On the Growl: A Shifter Romance Anthology

by Lynn Red

  I’m gonna rest for a couple days, and then I’m going to get on with life. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. And why am I so nervous? Must be the exhaustion talking, or maybe the tail end of my slight intoxication?

  She sighed heavily and decided that she was just being an idiot. Paprika ran through a checklist in her mind.

  Courage? Gathered. Hair? Sorta tamed. Hippo pajamas? Equipped. Acting like a giant idiot? I—

  “Rika?” her sister’s voice came in loud and clear, probably because at some point in this panic attack extinguishing exercise, she had come to the bathroom. “Hey, I got someone for you to meet. He’s, uh,” seeing her sister’s apparent anxiety, Petunia changed courses. “You okay?”

  “I’m just tired, I think.” Her hands were shaking. The bags under her eyes stretched past her nose. “Just tired and… and…”

  It all came rushing out at once. “I thought it was for real this time. I thought this was it, and then he just vanished! He just fucking ran away! I kissed him and he kissed me back. One time he chased me through the woods and we had, uh, a little thing and,” she sniffed deeply through her nose, surprised at how stuffy she’d gotten in the last eight seconds.

  The chair in the living room creaked. Someone stood up – whoever the stranger was, Petunia’s new fake boyfriend-cum-roommate was about to figure out that her sister was the real basket case. She sniffed hard and rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to control herself. “I’m just tired and I kept pushing this out of my mind, convinced that it would be fine and the universe would work everything out. He told me that once, you know.”

  “Jesus,” Petunia said. “You got it bad for this guy.” There was a flicker of mischief in her eyes, but through the tears, Rika didn’t see it. She also didn’t hear the footsteps coming up from behind, and she didn’t hear the floorboards creak, either.

  “I’m so sorry,” Paprika kept on. “He left town, this was the last place that was on his computer when I had his secretary check. I figured he’d come here, so I came here and now I’m just a goddamn mess and I’m pining after a guy who ran away from me because I’m so clingy and weird and needy and,” she stopped to catch her breath again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Petunia, normally about as tender as a raw head of kale, pulled her sister in, stroking her hair, and kissing her on the forehead. She looked at the guy standing in the doorway, and gave him an expectant, “what are you gonna do about this, jack ass?” look.

  “I’m so sorry,” Paprika said again. “So, so sorry. I thought it was real this time. I thought…”

  “I’m the one who needs to apologize. And it is.”

  Paprika froze, stiff as a board, for a second. The gears in her head, grinding away, were almost audible. Her lips stopped shaking, her fingers clenched into a fist, and Petunia slid backward very, very carefully. She knew what was coming. From how he didn’t move, Thor obviously didn’t.

  One breath, Rika was staring straight at the wall, fist clenched. In the next, she swung around, whap against Thor’s jaw. “Why did you do that? After all the stuff we said? You just ran?”

  “I deserved that,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could, Paprika was on her tiptoes, he had his hands in her hair, and his lips found their way to hers.

  Petunia was shaking her head in stunned silence. “Well,” she said as the two explored the inner reaches of the other’s throats with their tongues. “At least I’m not the crazy one anymore. Well okay, maybe I am. But at least my mood swings aren’t that fast.”

  Behind Thor’s back, Paprika turned a hand over, and extended her middle finger. “I told you I’d pay you back for the bail,” Petunia said. “And remember you have an apartment, you don’t have to make up all over my bathroom.” As she slipped out the room, Petunia made sure her sister could hear her laughing.

  Chapter 9

  “Thinking about it, logistically, I don’t know how this is gonna work but... you know what? I don’t care.”

  -Paprika

  “So, the teeth thing,” Rika asked as soon as the two of them were safely behind the closed doors of her tiny studio. “You really don’t mind?”

  With a grin, the big dentist started to shake his head. He reached up and plucked a very odd looking porcelain doll off a display shelf near the front door and turned it around in his hands. “Incredible craftsmanship on these things. It’s kinda… creepy, but these old dolls, you just can’t deny how great they look after all these years.”

  Paprika quirked an eyebrow, watching him study the small, round-face baby. “Gives me the willies, looking at those things. I don’t know why my sister loves them so much.”

  “She’s got good taste, whatever it is. Hand me downs from a dead great grandmother or something?”

  “Must be. Now, back to my teeth.” They’d long since receded after their last little encounter, but she was tired of it. She wanted to have them act like normal teeth, not stick out every time she had a dirty thought, and then take half a day to go back in. It didn’t make any sense – her fur didn’t stay out, her ears didn’t stay flopped over, so why did her teeth just have to keep on buckin’? “I want to do something about it. If I’m gonna start a new life, or whatever I’m gonna do out here, I want to do it without—“

  Thor silenced her with a kiss. Long, lingering, sweet and hungry. He tasted her lips, exploring the bottom one with the tip of his tongue, and then slipped it between her teeth, swirling it against her tongue in a long, slow dance. When he pulled away, she was a little flushed, and he was beaming.

  “Yeah,” she said, looping her arms around his thick neck, tickling him on the back of his head. “So about these teeth, I—“

  He grabbed her, pulling her against his body so closely that alongside the flexing muscles in his chest, Paprika felt his heartbeat, almost in time with hers, which was remarkable considering the difference in the sizes of the hearts. This time he pushed her lips open with his, and tasted her deeper than before, teeth clashing and hands sliding underneath her loose-fitting tee. By the time he stopped for a breath, Paprika’s lungs were burning from a lack of air, but she could hardly bring herself to care.

  “So if you keep doing that every time I ask about my teeth, what do I have to do to get you to do that other thing with your mouth?”

  “What other thing?” he asked, looking as confused as if she’d just told him she was actually a reptilian from Planet Xaxxon.

  She grabbed his hand and put it between her legs, clenching tight with her thighs. She was so warm down there, but even still, the heat from his fingers tingled through her jeans. “Oh, nothing,” she said, giving him almost comically demure bedroom eyes. “I just thought maybe…”

  “Oh,” Thor said. He pressed the backs of his fingers against her sex, grinding softly against her inseam. She let out a soft groan. “Oh, so that’s what you mean.” She felt herself moving backward the second his other arm locked around her waist and she left the ground – hell, she may as well have left the earth behind for how incredible she felt right then. How safe, how secure, how unbelievably… happy?

  The prickly late 90s style wall texture scraped against her bare shoulder and against the place on her back where he’d pushed her shirt up above her jeans. Rika looped her ankles around Thor’s waist, vaguely surprised that she was actually able to lock them in place. He pulled his trapped hand out from between them, which she missed sorely for the quarter second until she felt his thickness swell against her sweetest place.

  “How do you do that?” she shuddered, in between moans.

  “It’s easy,” the big bear said with a grin. “All you do is push here and—“

  Once again, Rika gasped and then let out a rumble that came from somewhere deep inside her chest. “Not that,” she said, “I mean, how do you make me,” he pushed his hips upward, meeting her body, and drew another one, sweet whisper of pleasure from his Paprika’s lips. “You make me feel�
� good… about, mmm,” her moan interrupted her that time.

  “Oh, well that’s a different story,” he pushed up against her, letting gravity squeeze them together. “You’re what I feel inside. You’re what I imagine every time I wake up, every time I go to sleep. Me thinking you’re incredible shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.”

  A deep flush covered her chest, her neck, and her cheeks. Somehow, his words made Paprika ache even more deeply, more strongly, for him than she ever had before. And that was saying something.

  “What are we gonna do?” she asked, trying to keep from just moaning more, even though she was hurriedly yanking the zipper on her shorts down, and somehow managed to unbutton the top of his 501s at the same time. “I mean, with jobs and life and… and everything?”

  “I guess your sister is gonna need a new roommate,” he said with a smile. “I guess I can pay rent until she does.”

  Her feet hit the floor and before she knew it, Thor lifted her and threw them aside. She was standing there, bare and vulnerable, shirt half tucked into her panties from the way he’d pulled his hands out from her shirt. Both of them had grins on their faces that could only be described as “doofy” but that was okay. Everything, for once, was okay. Better than okay, Rika thought, better than good, better than fine.

  Everything was the way it was supposed to be.

  Her time for reflection passed as soon as he decided that the inside of her panties was where his fingers belonged. Not even bothering to pull them down, the big bear shoved her polka-dotted cotton underoos with a picture of the Batgirl symbol on the broad side of her ass. “Oh… oh my God,” she whimpered as Thor’s finger slid in to the first knuckle, and he rotated it slowly, teasing another long, drawn-out moan from her bowed lips.

  A rumble from deep in Thor’s belly vibrated her stomach, then her sex, as he pushed a little deeper, smiling when she opened her eyes. “When someone’s this beautiful, when someone makes these cute, almost sickeningly adorable noises,” she interrupted with an excited growl and a yip, to give an example of her unbearable adorableness.

  Thor chuckled and rotated his huge finger again, lingering on the place at the front of her sex that made Paprika start rolling her eyes and drooling just enough to be cute. “Yeah, like I was saying. It makes it real easy to think you’re—oh look out!”

  With a sneaky hand, and a glint of mischief in her eyes, Paprika snaked her hand down between their two bodies, and inside the top of Thor’s boxer briefs. “What’s this?” she grinned, wrapping her hand around him about halfway down. “Already all big and hard? I didn’t have to do anything.” Paprika pouted playfully. She lifted him so that he was laying vertical inside his underpants, and then slid a leg around him so that he was against her opening.

  Just the heat of him there, the promise of his thickness moving into her, was enough to send a shiver up and then down Paprika’s back. She squeezed, sliding her almost-closed fist up his shaft and then back down. “Do I actually get all of you this time? Or is there some other complicated bear mating ritual that has to happen before I get what’s mine?”

  “Yours?” he chuckled. “I mean, I’d hate to keep something away that belonged to someone else. Although,” he was teasing, and she hated it, but she loved it at the same time, especially when he gave his hips a little thrust and sent a shudder through her entire body. “I’m not sure what it is I have that’s yours.”

  Without a word, Rika wriggled away from Thor, regretfully sliding off his finger. God he feels so good. Everything about him, every breath, every kiss, every pulse of those fingers. But there was something she wanted – needed – more than any finger, or word, or kiss.

  Deftly, she worked her way to the floor, unbuttoned his jeans the rest of the way and slid them down over his perfectly rounded ass. With both her hands around his cock, she squeezed and watched him get harder, thicker, fuller than before.

  “Open the window,” she said, before she circled his tip with her tongue and tasted his saltiness. “I want to see what I’m doing.”

  “But won’t someone be able to see in?” he asked, but was already throwing the curtain open.

  “Honey, this town’s full of people just like us. You don’t think anyone’s seen a bear and a rabbit get it on?”

  He grumbled a laugh. “I guess Jamesburg isn’t exactly like Cedar Falls, huh?”

  Rika’s answer was to open her lips and slide down until he filled her mouth. She looked up, eyes twinkling, at Thor as he smiled down and pushed a red coil out of her face. Sticking her tongue out as far as she could, she wiggled it along his underside, and rotated her hands.

  She caught a rhythm in a way that reminded her of floating on her back in the ocean. Waves came and went, some faster, some slower, some bigger and some smaller, but all of them going in the same direction. For a second, she pulled away from Thor’s erection and kissed his tip, watching with her mouth open as he glistened in the moonlight streaming through the now open window.

  Her breathing was heavy, but nothing like his. The slow pace of her sucks, of her moving hands up and down, increased, and with it, so did the bear’s heartbeat. She felt him surge, and then heard him laugh, a sound that shocked through his body and tightened his already impressive abs into a rock-hard washboard.

  “How did I ever go along without you?” he asked.

  “I dunno,” she kissed his tip again. “It’s not like you didn’t throw yourself at me pretty hard, Mr. Conductor.”

  A look of confusion, coupled with ecstasy when she closed her lips around him again, passed over Thor’s face. It wasn’t until she had brought him to the brink that he stopped her, pulling back and lifting her to her feet. “You got a train to catch?” he asked, laughing softly. “What’s the hurry?”

  Rika smiled, a hint of blush coloring her cheeks. “After the first one we can get on with the second,” she whispered, still with her hand wrapped around his base, though she didn’t push – or pull – the issue.

  “There is one thing,” he said, lifting her off her feet and manually wrapping her legs around his waist. His girth rested against the crotch of her panties was almost too much for Rika. She reached down between their bodies and pressed him up against herself. “One thing I have to tell you,” he finished. “About bears and mating.”

  “It’s for life, something about a bite, yadda yadda?”

  “Close,” he whispered, and then leaned in right next to her. She felt her panties shoved to the side and then at exactly the same time, stretched around Thor’s tip, and felt her weight caught by the soft, faux-leather sofa. “Very close.”

  “Well,” she laughed, rolling her head back on her shoulders and resting it on the couch, which was surprisingly comfortable for being owned by her sister. “God you feel good,” she stroked him with dancing fingertips, making goosebumps pop up on his forearms. The hair on Thor’s belly and chest was trimmed, but obviously thick and full. With the hand that wasn’t holding onto him, Rika grabbed as much of a handful as she could.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she breathed, “but what is it? What’s the big secret mating ritual?”

  He pushed, spreading her legs and her sex, pushing deep, but slowly and gently enough to give her body time to adjust to his size. He moved softly, quietly, but passionately, pushing and pulling at exactly the right moments, like he knew what she wanted without her even asking.

  Thor’s length filled her deeper than she’d ever imagined. Faux leather swished and swooshed with every movement, like that zipping sound corduroy pants made when she wore them, and consequently why she stopped wearing corduroy.

  “Take off your shirt,” she whispered. “Mine too. I want to feel you against me, feel your skin, your hair, everything.”

  She pulled her hands out from under his shirt and helped him push his over his head. Without moving, without letting her get up from the couch, Thor tried to wrestle Paprika’s shirt up over her head, but it was stuck somewhere. After the second try, he ju
st growled, his eyes flared slightly, and he bit right through the collar, ripping it and hurling it to the side. He bared his teeth again, and she saw that they were slightly longer and sharper.

  “Whoa, whoa, cowboy, you’re not doing that with this bra.” She reached back and undid the latch. Just when she was about to take it off, Thor shattered her with a deep, hard thrust that thrilled her and ached so sweetly and deeply that she completely forgot about the stupid bra, leaving it hanging off her shoulders until it just fell by the side on its own.

  His hands, rough and hard, and so, so strong, cupped her breast and the other went underneath, gripping hard on a muscle or a tendon, or something that sent a shock of pleasure working up through Paprika’s ass and into the pit of her stomach. He nipped at her neck, then her ear, before nuzzling her softly and driving his hips up and in.

  “How does everything you do feel so good?” Rika moaned in and out, one solid, humming note.

  “Because this is how it’s supposed to be,” the answer came, caressing her ears, prickling her nipples.

  The hand on her breast flicked a thumb over her nipple, then circled as their bodies moved together. Paprika let her head roll back and forth on her shoulders, hair going all over the place. She was so close, so painfully close that she almost hurt with the onrush of her climax. The tension, the tightness, it was all too much.

  “Is it gonna hurt?” she asked, biting her lip.

  “Is what?” he pushed again, his breath ragged and his hands hungrily devouring every inch of her bare skin. He lowered his huge head, sucked briefly on her free nipple, and then pinched ever so slightly with his teeth. “I’d never hurt you.”

  “The biting,” she paused to groan, “thing. You said—“

  As he lifted her off the couch, and spun to get her on top, Thor chuckled in a leathery, soft, gravelly way. “Who bites someone to mate with them? I’m pretty sure we’re—“