Bear Me Away (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Romance) (A Jamesburg Shifter Romance) (8 page)

Oh God,
she thought.
Why can’t I stop, why can’t I just get this out of my head?

The war she fought with herself was pointless. She’d fended him off this long, but for what? Why was she so worried about going to get coffee? Why couldn’t she just let herself finish one single, goddamn thing that she started?

The movie playing behind Elena’s eyelids turned to made up memories of his lips against hers, of her sucking at him, and tasting the salt from his sweat, when she kissed him back. He smiled and he tangled his fingers in her hair. His breath caressed her skin; he tugged her hair, forcing her head back before he sucked at her neck.

It was all right there, aching, filling her with desire that burned and prickled her skin.

“Well,” she whispered into her empty room. “If I can’t have the real thing, I may as well have...”

She tugged her lip into her mouth, biting softly with her pointed canine, and slid her left hand down her chest, lingering on her pebbled nipple. She imagined it was West’s hand, rough and hard from work, scratching tantalizingly across her chest. The miniscule hairs on Elena’s neck stood up as a rush of cold went down her back, followed by a wave of heat. The warmth spread down her belly, and moved inside her, warming her all the way to the core.

She pinched, gently, on her nipple, and then rotated her fingers, making the hairs on her chest stand up just like those on her neck.

“Tease me,” she moaned, arching her back into the pressure of her hand. “Pull me, kiss me, suck...”

Her voice trailed off into a whimper, desperate and hungry for a touch she convinced herself she couldn’t have. The first finger that disappeared under her soft, slightly wet panties, made Elena gasp softly. The second made her smile.

“More,” she whispered as she writhed under the pleasure. “Yes, yes, kiss me, please!”

Again she bit her lip, imagining it was West holding her lip hostage between his teeth in between kisses. He sucked at her lip, then swirled his tongue against hers before pulling away, driving his fingers deeper, and sucking at her neck.

Her skin was on fire. A hot, red flush crawled up her cheeks, and all the way down to where her fingers rotated inside her softest place. Her muscles tensed, and she paused momentarily to take a breath and prolong the ecstasy.

Breathing deeply, Elena opened her eyes in the darkness as a tear ran down her cheek.
He wants me
, she thought, almost pleading with her own mind.
He wants me, why can’t I just give in? Why can’t I let my guard down?

She swallowed, and pushed her fingers even deeper, dragging them against her front wall, and gasping at the hungry tug of her sex against her fingers. Her heart rushed, thumping inside her chest. Every beat was part of a rhythm that hypnotized her, took her away from her confusion and fear.

The wave she rode crashed against an imaginary beach, broke, and as it did, the pleasure coursing through Elena crested.

Clenching the sheet with her free hand, she gasped, ground her teeth, and then bit her lip hard enough for pain to mix with the pleasure between her legs, running through her belly. The two sensations swirled around each other as Elena writhed, imagining it was her huge bear coaxing her to the edge.

“Yes!” she cried out, into the darkness. “Yes! I can’t stop, I can’t... you’re making me—”

The yelped squeal, the groan, and then the hiss as she clenched and released every muscle in her body sent a shock of pleasure all the way from Elena’s curling toes, to her sweetly tickling scalp.

As her breathing slowed, and her core temperature fell to something approaching normal, she rolled over, and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex. She imagined it wasn’t just hers, but West’s too. She imagined his hands on her bare skin, his kiss on the back of her neck, his muscled body curled up behind hers.

She imagined her eyes closing, and sleep overwhelming her. Sleep, for Elena, was an elusive treasure. But that time? Right then? Just the imagined closeness to West, the fantasy of his love, was enough.

Before she knew it, Elena’s eyes drifted shut, her hand relaxed against the sheet and fell open.

Gentle snores filled the darkness.

*

T
he pale gray of pre-dawn met Elena’s eyes as they fluttered open.
That’s the longest I’ve slept in weeks
, she thought.
Maybe Oprah was right about a pre-sleep jostle being the best thing for a good night.
She snickered at herself for actually thinking in words that Nanny St. Claire used to use.

She rolled left, then right. The sheets were still a little wet from her sweat, a little sticky from her sex. Just the feeling of that dampness against her skin brought all those memories from the night before flooding back.
I have to get this guy out of my head
, she thought.
If I don’t, I’m going to have a heart attack, or a hernia, or... something
.

Beside her, Elena’s phone started to buzz. She shook off the cobwebs and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Paul replied, in a tone far too casual for – she looked at the time on the ceiling – five forty-six in the morning. “I’m not feeling so good.”

He followed his declaration with a groan so pitiful it would have made a mother weep. “Did you get shot?” she asked. “Sounds like you’re dying.”

He groaned again. She’d heard this before. Someone was feeling the after-effects of a very good night that led into a very bad morning. “Good night last night?”

“Nah,” he said, audibly rolling over and grunting. “Just woke up with a stomach bug or something.”

“Really?” she asked. “Stomach bug? You sure you and your buddy didn’t close down The Tavern and then eat a bunch of tacos from that truck? Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said. Somehow, just the fantasy of West, the idea she’d maybe decided she couldn’t actually fight herself anymore, took a little off her snark-laden edge. “So you gonna go in today?”

He paused, and gulped, swallowing something. Elena just rolled her eyes and smiled. A short cough later, he said that no, he wasn’t. “But remember you got that meeting with the cowboy today.”

Elena’s chest twisted into a knot. How had she forgotten that? Another case check-up with West was planned. She guessed she’d have a chance to try out her new resolve to stop being so guarded. “What do you mean you can’t make it?” Elena asked Paul. “Is this some kind of a set up? Are you trying to be cute?”

Paul groaned and made a sort of croaking sound. “Does this sound cute to you?” he asked before issuing a thick, hoarse cough. “I woke up at four this morning and started,” he trailed off for a second and made a gulping noise. “Anyway, it just wasn’t good. And you know I’d never leave you hanging like this, but—”

Elena’s phone beeped in her ear. Someone else was calling. “Hold on a second, someone’s buzzing in.” She took a quick glance. “Oh, it’s your cop buddy. Want me to tell him you’re too hung over to come to work, and that he has to talk to me?”

Paul laughed a little, and then groaned in pain. “Hangovers come with drinking. If they made me feel like this, I’d never touch another bottle. Anyway, I’ll talk at you later. Sorry again.”

“Feel better,” Elena said. “Seriously, get better. I need you.”

“Will do, I’ve got a day or two worth of Gatorade and saltines, I’ll probably live. I don’t want to come in and get you sick, too,” he said. For a second, Elena thought maybe his illness had brought out some sentimentality. “Someone’s gotta pay the bills,” he finished, banishing that thought.

“Yeah, yeah, get some rest,” she said, clicking over.

“Saints,” she said into the phone. “Private investigators with a... to hell with it. What’s up, Ralph? Paul’s out sick today, so—”

He snorted a laugh. “I’ll say he is. I’ve never seen anybody eat that many tacos. He got the really crazy ones, too, with the sour cream, guacamole and barbecue or something.”

“That son of a bitch,” she swore, shaking her head and smiling despite having to hold down the fort on her own. Of course, when you’re talking about shuffling three cheating mate cases and one actual real case, that’s still not all that much to deal with, but still it’s the thought that counts. “I knew it. Well anyway, you must be calling me for a reason.”

“You know those little shreds of paper? The ones from the tomato jars?”

“Yeah, of course, though I never did manage to make any sense of them,” Elena said. She grabbed a pen, and got ready to scribble something. She wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, but it seemed like a good time to be prepared to write. “Any leads?”

“Yes,” he said, and then trailed off. “Sort of.”

“How do you have a sort-of lead? Either you got something or you don’t.”

Ralph chuckled under his breath. “Well, the department’s official position is that we issued a citation for improper food handling, we call it a Violation C-208. Like when the guy at Applebee’s drops a riblet on the ground and then just sticks it back on the plate?”

She shuddered. “You should issue a citation to riblets for existing. Anyway, what does a food handling violation have to do with the case?”

And there it was, like a shot of lightning forking through the night sky. Every damn time she thought of the case, every time anyone mentioned it, Elena thought of the guy who hired her in the first place. The guy she needed worse than anything to get out of her head, but who just wouldn’t let go of her consciousness. She shook her head, trying to clear the stupid.

Luckily, Ralph started talking again before she could really lose herself in the jungle of longing. “It isn’t exactly what we found, rather who we fined. Uh, so to speak.”

Elena perked up. “Yeah?” She started scribbling a note, but didn’t have anything to write. “Well, are you gonna say anything else, or just leave me hanging?”

“It’s like you said – she’s a rabbit. A strange, albino rabbit, who is way twitchier than she needs to be. You’re looking for one Petunia Lewis. She works at the Cannery, though no one seems to remembering hiring her, and she hasn’t gotten a paycheck in... well, ever, actually. Anyway, when we were called, they had her in a back room, and had found her with a sack of little notes that she was sticking in the diced carrots.”

“That,” Elena said, screwing up her face and scratching her chin with the pen, “is possibly the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He snickered. “It’s about to get weirder.”

“How?” She asked.

“One of the notes? It said
“I’ll show her. I’ll show her for forcing the carrots down my throat. I’ll show her.”

“That’s a little intense,” Elena said. “But it’s a connection.”

“Intense is an understatement. But that’s what you’re dealing with. I don’t envy you, although I am morbidly curious exactly what she’s doing, and why she hates carrots so damn much.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said. She was chewing her pen cap, grinding her pointed teeth into the blue plastic. “There’s something going on here that’s got very little to do with carrots, and a lot more to do with,” she trailed off, losing her train of thought.

“With what?” Ralph asked.

Elena shook her head. “If I knew, I’d tell you. But something about this doesn’t check out.”

Her phone beeped in her ear, and she glanced briefly. West.

“There’s something going on under the covers here,” she said, her mind a million miles away.

“Covers? What covers?” Ralph asked.

There’s a Freudian slip I coulda lived without making.

“Buh, nothing,” she said, faking a laugh. “I’m doing laundry and I just put the sheets in, and – oh God! Gotta go, someone’s calling. Thanks Ralph!” She clicked off and immediately frowned at how enormous an idiot she’d made of herself, and all she’d seen was his number.

“He – hello?” Elena gulped, answering the call on the last ring before it went to voice mail. In a way she wished she waited, listened to his voice on the recording to steel her nerves. But who was she kidding? She wanted to hear West’s voice so bad it hurt like the hole after a splinter was pulled.

“Good to hear that voice,” he said. She could hear the smile behind his words. He had a way of speaking, his drawl deepened, his voice got more lackadaisical, when he grinned. “Tell me something I want to hear.”

Elena took a deep breath and considered laying a whopper on him.
Uh, how about I can’t stop thinking about you and last night instead of lying awake all night, I thought about you and had an orgasm so strong it put me to sleep?
She giggled under her breath, and then fought to regain composure by clearing her throat. “Well, we
do
have an appointment this morning. Are you calling to reschedule?”

She had no idea why that was her default question. It sounded like a dentist’s office. Next, she thought, she should tell him she’d have to charge twenty-five bucks if he missed a meeting with less than twenty-four hour notice.

“Can I be real honest with you?” he asked.

“You’re actually a serial killer and you’re going to turn me into a lampshade?”

He laughed, and loudly. “Well after that, what I have to say is gonna seem about a thousand times less creepy. I hope, anyway.”

West trailed off, and made the sort of noise someone does when they push their hat back on their head and whistle in exasperation. Elena felt a squiggle of excitement crawl down her stomach. She didn’t – couldn’t – speak.

“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “I got to thinking about you last night, and nothing else went through my head for hours. I tried planting things, I tried watching TV. I even tried whittling something.”

“Whittling?” Elena asked. “I think the bus to Mayberry left a half hour ago.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a laugh. “But I couldn’t. The only thing in my mind is you, Elena. Unless I see you, I’ll never get anything done. I have to see you.”

She gulped. This was it, she knew. He needed her, wanted her, as badly as she did him. She had to let him in, had to give up the pointless illusion of pushing him away forever and ever. Elena hopped off her bed, pulled on a shirt and walked to the front door. “I’ve been,” she started and then stopped herself with a sip of coffee. She only needed to spit out a few grounds.