by Sable Sylvan
“Noted,” said Meredith.
“The bathroom for this floor is here,” said Scott, opening up the door and popping inside. He looked at the haircut. “You did a good job, Meredith.”
“Really?” she asked.
“I like it,” said Scott, running his hands through his brown hair. “And it’s out of my eyes, which is the important part. Sorry the bathroom’s such a mess, by the way.”
“Nobody said this would be easy,” said Meredith.
She walked back into the hall and Scott led her up to the second floor. “This is where all the bedrooms are, including yours,” said Scott .”We’ve got a guest room for you, and it’s got a private bathroom.” He opened a door, revealing the only clean room Meredith had seen in the house. It was actually cute: there were dark wood floors, black sheets with green plaid flannel sheets, a dark wooden desk, and a armchair with a green cushion that functioned as the desk chair, as well as a bay window that overlooked the forest, with charcoal cushions on the window bench.
“Here’s the bathroom,” said Scott, and he opened the door to the bathroom, which had a large tub with a showerhead and a curtain, a toilet, and a large sink inset into a counter with drawers and mirror with marquee lighting. It was a bit musty, but clean.
“Where do you sleep?” asked Meredith.
“My room’s a mess,” said Scott. “All of ours are.”
“Should I clean them too?” asked Meredith.
“Please don’t,” said Scott. “Really. Hibernation...it’s kind of serious business for bear shifters, and we don’t want to be woken up, unless it’s an emergency, as pleasant as your company is. Which reminds me: please keep the noise level down in the house, and if you listen to music, don’t use the stereo, use headphones or something.”
“No problem,” said Meredith. “Thanks for letting me know...so now what, should I go clean more and let you go to bed?”
“It’s up to you...although, knowing my biological clock, I won’t be hitting the hay for another few hours, and I could always use some company,” said Scott.
“Is that your way of telling me you wanna hang out with me?” teased Meredith.
Scott got down on one knee and Meredith almost had a heart attack. “Meredith Baxter, will you make me the happiest man alive...and hang out with me?” asked Scott, looking up with eyes so serious that the request took Meredith a full five seconds to process as a joke.
Meredith laughed. “Of course, you goof,” she said, and she followed Scott into his bedroom.
“I thought you said this was messy,” she said. Aside from some dirty laundry and an unmade bed, Scott’s room wasn’t nearly as bad as any of the other rooms. It wasn’t as clean as her guest room, but it was livable.
“It is,” said Scott. “I do the cleaning for the house, and this is filthy compared to how it is usually.”
Meredith picked up a laundry bag and started stuffing the bag with the dirty clothes. “It’s light work, really.”
“If you insist,” said Scott, taking a peek at Meredith’s round butt as she leaned over to pick up the various articles of clothing.
“I’ll leave the bag of clothes outside your room once they’re done,” said Meredith, walking out the room.
“Meredith...stay,” said Scott. “Please?”
“Okay, okay, just give me a second,” she said as she placed the full bag of laundry by the door. She sat next to Scott on the bed. “You’ve got a nice place here.”
“I like it well enough,” said Scott. “It’s not huge, but I like to come up here and listen to music. I miss that, during the winter.”
“You could listen to some now,” said Meredith.
“Nope, I wouldn’t want to wake up Nathan or Brandon,” said Scott. “They’re both grizzly enough.”
“And what’re you?” asked Meredith. “Brown bear? Black bear?”
“Grizzly, like the other two,” said Scott. “So, a kind of brown bear. I only have the form, not the temperament...but those two have never taken well to hibernation. I like the sleep, and all the eating in the fall.”
Scott yawned. “You should lie down,” said Meredith
“No, that’d be rude,” said Scott with another yawn. “I’m fine, really.”
“I can’t hoist your butt into bed if you fall asleep on the floor,” said Red. “So get under those covers so that if you fall asleep, you’ll do so properly.”
“Fine...but only if you get under here with me,” said Scott.
“Okay, maybe I will,” said Meredith.
Scott was surprised but didn’t argue with Meredith, and he got into the big king sized bed and then opened the sheets so she could get in. “Make good on your promise.”
Meredith snuggled into the big bed which warmed her right up. The Joyce house was nice, but drafty, and getting into bed with a bear shifter warmed her up. Scott was still shirtless and his chest, pressed against her back, was hot and broad. Scott wrapped an arm around Meredith’s waist. “Isn’t this nice?” he asked.
“Yeah,” admitted Meredith. “It is.”
“Thanks for cuddling with me, Red,” said Scott with a yawn, cuddling closer to Meredith, enjoying how her curves made her feel soft, like a large body pillow, a body made for cuddling.
“Red?” asked Meredith, turning to face Scott.
“That’s your new nickname: Red,” said Scott, running the back of his hand down Meredith’s cheeks which were burning pink.
“You’re welcome, Scott,” said Meredith. “Red...I like the sound of that.”
“I like the sound of you,” said Scott. “Talking to me.”
“You really are getting tired,” said Meredith. “You’re practically incoherent.”
“Alright,” said Scott sleepily. “Goodnight, Red.” He pulled her closer and pressed his lips against hers gently, pressing into them hard. He didn’t part her lips with his tongue but Meredith’s body was begging for Scott to go the distance and plunge deep inside of her mouth, and other parts as well, but the kiss ended as Scott fell asleep, holding Meredith close.
Meredith watched Scott sleep for a few minutes, slipping out from under his arm gently so she wouldn’t wake him up, before getting up, tucking him in, giving him a kiss on the forehead, and turning off the lights behind her as she left the room. “Goodnight, Scott,” she whispered as she closed the door, leaving her new crush to sleep.
Chapter Three
Meredith let herself out and went to her car, getting her suitcase out of the back and lugging it up the stairs to her room, carefully so as not to slip on the ice. She put her things away in the dresser and as she folded each shirt, thought about the day she’d had: there’d been the accidental kiss with Brandon and the unexpected kiss with Scott, and both had sent electricity down her spine. She thought about what they’d said, about fated mates, and mate marks, and wondered what their mate marks could mean. Red was the color of love, passion, and the lack of a sigil for a mate mark meant that she was as at much of a loss regarding its meaning as they were.
That new nickname of hers: Red. She’d been called Mary by some, as a shortening of Meredith, but Red was a new one. She’d been made fun of for her red hair before, but it seemed the shifters in this town were nuts for redheads. She hit the hay as soon as her things were put away: she’d had a busy day and had another busy day ahead of her.
That night, Meredith’s dreams took an interesting turn. Meredith had always had vivid dreams, as a young girl, dreams which she could remember the next morning, some lingering hours, days, even weeks or months or years. Tonight, Meredith had one of those dreams: as soon as her head hit the pillow in her guest room, she fell asleep, hard.
***
The dream started out as a nightmare: she was running from the woods and she wasn’t talking, but some noise was coming out of her mouth uncontrollable. She ran and ran through the woods and when she looked back, she saw a big, brown bear running at her. She ran faster, and faster and faster, her feet practically floa
ting over the forest underbrush, a white dress swirling around her as she ran through the woods.
The bear caught up to her.
But it didn’t lunge: it let out a roar, and she reached out: the bear was her friend, and she now knew the sounds coming out of her voice weren’t screams or cries, but laughs. She was laughing, with her friend, having fun in the woods.
The bear stopped and so did she. The bear moved its head, looking at her and then its back, and nodding. She knew what the bear wanted, even though she couldn’t explain it, and she got on the bear’s back, held onto its fur with her hands, and the bear ran.
This was a dream she’d had before, as a little girl, but the dream had disappeared over time, only to reappear again as she slept in the Joyce house. Meredith’s legs twitched as in the dream, they clasped onto the bear’s back.
Meredith road on the bear’s back through the woods, through a path she remember from long ago, a path lit with fireflies, glowing blue in the clear warm air. It was summer. It was always summer in this dream.
The bear ran faster and as it ran faster, Meredith held on tighter, until finally, the bear slowed, and walked into a glade. Meredith knew this glade. She knew these flowers. She dismounted and walked with the bear into the glen. The bear let out a roar: out here, he could roar without scaring humans, and merely the freedom to roar was enjoyable itself. The bear turned over, onto the grass, revealing that it had a red patch of fur on its chest.
This was a detail that Meredith had never noticed before. Maybe the detail hadn’t been there before: the dream usually ended with her riding the bear at the very end of the dream, not in the middle.
Meredith walked over and lay her head on the resting bear’s chest as the bear basked in the summer light, and Meredith closed her eyes, the sun in her dreams too bright to look at, but when she looked up, the bear was gone...and she was lying on Scott’s chest, like she’d wanted to back in his bed.
“Miss me?” asked the man.
“Scott?” asked Meredith.
“That’s me, honey,” said Scott. “I’ve missed you.”
“You just saw me,” said Meredith. “And I know I’m dreaming.”
“So tell me, Red...what happens in this dream?” he asked, rolling over so he was above Meredith, the sun streaming in from behind him and illuminating the reddish gold highlights in his brown hair. “Because I know I can make your every dream come true.”
Scott kissed Meredith deeply, his tongue exploring the cavern of her mouth before he pulled away and kissed down her neck. He made a trail of kisses down to her cleavage, and he rolled her breasts in his hands. “I’ve wanted these all night,” said Scott, taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking it hard.
Red’s back arched. “Oh, Scott,” she moaned, and he ran his hands down her body as he worked her breasts with his mouth, until he found her wetness with the tips of his fingers
“Someone’s wet,” said Scott.
“All darn night,” said Red. Scott ran a finger over her clit and sent a shiver down Red’s spine, and then, Scott spread Red’s thighs and ran his leg into the space between her thighs, making her ride his thigh as he kissed her and played with her tits.
It usually took a lot to make Red climax, because like any woman, she needed romancing, foreplay, but Scott had that in spades and he was so adept with his hands, his mouth, and the rest of his body that Red was close to the edge within a few minutes of the wet dream.
“Say my name, baby,” ordered Red.
“Scott,” moaned Red, aloud and in the dream. “Oh, Scott.”
“That’s right, I want you to come for me, baby,” said Scott. “I want you to feel something close to what I feel every time I look at you, baby.” Scott rocked his thigh against Red’s slit harder and then he moved, lifting her up and teasing her entrance with his cock.
As Red hadn’t actually seen it yet, she filled in the details with fodder from her imagination: in the dream, the shaft was larger and thicker than average, and rock-hard.
“You want this, don’t you?” asked Scott. “Too bad...because I’m having too much fun teasing you.” The Scott in the dream was far more rakish and roguish than the Scott she knew in real life, but how well did she really know him?
Scott pressed the tip of his cock around her entrance but then pulled away, and pressed his fingers inside of Red instead, pressing two fingers up and curling them as he pulled them out of Red and then, pushed them back into her tight hole, which squeezed onto the fingers with every thrust.
“That’s right,” said Scott, using the flat sides of his other fingers to rub against Meredith’s moist clitoris. “I want to feel you come, baby, right on these fingers.” Scott’s fingers pressing against both her G spot and her clit proved to be too much, and the rock-hard bear shifter got his wish as the tension built up inside of Meredith released around his hand.
“Oh, Scott,” she moaned, and she came around the fingers that were inside of her.
***
As Meredith climaxed in her dream, she climaxed in real life, letting out a small moan that nobody in the house could hear as pleasure pulsed through her body. Meredith hadn’t even needed to be touched: she had come just from the intensity of the dream, and the orgasm left her panties soaked.
***
Scott faded away into mist and she was alone in the woods without an explanation. She heard a rustling in the woods. She turned: another large bear, bigger than any normal bear, was making its way into the glen, a large streak of red fur over its chest.
“Brandon?” she said to the bear in her dream.
The bear roared and then, shifted in front of her, into the form of a man, a man who was nude but who she recognized from head to toe.
***
The dreams Meredith had melded into each other and soon, the man in her dream was replaced with another: tall, dark, and brunette, his face was harder, his eyes steelier, and there was no mistaking him for anything but a bear shifter, with his firm, broad chest, a patch of red fur over his chest, and his hands covered in bear shifter paw marks. Brandon was still in Meredith’s head: the kiss they had, although accidental, had made a lasting impression on her, and although Meredith had been distracted from her feelings for Brandon by the time she’d spent with Scott, there was no telling her subconscious to lay off and let sleeping bears lie.
***
“Brandon,” said Meredith, standing up from the glen of wildflowers. “It’s you.”
Brandon scooped Meredith up into his arms and looked her in the eyes, brushing a lock of her curly red hair, hair as red as his mate mark, out of her face before kissing her gently on the forehead. “My beloved,” he said. “How I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” said Meredith. “I don’t know why, and I can’t explain it...but I just have.”
Brandon carried Meredith to the center of the glen, where a picnic blanket had appeared that wasn’t there before, and he laid her down on the blanket. “Well, I’m here now,” said Brandon, laying next to Meredith on the blanket, his mate mark identical to the one he had in real life, the swath of red fur just as vivid as it was in person. “And now...we can pick up where we left off.”
Brandon pulled Meredith close, one hand on her plush waist, the other on the back of her head, and he pressed their faces and their bodies together as their lips met. Meredith grinded on Brandon, feeling his firm leg between her thighs as he moved his leg up and against her body, pressed against her sex, and Brandon kissed Meredith back deeply, each kiss back and forth getting more and more passionate as the pair of lovers pushed against each other.
Brandon pushed Meredith down, onto her back, and pulled up the hem of her white dress and exposed her sex, wet and uncovered, and he pressed his mouth to her honey pot, swirling his tongue around and around her clit, pressing it with the flat side of his tongue, and then, using the tip to write the alphabet.
“Oh, Brandon,” moaned Meredith. “That feel so good.”
Mere
dith twisted and turned in her bed as her body reacted to the sensations they felt from her subconscious as if the sensations were real, as if everything happening in the dream was happening in real life. To an onlooker, it would look as if Meredith was possessed, but her moans were of ecstasy, not terror like those of a spooky ghost.
Brandon used his fingers and opened Meredith’s lower lips while he played with her with his tongue, savoring every swirl of her honeypot as if was the inside of a pudding cup.
Meredith gripped onto Brandon’s head and pushed it further into the crevice between her thick thighs and she threw her own head back, arching her back. Brandon kept a firm hold of her thighs with his two firm arms, arms as firms as her thighs were soft, and he pressed himself into her further, going to town like a man at a watermelon eating contest at the Port Jameson Fourth of July extravaganza.
The tongue lashing she was receiving was enough to drive her wild, but to the point of ecstasy? Not quite...but as Brandon entered three fingers into her pussy, she couldn’t help herself. He found her magic button and all bets were off as she moaned his name allowed while the electric shock of sexual ecstasy rocked her body and sent wave after wave of pleasure through her ungrounded body.
This second orgasm left Meredith’s legs jelly, but it didn’t stop the dream from continuing, and through the night, her dream lover switched, back and forth, between Brandon and Scott, and then back to Brandon again. Meredith couldn’t choose between the two men in real life, and her subconscious wasn’t making it any easier. In her dream, she didn’t have to choose anything but pleasure, but in real life, well, the real world wasn’t exactly amenable to women sleeping around, and a woman with two lovers was enough to give people a heart attack. In dreams, anything goes, and Meredith savored these dreams the way she’d savored the werebears’ lips on her own.
***
The next morning, Meredith slept in for the first time in the longest time, letting her long dreams last into the morning until she was woken up by an errant sunbeam that had eked its way through the clouds and into the guestroom over the treetops of the forest behind the house.
