Clay (BBW Secret Baby Bear Shifter Romance) (Secret Baby Bears Book 4)

by Becca Fanning

  He looked up at her, an incomprehensible table of emotions in his eye. Gently, he reached out and took her hand. “Just don’t corner me in a bar the next time you need a favor, okay?”

  Thalia smiled and, before she could second guess herself, leaned in and pressed a kiss against his lips. He sat perfectly still for a moment before leaning in. There were words somewhere, in some language, that could describe the sensation of his mouth on hers but in that moment Thalia couldn’t think of a single one.

  They broke apart and Thalia smirked at him. “So, you a third date type of guy, or…”

  Hyde growled, heat flashing in his eye. “So help me God I will throw you on that bed.”

  “Don’t bother,” Thalia told him, pushing away from him. “Let me.”

  She sauntered over to the bed as best she could on legs that were about to give out and dropped the towel before laying down as gracefully as she could. Turning over so she could look at Hyde, she was delighted to see he was staring hungrily at her.

  “You look…” he trailed off and shook his head.

  “Mmm, I know. So, you gonna get over here or what?” Thalia asked, like she wasn’t naked on the bed of the most attractive man she’d ever seen. Forcing herself to remain outwardly nonchalant she rolled her shoulders. “I’m getting cold. And bored.”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Hyde said roughly, yanking a boot off.

  “I’m glad you understand,” she told him as he pulled the other one off as well and started for his belt. “Also, as much as I appreciate the strip tease, I’d definitely prefer it if you came over here instead.”

  “You want me to leave my clothes on?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

  “I want you, period, and you’re taking too damn long,” she replied.

  Hyde grinned at her and pulled his belt through the loops, tossing it across the room. He sauntered over to the bed. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?”

  As soon as he was close enough, Thalia reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him towards her. He was surprised enough that she was able to unbalance him, dragging him down so that he was half on and half off the mattress, his right knee digging into the bed beside her hip and his right hand bracing himself on the pillow so he didn’t crush her. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to treat a lady right?”

  Hyde smiled and leaned into her. “Well,” he said against her lips, “if that’s what you want, I’ll see what I can do.”

  He pressed his mouth to hers, hard but chaste, but Thalia had never been one for teasing caresses and gentle touches in bed. She parted her lips and arched up, making Hyde moan. Sliding her arms around his neck, she took the opportunity to lick her way inside his mouth as he settled on top of her.

  Thalia slid her bare legs along his clothed ones, delighting in the contrast as the sensation sent sparks of pleasure though her body. The way her breasts brushed against the material of his shirt somehow felt more erotic than any touch she’d had in the past and she whimpered as Hyde slid a hand down along her side and cupped her ass.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what you want?” he asked in a voice like melted chocolate, squeezing ever so slightly.

  “You,” Thalia gasped out. “I want you to touch me. I want you to fuck me.”

  “Maybe if you ask nicely I’ll consider it,” Hyde said with a wicked grin.

  Thalia looked up at him, widening her eyes and slipping her hands down to the fly of his pants.

  “Please, Hyde,” she breathed out as she undid the button. “Please fuck me.”

  If the look in Hyde’s whiskey-gold eye had been hot before, now it was molten. “Anything you want,” he said as she worked his zipper down.

  Thalia stroked his hardening member lightly, pleased by the ragged edge his breathing took.

  “I’m so glad you think that,” she told him, applying slightly more pressure to hear his breath hitch, “because you’re here, and I’m here, and I have a birth control implant, so really there’s nothing stopping you from fucking me into you matress. And I really, really want you to do that.”

  Hyde groaned. “Are you ready, or…?”

  “I’m past ready,” Thalia said, because he was big but she was impatient and besides, she wanted to feel it tomorrow, a tangible reminder of what had happened.

  Hyde swore and reached down, lining himself up and sinking ever so slowly into her. Thalia sighed and pressed herself down, trying to increase his maddeningly slow pace, but he was stronger than her and pinned her in place. She was helpless, whining and squirming in his grasp, until at last he was fully inside her. He paused for a moment to let her adjust and Thalia nearly snarled at him.

  “If you don’t move in the next three seconds,” she told him, “I swear, I’ll leave and—” The rest of the threat was cut off by a gasp and Hyde thrust his hips forward suddenly, sending something electric sparking through her. “Oh, God, like that.”

  Hyde rocked forward again, repeating the motion until he had settled into a brutally passionate pace that left Thalia gasping for breath. It had never been like this before, never been this hot or this wet or this good, and suddenly she felt cheated. Everyone, she though deliriously, should have a Hyde, as long as they didn’t try to take hers.

  Thalia was, distantly, aware that this was both already the best sex she’d ever have at only a minute in and also going to be over embarrassingly quickly on her end. She could already feel the tell-tale pulse of pleasure thrumming between her legs as she gasped and moaned as quietly as she could while Hyde moved over her, his eye squeezed shut and mouth slightly open as he panted. There was a thin sheen of sweat over his face and Thalia thought he might be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She wanted, very badly, to have this forever—the gleam in his eye when he looks at her and his smiles and his threats that he never meant and everything else. Then Hyde hit something inside her and it was like every nerve in her lit up with pleasure and thought was suddenly beyond her. All there was, was her body and his body and the perfect way they moved together.

  Hyde grunted over her as the arm he’d been using to hold himself up trembled and gave out and he ended up sprawled on top of her. The warm weight of him and the steady thrusts of his hips combined pushed Thalia even closer to the edge and she turned his face so she could kiss him. He slid his lips down to suck at the sensitive skin just under her ear and she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a shout as she felt herself begin to shake apart. Distantly she was aware of the sounds of Hyde’s orgasm following on the heels of her own but she was too caught up in the whirlwind of her own pleasure to be able to do anything but observe.

  Finally, the sensations died down and Hyde rolled over, slipping out of Thalia’s sensitive body. They lay there, getting their breath back, and Thalia reached over to slip her hand in Hyde’s.

  “So was it good for you too?” she asked breathlessly.

  He laughed. “It was… yeah. It was good.” He squeezed her hand. “Thalia…”

  Thalia looked over and saw questions in his eye, hesitations and worries and just a smudge of hope. She smiled and him and rolled over so that she was half on top of him.

  “Hey,” she said gently, reaching up to cup his face. “Relax.”

  She leaned down to kiss him and felt the tension leave his body as he wrapped his arms around her. His mouth curved under hers and Thalia could swear her heart skipped a beat.

  This, she thought. This I could get used to.

  Breakwater: Dom

  Star Bears V

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Aurelia Talbott was not having a good day. Normally, getting off to a bad start on work days meant sleeping in, but unfortunately today the opposite had been true. Aurie had been ripped from the gentle embrace of sleep at three thirty in the morning by her neighbor’s colicky infant. The same child who a week before Aurie had offered to set up a free consultation for with a pediatrician friend if only to be able to get more than f
our hours of sleep a night, only for the mother to glare at her for daring to recommend she take her precious child to one of “those know-it-all poison-peddlers.”

  After lying in bed for two hours, completely awake, she had stripped, stepped into her shower, and discovered that the water was icy cold no matter how long she waited or how hard she twisted the handles. Teeth chattering, she’d fixed herself breakfast, eyeing the stove warily, and when her eggs neither spontaneously combusted or turned out to be poison she chalked it up to a rough start, arrived to work fifteen minutes early, and was promptly informed that she was being summoned to her supervisor’s office.

  After thirty minutes of a gentle lecture on appropriate workplace behaviors, during which at no point did Mr. Friedrichson look above her collarbone, she was finally released to go fulfill the duties of her residency, which went normally, meaning she spent the rest of the day growing slowly more and more irritated with everything but especially insurance companies. She managed to catch about ten minutes of sleep in two plastic waiting room chairs pressed together, which only made her more tired and frustrated rather than less, before having to assist in an uncomfortably touch and go surgery on a twelve-year-old with a brain tumor.

  By the time she finally walked back out of Grand View General Hospital, she was angry, tired, dreading returning to her own apartment, and on the verge of tears.

  And that’s when she got kidnapped.

  She supposed, as she was gently but firmly herded towards what appeared to be a decently sized cargo ship, that it said something when your kidnappers where nicer than your coworkers and your neighbors combined. There were three of them: a tall, dark man with an eyepatch who’s remaining golden eye gave him away as a shifter immediately who seemed significantly more annoyed at kidnapping Aurie than Aurie was at being kidnapped, a woman with her hair swept back by a patterned cloth and no discernable expression, and a slight, pale girl with dark hair and eyes who quietly apologized the whole way to the ship.

  “I really am so sorry about all this,” she said.

  “I’m sure you are,” Aurie said in her most reasonable voice, “but you appear to be doing it anyways, which sort of negates your apology.”

  The pale girl winced. “Would it make you feel better if I told you we aren’t going to hurt you?”

  Aurie considered it. “Yes, but not as much as, say, letting me go would.”

  “See, that would sort of defeat the purpose of us doing this in the first place,” the man said in a voice that implied that he would rather be just about anywhere in the universe other than kidnapping an innocent medical student, a feeling which Aurie could definitely empathize with. “Look at it this way: unexpected vacation days.”

  Aurie considered trying to consider fighting them off as a ramp leading into the ship lowered, but decided that she was probably exhausted enough that she’d just fall asleep trying to run. At the top of the ramp stood a broad, hairy man and a tall woman with dark red hair.

  “Which one’s this?” the broad man asked.

  “Aurelia Talbott. Still a student but almost done with her residency,” the pale girl answered.

  The man at the top of the ramp grunted and walked into the ship as Aurie and her kidnappers began to trek up the ramp.

  “Any difficulties?” the red-aired woman asked once they reached the top.

  “No,” dark-skinned woman said. “Where’s Dom?”

  “Where do you think?” the red-haired woman answered with a raised eyebrow before turning to Aurie. “Hello. I’m terribly sorry about all this, but, unfortunately, needs must. I’m Annie. This is Hyde, Zosha, and Delphine.”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Hyde grumbled. “Tell her our names. Do you want to help her fill out a police report, too?”

  “Yeah, it would really suck if we went to jail for kidnapping instead of, you know, all the other illegal shit we do,” Zosha told him, deadpan.

  Hyde sent her a look that was pure venom and opened his mouth to say something in response, but Annie cut him off.

  “Alright,” she said. “Zosha, you and Delphine take Aurelia here to your quarters. I’ll comm you when Dom is ready. Hyde, go do your job.”

  Hyde walked off, muttering under his breath. Zosha giggled.

  “Don’t mind Hyde, he’s always grumpy. I have no idea what Thalia sees in him, honestly.”

  “I’m… sure he has many nice qualities?” Aurie responded hesitantly, unaware of what the correct procedure was for gossiping with one kidnapper about another kidnapper’s love life was.

  “Not really,” Annie said, sounding highly amused. “Make sure she’s got anything she needs, okay?”

  “Of course,” Delphine said quietly.

  The group of women moved towards what appeared to be a hallway, Delphine’s grip light but solid on Aurie’s arm.

  “Why’s Hyde so pissy about her being here, anyways?” Zosha asked. “I mean, he likes Dominic.”

  “I think he’s just frustrated that there’s not really much he can do to help,” Annie told her as they reached a crossway. “Now remember: anything she needs.”

  “’Kay,” Zosha said. “See you soon.”

  They split apart, Annie going further down the hallways and Zosha, Delphine, and Aurie turning down a corridor that reminded Aurie of living in the dorms.

  Zosha walked up to one room and punched a code into the keypad by the door. “This is my room,” she said as the door hissed open. “Well, my room and Rick’s room. You’ll meet him later. Anyways, this is where you’ll be staying while you’re here. Due to the whole thing where you’re technically our prisoner, either Delphine or I—or anyone else that’s part of the Breakwater’s crew—has to stay with you at all times. You can wear anything of mine, though, and you can watch any of the holovids we have.”

  “Great,” Aurie said, moving to sit down on the bed. She had been tired at the hospital. Now, she was exhausted. All she wanted was to be in her own apartment, in her own bed, but instead she was getting abducted by the world’s most cheerful kidnappers. Unable to resist the cloud of sleep that crept through her mind, Aurie felt her eyelids drift shut. Maybe this was all a bad dream, and when she woke back up everything would be fixed.

  As per her usual luck, when she woke back up, nothing was fixed.

  Zosha was standing next to the bed, leaning over Aurie with her hand on her shoulder.

  “Good morning,” she said. “The bathroom’s attached if you need it. There’s a new toothbrush in there, too, so feel free to use it.”

  “Thank you,” Aurie said. “That’s very polite of you, especially in light of the whole kidnapping thing.”

  Zosha winced. “I am sorry about that. It’s a complicated situation. Captain Ingram’ll explain it all, I promise.”

  “That sounds… promising,” Aurie sighed. “Bathroom’s through here?”

  At Zosha’s nod, Aurie walked into the small connected bathroom and shut the door behind her. It had a shower stall, a toilet, and a sink with a sonic tap and a water tap. According to the holovids, this was the point where Aurie would tap into her inner genius and figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, Aurie was no vid hero, and even if she managed to somehow escape she had no idea how to get planetside again. She looked her reflection in the tired eyes and sighed, grabbing the toothbrush Zosha had left out. As she brushed her teeth, she ran over the things she knew and the things she needed to find out. The things she knew were: she had been kidnapped, her kidnappers seemed like pretty decent people other than that one glaring flaw, and that there was a pretty good chance that if she kept her head down and did what was asked of her she’d get out alive. What she needed to know was what, exactly, they needed her to do. She decided to hold off on a full-fledged panic attack until someone asked her to, for instance, sew a bag of something illegal into someone stomach or perform a lethal injection. For all she knew, they just really desperately needed someone to take out an appendix.