by Ruby Scott
"I'm not shy," Ella said, blushing.
"Then why are you blushing?" He looked at her lips, then met her eyes again.
"I'm just saying if you're going to be naked around me, just---"
He kissed her then, plunging both hands into her thick hair and pressing her against the wall with his wide body. She felt his heart pound, wild and heavy and was surprised when he lifted her and spun her around. She threw her legs around him as he carried her to the bed, putting one hand on her underwear and ripping it easily from her body. She lifted her dress over her head without a word, eyes heavy with lust, and Ella's breath caught in her throat; he stood at the foot of the bed, completely naked and still damp from his shower, shoulders heaving, looking for all the world like the bear he was. Ella felt her pussy moisten, and she shivered. He knelt between her legs and spread her thighs roughly, grasping his thick, slightly curved cock as he moved. She watched his hand move over the length, of his shaft, transfixed, then gasped when he pressed his head against her throbbing clit teasingly.
"Please," Ella moaned, feeling the peculiar tension between them again. She saw his aura sparkle to life, changing from blue to a deep red flecked with orange. He liked it when she begged.
He pushed his head into her slick opening, and she cried out as he entered her. He was even thicker than he looked, and he stretched and filled her slowly, fitting her like a glove. He kissed down her neck as he started to thrust, slowly, but deep, so that it drew a sound of passion from her with each movement. He licked her huge breasts, tenderly running his tongue across her nipples until they stiffened. Ella's fingernails were digging into his skin, leaving evidence of her pleasure in little half-moons across his rippling shoulders and back.
"Oh, god." Ethan threw his head back and pumped his hips into her faster, bringing a sharp cry of ecstasy from Ella as her breasts bounced with his rapid strokes. "Fuck, why do you feel so amazing?"
His shaft slipped in and out of her soaking wet walls, his strokes becoming more powerful and less rhythmic as he neared his release. His eyes were glued to Ella; they were sparkling, and the longer she looked, the heavier the feeling in her chest and head got. She wanted to pull herself inside his gaze and live there in the warmth that was enveloping her, and never leave the incredible pleasure coursing through her body. He was deep inside her now, pulsing against her clit wildly. He was hilted inside her, kissing her neck and lips desperately as her pussy clenched around his shaft and they rode together to their climax. Then a blinding light illuminated the room, and Ella felt herself leave her body. She was watching Ethan drive himself into her from above, exactly as she had imagined, his muscles contracting as he threw himself against her. Then she was back under him, gazing into his still-sparkling eyes. She blinked, slowly, and he was off of her.
"Whoa," he said. He sounded like he wanted to say more.
Ethan was on his back, barrel chest heaving, gazing at Ella's curvy body as she reclined next to him on the bed. His eyes were bright, teeming with thoughts and emotions; Ella half expected them to bleed into the brown they took on when he shifted. His heart was racing, and an intense energy was moving between them. He looked scared and confused.
Ella put her head on his warm chest, knowing what was coming. "You look like you've seen a ghost. What is it?"
Ethan looked at a loss for words. He took her hand in his. "This energy...the way it felt when I orgasmed. It's like you're my mate. But you're not a bear. You're not even a shifter."
Ella was quiet. She'd had this conversation before, and hadn't expected to have it again so soon. Not ever, actually, after losing Brandon. She sighed. "This happened before. With my...with someone else." She felt a lump in her chest, briefly, like a hailstone catching her heart. Then it was gone, and she could breathe again. "I'm compatible with shifters. Or bears, at least. "
Ethan was shaking his head. "That's impossible."
Anger swelled in Ella's stomach. "It isn't. I went to a specialist and everything. Trust me, Ethan. I know more about my body than yours." Their post-coital glow was fading in the wake of his arrogance.
Ethan sighed and rubbed his eyes vigorously, then pulled her to him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have implied I knew more than you." He ran his hand across her thick mass of hair. The irritation started fading immediately, and a cool sensation slithered through her veins. It was like liquid peace. Ethan stilled, apparently experiencing the same thing. "Did you feel that?"
"Yes," Ella answered. A feeling of dread filtered into her body.
"What was it?"
Instead of answering, she wriggled free of his grasp, slipping easily away from him on the satin sheets. Tension began to build again, and Ella's skin felt like a colony of ants was marching across it. Ethan's face twisted in annoyance, and Ella took that as the cue to move back. As soon as she placed her hand on his stomach, the calming tide of emotion radiated outward and filled their bodies again.
"It's you?" He asked, baffled. "I have to...keep touching you?"
"It will come and go," Ella whispered, remembering the last time it had happened to her. "And the discomfort will get worse. Soon it will be pain, for me at least. I'm not a shifter, so I won't be able to stand the same level of discomfort as you do." She remembered crying on the floor, holding in her racking sobs while Brandon was away at work. He had been furious when he found out.
"How do we stop that from happening?" Ethan propped himself up on one arm, his face serious. The light filtering in made his muscled profile more dramatic, and Ella had the impression she was being towered over by a giant.
"We bond," she said simply. She was nervous again, even though she was irresistibly drawn to him. Her heart turned cartwheels when he touched her, and sunk when he was away. She didn't like it at all.
"Bond?" Ethan laughed, a bitter, short burst of sound. "I have to transfer energy to you during sex. There's no way you can take that."
He was still touching her, so the anger that flared through her body was dull. "I keep telling you, my body is different. I can bond with someone."
"How do you know?" Ella sat up, ripping herself from his grasp and almost doubling over when the rage fully realized itself. "Because I bonded with someone before," she said, near tears. "Obviously. How else would I know so much about shifters? How else would I know I was compatible with bears? Or do you only think about yourself?"
"I think about everyone else constantly!" Ethan shouted. "How do you think I've established so many shifter-based insurance agencies? Who do you think did the legwork? How many bodies do you think I had to bury myself, with my own money before I found another way? "
"Oh nice, use your work as an excuse for never letting anyone get close to you! That'll be real helpful when you die alone in your big, empty house!"
"Dying alone is better than taking you with me!"
They were both standing on opposite sides of the bed, arms raised in fury; now Ella stopped and lowered hers.
"What do you mean? Why would you take me with you?"
Ethan walked across the bed and grabbed her by the shoulders, and they nearly collapsed as the anger was sucked from their bodies. He guided her back to the mattress, pulling her into his embrace.
"If you bonded, and you're not with him anymore, you must have known how much it hurt when the bond was broken. And that can't happen to you again. Shifters can rarely take more than one bond breaking, let alone humans. I won't do that to you. I won't kill you."
His beefy arms were pressing her hard against his chest, and his heartbeat was steady and strong. The pounding blocked out all other sensation, and she thought she might be able to live here, happy in his arms and in the spaces between his heartbeats.
"If we don't bond," Ella said softly, finally, "I could die anyway."
"Maybe there's a way to stop it," Ethan said desperately.
"Why would you want to?" Ella snapped. "Why are you running from this? What could you want to run from? You told me yourself, you can't stay away from me, t
hat I was special, and that you never felt this way about anyone else." Ella was crying, and Ethan was gently releasing her. Anger and shame flooded her veins. "Why? Why do you have to run?" Ethan stepped back, burying his face in his hands as the intensity overcame him. She regretted her outburst then, especially since she had been the one running until now. The anger and ardor overwhelmed all of her thought.
She collapsed on the bed and let the emotion wash over her; she knew if she fought it, it would be more difficult. When her body was able to relax and she could pull cool air into her lungs she opened her eyes and sat up.
Ethan was gone.
She spent most of the next day pacing the hotel room, avoiding calls from the others, trying to figure out where he could have gone. She'd put herself to sleep with one of the sleeping pills she bought for travel, thinking it would help. It was noon when she woke up, and the Klasky meeting was at eight, so she knew going to the building would be a waste of time. Every few hours a cramp in her body would sweep over her and take her out, and she would feel the pressure from their impending bond move around her body, trying to find a release. It had never been like this before. Ethan was far more powerful than she realized at first. Ella kept remembering the light that enveloped them, and how she found herself watching her body being penetrated by his. A wave of pain crashed into her again, stealing the breath from her lungs. She struggled to think of something else.
She texted Ralph, his assistant, and Rachel for good measure. The meeting was probably over by now, but she called Klasky Insurance just to be sure, keeping the agony out of her voice as best as she could.
"He was here quite briefly," the cheery woman on the other end told her. "Whirled right through, but he's gone now! I'm sorry."
She hung up, racking her brains for information that might lead her to him. How cold he just leave her like this? The fucking coward. Ella hated herself for falling for him, for letting the magic of a bear's attraction blind her sensibilities. This man was not going to be here for her, ever. But if she wanted to be free of this, she had to either bond with him or find a way to break it. Since death was the only way she knew, the latter was the preferable option. She didn't want to descend into the pit of despair she was familiar with. When her fiance died, she hadn't been able to feel any sort of sensation for weeks afterward. She opened a vein by accident while slicing tomatoes, and came to on her kitchen floor an hour later. She'd been lucky she hadn't bled out, but not even noticing the cut had been the thing that convinced her she needed help.
Help. Something stirred in Ella's brain. Ethan told her he'd lived alone in a cabin not far from here. She could hear him describe how to get there from Mosby's Diner, through the thicket of trees, past the rosebush, over the bridge and a mile past the little waterfall. He said he went there to feel safe and more like himself. A cabin miles into the lush forest was exactly the kind of solitude a bear shifter would seek at a time like this.
While she had a calm moment, Ella called a cab to take her to the diner. The cab driver watched her as she curled into a ball and lay motionless on his seat, but didn't say anything to her after she assured him she was okay. She unfolded her limbs slowly and handed him a one hundred dollar bill. As he sped off with wide, frightened eyes, Ella realized he probably thought she was a shifter herself, on the cusp of a change. The sun was setting, and that night was a full moon. People still believed in the stereotypes.
It took her an hour to find the cabin because she kept stopping to lean against trees as her muscles seized up. Whenever she thought she was lost, she closed her eyes and opened the part of herself where the cluster of shifter energy was hiding and sought out his power signature. She'd memorized it now, and since they were so close it was almost a part of her now. Ella thought she might just kill Ethan when she saw him, instead of bonding with him. It was a squat building surrounded by trees, with a few hundred feet of space cleared out around it for a garden. There was even a fence, apparently more for aesthetic value, since it was only two feet high, and didn't join up with itself to form a border. She ascended the steps, surprised to find the door open.
The cabin was simple, an open floor plan with polished wood floors and a wide, thick carpet that covered most of the main area. A simple couch sat squarely in the middle, with a coffee table in front. Beyond was a spacious kitchen that flowed into a dining room, and to the right, a sheer curtain through which the bedroom was visible. A closed door on her left proved to be a closet. The bed was neat but unmade, and though everything looked new and without a layer of dust, there were telltale signs that no one had been through for longer than a moment: The TV was cold, the sinks were dry, and the fridge was full of food. The toilet seat had a spider web stretching from the lid to the base. Ella dragged herself into the bedroom in the midst of massive stomach cramp, sank into the mattress and cried herself to sleep. When she woke up, she dug through her purse for her sleeping pills, took four, and slept. The last thing she thought of was Ethan. He was looking at her sadly, wordlessly, and she felt the crushing weight of the world in that once glance.
She slept for eighteen hours, according to her watch and the light from outside. She'd thrown off her clothes sometime during her slumber, and was wrapped up the bed's sheet. She pried herself loose and stood---or tried to; she stumbled like a colt to the bathroom, still half asleep. The water sharpened her senses immediately, she tried to wash herself before she was hit with another cluster of pain. She had to wait for her phone to charge to find out why she felt so dazed: her watch had died. It was 2 pm, two days after she'd arrived.
Her spine was hit with a crushing pain, and she fell to the floor just as the phone started to ring. The pain went on for what seemed like hours, but the phone was still ringing when she could breathe again. She picked it up, trying to read the name with her eyes blurred with tears. It was Rachel.
"Hello?"
"Ella!" Rachel's voice was panicked. "Where are you?"
"A cabin," Ella gasped. "...Upstate..."
"You sound terrible. I haven't heard from Ethan," Rachel said slowly. "He left you there? Where is he?"
"I don't know where he is," Ella gasped, tears finally starting to slip past her eyelashes. "I haven't seen him in days, okay? Can't you tell?" She was yelling and sinking toward the carpet, fighting against the molten ball of lead tearing its way through her body. She could take in enough air to stay conscious, and nothing more; the phone clattered to the floor, and she could hear Rachel calling her name frantically, but it seemed a thousand miles away. The world spiraled down to a pinpoint, and she felt the sweet darkness close its grip on her throat.
When Ella came to, she was being settled onto a cool mass of thick, white sheets, and she could feel each fiber slide across her bare skin. What happened to her clothes?
"I took them off," came a gentle voice. She opened her eyes and tried to make sense of the mass of fuzzy shapes and colors, and slowly, Ethan kaleidoscoped into view. His broad face was pinched with resignation, and she tilted her head down and saw that he was as nude as she was.
"You're burning up," he said, and he touched his palm to her face. Instantly the pressure slipped from her chest and she took in a ragged breath of air. "I'm sorry, Ella. I got scared. I wanted to know if you were really my mate, but you found my den without me. When you didn't show up back at the hotel I knew you had to be here. You found my scent, and only my mate could do that. I'm so sorry, Ella." He was crying, she realized, but her heart could only sing because he was finally here.
"I need to know if I can bond with you, but I want you to be clear-headed enough to answer." He put his other hand on her opposite cheek and looked at her until she nodded. "Say it out loud, please. In a sentence, so I know you're there." "Yes." Ella gasped.
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, I want you to bind with me." Her body was thrumming with energy, pain-free for the first time in days.
His hands moved away and fire sliced through her muscles again, but only briefly. She felt h
is hands again on her thighs, spreading them gently. Then she felt a pressure between her legs; it intensified and rippled outward, and she screamed---it was like her body was doused in ice and then in oil, and lit on fire again. He pushed his cock inside of her slowly, grabbing the softness of her curvy waist and thrusting as deep as his hips would allow. Ella arched her back as he started to move, gently pressing his body forward as the intense connection between them began to manifest.
"God, you're so thick," Ella sighed.
Ethan smiled seductively. "I could say the same for you."
She wrapped her shapely thighs around Ethan's hips, pressing her own hips upward as he slid inside her so her that clit ground against him. The intense pleasure took her focus away, and she faltered, throwing her head back against the pillows. Ethan slipped his hands under her ass, squeezing the firm flesh as he sank into her pussy again and again.
"I'm never leaving you," Ethan groaned as her walls gripped his shaft tightly. "Never again." Pinpricks of pleasure dotted her skin and magnified until her body was pulsing in rhythm with his strokes. She saw his aura go electric blue and then deep red, then finally settle on a vibrant purple. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders as he pushed himself inside her, bringing his cock deeper so his bulbous head could press against her g spot. Every nerve was alive with pleasure, and each stroke stoked the fire of her lust.
"I love you," she moaned in his ear as he pumped faster, and she felt the breath being stolen from her lungs. The heat in the air was almost tangible, and he slammed his hips into hers, burying his thickness deep in her pussy as the magic of their bond began to solidify. Ethan kissed her roughly, slipping a hand between their bodies to massage her soft breast and twist on her nipple. Ella's walls clenched around his shaft as she shrieked and bucked her hips against him, wanting frantically to make him explode inside her.
"God, I can't last like this," he said desperately as he pumped, driving Ella into the bed audibly. "Fuck, your pussy is so good. You really were made for me,"
