by Meg Ripley
He moved towards the living room and began to build a fire in the large fireplace. It was the main source of heat for the small house and, although he didn't require it, he knew that Miriam would need it once the shock wore off.
As the fire crackled in front of him, he tried to figure out his next move. He knew that it was his family that had stolen his Anima as a way of teaching him a lesson. He figured that they must have instructed his driver to leave it in some strange place in town, as a way of forcing him to use his dark magic to find it and thus speeding his dark transformation. They were hoping he would come crawling back to them, begging for their help before he devolved into a merciless creature of the night.
They had thought wrong. But despite their plan not going as they had expected, it didn't mean that they hadn't won.
It hadn't taken him long to realize that his driver had been bought off and that Miriam was not on her way home, but to somewhere sinister.
He rested his head in his hands; what was he going to do about Miriam? He felt it the moment they had touched; the connection between them that went beyond the bond created when someone with the sight holds the Anima of a vampire. This attraction was much more primitive.
He longed to smooth her hair back, to touch her lips with his, and to kiss away any fears. He longed to bring their bodies together, to explore her curves, and to taste her essence at the precise moment that she came.
He groaned in frustration and unquenched lust.
****
Miriam woke up disoriented. She had drifted off, despite her best efforts not to. The strange events of the past day had played out in her dreams and had jolted her awake. She realized that she was suddenly alone.
She swung her feet over the bed and noticed a bit of dull light emitting from under the door. Miriam made her way out to the hall, feeling her feet pulling her forward, as if something within her was being called.
She stopped once she noticed Dominic sitting before the fire. His eyes glazed over as he stared into the wavering flames with a dark intensity.
When she moved forward, he looked up to meet her gaze.
"You should be resting," he noted quietly.
"I can't sleep." She had too many questions, too many thoughts racing through her mind to be able to quiet them long enough to find rest.
He motioned towards the plush chair next to him. "Then I could use the company."
Miriam moved to join him. They sat like that, side by side, in silence for a long time before Miriam found her voice to start delving into the topic ahead of them.
"It was you," she started, "in my dreams, that is."
He nodded slowly. "I'm afraid so."
When he didn't elaborate, Miriam pushed further. "So, you and your family are..."
"Yes, Miriam, we are vampires, although not the kind that you’re thinking of. Our humanity is locked away in an object that we must never lose."
"Oh," Miriam added with surprise. "So, the medallion held your humanity, then?"
"Yes, we call them Animas," he added.
"So," Miriam began in an attempt to make sense of the events surrounding the strange day. "So, when I touched your, um, Anima, I was able to read your soul?"
"In a way," he flashed her a wry smile. "Only a few humans possess your ability to read objects; even fewer ever have the opportunity to read a vampire's soul. Once you do, you become bound together." He leaned in closer, closing the distance between their bodies.
"Oh," Miriam gasped. "So is that why I, um, we—"
Dominic laughed softly, "No, Miriam. That is a whole other beast."
"Oh," Miriam's breath hitched in her throat and her stomach did a tumble. She could feel her heart race with anticipation, while her center began to throb with desire.
"And?" Dominic threw the question out there; it hung in the air between them, thick with potential and heated promise.
Miriam knew that if she chose to go down this road, that there would be no turning back. Their relationship was a complicated one, to say the least. Dominic was anything but the safe choice, although she was long past making safe choices. She didn't know why or how they had found each other, but she was past looking for logic in this situation. She herself was a walking contradiction with her strange ability to find the past in inanimate objects. Dominic himself shouldn't exist, but yet here he was before her. She had a choice.
"Well, who am I to deny the beast?" she teased.
In the next instant, his mouth was upon her. She groaned as their bodies came together in a fervent, wild passion. She felt like her body was on fire with the rapid sensations that coursed through her.
She could sense his desire, feel his thoughts as they were focused on her, and taste the danger on his tongue. It all excited her.
He lifted her body from the chair and brought her to rest on the soft carpet. The fire roared next to them as it casted a warm glow across their bodies and illuminated the dark room.
She enjoyed the pressure of his body stretched over hers and felt his hard desire press up against her thigh. She brought her legs up to wrap around his waist and pull herself closer to his body.
When Dominic reached up under her shirt to squeeze her breasts, she shivered with pleasure. He roughly brushed his palms against her nipples; Miriam gasped as her body began to hum with erotic anticipation.
She moaned when Dominic nipped at her bottom lip. He raised his head up from where he had been lavishing her mouth with his and locked her eyes in an intense gaze.
Miriam sighed as he brought his other hand around to grasp the edge of her T-shirt to slide it up and over her head. He tossed it to the side and quickly unclasped her bra, soon replacing his mouth where his hands had been, lavishing erotic caresses across her breasts.
He brought his lips down to take one of the pert buds into his waiting mouth; Miriam groaned in response. She could feel his sharp fangs graze her full breasts, which only excited her more.
Her desire for him was almost unbearable. She needed him inside of her—now.
"I need you inside of me, Dominic—"
His lips curled around his fangs, his gaze heated, and his voice came out deep and raw. "Say nothing more."
In an instant, Miriam felt him tear away her clothes before he flipped her around so that she could straddle him.
She was fully exposed to his gaze, but it only excited her more. His throbbing, hard member was pressed against her. She moved to reach down and guide him towards her entrance, pushing him inside of her waiting body and began to rhythmically rock her hips against him.
His gaze grew hooded as the carnal pleasure began to take over both of their senses. He brought his hands to rest on her hips, aiding her in the sensual movements.
She began to increase her pace as the urgency of the moment took over. They became consumed by the pleasure and the connection created by their bodies.
Miriam spread her hands out on Dominic's chest; her eyes closed as she became focused on the heat of their bodies, the way his thick manhood felt inside of her, and the carnal movements as she rode him to the end of both of their pleasures.
They came at the same time, their cries the result of intense euphoria.
Miriam collapsed on top of Dominic's broad, strong chest. She felt his arms come around her, holding her tightly as she gasped from the exertion of their lovemaking.
Neither one made a move to stir, instead they enjoyed the way they remained connected.
Dominic was the first to break the silence. "Do you have to work tomorrow?" he teased lightly.
Miriam gasped as it dawned on her how late it actually was. "Oh shit," she exclaimed as she attempted to get up. "I need to get home."
Dominic rolled her under him and trapped her hands above her head. "Not yet," he spoke as he brought his mouth to meet hers.
Miriam became lost in his steamy kiss. "I guess," she breathed against him.
Dominic lifted his head from where he was lavishing kisses upon her full mouth. "I was
asking because I have a business proposal for you."
Miriam looked at him quizzically. "How so?"
"Well, I was thinking, with your ability to assess antiques and my ability to breed success in all my ventures," he winked at her, "I thought we could upgrade the shop and maybe start dealing with higher end antiques."
Miriam paused for a moment. "But what about your family?" she asked.
"Miriam," Dominic took her face into his hands. "You don't need to worry about them, they will not touch you again. I guarantee it."
Miriam trusted Dominic despite everything—his mysterious past, unpredictable family, and the dangerous nature that made him a little otherworldly. Theirs wasn't exactly the start of a normal relationship.
But then again, she wasn't exactly normal, either.
She paused for a moment. "I'll agree on one condition."
Dominic stilled as he waited for her terms.
"You kiss me," she shot him a teasing wink.
"That, I can do."
And as they came together again, they both reveled in the knowledge that there would be many more moments like these to come. After all, there was no fun in business if they couldn't mix in a bit of pleasure here and there.
THE END
Claimed By The Werebears Of Green Tree
PART ONE
Claimed By The Wild Alpha Werebear
Sasha, Alpha of the Nita Werebear Clan, is in the midst of a quandary; his brothers are becoming restless in the absence of mates, and he himself knows that he needs to find a woman to claim soon. One night as the clan is foraging in the forest outside of their hometown, Green Tree, fate brings a strange opportunity to work towards solving the thorny problem.
After her car breaks down, Alexandra soon finds herself lost deep in the woods. Her predicament rapidly grows dire when a pack of wolves decides that she is prey and descends upon her. She awakens in a daze in an irresistibly handsome stranger’s home. Her host graciously introduces himself as Sasha and fills her in on some of the details of her rescue, all the while seemingly withholding key pieces to the puzzle.
What really happened the night her car broke down? Will she be able to resist Sasha’s charms and convince him to reveal the truth?
Sasha’s nose twitched as a foreign scent caught his attention. He looked around the woods, grunting to himself as he tried to identify the person that the scent belonged to. Female, human, fertile; the thoughts were more impulse than thought in his ursine brain, and Sasha struggled to bring his human consciousness to the forefront. The scent did not belong to anyone he knew from the town of Green Tree; that much Sasha was able to bring himself to think. He opened his mind, finding the warm and comforting presences of the rest of his clan, scattered through the woods on their own solitary errands—hunting, enjoying the cool, moist air of springtime or the glowing moon, some of them foraging. Stranger, he thought—the one word a huge effort. As his human consciousness began to assert itself, Sasha found thinking in words easier. Stranger—in the woods. Steer clear. The Nita clan had managed to avoid detection from both the town itself and the people of the area—hikers, conservationists, and loggers—by avoiding them; it was one of Sasha’s many responsibilities as the Alpha of the group to warn his clan brethren whenever something like this happened. With any luck, the stranger was simply lost, would find her way out of the woods and into town, and that would be the end of it. Someone just passing through; that was the hope that flickered in Sasha’s mind.
He went back to foraging, thinking in the human part of his mind about the state of his clan as a whole. Bears—of all of the types of shifters—had special problems; they didn’t breed quite as ably as the wolves, or as plentifully as lions, who seemed to constantly be bearing twins. While they were human, or at least half-human, it seemed to Sasha as if some of their trouble was the fact that their animal natures were not as easily reconciled with human living. Bears in the wild were solitary creatures, males mating with females and then leaving shortly afterward, the young going off on their own after a few seasons. Werebears like himself and the other men of his clan were much more social than their strictly-animal counterparts; but they were still insular. We will have to reach out to other clans, Sasha thought. Fights had started to break out amongst his brothers—it was time for many of them, particularly for Sasha, to find a mate, and tensions were high, especially now that spring had arrived. Sasha had had to send away the few females born into the clan over the years since he had assumed the Alpha title; they were too closely related to the other members of the clan, and if mating urges held sway, they would have a high rate of miscarriages and birth defects in the offspring. Where wild bears mated in a system of serial monogamy, werebears mated for life, bonding with their mates. It would have been a disaster for the clan as a whole if Sasha had not sent the women away as they reached the proper age for mating.
He wandered through the woods, sniffing and snuffling, considering the problem even as he contemplated what he wanted to eat. If he wanted to keep the clan stable, he would have to find mates for his brothers; and in the back of his mind, Sasha knew that some of his temper in recent weeks had come from his own need to mate. The spring brought it on in all of them—the drive from their animal minds to take advantage of the lengthening days and the safety that summer and autumn provided. It wasn’t something that anyone could avoid, and Sasha knew that sooner or later he would come up hard against the realities of the situation, if he didn’t take action now.
As he was contemplating which of the other clans to approach, the foreign scent filled Sasha’s nose again—stronger this time, with an undercurrent of fear like burned gunpowder. The scent disrupted Sasha’s thoughts and he looked around in the darkness. If the woman had come this deep into the woods, she was lost indeed; he would have to take some kind of action, and perhaps steer her in another direction, back towards the town. Has anyone seen the stranger? Sasha called out mentally. He needed to place her—whoever she was—in order to know how to handle the situation. The fear that Sasha could smell on the woman’s scent was more intense than the simple anxiety of being lost in the woods, and Sasha had run afoul of wolves in recent weeks, taking advantage of the improved weather and the better hunting. No wolf pack would challenge a bear without good reason, but a human was another thing entirely.
Flickers of thought reached him; Sasha realized that he had to be the closest to the woman of the members of his clan. He felt a rising sense of irritation that his time in the woods would be marred by the necessity of attending to a human woman who didn’t have the sense to avoid getting lost and exposing herself to the dangers that wild animals presented. Sasha lumbered in the direction of the scent, grumbling to himself in little growls as he made his way through the thick underbrush and tightly packed trees. The last thing he needed on a night like this was to have to steer some woman back to the road—she’d probably be frightened and scream at him the moment he showed up. In the distance, Sasha heard the telltale sound of a howl carrying through the air; the local wolf pack was nearby. He had to get to her quickly. She’s about to blunder on wolves, Sasha thought, projecting his mental voice to the other members of his clan. I need some backup. Armand, James, Holt—fall in with me. Sasha hurried his movements, torn between the impressive presence that his bear form would make—a better guarantee of deterring wolves—and the nimbleness and speed of his human form. Even if the human stranger irritated him, he didn’t want her to be attacked.
****
“Good God, could I be any stupider?” Alexandra looked around in a state of barely-suppressed panic at the anonymous woods that loomed around her. She no longer had any idea whatsoever of where her car was; the light of a nearly-full moon had seemed enough to guide her steps through the thickly-wooded area back to the town, but somehow, she had managed to thoroughly lose herself in the black-green depths. Right, great idea, talking out loud where the wild animals can hear you, she thought, staggering to a stop on the clinging, draping underb
rush of the forest as she thought she heard something like movement. Alexandra turned in a slow circle, thinking fretfully that even if she wanted to get back to her broken-down car, she wasn’t likely to be able to retrace her steps.
It had seemed so straightforward when she had left home that afternoon; Alexandra found an uprooted tree in the silver-tinged light of the moon and sank down on it, sighing. She had decided that instead of paying the obscene rate for a train ticket, she would just drive. Her car was only a few years younger than she was—but it had been behaving itself well, and it wasn’t as though the drive was across state lines. Alexandra had noticed the old Volvo beginning to run a little hot in the stop-and-go traffic a few towns back; but she had hoped when she stopped for dinner that the cool-off time would help it get through the trek.
She had a job interview in two days’ time; she had already called ahead to the hotel to let them know that she was running late, but Alexandra was now feeling as though the possibilities of even getting there were completely hopeless. The car had overheated right in the midst of the woods, just a mile or two south of the closest town. While Alex had not been exactly thrilled at the idea of walking two miles or more to get to the nearest gas station—and therefore arrange a meeting with a roadside assistance guy—she had decided that there was nothing else for it, and that she would rather not spend the rest of the night locked in her car in the middle of nowhere.
Alexandra shivered in the slight chill of the air as the light breeze dried the sweat on her arms and legs. The woods looked—and felt—so very forbidding. Every few moments, it seemed, there was the sound of something moving, and in the distance, she had heard the unmistakable howls of a pack of wolves. As she sat, attempting to figure out what she should do next, Alexandra heard the sounds of the forest around her starting to rise up a little more: creaky chirps and buzzing of bugs, an inquiring hoot from an owl—and in the distance an air-splitting shriek from another nocturnal bird. She swallowed against the tight dryness in her throat, looking around in the gloomy, pale light. If I tried to get back to my car, I’d probably only get even more hopelessly lost, Alexandra thought bitterly. But if I keep going forward, I’m only going to get more lost, too. Congrats, ‘Lex. Your options are: lost or lost. She hugged herself, trying to find something—anything—she could use as a landmark.
