Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (13 page)

“Atlas... you’re... Leota, he’s eating... your... uh...”

Jenga was just panicking. Atlas gobbled up the third teacup, and then took a bite out of the pot. Slowly, the zombie ground the intricate, beautiful pot in his massive jaws, and swallowed. Jenga’s lips began to tremble as he thought about how much he owed his witchy friend for her tea set.

He chanced a glance over at Leota, who was, to Jenga’s surprise, beaming.

“Why are you not madder than a possum in a hornet’s nest?” he asked.

Atlas burped.

“It works!” Leota said. She was positively bouncing from toe to toe. “The potion! It works!”

She grabbed Jenga’s hands and turned him in a rickety circle.

“Good!” he joined in, laughing and doing his best to hop from foot to foot. “I’m so happy for you! But... what is it? What worked? Your potion makes people like tea?”

Instead of answering, Leota just handed Jenga her notebook. He cleared his throat and squinted. “Paulina’s Properizing Potion – one dash will make even the naughtiest... Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “Who are you using this on?”

“Jasmine, of course,” Leota said as a grim smile stretched across her lips. “She’ll either behave... or I’ll
make
her behave. She’s well on her way to a life of lascivious promiscuity if I don’t help her!”

Her vile cackling filled the house, echoed through the woods outside. Jenga joined in, but he wasn’t really sure why – he just loved laughing.

Atlas took a big, healthy bite of the silver serving plate, chewed, swallowed, and let out another belch.

Down the road, in a very large tree nestled between Leota’s house and Jenga’s, Crazy Mary started laughing too. Hanging upside down from a branch that had pierced her top story window about two hundred years before, she just laughed and laughed.

She wasn’t quite sure why, but what did it matter? Mary was, after all, crazy.

––––––––

I
had just finished binge-watching season three of
Star Trek
and thinking quietly-out-loud to myself about how hot Jean-Luc Picard was when I got the sudden overwhelming urge to get a drink.

Not like going out to a bar – hell, it was almost ten-thirty at night, I’m not some kind of psychopath – but I just needed a
drink
.

Maybe it was the slightly uncomfortable fluttering sensation that Patrick Stewart put inside the deepest parts of me, or maybe it was that I hadn’t heard from Ash in over a week. I knew he was busy, that he was on the road and doing his fighting thing... but for some reason, I thought – more like wished and hoped – that he’d at least call or something.

“Jeez,” I chided myself as I poured an
extremely
healthy serving of Malbec and took the first soothing sip. “I sound like a love-sick freshman.” I took a second, and then a third, and before I knew it, that whole glass was gone.

“Why won’t he call me?” I fake whined, not able to keep from grinning at my own silliness. “I wonder if he thinks I have a weird mole. What if he doesn’t like me?”

I stared at the bottle, shrugged, and poured another one. The first sip tasted like wine, instead of Malbec. I was well on my way to drunk-town.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Henry said.

Jesus! I forgot she was here! I’m a lot worse off than I thought.

She patted me on the shoulder and grabbed her keys off the pegboard by the front door. Underneath us, Mrs. Whipplebottom, my landlady who also loved being my unwanted advice-giver, was vacuuming. She always vacuumed when she was trying to snoop on me. This was made funnier by the fact that in the three years I’d lived above her, the number of times I’d done anything worth snooping on was frighteningly close to zero. The one time I had, it was out in the woods.

That got me giggling, and blushing. Or maybe it was the wine hitting me. Who knows? Who cares? Both of them feel pretty good, especially when you haven’t eaten in six or seven hours.

“You’re a mess, Viola,” Henry said with a grin. “I don’t know the last time I saw you like this, all wiggly and silly.”

I shrugged. “Can’t help it,” I said. “No matter how much I try. He just... I don’t know. It sounds stupid to even say it, but he makes me feel like I’m a little kid again.”

“So I guess that whole thing where you were going to let him chase you, that didn’t pan out?” she asked.

“Hey now, do you see me following him around? I’ve played that game with Reid, with...” I shook my head. “Anyway, I’ve played that game. This one has to come to me. I made up my mind, and I’m sticking to it.”

“Say one thing for him,” Henry said. “He must know how to treat you. After Reid, I didn’t know if you’d ever be back to your bubbly, foxy, old self. The things he said, he...”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I felt the same way. I thought that particular hole was one I wasn’t ever gonna dig my way out of. I kinda just gave up, I guess.”

Henry grabbed my glass and took a swig. After a second of watching me, she let out a sigh. “That’s kind of the old adage, isn’t it? Love comes when you’re not looking? Something like that anyway.”

I snickered. “Yeah, I’m sure it does,” I said.

“Oh
shut up
!” Henry was laughing and turning red before I could react. “Anyway, you know what I mean. You were on that ridiculous date with that guy... what was his name?”

“Eustace,” I said. “Or, no... wait. That was the name you thought was his real name, but it wasn’t. He told me, but...”

Henry’s shoulders were shaking, she was working so hard at keeping in the laughter. It worked for about a half a second, and then we were both hooting, honking messes. About five seconds after that, Mrs. Whipplebottom started banging on her ceiling – my floor – with the butt end of her broom, and then we both just
lost it
.

“What the hell would I do without you?” I asked as soon as I was able to start breathing again. “Without the nights like this? I was about to go crazy without hearing from Ash—”

I clapped my hands over my mouth. “I just said that, didn’t I?”

“Ash?” she asked. “You’ve got
two
bears after you?”

I laughed. “No, no, that’s his actual name. The Crag bit is...”

“Oh is it that thing where bears have their real name, and then the nickname their family calls them and all that? It’s crazy how many rules there are around this place, and how we manage to all get along, more or less.”

“Ugh,” I said. “I can’t believe I did that. He made this big deal about trusting me enough to tell me his name, and then I go and get two glasses of wine—”

“Calling each of those things a single glass is a little bit of an understatement,” Henry said with a chuckle. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to say anything. To change the subject a little, what’s the ‘fox’ thing? Like bears have all their weird names.”

“You know the weird fox things we do – sleeping in our big, built up tunnel-looking beds.” I took another long drink. “What’s a turtle thing?”

“Oh, I have to think,” Henry said, slowly. She shrugged, also slowly. “Not a whole lot that you don’t know. There’s the thing about us falling over, though.”

“Huh?”

“You know, if one of us falls over on our back, another has to help?”

She stole my glass and took another swig. “I gotta go, had fun tonight. Especially when you forgot I was here and you started talking to yourself like a psycho. See you tomorrow?”

I smiled at her and shook my head. “Yeah, of course. Tomorrow’s Thursday right? So you have Duggan’s classes?”

She nodded. “That’s it. I also have some essays to grade for him, because I always have essays to grade for him.”

“Why
does
he assign so many?” I asked. I vaguely remembered taking some class with him a few years back that had more homework than all my other ones combined.

“Because he has me to grade them,” Henry said. “I’m about a thousand percent sure that’s the reason. Anyway, yep, class and then sitting in my office watching YouTube corgi videos and pretending I’m grading until someone asks if I want to go out and get a drink. After that I’ll go with them, whoever asks, and wish I didn’t because I won’t have gotten anything done.”

“That’s... oddly specific,” I said.

“It helps to have routines. Keeps me in line.” She slapped me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow? Get some rest too. You’re starting to get the boyfriend bags.”

“The what?”

“You know – the bags under your eyes. You get them whenever you stay up too much thinking about men. I may or may not know you really well, Viola.”

“Ha! Yeah, yeah, all right. I was going to polish this glass off and hit the hay.” I yawned and stretched my arms above my head. “Anyway, I don’t want a boyfriend. I just want something to take my mind off the other stuff going on. Ash is a nice guy, and—”

Henry pursed her lips in one of her patented ‘uh-huh, yeah right’ looks. I was getting those a lot lately. “Just be careful,” she said. “Don’t let yourself dream too hard about someone you don’t even know.”

I nodded as she turned and left. I listened to her footsteps quietly descend the stairs. Mrs. Whipplebottom stopped vacuuming. The world was completely at peace.

The world
outside
my heart, anyway.

Inside? Totally different story. I knew Henry was right – I knew I shouldn’t be falling so hard for this guy. But the way he made me feel, the warmth he put inside me, the fire that felt like it was burning to escape whenever I thought of him – those things were all real, and they were all things I’d never felt before. Not with Reid, not with Lex, not with anybody.

Hell, some of them were things I didn’t even realize I
could
feel. With a sigh, I double-gulped the wine and put the glass back on my faux granite countertop with a
thunk
. For a second, I thought about bed, and then I found myself pouring another glass. This one was a little less stout than the last. By the time I was done though, I had a pleasant whirring sensation behind my eyes whenever I closed them.

My cheeks were a little flushed and the world had slowed down. The booze took the edge off of missing the guy I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about, but luckily I hadn’t drunk enough to have a sulfite-induced hangover in the morning.

On the way back to my little makeshift box-bed that I love so much, I was almost fantasizing about how the soft, close walls were going to feel around my tired, achy body. That was the first time in a week that I thought about something other than my wayward bear. I climbed in, and pulled the curtain over my window.

There was a little red halo where the streetlight beat against my hand-sewed drape. I stared at it, hypnotizing myself and thinking about my mom, who made them with me back when I moved out. They were both so proud – my mom about me being able to sew and my dad about me just getting out on my own.

I was just so lucky about everything. No major tragedies, no big dramas in my life. Well, except where boys were concerned.

As I closed my eyes and let sleep caress me, my breathing slowed a little. I listened to myself breathe and imagined I wasn’t alone.

I constricted my fist around the blanket, and before I knew it, my other hand found its way down between my legs.

I squeezed my thighs, grinding my hand against my sweetest place.

“Let me hold you,” I imagined. In my thoughts, Ash’s voice was rich, warm leather. Gruff and hard, but soft underneath. “Let me do that for you. I want you to feel as good as you make me feel.”

A little gasp escaped my lips when I pushed a finger inside and rotated it slowly. Every inch of me that I touched quivered and trembled. Sliding my other hand up my chest, I cupped my breast and gave myself a pinch.

Biting my lip so I didn’t scream – I
really
didn’t need Mrs. Whipplebottom listening in to this – I ran my fingertip roughly over my stiffened nipple. In the next breath, I flattened the heel of my palm against my clit and pressed harder than before.

The tension building up inside me was almost too much.

“Pull my hair,” I wanted to whisper into Ash’s ear. “Pull it hard and kiss my neck and make me scream.”

I craned my neck, imagining my hair tangled around his fist.

Deeper, deeper, I pushed my finger. “So big,” I whispered into the darkness. “Give me more, give me more, please! Bite me, scratch me, give me everything!”

Pinching myself harder, I twisted my nipple between my fingers and shoved a second finger in beside the first. Two of mine were maybe – maybe – the size of one of his. But I was sure that nothing would match the feeling of
him
inside me. That huge thickness I’d felt swell against me in the woods, that I’d wanted but that he denied me.

“Please,” I whispered again, touching myself as deeply as I could and grinding my palm against my button. “Please don’t make me wait anymore. You caught your fox, Ash, don’t make her wait.”

Slowly, I pushed a third finger between my legs, into my sex. I couldn’t hold my pleasure anymore, and let out a slow, trembling groan.

In my imagination, I was pushed up against something rough – a wall, a tree, it didn’t matter – and he was slowly stretching himself into me. With every inch deeper he went, it was harder for me to breathe until finally the fire between my legs consumed me completely.

My whole world slowly became a writhing, sweating, desperate fantasy of a man I’d met three times. I didn’t care. It was so pure, so perfect. In my heart I knew that no matter how crazy it was, no matter how little sense it made, this was right.

I bit my lip again, but not to bother trying to stop my climax or my moaning. I bit my lip imagining that it was Ash biting me.

Trembling, I brought my fingers up and swirled my tongue around them, then gave myself one last twisting, wrenching pinch. The mixture of burning pain and sweet release that snaked down my body almost took my breath.

An involuntary spasm coursed through me, making my back arch. I dug my fingers as deep as I could manage. My whole body went tense. I clenched every muscle I knew how to clench. I didn’t want to give up, to give in. I wanted this feeling to last as long as it possibly could.