Bear Your Teeth (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Shifter Romance) (7 page)

She lingered just a little with the cold metal between her legs, supporting her weight and chilling her through and through. The cold always thrilled her, the bracing chill of a coming winter storm was something Paprika always looked forward to, rather than dreaded. But today, she had other plans.

As soon as her feet hit the ground, she was running, and then seconds later when her soft, thick, coppery-red fur was full and luxurious, blanketing her in a grown-on full-length fur that didn’t require the death of any innocent woodland creatures, her run turned into more of a stride.

Her legs, already long and slender, folded up on themselves, her ears extended, and for a second, every sound in the forest converged on her. Shifting was always like this, no matter how many times she did it. The rush of sounds, the enveloping cocoon of smells and tastes that she couldn’t sense while in human form, flooded her lagomorph brain.

As she hopped and skipped, deeper and deeper into the woods, she went too low over a jutting root, which sent Henry into a vibrating fit. The pulsing, rotating, whirring engine warmed her belly but she wasn’t ready to stop, not just yet. She wanted to get to the place she always longed to visit when she had one of her attacks.

But then again, that pulsing would feel
really
good right about then.

She shook her head, clearing out the first wave of horn-dog desire, and continued on her way.

The woods, for their part, were still and calm. That wasn’t so strange, not for early October, and she appreciated the solitude, the quiet. Still though, something wasn’t quite right, she thought as she bounced over another branch and then crouched low to slide underneath a bunch of mushrooms growing out the trunk of a massive pine. When her belly scraped the ground that time, Henry flicked off, which was, being honest, vaguely disappointing.

Her legs were starting to burn, her ears starting to twitch. She loved how it felt to run like this – free and liberated from everything in the world – she loved how her muscles filled with blood and surged with power. She loved the peace and the...

Something in the distance cracked a stick. And then another.

Rika froze. Even if the residents of Cedar Falls weren’t going to hunt down and murder a shifter girl no matter how much they distrusted her kind, they were absolutely not above blasting a rabbit. And a weird colored one like her?

She turned back toward home, her worst fears confirmed. A pair of hounds, still on leash, had picked up her scent and were starting to tug at their master. That’s how she knew they weren’t shifters – they let themselves be leashed up. That’d never do for someone who didn’t want it.

There wasn’t much sound coming from the hunter which was bad – it meant that he knew what he was doing. Of course, the two bloodhounds could have told Paprika he was no amateur. He had the gun crooked over his forearm, probably loaded but he was too seasoned to wander around with it in firing position.

Good for him, bad for her.

She dug down just into the first layer of leaves. The humus and smell of decay would hide her from those super-sensitive noses, but not for long. She’d have to make a break for it sooner than later if she wanted a reasonable chance of getting out of it alive.

Of course there
was
the other option of just turning back into Paprika and presenting herself to this guy. That brought its own set of potential problems though. And anyway, she was starting to like this adventurous new side of herself she’d found. One of the hounds straightened. The trail of scent he found had turned hot.

“You see somethin’, Elmer?” the hunter asked his dog.

Well yeah, dumbass,
Rika thought.
I smell a rabbit, but she’s kinda weird, kinda like she’s got something made out of silicone around her neck.

Huffing a laugh, Paprika waited until both dogs had circled back around the other side of the hunter. Both of the dogs were probably good trackers, but it wasn’t anything to do with their personalities. Both animals looked slightly dopey, slightly confused. No way they’d catch her.

That’s the thing about shifters. They might be animals, they might take new shapes, but they didn’t
behave
like their shape shifting targets. A normal rabbit would have just panicked and ran, and gotten shot in the ass for his trouble.

Rika though? She had a plan.

The two dogs were beginning to snuffle and get excited. One of them hopped up on his back legs and then crashed back to earth with a very excited look on his face.
Just a little closer
, she thought.
Let ‘em off those leashes
.

This was nuts, she knew. Even more nuts than moving wherever the hell she was going with Thor, or than just up and moving to Jamesburg. Worst case with either of those, she ended up having to come back home. Wouldn’t have been the first time. With this guy thought? Worst case she ended up with a slug in her head, or her ass, or wherever he managed to hit.

Then again, going on adventures was fun, she’d decided in her long meditation and her short, punchy conversations with her sister. She’d never learn what her limits were if she never pushed them.

Closer,
she urged.
Come on you ugly shits, just a little closer.

The splotchy-coated dog on the left grew more and more excited until finally the cover-all-wearing hunter got the idea. “You got somethin’ boy? Go! Go get it! Catch me a fox!”

A fox? Yeah these shit-for-brains could probably catch a fox. But me? Not a damn chance.

As the two dogs bounded toward her, jowls, skin, and ears flopping all over the place, Paprika watched in silent astonishment at the sheer volume of saliva coming out of the two beasts. The splotchy one had so heavy a tendril that it stayed together when he ran until it whipped back over his head and across an eye.

Just a little closer
.

She could smell that distinctive musk that only hound dogs get. Well, hound dogs and a couple of guys she’d dated who she was fairly certain weren’t hounds.

They slowed, preferring to use stealth. This was always a really funny thing for an animal which was actually stealthy to watch, because even though humans can’t hear the plodding feet, every single other thing in the world can hear it clear as day.

Just a little...

Paprika could almost taste the mealy, kibble breath on her cheek. With a determined blast of speed she shot out of her little dugout cubby in one direction, and when she was sure the hounds were both on her tail, she jumped from the forest floor to a pine tree, then shoved herself backward off of it, charging headlong into the two gaping, slavering, derpy-looking maws.

“Get ‘er!” the hunter shouted.

No fuckin’ way,
Paprika thought with a smirk as she went flat on the ground, sliding across the leaves. She skidded directly between the two hounds who both turned to try and snatch her. Both of them snarled, then lunged, and then crashed directly into one another.

The look of surprise on the hunter’s face was pretty great, but even though the dogs were in a heap, he was still armed, and was cocking his rifle. Rika knew better than to try and out run a bullet, so she just kept right on, charging straight at the guy with the dumb looking straw hat.

He was quick though – real quick. In one smooth motion he clicked the barrel into place and cocked his shotgun. Rika was close, only about twenty feet away, but she was so, so fast.

Like a blur shooting over the leaves, she blasted toward her would-be murderer, and wondered vaguely what he’d do with her if he killed her? Turn her into a hat? Pair of boots? Part of a cloak? Stuff her and sew a second head on beside the first to try and sell to some sucker tourist as a wild, whacky tchotchke?

That thought made her giggle, but the intensity on the guy’s face as he trained the barrel on her was less amusing. Still, he wasn’t paying as much attention as he probably should have been.

“Gotcha now, sucker!” he shouted.

Oh yeah?

Rika scrunched her tiny black and pink nose up into an expression that would win the hearts of any little kid at a pet store looking at bunnies. And then with all the deftness of a pro baseball player, she stuck out one leg, slid straight between the wide stance of the hunter, and through.

With a hoot of surprise, the man pulled the trigger, shot a slug right into the forest floor, and got himself a face full of leaves as his gun’s kickback knocked him flat on his board-straight ass.

Dashing back toward her outcropping as fast as her long, slender feet could carry her, Paprika was satisfied that the hunter wouldn’t try again. And if he did, she could just figure out some other whacky escape. It took about four minutes of skimming over the ground before she noticed that Henry had started buzzing and whirring again, which got her first blushing and then giggling.

Up ahead, she saw that her little cave, an outcropping of rock and root that stretched out over the creek that ran through the forest and through the center of Cedar Falls about thirty miles downstream, gave her an instant feeling of well-being and safety.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she stretched out on the cool, time-worn wood and stone, and let her fur recede and her body return to human form. She wasn’t always a nudist, or hell, even immodest, really. She had a few hang-ups about this curve, or that one, or the way her boobs weren’t quite even, but out here in the woods where no one would ever find her?

This is where she felt at home. This is where she fit in.

She lay back, running her whirring friend up and down her bare body, and then between her legs. A soft groan escaped her lips, drowned out by the rush of water, as she pushed him inside and let yet another dentist fantasy carry her away.

Only, he wasn’t just a dentist, not when she imagined him the way he
really
was. She got a hint of it when they kissed, when the hair on his cheeks grew thicker and harder, but the thing she knew would happen that she could hardly wait to experience was that the
other
part of him were sure to grow too.

“Oh,” she whispered a moan, letting her little wand disappear between her folds with a slick, soft, warm sound. She pulled it back, then pushed again, a little deeper. “Oh yes,” she grabbed one breast with a cupped palm, pinching at her nipple until it was rock hard and standing up firm.

Every time a breeze blew through, she took another breath, inhaling the scents of the forest and the rocks and the water trickling gently beneath. Paprika, bare and open and without a care in the world, was lost in the sounds and smells and tastes of the world, and the gentle, but urgent buzzing between her legs.

“No need for that,” a familiar voice crooned.

“Son of a shit!” Rika jumped so high she almost fell off her perch. “How the hell do you keep showing up like this?”

“This is the first time I caught you naked,” Thor said. He had a smile – of course he did, that damn smile that slicked up Rika’s thighs and made her think things that no good girl ever thought. Admittedly, she wasn’t much of a good girl, but still, she
was
naked and playing with herself in the middle of the woods. And here he was.

And here
she
wasn’t making a single move to get away, not even a totally reasonable backing away motion, or getting up to possibly run. She was just lying there, entranced by the grin that, had she been wearing panties, would have got them
real
wet.

He took a step nearer. That’s when she finally looked away from his eyes to notice that, just like she imagined, the good doctor was indeed big everywhere. “It’d look weird if it was smaller,” he offered. “Bear and all.”

“No more jokes,” Paprika said, sitting up on her outcropping and setting Henry down beside herself.

“No,” Thor said, his voice a husky, lusty whisper. “I’m going to help you with that.”

“You’re... what?”

The huge bear crawled up onto Rika’s safe haven with more agility than she figured he had, and kissed the top of her left foot, then the side of her calf, right where her leg started to bulge a little.

A hot flush crept up from where his lips fluttered, and Paprika let her head fall backward on her shoulders as she drew a breath. “This is real?” she asked. “This is crazy.”

“Yes to both.”

A finger slid up one side of her sex and down the other, circling slowly, tickling her softest skin to life. She grabbed the finger and tried to push it between her folds, but Thor wasn’t having any of that. Not just yet.

He tisked his tongue against the back of his teeth and pulled his hand away, trailing soft, curling tickles down to Paprika’s knee. Pushing her leg in the air, a butterfly kiss on the back of her knee shot a hot surge to where his finger had just been. She closed her eyes, letting the pleasure wash from head to toe.

A gentle buzzing sound was the next thing she heard. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “That’s so good.”

“Hush,” Thor urged. “Lie back. Let me drive.”

As her vibrator circled one nipple, and her bear flicked his tongue over the other, letting him drive was the only thing she
could
do. She had enough strength to grab a handful of wavy, dark brown hair. She clenched her fist, and made him breathe a little harder. His hot, sweet breath sliding around her breast sent another chilling wave down her body.

A warm, almost hot palm cupped her sex, and Paprika spread her legs, hoping he’d take the hint. He pulsed two fingers against her, pressing hard on the tendons between her thighs. The sensation was something between a massage and masturbating, which... was probably the point.

A pleasured giggle escaped Paprika’s parted lips. A twinge of tightness gripped her stomach.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please let me taste.” Her words were halting and broken up by gasps, deep breaths, and even a lip biting or two. “Let me...”

Standing up and then kneeling beside her head, Thor slid the first of two thick, long, rough fingers inside her waiting sex. Rika opened her eyes wide, and then closed them as she purred her pleasure. Reaching out with groping fingers, she closed a fist on Thor. She rubbed him slowly, softly, feeling him lengthen and thicken in her hand. As she ran her tongue around his tip, he pushed deeper, curling two fingers then deep inside.