Green Bearets: Jarvis (A Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Base Camp Bears Book 3)
Page 8
“Are you okay?” the baby-faced mountain of muscle asked, peering down at her, his eyes wide with concern.
“Just…fine,” she said through gritted teeth, not willing to admit weakness in front of this unknown. “Now, let me pass.”
“I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t do that.”
“And why not?” she asked, anger washing through her system, pushing aside her terror and replacing it with blistering heat.
“Because you don’t have access to be in this area,” he responded.
“Oh no?” she said dangerously. “Are you sure about that…” she studied his shirt, “Corporal?”
The shifter was no pushover, she had to give him that.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied, his spine straightening as he realized she was no longer about to have a meltdown, but was instead challenging him.
“Why don’t you just run along and ask Jarvis if I can be here?”
The guard blanched at her casual use of Major Eidelhorn’s first name. “Ah, and who should I say is asking?” he said.
Give the man credit. Not a waver in the voice.
“Tell him Miss Carrie Suter is here to meet with him,” she said, lifting her nose in the air with a slight sniff of disdain.
“If you’ll just wait here?” the guard asked, pointing at a pair of chairs against the wall.
“Of course,” she said, making no move to go anywhere.
The shifter grimaced and then turned smartly and disappeared down the hall. She heard his fist knock on Jarvis’s door around the corner, but she couldn’t hear anything that was said.
A moment later the same shifter, looking properly chastised, reappeared and hurried back down the hallway.
“The major will see you,” he said. “Do you know which door is his?”
She nodded. “I do. Thank you, Corporal. Keep up the good work.”
The shifter looked at her in surprise, not expecting a compliment for doing his job, and snapped smartly to attention.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She touched her fingers to her brow in a civilian approximation of a salute and continued on her way down the hall.
“Come.” The voice answered her knock almost immediately.
She entered the room. It looked the same as it had the day she’d first come into his life. When everything had changed upon her first look at Jarvis. Now she was back here, and if everything went well, things were going to change once again. It was far more symbolic than she’d planned, but there it was.
“Hello, Jarvis,” she said, angry at how stiff and formal her voice sounded.
“What can I do for you, Carrie?” the big man replied, just now looking up from the paperwork he’d been working on.
“For starters, you can sit there and let me speak like an adult. To share my thoughts without trying to impose your own over the top of me like I’m a child.”
Despite the difference in sizes between them, Jarvis rocked back in his chair as if she’d hit him square in the jaw. Shame and embarrassment crept into his expression, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he looked at her for a long time, evaluating her.
Carrie stared right back, no longer intimidated by him. Besides, she was still standing and he was sitting, so she didn’t have to look up at him. This time it was the other way around, though she wasn’t naïve enough to think it made a difference with him. He didn’t become a major in the Green Bearets by being a wuss.
“Very well,” he said at long last, and gestured at one of the two chairs opposite his desk.
Carrie sat, crossing her legs and arms, staring at the big idiot that she cared so strongly for.
“What did you wish to tell me?” he asked, blatantly not leaning back into the table now that she was closer.
Anything to keep me at arm’s distance or more. You stupid chivalrous pile of muscles. Your cause is noble, but it’s so horribly misplaced it’s no longer endearing, but annoying!
“You need to know something.”
Jarvis just arched an eyebrow.
“When I came to you, I made it seem like I wanted you to go looking after Angelo because he and I were close. That we were together.”
“You made it seem?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes.” She paused, and then sighed. “We weren’t together. Not in any serious way. Yes, we’d seen each other a few times. But things went to shit the night he was taken.”
Jarvis sat up straighter at that.
“Exactly. He got drunk, and started losing his shit when I wouldn’t sleep with him. Threatened me, shoved me.”
The edge of the table crumpled as Jarvis’s hand closed around it, the plastic simply deforming under the steel-like fingers as they tightened.
“He never hit me,” she rushed on hurriedly, “though I was scared he might. So that’s why I told him it was over. That I wanted him to leave, and the only time I wanted to ever see him again was when he picked up his shit.”
Her head drooped slightly. “I should have done it a week earlier. Or just never saw him in the first place.” Carrie’s shoulders sagged now too. “I have terrible taste in men usually. I always date the assholes, rebels. Losers. Whatever the hell you want to call them.” She smiled sadly. “Then you come into my life, all noble and righteous, determined to help whoever you could to do the right thing.”
Jarvis made a noncommittal sound in response to her praise of him.
Then she dropped her bomb.
“And yet, you won’t touch me. As if I’m not good enough for you.”
***
Jarvis
He flinched.
“That’s not true,” he protested, his fingers extracting themselves from the warped table as his anger vanished, replaced by horror that that was how Carrie thought he perceived her.
“No? How else am I supposed to interpret you leaving me on the dance floor like that?” she shot back, rising from her chair and turning her back on him, walking slowly to the middle of the room. “Unless you have someone else…?”
“There is nobody else,” he said immediately, also rising from the chair. “That’s not it. Not on my end, at least.”
“On your end?”
He grimaced. “Yes. But on your end, there is. Angelo.”
Carrie threw her hands in the air. “Are you for real? After all I just told you, you’re still going on about that?”
Jarvis paced over to the wall nearest him, placing both hands on it and pushing himself off as he composed his words. “It’s not that simple,” he said.
“How can it not be? I told him I was done with him. That I wanted him out of my house. I was scared for my well-being. If he’d turned more violent, there’s nothing I could have done. He’s an asshole.”
“Probably,” Jarvis agreed. “But you never know what might have happened if he hadn’t been taken.”
He hated himself for saying it, but it was the truth. Whether Angelo was a good man or not—and Jarvis was rapidly coming to believe he was anything but good—if he still thought that he and Carrie were together, then Jarvis couldn’t come between them.
Could he?
“So what, you need his permission to do something like, say, kiss me?” she said, her voice rising angrily until she was almost shouting.
“Essentially,” he said weakly.
“Asshole!” Carrie roared. “How dare you?”
Jarvis blinked. “How dare I what?” He was confused.
“How dare you respect him more than me? I am my own person you thick-headed dolt! I don’t need his permission to kiss you. If I say that things are over between me and him, then they’re over. I am an adult and not someone’s slave. I am free to make those decisions as I want. For you to refuse to listen to me when I say so, but be willing to listen to him… do you have any idea how fucked up that is?”
Jarvis rocked back on his heels, stunned both by her vitriolic onslaught, but also by the thoughts behind it.
“Unless you don’t feel the same way about me?�
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He froze.
“That’s not it at all. It’s about doing what’s right…”
She threw her hands in the air, then gestured rapidly back and forth between them.
“Does this not feel right at all to you? Even a little? Or maybe I’m just imagining it all!”
Jarvis walked around the front of his desk, but stopped short of approaching closer.
“You’re not imagining it,” he said, his voice deep, filling the room.
“Then fucking prove it!” she exclaimed, exasperated with him.
He was moving before he even realized it. Carrie’s back was to him, but that didn’t matter. One hand spun her around with effortless ease, her hair flashing out behind her. His left hand slipped into the small of her back and under her rear, before it squeezed.
Carrie practically flew into the air as he brought her to him. A full-throated growl filled the room as he felt her press into him. His legs never stopped moving, until her shoulder blades impacted roughly on the far wall.
Neither of them even noticed. Carrie’s legs automatically wrapped around his waist, while their lips touched and moved against each other with a fierce, fiery passion. Nothing was held back, the two of them letting their pent-up passion flow into the moment. His lips were not gentle or caressing, but rough and demanding. Jarvis’s bear worked to prove to her that he was just as crazy for her as she was for him.
Fingers scraped his neck and the back of his head as she continued to react to his kiss, making soft moaning noises even as she parted her lips, letting him explore her mouth.
“You certainly had me fooled,” she whispered as they parted for air several minutes later.
“When I’m being a fool, it’s easy to confuse others,” he said, admitting at last that he’d been a stubborn idiot.
His intentions had been good, but he’d not thought them all the way through.
“Well, you can keep making up for it now, if you’d like,” she teased, tilting her head to the side so she could kiss his neck, her teeth nipping gently at his earlobe as he growled a reply, at a loss for words from her touch.
“Here?” he asked, looking around the office. “This isn’t a good location. Too many people come through here during the day. Plus the walls are thin,” he said, giving her an evil look.
But Carrie wasn’t backing down. “Well, maybe you need to be quieter.”
He roared with laughter, spinning her around the room before kissing her again, leaving Carrie near breathless.
“Do you have your own quarters, Major?” she purred into his ear, managing to almost make his rank into a sexual connotation.
“I do,” he said. “But it’s a short walk from here. Think you can contain yourself in public?”
Carrie grinned wickedly, her eyes glancing down at his crotch.
“Can you?”
“Perhaps,” he said, shifting things in his pants to hide his rather obvious erection. “But I make no promises after the door closes.”
Carrie just licked her lips.
“Good.”
Chapter Seven
Carrie
The change from being pissed at him, to letting him take her to bed was rather abrupt, true.
But it’s not like I didn’t want this beforehand anyway. And he admitted to being an idiot, and responded to my challenge.
Maybe there was hope for Jarvis after all.
The door closed behind them and his hands immediately began to run up her sides, eliciting a soft moan and lip bite from her at the way his big fingers caressed her.
Right now though, I think I’ll just take what I can get.
Reaching out behind her she felt the bulge in his pants for the first time. It was quite large. Taking what she could get seemed just a little harder after that. But Carrie would give it her all.
Jarvis’s lips brushed against her neck, making her shiver with anticipation at what was to come.
“You feel so good.”
The warmth of his breath washed over her ear and neck, making her skin tingle where he’d kissed her.
“So do you,” she teased, giving his cock a squeeze with her hands.
Jarvis flinched, but then chuckled into her ear. “You think that’s good? Wait until you feel it elsewhere.”
Carrie’s breath caught in her throat at the blatant mention of him being inside her. She knew it was going to happen, but the open acknowledgement that he was going to put that inside her was still enough to make her lose her train of thought.
Now that it was front and center in her mind, however, Carrie wanted it. Her fingers began to fumble with his belt, a difficult task considering he was still behind her, his hands running up her stomach and cupping her breasts. One of them suddenly dropped to her waist and began to creep lower, further distracting her from her attempts.
“We have time,” he said softly as she tried harder.
“I want you now,” she told him sternly.
“And you have me,” he replied, tightening his arms to pull her even closer into his embrace. “You have all of me. And I want all of you.”
“I’m yours,” she said, the words never having felt more right until that moment.
The growl that ripped from Jarvis’s throat made her nerves sing, her heart race, and her knees weak, all from one primal noise.
Jarvis stepped to the side of her and without pausing scooped her up into a cradle, moving over to the huge bed in the middle of the room. He paused to remove his boots before moving to the middle of the bed, where he laid her back into the cushions and pillows piled there.
“Jarvis.” She said his name as her hands cupped his face, bringing him in close to hers, where they could kiss once more.
He murmured her name as he kissed her neck some more, his hands finding the hem of her shirt and slowly lifting it up over her head.
“My turn,” she said as he tried to undo her bra. Pushing his hands aside, she removed his shirt in one smooth move, sliding it up and off, before flinging it to the floor.
“Damn,” she said in quiet surprise. Carrie had known he was ripped. The tight shirts didn’t really hide much. But seeing just how defined he was, his abs practically rippling as he moved, was another thing entirely. His broad, powerful chest was perfectly sculpted, and his arms bulged.
Even his forearms were well defined, and she salivated at the idea of what he’d look like in a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said, his lower lip curled up and under as he bit down, his eyes blazing as he looked her half-naked body up and down.
Emboldened by his uncovered want, his need for her that was written clearly on his face, Carrie reached around her back and unclasped her bra, letting it fall to the side as seductively as she could, hoping Jarvis would appreciate it.
The sudden tightening of his muscles around his neck and bulge of his arms as his hands closed into fists forced a rush of heat through her body.
Never before had Carrie felt so sexy. And Jarvis hadn’t even touched her. It was simply in the way he looked at her, his expression filled with carnal lust, as if he found her the single hottest thing on the planet.
It was…arousing, to say the least.
In moments the pair of them were naked. Jarvis moved up between her legs, and she grabbed his shaft, pulling him toward her opening.
The massive shifter frowned.
“What?” she asked, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
“Not that,” he said, pushing her arms away as she tried to cover up. “I just want to make sure you’re okay without any warmup?”
Oh. That’s all.
Carrie took one of his hands and rubbed it between her legs. His fingers all came away slick.
“Ah,” he said in understanding.
“What can I say, you get me going,” she told him, reaching out for his cock once more.
This time she rubbed the head of it against her, letting it become covered in her wetness. He
slipped inside of her, and she gasped.
“That’s bigger than I thought,” she said, her voice tight as she realized that maybe she should have taken him up on his offer.
“I warned you,” he replied, leaning in to kiss her, pumping his hips so minutely that he slid in and out of her perhaps a fraction of an inch at most.
All that served to do was arouse Carrie further.
“More,” she gasped as his body draped itself over her, heat rolling off of him and across her in wave after wave, leaving her skin tingling.
Perhaps another inch or so of his rock-hard shaft pushed inside her, and Carrie gasped as her walls protested the adjustment they were forced to make.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his mouth right next to her ear, where he’d been gently kissing her as he prepared her for his girth.
“Oh yeah,” she replied. “Fuck, you feel good. You’re just huge.”
“Not something a guy ever tires of hearing,” he replied, which brought a laugh from her.
“I bet,” she replied, pushing him slightly back from her and moving to the side so she could watch as he entered her.
But Jarvis didn’t thrust closer.
“Don’t you dare tease me like that,” she warned, thrusting her hips at him and letting another two inches fill her up.
“Yes ma’am,” he said and pushed another inch in.
Carrie quivered as she was filled by his throbbing cock; the sensation of it occupying everything she had to offer was electrifying.
“Give me the rest, slowly,” she commanded as her walls adjusted to him.
Jarvis didn’t argue, but he did go far slower than she’d anticipated. By the time his hips made contact with hers, Carrie was begging him to fuck her. She wanted it, and wanted it now.
But Jarvis had other ideas. She did get fucked, but it was slow and tender. At first she’d contemplated telling him to just fuck her hard, but as he continued to look into her eyes and kiss her with the exact same amount of passion he had back in his office, her mood changed. In minutes Carrie was close to exploding every time he slid back into her.
Her hand pushed between them, finding the pulsing little mound just above where he was entering her, and she began to rub it while Jarvis kept up his slow, steady rhythm. It was driving her wild, and Carrie let herself love every minute of it.