by Lynn Red
“There’s magic,” he said, “and then there’s Eve.”
The two of them smiled into each other’s eyes for a long moment. “I think I’m ready to see the palace you’ve arranged for me,” Rory said, trying hard not to laugh.
“As you wish, princess, as you wish.”
The two of them laughing filled the forest as they walked into the house. Whatever happens from here, Rory thought, at least we have this. We’ll always have this.
8
“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Breaker said. “These are pretty low thread count sheets, right? But here’s a secret. The higher thread counts? Burn like hell. Just whoosh, up in a flash.”
“Really?” Rory asked, pulling her hair back into a high ponytail, and taking in the strangely non-charred burn house.
“No, but like I said, I don’t spend much money and by the time I decided I was actually going to go through with this, Walt’s department store was closed and I had to just get the blankets from my house. Hope it isn’t too scratchy.”
“I love them,” she said, pulling the fluffy, down-filled comforter up around her. Even though she was still wearing part of her clothes, the night’s chill made her glad for the blanket. “I love that it smells like you,” she paused for a moment. “I love you,” she said. “I think,” she added quickly.
Suddenly, Breaker became very serious. The joking way he’d talked about this old burn house being a vacation home for firefighters who needed to get away for a night melted almost immediately. On the stove behind him, the tea kettle he’d started began to whistle, but he paid no attention.
“Oh God,” Rory said, that old self-doubt surfacing again. “I did it. I went and did it. I just had to open my damn mouth and I—”
“I love you too,” Breaker finished for her. Rory’s cheeks burned, but nothing like the fire in her soul. “I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know why my brain hasn’t made me turn and run like a lunatic, but... this is the first time I’ve ever been able to say that without the slightest question in my mind. You’re... I don’t know,” he said. “Something I never thought I’d find. But now that I have? I’m not letting you go.”
Rory started laughing, throwing her head back in a way that made her look slightly batty. “If you think,” she said, “you’re the one who isn’t going anywhere, you got another thing comin’, buddy.”
“Well then tell you what,” Breaker said, sliding into the blankets, his body immediately warming hers, even though he hadn’t touched her yet – his skin was just that warm. “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves one hell of a deal, doesn’t it?”
“I wish you were naked,” he said with a growl. His first kiss was soft, the second one insistent, and the third hungry and deep. It was a sort of passion, a desperate power, that Rory didn’t know if she’d even heard about in movies. It was just a pure sort of vulnerable need for her, that in that one instant, she knew without any question, that whatever was happening between them, it was real.
And for her? Right then? That’s all she needed in the world. At least, that’s what Rory thought until her bear grabbed a handful of hair, forced her head back at an angle and enveloped her in a kiss. Her lips tingled with anticipation for him, and when he pushed his tongue inside, she could hardly think of anything else.
“Soon,” she whispered. “Whenever you want, just make me that way.”
The teapot on the stove began a soft, almost droning whistle, which Rory thought mirrored the way her own heat had begun bubbling up inside, and creeping out in wet heat from between her legs. She was still soaked from before, but the chill air had mostly cooled her dry. When Breaker’s hot, soft lips trailed down her chin to the hollow of her bared throat though, the sweet ache was back in an instant.
Breaker kissed her throat, sucking gently on the side of her neck and then let his lips slide down to her shoulder where he bit gently. “What did I ever do without you?” he asked. It seemed a little more rhetorical, but Rory couldn’t resist.
“Probably watched a lot of bad TV,” she whispered. “Or internet porn, depending on what you were needing.”
She laughed and Breaker smiled, which she could barely make out in the pool of silver, shimmering moonlight flooding through the burn house’s window and surrounding them on the pile of blankets and sheets. She took a deep breath, pulling her breath in through her nose and relishing Breaker’s hard, masculine scent, and drinking in the way his kisses were trickling, almost dripping, down her neck and finally between her breasts.
The soft cotton of her t-shirt brushed against Rory’s aching nipples, sending a trill of pleasure down her spine. Involuntarily, she closed her fingers on Breaker’s back, scrunching up his shirt. “How are you doing this to me?” she asked. “It’s like you’ve opened up some... I don’t know, something inside me that I had no idea existed.”
“Oh, you mean like how you made my eyes turn yellow?” he asked, looking up from where he sucked. “And made hair come out of my neck? I think we might have some crazy things we’re doing to each other. I kinda like it.”
As if to punctuate what he liked, Breaker closed his mouth around Rory’s nipple, perfectly encircling her peak. Dragging his tongue around her, and warming her skin through her shirt with flicks of his tongue, he groaned as her nipple stiffened inside his mouth. With each circle of his tongue, each soft nip of his teeth, Breaker forced Rory to take quicker, hotter, shorter breaths.
She grabbed one of his hands, and led it down her body, between her legs. He unbuttoned her jeans, then cupped his fingers around her, moaning softly against her skin when he found her heat. The knuckles of his middle finger pulsed against her, and his palm ground hot and hard against her clit. The way he pressed, in slow, patient circles that pulsed against her, had Rory’s lungs burning with excitement.
He kissed her again, after licking all the way up to her chin. He closed his mouth over hers just as Rory started to groan. She whispered his name and arched her back, pressing her hips against Breaker’s hand.
“In... me,” she whispered, “please, in me... now...”
She hooked her fingertips inside the waist of her jeans and kicked out of them.
Breaker watched her for a moment, before inhaling deeply through his nose. “The way you smell,” he whispered, “it makes me crazy, makes me feel like you’re taking me over, like I can’t control anything I’m doing.”
She lay her fingers on the sides of Breaker’s face just as he pressed against her entrance with a tantalizing fingertip. “There some reason you need to control yourself? Seems like we’re doing just fine not bothering with all that.”
A giggle escaped Rory’s lips followed by a soft moan that pitched up toward the end. “Don’t make me wait anymore,” she whispered as she slid her hand down her bear’s chest and undid his fly. The hair above his cock tickled her wrist, and when she circled him with her fingers, they barely touched at the tips. She stroked him gently, working him free of his jeans and nestling his heat against her belly. His weight on top of her and the soft motion of her hand against his softest skin drew another groan from Breaker’s lips.
“My turn,” Rory whispered as Breaker’s ear passed right next to her mouth. She tugged on him, slowly stroking from base to tip. Before long, she needed to wrap both hands around Breaker to keep him encircled.
In the silvery moonlight, his naked beauty struck her. The line running down his muscled torso, the hair above his stiff-standing erection, and the shadow where his jeans hugged his hips held her attention for longer than she thought she was staring.
“You’re beautiful,” Breaker said, interrupting her staring. “The moonlight in your eyes, the sweat running down your cheeks... you better hurry or I’m gonna throw you over and fuck you until you scream.”
“You had better not be exaggerating,” Rory said. She gripped him right at the base, squeezing him in the circle of her fingers that wouldn’t quite close. “Because if you are... well... you better not be.
”
The more she tugged on him, slowly stroking from base to tip, the bigger he grew. She squeezed, dragging her hand upward and then focusing a gentle massage with her thumb on the underside of his tip.
“Turn around,” he murmured with a gentle growl. “I need to taste... you...” as if to explain, Breaker lay a hand on Rory’s leg and directed her to where he wanted—needed—her to be. He tasted her first, just a second or two before she took him between her lips. Breaker’s tongue danced a gentle rhythm down the line where he was able to just tease at her clit with the tip of his tongue. As he ran it back downward toward her opening, his chin nestled right in the spot it needed to be.
She was able to tug his jeans down just enough to give him the message. Breaker picked his hips up and let her slide them off without taking his mouth away for even a moment.
“God... yes... yes... feels so good,” Rory managed, in the split second before she took Breaker’s tip inside her mouth. His warmth and the taste of a drop of his anticipation sent a shiver through her entire body.
The fluttering kisses, the gentle sucks, and the tentative bites sent snakes of electric pleasure up her back to join the chills she couldn’t quite shake.
The big bear mumbled something into the softest skin between her legs, but there was nothing to understand. At least, nothing past the vibrations his growling voice thrilled her sex. Without really knowing she was doing it, Rory drew her thighs closer on either side of Breaker’s face, and pushed herself down against him a little harder. She tossed her shirt off into a darkened corner of the room where it landed with a soft rumpling sound.
His hungry tongue slid up and down and then wrestled inside her entrance. She didn’t know how, but he’d managed to get the tip of his finger in as well. He rotated it slowly, teasing another near climax out of Rory, only slowing when he felt the muscles inside her squeeze. She took a deep breath, held it for just a moment, and then exhaled a hot breath around his cock. He trembled, as though the sensation of air rushing around his tip, followed by another gentle suck, changed his entire world in an instant.
Again, a droplet of his excitement slid down Rory’s throat, thrilling her all the way down. But when she squeezed again, flicking her tongue across Breaker’s tip, he began to shudder. He thickened in her mouth until he almost filled her up and then grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said with a laugh-gasp. “Hold on a second. I can’t let things go like this, I’ll embarrass myself.”
“It’s only embarrassing if I don’t want you to—” Rory closed her eyes and sunk down onto Breaker again, slipping her tongue around the rim of his head and then lay it across him as she pumped her fist.
She was just about to tell him to come when that one finger he had inside her found that spot again.
The grinding of his chin, the slow rotation of his fingertip and the pulse of his tongue just past her entrance was enough. Neither of them needed to give the other permission – not that it would have mattered anyway, as far gone as they were. It was all Rory could do to close her lips down on her bear and swallow him as they both exploded at once.
White heat erupted in her core, followed by a wave of cool and another pulse of warmth. She gulped again, pulling away to take a breath. “That,” she began, taking a second to let the last flush of her orgasm recede enough to make sense when she talked, “was—”
“Not everything,” Breaker finished for her.
Somehow, he was still rock hard, and he was on top of her before she had a chance to catch her breath. A shower of sucking kisses ran from her neck, to her breasts, and back up. Breaker sucked Rory’s bottom lip between his teeth, and stared into her eyes for just a second. He didn’t break the gaze even when he pushed his tip inside her, and if what she felt before was a fire deep in her core, what she felt then was a volcano.
The next few moments were a web of clutching, grasping, kissing, holding and gripping. Rory tilted her hips back to let her bear in as deep as he could get, and grabbed two handfuls of his hair, forcing his head down to her chest.
He took a nipple in his mouth, flicking his tongue back and forth across her tip to match the rhythm of his long, deep strokes.
“I don’t think... I’m gonna... last,” Rory whispered in a husky, throaty moan.
Breaker said nothing. He just drove himself as deep as he could go, and lifted his head from Rory’s breast. As he thickened inside of her, once again driving her to the precipice of a climax, he stared straight into her eyes.
“I’m yours,” he said in a way that seemed to pull her out of reality. “If you want me.”
At exactly the same time, he sucked her neck and she felt his teeth grip her. She sunk hers into his shoulder, somehow staving off her need—almost compulsion—to scream as he brought her right to the edge.
“I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you,” Rory said, pulling away from Breaker’s shoulder and staring right into his burning, yellow and gold-flecked eyes. “If you’ll have me.”
His answer was to thrust so deep inside that at first it sent sparks of pain followed shortly after by the warming trickles of pleasure. She tried to close her eyes as her third climax washed over her belly, but Breaker rubbed the sides of Rory’s face with his thumbs. When she opened her eyes she saw her bear watching her.
Every nerve in Rory’s body smoothed out and then tightened back. She felt electricity flicker through her entire being.
And then, as they stared into each other’s eyes, both gave up at the same time.
Their bodies seemed to move on their own, without any input from their brains. The entire world seemed to narrow to a pinpoint of nothing but this building, Rory and Breaker, and the beating of their hearts, and the rhythm of their breath.
When the world returned to normal, the two of them just lay there, holding on and refusing to let go. “Something feels different,” Rory finally said. “But I can’t really place it.”
“Good different?” Breaker asked. “Bad different? Indifferent... different?”
Rory laughed softly, nestling her head down where her bear’s neck and shoulders joined.
“Safe different,” she said. “Like something I always wanted finally came true. You know what I mean?”
“You got a hell of a long time to change your mind,” Breaker said. “Because like hell I’m ever letting you go.”
“Deal,” she said with a smile, as she closed her eyes. “God is that ever a deal. But first—”
“Tea?” he asked, interrupting her. “That kettle’s still going so hard I keep thinking it’s going to explode.”
The two of them laughed, kissed one last time, and then, yeah, figured they had some time for tea.
9
“Have anything to tell me?” Monte had a reptilian smile on his face that was undeniably warm when Rory walked into the lab. Breaker was behind her, lugging a huge duffel bag. The heft of the black athletic bag strained the shoulder strap, and when the bear hefted it up onto the futon in the lounge where Monte sat, the metal frame gave a sigh.
“Which one of us?” Breaker asked. His bringing her to work every day had become somewhat routine, but this time was different. “Well, you know that we’re going on our mating honey moon—which by the way, I’ll be here at half past two, train leaves at four—and uh... I saw Expendables 3 last night on Netflix. Wasn’t very good.”
Monte smiled. “Oh, that’s all very nice, but Rory and I made a deal a long time ago. She knows what I mean, and if she doesn’t I’ll jog her brain. Either way, you two make a wonderful pair.”
A knock at the lab door interrupted the pleasant conversation. “National Shifter Council business,” the visitor announced before knocking again. “Got a report here, and I also need to get on the road, so...”
“I’m coming!” Rory called out. “Must be the claw mark report? I can’t think of anything else we’d be getting from the NSC, unless you ordered something?” She looked briefly at Monte, who shook his head and shrug
ged.
The arson investigation took a strange turn after Rory filed the police papers. Aside from the normal paper trail bullshit, they also had to deal with an odd fact—whoever left the claw mark had a particular signature. It was a lion’s claw, yes, but the small claw was smaller than it should’ve been. That should have been helpful in finding their claw maker, but no one in the town’s registry fit the pattern. So, off to the national registry it went.
And of course, once things go national, they never come back quick.
Retrieving the folder, Rory popped the binding string and gasped at the jagged scar she saw looking back.
“Oh my God,” Rory whispered. “Look at this kisser.”
She passed the folder around to the two men in the office, and all three hummed and hawed for a moment. “He used to live here,” Monte finally said. “I knew him.”
“This doesn’t prove anything though. Says here, he was a contractor back in the 80s, so he might’ve just been involved in a remodel or something,” Rory said. “Or anything. Or, I guess, he could have had a fling with the woman who lived there, and came back to try and burn the place down.”
“Yeah,” Breaker added, “and ripped the guts out of the fusebox to confuse anyone looking to see if it was an electrical fire. On top of that, he probably knew well enough that no one would look past the surface.”
The three of them sat in silence for a long moment, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Well, I don’t know,” Breaker finally announced. “But it’s taken this long, so we’ve got some time to think. I’ll see you this afternoon?”
Rory nodded, and the two of them exchanged a kiss. “Can’t wait,” she said with a smile. Breaker noticed she was looking past him, at the folder on the desk.
He laughed softly, “I love you, Lorelei, go read your damn report.”
