her sides until they cupped her breasts. As he watched she gently played with her own nipples. The entire time her hips didn’t stop, grinding into him. Then without warning she squeezed his cock with her walls.
“Again,” he commanded as pleasure shot down his cock and through the rest of him.
“Are you going to cum for me?” she asked, tightening even harder this time.
“Yes,” he grunted.
“Good,” she said, and his eyes flew open as he recognized the change of tone in her voice. “I’ve been holding this in too long. Cum for me Evan, please,” she said, and her voice took on a faraway sound as he watched her body begin to shake.
Almost instantaneously his own orgasm hit him. A long, low growl escaped from his lips as he grabbed her hips and pulled them into him, pushing his cock as deep inside of her as he could.
“Evan!” she cried, her eyes flying open.
He shouted her name and pulled her down to him, their lips meeting in a frenzy of passion as he exploded, his cock pulsing as it shot molten-liquid deep within her, his hips bucking in time as she shook atop of him. Her cries were muffled by his kisses, but she couldn’t contain it completely and he felt her muscles spasming, contracting, and relaxing rapidly as she climaxed.
Holding her tightly to him, the pair were rigid for a moment longer, before practically melting into each other as they tried to recover, their breaths short and their lungs heaving with effort.
“Holy shit,” he managed to get out with a gasp, overwhelmed by the freight train of pleasure that had slammed into both of them.
“Wow.” It was the only word Victoria got out, but it summed up the experience rather nicely in his opinion.
As the post-sex glow settled over them, Evan felt his body go limp, while Victoria draped herself across him. He ran his fingers lightly across her naked body, enjoying the closeness of the moment.
“Stop that,” she said softly.
“Why?”
“It tickles,” she said and he could hear the smile in her voice, even if he couldn’t see it. Her head was currently buried in his neck.
Reluctantly he settled for resting his arms on top of her. The last thing he wanted to do was force either of them to move. Blinking rapidly, he fought back a yawn, realizing that he could actually take a nap. That’s how comfortable he was.
It’s amazing how nice a thin carpet can feel when you have the right company with you, he thought tiredly.
“First step of business, getting some damn sheets so we don’t need the carpet anymore.” His knees were beginning to tingle, and he suspected Victoria was experiencing the same.
“We could have unwrapped the mattress that was so kindly left here, if somebody hadn’t been so eager,” she said.
“True,” he agreed. “But I can’t control you any more than you can.”
She jerked and lifted her head from his chest just enough to look in his eyes. “Are you suggesting that I’m the one who initiated all this?” she tossed her head, indicating the clothes strewn about them.
“Pretty much,” he said with a smile.
“Good.” She smiled, but then sat up abruptly. “We’re going to need to talk,” she told him.
Evan grimaced, but nodded all the same. He had known it was coming. Now that they were able to think straight, a lot would have to change, and things would have to be shared.
After all, Victoria had a right to know what was really going on in Genesis Valley.
Chapter Five
Victoria
Sunlight streamed in through the uncovered window, the blinding rays of light washing across her face.
“Whassat?” she mumbled blearily as the brilliant sunshine woke her abruptly. Sitting up in bed—or on the mattress, since that’s all that had been provided ahead of time—she rubbed her fists against her eyes, trying to clear them.
She was the only occupant of her bed, but that was okay with her. After she and Evan had finished, he had excused himself to give her some time alone. Time to think about what she wanted to say.
What did she want to say?
Noisily blowing the air in her lungs out between her lips like a trumpet, Victoria climbed to her feet, heading for the washroom. A shower would wake her up. Hopefully. She leaned over the tub, flicking the handle from off to somewhere between boiling hot and lukewarm.
Nothing happened.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she raged, slamming a fist into the tiles above her head before standing upright again. A quick twist of her wrist told her the sink wasn’t any better.
“Don’t these people know better than to get between a female shifter and her shower?” she muttered angrily, retreating to the bedroom here she threw on a bra, a gray wifebeater and a pair of blue jeans. It was her normal go-to outfit when she didn’t have a need to do anything fancier.
Slinging her hair back into a messy ponytail she strode out the door into the hallway. Evan had mentioned he had grabbed room 401, and that was right where she headed. Her fist rose to pound heavily on the door, but right as
it descended the door opened, and she nearly fell through the opening.
“Hey,” Evan said with a smile as he caught her in his arms, holding her upright.
She wanted to relax into him, to let him hold her tight, but she couldn’t. Not until they talked things out, to find out where each of them stood. That was on the agenda for the day, though she wasn’t sure just how it was all going to go down.
Evan probably has no idea how to begin either. Which means the two of you are likely to continue circling around each other without actually getting anything done until one of you steps up to the plate.
Her inner voice was right, but just then, Victoria had other things on her mind. Like a shower.
“Water,” she growled. “I need a damn shower.”
Instead of offering up an explanation, Evan frowned. “What about the water?”
It was then that she noticed the slicked look of his hair, and the beads of water dribbling down the sides of his neck.
“You have water?” she asked dangerously.
“You don’t?” he replied firmly.
Victoria realized just then that she was encountering her Alpha for the first time. His tone told her that he was willing and ready to help solve the problem, but not if she didn’t explain things to him in a calm manner first. Taking a deep breath, she steadied her morning ire and spoke without a challenge in her voice this time.
“No. Nothing comes out of my shower, nor does it come from the tap.”
“Okay,” Evan said, his voice softer. “Go ahead, use mine while I go take a look into it.”
“Thank you,” she said, not even protesting what others might think of her using his shower.
If they didn’t hear us last night, then they have other problems to deal with, such as finding a hearing aid.
Victoria wasn’t embarrassed about the fact that the rest of the crew might have heard them. Sex was sex, and she wasn’t about to start becoming shy about it now after a lifetime of openness. Besides, she had gotten laid and they hadn’t. All the power to her!
She knew that as a woman she was supposed to be shy and timid about it, but that was just no fun. Besides, at six foot two and thickly built, she couldn’t exactly hide herself away either. All of her life she had been looked at because of her size, and after a while she had formed a tough skin and learned not to care what others saw or thought of her. What mattered was what she thought of herself.
So now, as she stripped off her clothing and snagged the towel hanging over the door, she wondered not what the others thought of her, but what they thought of her and Evan. Together. Which is where things were going, she was fairly positive. At least that’s what her bear wanted. Each time she was around him her animal reacted wildly, with a very primal, carnal urging that seemed to connect her to the Alpha of their motley crew. She knew he felt it as well, even if neither of them had outright acknowledged it yet.
Victoria knew a little bit about mates and the connections they formed with each other, but most of that was just pieced together from snippets of conversations with the few shifters she had encountered in her life. Nobody had ever been around to tell her the truth about her race and how this whole thing actually worked. So she would have to figure it out for herself, just like everything else in her life.
First of which was finding out just what the fuck was going on in Genesis Valley. Victoria got the idea that she had walked into one hell of a clusterfuck of a situation. There were whispers and words that were spoken just when she was out of earshot, as if they didn’t want to burden her with the danger of the current reality. She would prefer that her new crew mates would share everything with her, but they had obviously decided that was for Evan, and Evan alone to do.
Such were the burdens of an Alpha.
“Now this is better,” she said aloud several minutes later, the near-scalding water having cleansed her skin and placated her ire for the time being. But even then, another pressing need settled over her.
“We’re going for breakfast. Care to come along?” Evan asked her from the common area outside the washroom.
She started, not having realized he was back.
“Try and stop me,” she said, chucking the towel at him as she excited the washroom, her wet hair still hanging down her back.
Evan sniffed the air as she walked by. “Smells like wet fur,” he teased.
Victoria felt her jaw drop open. “Did you just poke fun at me for smelling like wet bear?” she asked in disbelief.
Part of her wanted to throttle him, but another part of her wanted to giggle. The whole concept of it was foreign to her. She was Victoria Mackey, female bear shifter, tough as rocks. She did not giggle. That was what helpless little girls did. The type who couldn’t open the door by themselves, or who always let a man open the jar. They giggled when someone they liked teased them.
Never before had she understood why a female could be like that. But all of a sudden, looking at the man who was her Alpha and quickly becoming much more, she understood. It wasn’t out of helplessness, or sheer stupidity—okay, she conceded, maybe it is some of the time—but to delight those who they cared for. There wasn’t a jar made yet that could defy her, but by giggling in a rather effeminate way, she could make him feel appreciated.
“I need to go,” she said abruptly, rushing out the door and down the hall toward the red sign that read Exit.
The door blew open in front of her as she crashed through it, and part of her memory vaguely recalled Evan calling after her, his voice sounding confused. It didn’t matter just then. She needed out, to get away, to put some distance between herself and anyone else.
Distance.
Space.
Security.
“What the hell are you doing, woman?” she said to herself as she almost tore the hinges off the door at the bottom of the stairwell in her rush to get outside. The parking lot flashed by as her powerful legs drove her across it, relentlessly pushing her deeper into a town she didn’t know.
Businesses and buildings, people and vehicles all blurred together as she tried to find a place to escape. Her bear took over as she felt herself descending further and further into a sense of fear and trapped insecurity. Somehow her animal managed to find a park full of trees. It drove straight for the densest section of the little woodlot, and Victoria threw herself in amidst the bushes and thick trunks of maple oak and even several massive pines. Leaves crunched and sticks snapped as her heavy footsteps pushed her deeper into the untouched part of the forest.
Finally, with all signs of the city behind her, she dropped to the ground, her back pressing up against one of the trees. The impact of her body sent a shiver through the solid wood, but the decades-old giant held firm.
Only then did she allow herself to contemplate her sudden departure and unexpected flight. The security she had built around herself had triggered an alarm even before her mind had realized it. Ingrained responses commanded her to run even as her brain was still finishing a different train of logic, one which had gotten brushed aside in her haste to leave.
As her mind had processed certain things about relationships she had seen before between men and women, Victoria had inadvertently come to the realization that she was doing what she was doing, and feeling what she was feeling, in an attempt to allow Evan to get close to her.
Victoria Mackey didn’t get close to people, and people didn’t get close to Victoria Mackey. It was a rule she had lived by for all of her adult life, and most of the period others would call “childhood,” though she simply thought of it as “not-yet-considered-an-adult.” She had never been afforded the chance to be a child, to know that carefree nature. Ever since she was a child, it had become apparent that she was different than the others, and by the time she was nine, none of them would talk to her. Once she hit her teens and the hormones of puberty kicked in, Victoria had become a shell of the person she might have otherwise been. From there, it only got worse.
She hadn’t admitted to Evan
that she ran away from home two years before she ended up having to go on the run for her violent outburst. But she had, in search of someone who might help her. Her parents had died when she was five, and her aunt had raised her only by doing the bare minimum, never any more. As it became more apparent that she bore the same shifter genes as her father, her aunt had done even less.
No one was going to penetrate her heart and the multitude of defenses she had put in place to prevent that, not even Evan—
You don’t even know his last name, she realized. They had slept together, and she had no idea who he truly was. What kind of idiot was she? Smitten just because they had a bit of a connection. What did she think, that he was her mate or something?
She laughed out loud.
Nobody wanted to be Victoria’s mate. That had been made abundantly clear to her throughout her life, from more ditched dates, “we need to talk’s,” and outright stares of distaste than she could count. True, she had never felt anything similar to the emotions Evan evoked within her, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d thought that “this one is different from the rest.”
And here she had gone, falling straight into the same old trap, thinking that he would actually care about her and that she might actually be able to open up to him.
Idiot.
“Okay, time to think about this smartly,” she said, trying to take a firm grasp of the situation. “What do you do now?”
She needed to get her stuff, first of all. The rucksack she had in her room contained every worldly belonging she possessed. There was simply no way she was going anywhere without it, end of story. It would be easier for her to suck up her pride, walk in there pretending to be pleasant and apologetic, grab the bag, and leave, than it would be to just disappear completely.
Still, if she could just—
Close by a branch snapped.
Victoria spun to face the sound, trying to take control of the situation, but it was too late. Already on hyper-alert, her bear surged forward, overwhelming her. She tried to hold it back, but it had caught her unawares with her attention elsewhere.
