by Lynn Red
“Ange?” Colton asked. “You’re drooling.”
“Oh,” she laughed and wiped her face. “Just thinking about beer.”
“O-okay,” he said. “So when are you going on your honeymoon? And are you gonna invite me to the mating ceremony? The part before the actual mating, I mean. I don’t want to watch that. Because you totally should. I want to see the thing, er I mean not that thing, just the vows part. And then you can tell your grandkids that the only reason they exist is that Uncle Colton told you to jump at the chance to find a good guy instead of being a baby and running away.”
“That was... oddly specific,” Angie said with a laugh. “But yeah, sure. Whenever it happens I’m sure you’ll be there.”
Immediately, like she’d just been shot in the brain with a lightning bolt, she went starkly still. A million thoughts – did she really just say that being chief among them – bounced around in her skull. Echoes that reminded her of shouting down the mouth of a sinkhole blanketed her mind. She just let herself admit something she’d been afraid to allow – she was thinking about this guy as a mate. She hardly knew him, but it seemed like they’d been together for an eternity. They’d been through a hell of a lot in the three days since they met, and they hadn’t even had a proper date yet.
Her phone buzzed again. “Look out the window,” his text read. She stood up and did. The sun was just beginning to peek up above the horizon. Underneath it was White Lake, the town’s namesake body of water. Orange fingers shimmered across the surface of the lake, warming her face just at the thought of sharing a sunrise with Dawson.
“Looking,” she texted back. “It’s beautiful. Are you looking too?”
Her house was facing more or less the same direction as the windows on the top floor of the police station where she was currently staring out the window. If he was, he’d see the same thing.
It took a few moments before he responded, during which she let the twinkling rays of sunlight on the water ease her fears and her worries. If anything happens I can always just start over, she thought, again. I don’t want anything to happen though. This is what I want. He – Dawson – is what I’ve been looking for, even if I hadn’t known it until I met him.
When her phone finally buzzed again, it reminded her she wasn’t actually standing at a beautiful cliff staring out over the ocean with her apparently beloved bear by her side. “I was looking at it and thinking of you. Your hair. How you felt when I touched your face. I can’t wait until you get off. An hour now?”
He almost took her breath. Not only is he a musician with a golden spoon, he also sweet talks with the best of them. “How the hell did I find you?” she replied. “I know we’ve known each other for less than a week, but—”
She was half done when he continued his message. “It doesn’t matter if it’s an hour or a year. You’re the one for me, and somehow I know that. I’m not going to lose you, no matter what.”
Her finger hung over the touch screen, trembling slightly. How the hell do you respond to that? Do you even try? She asked herself over and over again what it all meant, what it was that drew them together. Instead she decided just to continue her text. “But it all feels so right. Let’s just let it be whatever it is.”
She paused again, waiting for some divine inspiration to spark her to action, but none came. It was all her and Dawson, nothing else in the world mattered right then. Colton’s chair was squeaking as he turned back and forth, and the computer bank behind her was clicking out its standard rhythm. It was all so familiar, but at that moment it felt purely alien, like the first time you go into a building that’s completely empty when before you’ve only seen it full.
“Deal. I’ll never ask any more than for you to be you. And see? I’m not fat-fingering anything this time. Not yet anyway.”
The hint of levity was very welcome and the naughty joke was good too. She cracked a smile and extemporaneously decided to turn around and snap a picture of herself in front of the window.
“Oh Jeez, it’s selfie time?” Colton said. He was grinning. “You have no idea how happy I am for you. If you want to run, no one will know. These hours are dead time. I can cover you.”
She hit send without adding a message. “You sure?” she asked. “I’ll owe you one.”
“You owe me about thirty at this point. Get on out of here, you have a bear waiting to see you.”
For a moment, Angie pondered telling him she was on the way, but decided to surprise him. She loved surprises, and given how things had gone so far, she thought he probably would too. And even if he didn’t, it’d be fun to stroll in the door naked and see how he reacted. His ribs were getting better, he could stand a good wrestling match, or at least some nudie snuggling.
“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I know it’s really, really good.”
What she didn’t see as she left the Batcave were Colton’s twinkling eyes and the email he had started to a certain [email protected]. “It worked,” he wrote. “I have no idea how to thank you, but... yeah, I think we have a winner.”
He clicked send.
9
It took about five minutes for Angie to get home from the Cave and about five more for her to work up the courage to strip off her clothes in the car. There was so much natural greenery around her house that being spotted by either Mrs. Eldwood to her left, or Mrs. Bridger to the right wasn’t much of a fear. And anyway, Mrs. Bridger at least enjoyed naturist hikes, so she wouldn’t think a single thing about it.
What took building up courage though was the fact that she was doing something she hadn’t ever even thought of doing. This was something straight out of a rom-com, something that people only did in college and then told horror stories about how they were expecting their boyfriend but forgot he was having a Super Bowl party with a dozen guests who all got an eyeful. That was stupid. Dawson wasn’t the party type, and anyway it wasn’t even seven in the morning.
One by one, she dispensed with these fears by reading and re-reading Dawson’s incredibly sweet, panty-melting text messages. She’d heard of people being heartbroken over callused text message breakups, but she’d not yet heard of someone falling in love because of one. Although she thought maybe she’d fallen for him the second they caught eyes over that pan of fried chicken.
“I’m being an idiot,” she announced to her car. “I am sitting in my driveway, without any clothes on, and I’m probably leaving a sweaty spot on my seat. Time to put up or shut up, girl. Get out there and do something wild and crazy.”
Her mirror didn’t respond, and neither did the steering wheel, but as it always did, her little out loud pep talk worked wonders for her bizarre brain. She decided to reapply some lip gloss, and put her socks and shoes back on because there were some goathead stickers in her lawn last time she mowed, and nothing in the world would be less sexy than a naked girl appearing in the doorway of a bedroom hopping around on one foot and picking at stickers. She wished her driveway connected to the walkway up to her door, but that was no time to think about pouring concrete.
The mental image of her doing that gave her a little shot of laughter, and that was all it took. One last look toward Mrs. Eldwood’s house confirmed that the octogenarian ferret-shifter wasn’t gardening. Giggling madly, Angie kicked open her door, ran halfway to her house, ran back to the car to shut the door she’d accidentally left open, and then back to the house.
She grabbed the door handle, and then remembered that her keys were in her jeans. She gave it a tug anyway, hoping it was open, and when the door swung to greet her, she was so surprised she just about fell over herself on the ground.
Aside from the sizzle of bacon on the stove, her bear was standing there, tending the skillet and singing along to some sexy, slightly-dirty sound of Thin Lizzy’s Dancing in the Moonlight that emanated from the radio on her windowsill.
He waved back over his shoulder, but didn’t turn. Jeans hung loosely about his muscled waist. Dawson�
��s sides were wrapped in thick bandages, but from the way he was moving back and forth from foot to foot, he was in vastly less pain than he by all rights should have been.
“You’re up early,” she said as she came up behind him, purred softly and buried her face in the muscles of his back. “And... oh my God your pants are undone. You are straight out of a Chippendale’s show.” Without a second’s pause, she kicked her shoes off, and used her toes to slip off her socks.
Angie slid her hands down Dawson’s stomach and into the tuft of hair that would have been hidden if his jeans were buttoned. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked. “Make me kill you with desperation?” she bit him softly on the shoulder and dragged her teeth down his arm just a bit. The groan Dawson let out thrilled her to the core of her being.
“Oh, just figured you’d be hungry. Just about to put the pancakes on. But,” he paused, and an unseen smile spread across his lips. “You’re naked, aren’t you?” The heat of his back spread through her. “Holy shit, you are.”
She just hugged against him for long enough to fill her nose with his scent. “You are a man that I cannot believe has wandered into my life.”
Just as the raspy chorus of the song lilted into life, a smile danced across Dawson’s lips, like it was coming home to roost. He grabbed her hands, both in one of his, and his fingertips danced against the small of her back. “It’s just pancakes,” he said with a smile. Somehow, just those words, and the gentle way he watched her eyes got Angie’s knees a little weak in the sweetest way. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she whispered as her bear swayed back and forth in tune with the sexually-charged saxophone’s moaning. “But I think the pancakes can wait.”
Dropping to her knees and trailing her fingernails along the ripples of Dawson’s muscled stomach, she dripped them along his bandages and down further where his jeans lay open. The thick hair, attached to that on his chest by a long trail, was soft as she buried first her fingers and then her face, against him.
Her breath tickled his cock to life. Thicker and harder, as the seconds ticked by, he swelled in her hands. She held him like an axe, hands one atop the other. “God,” she moaned, sliding her lips along his shaft, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Believe it,” Dawson whispered, punctuated with a gasp as Angie took him into her mouth. Her tongue flashed across his tip, then swirled around his head before she backed off for a breath. His scent, and his taste, filled her entire body. The warmth radiated out from her center, sending goosebumps and a hot, red flush, up her neck. Involuntarily, she squeezed him and then slid her lips around his tip again.
“Teeth,” he whispered. “Just a little... just... yeah... God yes,” he sucked a breath between his clenched jaws. “More... more.”
Angie moved her hands around to her bear’s thickly muscled ass, and pulled him hard into her. The deeper he slid into her mouth, Dawson’s groaning grew louder, hungrier, more desperate. He tangled his fingers in her hair and took a deep breath.
Angie looked up at him, opening her eyes wide and drinking in the way Dawson’s tilted-back head made her feel like she had finally found someone who she could just be with. Here was someone who just seemed happy to be around her, happy to touch her, to feel her and to breathe her in.
As she watched his face, he swelled in her mouth and pulled back. He left her with a soft pop as her lips sucked and nothing was there. Angie went forward again, trying to pull him back, but he dodged her with a smile, and lifted her easily to her feet.
“You just about embarrassed me there,” he said with an easy smile. He kissed her hard, deep and hungry, sucking softly at her bottom lip, then biting it as they parted. “I can’t let our first real time together end in thirty seconds.”
“There will be plenty more,” Angie said, reaching down and sliding Dawson’s cock upward so that it was wedged between them. His heat pulsed through her belly. She was so entranced that she hardly noticed when Dawson slid his hands slowly down her sides.
After another, softer kiss, her big bear framed Angie’s face with his hands. His thumbs stroked the skin near the corners of her eyes as he stared into her eyes. “I just want to remember this,” he said softly. “Whatever happens, wherever this goes, I don’t ever want to forget the way I feel right now.”
A tear slipped out of Angie’s left eye, which Dawson swept away with a brush of his thumb. “What is it you’re feeling?” she asked, kissing his neck but going right back to studying his face. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” she urged, giggling softly and kissing him again to try and tease out whatever he was wanting to say, but wouldn’t.
“I’m not so good with the open emotions thing,” Dawson said. “You might have guessed at some point.”
Moving her body in a slow dance that went just in time with the grinding music, Angie was just about to let herself slide down his body again when some cosmic force stopped her. “We have to be able to talk,” she said. She kissed Dawson’s collarbone, then his chest, and traced a circle around his nipple with the tip of her tongue. “I think there’s something going on here that I don’t understand. I’ve never been like this before. I’ve never given myself up to—”
“I think I’m in love with you, and I don’t think I can do a goddam thing about it.” He took her head in his hands, tilted her back and caught her gaze. “I don’t have anything, any reason to think I’m anything but crazy.”
Dawson bent his head and kissed her neck, a slow, nuzzling, toe-curling kiss. “But I think for once in my life, crazy is a very, very good thing.”
She reached up and pushed a fallen curl of hair out of Dawson’s eyes. “I know I’m crazy,” she said, “but this is the first time I’m happy to be.”
Dawson grinned, pulling her close. His cock throbbed against her belly, and she could tell that he was aching for her. The way his breath hitched in his throat, the way he kept running his hands up and down her back; Angie hadn’t ever burned for anyone like this, like there was a furnace blasting away inside her.
“I’ve never felt like this,” he said out of nowhere. His hands slid up, tickling as they went. He cupped her breasts, thumbs painting slow circles against her nipples. They stiffened and peaked, prickling with sweet agony against the restraint. “I’ve always been in control, always needed to be. But with you?” his voice was a low growl, almost dangerous in its hot, thick hunger. “I can’t stop myself.”
Before she knew what was happening, Dawson lowered his head, kissed and then sucked at her nipples. She quailed softly, and when next the hard warmth of Dawson’s palms enveloped her, she let her mouth fall open slightly, and leaned her head back to drink in the swirl of emotion coursing through her body. Tingles swept from her head to her feet. Angie’s scalp prickled, the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up stiff and hard, and she couldn’t help but wrap her hands back around the thing pressed against her belly.
Dawson’s hands devoured her. Every inch of her body responded to his touch, and before she knew what was happening, the copper fur on her forearms began to prickle out of her skin. Dawson noticed when it brushed against him, looked down and laughed. When he held up one of his hands, the same thing was happening – his fingers were thicker and longer, his chest hair fuller and darker, but his eyes. Oh dear God his eyes. The deep blue had gained silvery-gold flakes of color sprinkled through them.
“This really is it, isn’t it?” she asked as he kissed along the line of Angie’s neck. He muttered ‘mhm’ as his kiss slid between her breasts and he tasted the salt of her sweat mixed with the scent of her sex lilting into the air. The smell sent him into something resembling a fury.
His kisses turned hungry and hot, sucking on her skin, then her nipples. Every inch of her drank in the pleasure; her nipples puckered, her fingers curled involuntarily against his back. The further down his kisses trailed, the more she responded, arching herself helplessly against him.
Her skin took in the coolness, and as she fi
rst felt Dawson’s tongue weave through the hair above her sex and taste the cleft of her body, Angie groaned from deep in her belly. Her eyes rolled back, and without a second thought, she slowly lowered herself to the ground. Rolling back on her hips, she opened herself to Dawson’s hungry tongue.
He slid it up her line and then down the left side before teasing her entrance with a finger. There were words on the tip of Angie’s tongue, but actually speaking them was completely impossible. The sound of her breath hissing between her teeth was like music to Dawson’s ears, and just got him going faster, harder and deeper. He dipped his tongue inside, tasting her deeply and whispering a moan. “Yes,” she whispered, the word trailing out into infinity before it disappeared. Her heart thudded heavily. Her breath came hot and quick.
“You’re gonna make me come,” she whispered, and then laughed softly. “You can’t keep going I’m gonna...”
Her speaking was instantly squelched by a clench in her throat. “You’re gonna...!”
Dawson moaned hotly against her sex. His tongue found her clit and he flicked it back and forth first softly and then harder and harder as Angie bucked her hips. He pressed a finger against her entrance and then slipped it just inside. He curled it against her inner walls, and then rotated it slowly until her breathing fell into a rhythmic pattern with his push and pull.
Angie bit hard on her bottom lip, squelching a yelp, and then grabbed Dawson’s wrist to make sure he didn’t stop what he was doing. She couldn’t help what her body was doing – she bucked her hips hard against Dawson’s nose, his lips, his beautiful tongue, and his finger.
Wet heat slipped out of her sex, slicking Dawson’s mouth and his finger. He slipped a second one in beside the first, and used his forearm to hold Angie down against the ground. She pushed against him, and he drove his fingers deep, lashing her fiercely with the tip, then the flat, of his tongue.
The seconds stretched into what felt like hours. Pulses emanating from deep inside Angie’s belly shook her to the core, then radiated outward until the pleasure forced her fingers to curl against Dawson’s neck. She dug her fingernails in, leaving hot tracks where they were.
