by Mary Calmes
His breathing rate shot up so fast I thought he might hyperventilate.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re coming here?” he squawked. “Right now? And I’m going to meet them?”
“Vy, it’s okay. They’re really nice people.”
“They’re human!” He threw his hands in the air. “What do I know about humans?”
The pacing started all over again.
“I mean, they’re bear experts or whatever, so I guess with you it’s different, but I’m a hawk. What am I supposed to say to them?” He dragged his hands through his hair. “I’ve never met any guy’s parents.”
I growled then; it just slipped out. Only the internal reminder that he was mine, that he’d given himself to me, soothed the jealous flame.
“Maybe I’ll ask my mom and dad. They’ll know wha—” He stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh God.”
“What?” I jumped to my feet. “Vy?”
“My parents,” he said in horror. “Your parents will have to meet my parents. It’s not like we can hide them. The town is too small, and everybody is always in everybody else’s business, and….” He rushed over to me and grasped my arms. “Robert? What are we going to do?”
I was so far beyond lost there was no way for me to answer the question. Having him freak out because he was alone with a man who could kill him without a moment’s hesitation was reason to be petrified; I’d been expecting that. But having a meltdown at the prospect of meeting my admittedly eccentric but completely harmless parents? I didn’t get it.
Try as I might, though, I couldn’t calm him down. He ranted and stomped and paced and rambled. I stood there watching and, frankly, getting progressively more aroused. His spirit turned me on, that heat in him that burned so bright was sexy as hell.
“What are you doing?” he asked when, in the midst of some sentence about whether dinner or brunch would be a safer introductory meal, he noticed me stroking my dick.
“You make me hard,” I explained with a shrug. “I can’t help it.”
He stared at my groin. “You’re really thick.”
His attention was another turn-on. I groaned.
“And long.” He darted his gaze to my face, then back to my dick, and licked his lips. “Robert?” he rasped.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I suck you?” He stepped over, dropped to his knees, and looked up at me from underneath his lashes. “Please?”
His eyes had turned golden, the green bleeding out of them, and the sight of it made me throb.
“Yeah, little bird, anything you want.” I cupped the back of his head and held him still as I painted his lips with my glans.
He gasped and opened his mouth, lowering himself down on my shaft. He rolled my balls with one hand and held on to my hip with the other. At first, he moved over my cock, licking and sucking, bobbing his head up and down. Watching him there, on his knees for me, pleased me deep inside, and though I wanted to let him do what he wanted his own way, I lost control for a moment and thrust forward hard, pushing myself into his throat.
Ready to apologize, I caressed his cheek and moved back, but then Vy surprised me by making a noise that sounded like a broken moan—so needy, so turned on, so sexy.
“Vy?” I gently brushed his hair off his face. “Do you want more of that?”
He looked up at me, wide-eyed, his lips stretched obscenely around my shaft, raised his hands to my hips, and nodded.
Ah, damn. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to keep myself from spilling right there.
“You’re perfect for me,” I whispered as I slid my fingers along his scalp and then tangled them in his hair. And he was. So strong, so proud, but still willing to submit to me. No, not willing; he wanted it. “Just perfect.”
Once I had a good grip on him, I slowly slid out until just my crown was in his mouth, and then I tightened my grip on his hair, making sure he couldn’t move, and shoved forward hard, not stopping until I was buried to the root, my shaft filling his mouth and pressing into his throat so far he surely couldn’t breathe. But he didn’t try to push me away, didn’t try to pull back, didn’t even tense. Instead, his stance softened, and his hold became more of a flutter of fingers against my waist.
“You want this,” I said more to myself than to him. “You want me to fuck your throat.” I pumped in and out as I spoke, and he made more of those desperate moaning sounds.
The faster I moved, the harder I pushed, the louder he got, and it was so intense, so perfect to have this man take me and accept me and want me, that I reached the breaking point. After pulling my dick out of his mouth, I left one hand in his hair and used the other to finish myself off. Vy stayed in place, on his knees with his hands on my hips, his head tilted back and his mouth open.
“You want to taste me?” I asked.
He barely had time to nod before I roared and came, shots of hot cum streaking across his cheek before I shoved my dick back into his waiting mouth and came down his throat.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” he shouted, as much as he could with his mouth full, and shook, digging his fingers suddenly into my skin.
Not sure if I was hurting him, I pulled back as soon as I regained control. “Vy?”
His chin was lowered, his shoulders moving up and down as he gasped for air.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Robert,” he said reverently as he raised his head and gazed at me.
It was then that I saw the cum streaked across his belly and pubic hair. The noises he’d made, the motions… those weren’t based in pain or fear; they were the sounds of his pleasure, his orgasm. But his hands hadn’t left my body, so I knew he couldn’t have touched himself. Looking from his ejaculate to his eyes, I arched my eyebrow in question.
“So good,” he said hoarsely, his voice strained from what we’d just done. “Never before.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Only with you.” He leaned forward and kissed my hip, the action light and tender. “Need you so much.”
Me? I craved the power that came with possessing, capturing, and owning. My bird, though? He needed to be taken and controlled and adored. We were, in every way, a perfect match.
“I love you, Vy,” I said as I caressed his cheek.
He leaned against me, pillowing his head against my hip. “I love you too.”
Thirteen
Vy
I’D HAD the best five days of my life. Monday through Friday, glorious days with Robert sleeping in my bed every night, leaving for work every morning, and being there when I got home. I told him he didn’t have to cook, that I could pick something up or even try my hand at maybe toast, but he was like a kid in a candy store, absolutely thrilled to have the kitchen be his domain. Each day my little house became less mine and more ours, and when Robert said, “I’ll see you at home” when we bumped into each other in town, my stomach fluttered every time. I was on a jobsite Friday morning, up on a roof, when I saw Robert’s truck roll to a stop on the street. I watched him get out and walk around the front of his truck to the sidewalk. I had an idea why he was there, but I waited while he looked around, not drawing any attention to myself.
When he walked over to my foreman, Ben Zinn, I saw them shake hands before Ben turned and pointed up to where I was. Robert snapped his head up, and I waved at him.
Moving quickly, he was at the base of the scaffolding seconds later, beaming up at me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying really hard not to smile as I stared down at him from twenty feet up.
Lifting his hand slowly, I saw the shiny new silver key hanging off the carbine clip hook I had put it on that morning. I had slipped it into the outer pocket of his coat before he left.
He’d had my key when he was secretly housesitting while I was away for the weekend on my firefighting stint with Carlo. He’d given it back to me when I returned, but lately, as he was the first to leave in the morning and also the first one home at night, he had been carrying it around. I simply pulled the d
oor shut after me when I left in the morning. But it wasn’t his key. It didn’t belong to him—it was mine, and he always put it back on the peg in the kitchen; he never kept it with his things. That was all different now because I had made him his own.
“What is that?” I teased.
“Come down here,” he coaxed me.
I squinted at him.
“Please.”
Climbing quickly, I was almost to the bottom when he grabbed my right calf and yanked. I fell backward into his arms and laughed as he held me easily.
“Your house key,” he whispered, his eyes red-rimmed and soft.
“No,” I corrected, “your house key.”
He bent and kissed me, and I should have cared where we were, but I didn’t have it in me to censure him. Instead I wiggled in his hold, wrapped my arms around his neck, and ground my mouth over his, returning every bit of heat and passion and love I was getting.
“Little bird,” he rasped when he had to pull free to breathe, bumping our noses, each of us panting. “You want… I can—”
“It’s fast and we don’t know what we’re doing yet, and I don’t want to pressure you or… but I know that every day the house becomes less mine and more ours and I wanted to tell you.”
He nodded “I got the message loud and clear.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at him, tracing down the side of his face with my fingertips.
“Okay,” he echoed.
We stood there grinning like idiots.
“You should put me down.”
“Yeah, okay,” Robert agreed, setting me on my feet but not before taking my face in his hands and planting one last kiss on me.
I forgot where I was.
He had to turn me around and send me back toward Ben with a sharp smack on the ass to get me moving. I should have been mortified, but he was too blissfully happy, the whistling a dead giveaway, as were the wave and smile I got before he drove off.
Everyone stared at me in absolute shock until I scowled. I’d never seen so many people scatter at once. It was funny and so was the wide berth I got for the rest of the day. Ben said it was because I was happy and no one wanted it to wear off. Perhaps before Robert walked into my life I had been a bit of an asshole.
“A bit?” Lou asked me at lunch as we sat together at Stampede having burgers. I liked mine with three different kinds of cheese: sharp cheddar, pepper jack, and Gorgonzola. Lou liked hers with onion rings and barbeque sauce.
“You’re saying I was an ass?”
“Not to me,” she clarified, her voice muffled since she was chewing. “Just to everybody else.”
“Oh that’s fantastic.”
She grunted out something.
“Will you please hurry up so I can understand you?”
I got a big smile full of chewed meat, and I proceeded to tell her how disgusting she was.
After she finally swallowed, she sighed and put a hand on my cheek. “You’re the strongest man I know, my kuar, but it was hard for you to find your balance.”
I could accept that.
“But with Robert here, you’re happy, so the anger takes longer to come out, and there’s a sort of contentment in you. In just this short time, you’ve finally learned some patience.”
My gaze met hers.
“Like I said, you’re so strong, you do everything better and faster than the rest of us, but it’s like you don’t resent us anymore.”
“I never resented anyone in my ket.”
“But it felt like it, Vy. You’re condescending and sharp. Everyone feared your disapproval.”
I groaned, carding my fingers through my hair. “Way to make me feel like crap, Lou.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel like crap. I’m telling you the truth. Some of your ket feared pissing you off, and they didn’t trust you.”
“And now suddenly they do,” I placated her.
“Getting there, yeah.”
“How?”
“Smiling at them, asking how they are, and simple things like checking in—you have no idea what a difference that makes.”
I had never even contemplated things like that because it had never mattered before.
“Being feared doesn’t build a strong ket. Being genuinely concerned does.”
“I agree with that.”
“What does Robert do?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, yeah, he’s a great guy and all, but there has to be more than that.”
There was no way to explain it to her without sounding trite. I trusted him. He knew all my secrets, knew my desires, knew how to fulfill them, and I had faith that he would never use those against me.
“Vy?”
“Robert’s the best part of me.”
Her face crumpled, and I rolled my eyes as she made a grab for me to snuggle.
I got up and left her in the restaurant making little “awww” noises. It was revolting and completely beneath her. She carried a gun, for heaven’s sake.
It was amazing, though, all of it, my whole relationship with Robert. Never in my life had I contemplated being in a monogamous relationship that did not factor in a mate. Robert was, after all, my mate, but there had never been the claiming, the coupling when I would supposedly feel our two animals intertwine. There were milestones in the life of a mated pair, and the first sex after recognition was supposedly one of those. I had heard all my life how it should be, how it would be, but what had once seemed the pinnacle of importance now paled beside the reality of being in a warm, loving, very human relationship. With Robert, I was so comfortable simply being me—a man in love—that I forgot to worry about my animal.
“Good afternoon, Kuar.”
Snapping out of my daze, I smiled and waved quickly. The young couple looped back to see me, shake my hand, and tell me they were getting married. Shelby Dennis, who I had seen many times but never spoken to, held out her hand and showed me the tiny chip of a diamond that Jared Pierce, her fiancé, could afford.
“Will you”—she coughed—“come to our wedding, Kuar?”
“Of course,” I promised her, taking her hand in both of mine. “Sweetheart, of course.”
I was surprised when she launched herself at me, even more so at the smile on her boyfriend’s face.
“Thank you, my kuar.”
They were both so damned pleased.
“Please bring your mate with you.”
And now I was the one with the goofy grin on my face, I was sure. “I will.”
My reputation as a badass would soon be shot to hell. Maybe, though, that was a good thing.
WHEN I got home that night, I was surprised to find I couldn’t get into my own driveway, and even more so to find my house filled with people.
Members of my ket, guys from my construction crew, Reno and Ginny, and Lou and Carlo were all there. There was a warm welcome for me when I came through the front door, and Lou passed me a margarita.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Robert invited a few people over to get to know him better, and it snowballed from there. Most of the ket is here or in the backyard.”
“It’s freezing out there.”
“Your guys brought over space heaters—”
“I just left my guys. What are they—”
“—and Carlo built a bonfire. It’s really lucky your house is at the end of this street and your property stretches for five miles, or I’d have to cite you.”
“Cite me?”
“Yeah. You can’t have a fire that big on private land without a permit.”
I growled at her. “Lou, I don’t want all these people in my house.”
“I’m sorry?” she offered, presumably not sure what I wanted her to say.
Crap.
“The thing is,” she began, smiling at me, “this is good, right? I mean, Robert here, with you, being his regular charming self. He’s such a wonderful host and completely in his element.”
“What?”
“Your mate,” she said, pointing to the kitchen.
I followed the line of her finger, and there was my boyfriend—the tall, dark, gorgeous man who had single-handedly brought warmth and joy into my life—schmoozing with members of my ket. He was in the kitchen surrounded by women, young and old, watching him as he cooked.
“What is he doing?”
“I think that’s the samba.”
The kitchen was crowded, but still, he was dancing a different woman around it each and every time he stopped stirring or tasting or checking whatever was in the oven. I was ready to flambé someone.
“He made tacos and enchiladas, mole sauce, and tamales.”
I turned to her. “Is it real meat?”
“Bean and cheese enchiladas, veggie tacos,” Lou informed me, “and veggie tamales.”
“It sounds great.”
“It is,” she assured me. “And his guacamole is to die for.”
I drained my margarita, shoved the glass back at Lou, and marched into the kitchen, moving people out of my way to get to the man dancing around the stove and being, as far as I could tell, far too irresistible. His dimples were out of control.
“Hey,” he greeted me, the smile making his eyes glow warmly. “How are you, Vy?”
It was completely insane, but I wanted to hear the regular, “There’s my little bird,” or “Look, my little bird flew home,” or some other gooey, gloppy, overly sentimental endearment instead of simply my name. I was used to it, used to hearing him say it, and—
My phone rang before I could respond or grab him or even get a kiss. I turned, shoving my finger in my ear to drown out the music while I answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Kuar!” the voice on the other end screamed. “You have to help us! The wolves are gonna kill Chris! They already got Brady, and I—”
“Jodie,” I barked, pushing out of the crowded kitchen. “Honey, tell me where you are,” I said as I walked back to the front door.
“We’re at the meadow close to Coleman Lake, by the—”
“Star Meadow, I know. I’m coming right now. Tell them your kuar is coming,” I told her, wanting my title used as the warning it was.
