Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) (21 page)

Claire shrugged. “Maybe they’re just patrolling? Maybe they’re starting to get desperate?”

“That would actually make sense,” Stone said in his deep, super-serious voice. “They’re starting to regret letting us go. They’re starting to worry – what
if
we weren’t meant to get so far away? What if we managed to accidentally escape a trap? It’s worth considering.”

“How does that affect us?” Fury asked. “Suddenly we have some sort of value to Eckert and the rest? Suddenly we’re not just biding our time running from one place to the next?”

But then all the activity came to a screeching halt just as suddenly as it had begun. The woods fell silent, the birds started chirping, and all was well. Except for something that Claire only happened to catch out of the corner of her left eye – which happened to be her weaker one by far. She noticed that when she looked at Stone, not only was he ever so slightly paler than he had been in her recent memory, he was also kind of... clammy looking?

And my mark isn’t burning. The mate mark isn’t tingling. That’s gotta mean something, right? I mean, that’s how we feel each other, that’s how we know that I’m meant for a Broken Pine bear instead of a Four Sixes bear, or whatever.

She made a quick mental note to ask Fury what could cause the sudden lack of tingly feelings in her chest. The funny thing was that she’d grown so used to the sensation that she hardly noticed it at all anymore, except, like right then, when she didn’t feel it. But, magical crests and chest-marks notwithstanding, something was definitely not right with the taller of her mates.

“You okay?” she asked, standing up and poking Stone with her bare toe. On the one hand—foot—whatever, she kind of hated how Jane of the Jungle she’d become. On the other though, she felt more confident than she had in her entire life, bare feet or no. Three months ago she would have been paranoid as all hell about pinworms, or this sort of tick or that sort. That transition was another she’d not noticed until it was complete.

Sorta like, you know, turning into a bear. Thinking back about it, she wasn’t sure which one was more traumatic and less like her: getting used to being a were-creature, or getting over ticks. Probably the ticks.

Yeah. Definitely,
definitely
the ticks.

Stone, she realized, still hadn’t responded to her question even though she’d been prodding him with her toe for about thirty seconds. Usually he was fairly quick to irritate, either he had been replaced by a vastly more patient clone, or something really
was
wrong.

“Stone? Everything okay?” she asked again. That time when she kicked at him, he jolted slightly, like he’d been dozing in front of a TV and suddenly awakened by a commercial that was way too loud. “You seem kinda out of it.”

He looked up at her, that one green eye and the one gold one twinkling in the midday sun, but as she studied his face, something just seemed
off
. And it wasn’t the clamminess or the way he was staring at her, it was something very difficult to quantify, but something that she definitely felt.

“Yeah,” he finally said. His voice was hollow to the point that she hardly recognized he’d spoken. He’d never been one for verbosity, but this was ridiculous even for Captain Serious.

“Yeah what? Yeah something’s wrong or yeah everything is okay?”

Again, he sat there with his lips pooched out a bit, looking every bit the dejected, grumpy bear.
But he’s never been clammy before. That’s...

“Stone!” it was Fury calling from past the clearing, out in the direction of the pup tent they’d been carrying around and living in for the last while. The tent was one of the better ideas Claire had on one of their trips into town to get more dog food, replace broken phones, get new batteries, things like that.

Rogue had gone off in that direction earlier to hunt, but as winter set in, the hunting became tougher to manage. When the other bear didn’t respond, Fury whistled with two fingers stuck in his mouth. It produced a sound so piercing and awful that any referee in the history of sports would have been jealous.

Stone just sat there, like his namesake.

With growing concern, Claire crouched down beside him – another skill she’d picked up recently, the flat-footed squat – and felt his forehead.
Blech, so clammy and moist it feels like the slick cobbles on Bourbon Street. But no fever, or at least if there is one it isn’t bad.

“Just thinking,” Stone announced.

He wasn’t much for non sequiturs unless they happened to be jokes about his co-alpha.

“Right, you gonna expand on that, Siddhartha?” she asked. Herman Hesse would have been proud of the way the bear just stared blankly into space. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

Off in the distance, she heard Fury grumble something about the only one who does any work, which slightly offended her, before she remembered he actually had cut most of the firewood and done a good bit of the hunting.
Come to think of it, Stone hasn’t really been the same ever since we got back together.

“Hey,” she said again, stroking his arm gently. “Did you see something back at the lab that upset you? You seem haunted. Aside from the clammy bit.”

She flattened her hand on his cool shoulder, which he promptly pulled away. “No,” he stated flatly. “Yes, maybe. I can’t remember. I don’t know.”

“See something,” he grumbled, before laughing under his breath. “See something. See something. See? Something?”

It was all very strange, and all barely audible, but he just went right on grumbling and grousing, mostly repeating the same disgruntled phrase, but every now and then he’d sprinkle it with some new word or other. If the gibbering weren’t enough, he started swaying a bit. When Claire grabbed his shoulder again in a gripping moment of panic, he looked up at her, confused.

He was back to normal.

All at once, his skin was the normal golden-tan, his eyes twinkled like always, and he was most notably not in any way slick to the touch. “You okay?” she asked again, having just witnessed something she couldn’t, in any way, explain.

“Yeah,” he said with a slight smile. “Why wouldn’t I be? Something going on?”

“I—no,” Claire cut herself off. She decided if there
was
something amiss, there wasn’t any reason to prod a tiger. And if there wasn’t, then she shouldn’t be such a damn cowardly weirdo all the time. “You just looked tired, is all.”

That’s a good enough lie, I guess
.

He shrugged. “Guess so. Winter coming in, hunting gets bad. Gotta get everything ready if we’re going to burrow down and hold out until spring.”

Hold out until spring
. It hit her in the stomach, a fist made out of a ton of bricks. “We’re staying?” she asked, slightly stunned, though not sure why – this wasn’t the first they’d talked of a long winter out here in the woods. “Why can’t we go back? Eckert’s alive, no one’s chasing us, can’t we please just go back to civilization? Cleo needs a visit to the groomer like nobody’s business.”

Stone climbed to his feet, muscled quadriceps flexing under Claire’s fingertips. He turned to face her. His eyes burning, his cheekbones somehow more picturesque and perfect than she remembered, Stone grabbed her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilted back her head, and tasted her lips.

As she looked into those flaming, green and gold eyes, she was
sure
it really was Stone. Whatever clamminess had been around was gone. The cloudy, confused look on his face had vanished and all that was left were those beautiful cheekbones, that golden-bronze skin and the stubble that seemed to always be just the right length.

He kissed her again, the power behind it forcing Claire’s head back against the grass and pine needle mat that they’d build to use for a bed. She arched her back, pushing her hips upward against her bear lover’s muscled stomach and let out a soft, quavering trill.

“I was wondering when this hot box would boil over.”

Fury stepped through the flap of their old, green canvas, army-issue tent and dropped a bundle of logs unceremoniously on the floor. Before the dust cloud settled, he was ripping his clothes off with a ferocity that almost frightened Claire.

Almost.

She welcomed him with spread fingers that enveloped his calf muscle as soon as he was close enough. Immediately, the heat from his skin burned through Claire’s hand, coursing up her arm and prickling her skin all the way to her neck. Fury crouched and brushed the back of his hand against Claire’s soft, full cheek. Even with his incredible strength, he was so gentle in his touch.

“I can’t believe how softly you touch me,” she whispered as one of Stone’s hands slid down the front of her shirt, unbuttoning it on the way down. “I expected a lot more roaring and hair tossing,” she giggled. “Maybe a dominance posturing or two, but certainly not soft touches and, oh,” Claire gasped lightly as first Fury, and then Stone, flitted butterfly kisses on her neck. She let out another hot, breathy groan when Fury ran his lips along her then-bare collarbones and kissed between her breasts.

With each kiss, he spread his lips, tasted her skin with the tip of his tongue, and then sucked gently.

“Yeah, really didn’t expect... God almighty that feels good,” Claire whispered. She ran her fingers through the thick, black mane on Fury’s head, and then reached for Stone’s. His hair was finer between her fingers, but it was just as voluminous and wonderful to get lost in. He leaned close to kiss her again, and she interrupted him to nuzzle against the side of his head and inhale a lungful of the natural scent he carried.

That mixture of work, man, and musk sent a chill, then a wave of warmth through Claire’s body.

Stone adjusted his position, turning himself and incidentally let his naked thickness brush against her leg. Without a second thought, Claire stuck out a hand and wrapped her fingers as far around him as she could – which was about three-quarters of the way. A prickly heat gathered on her cheeks and the back of her neck, but when both of them stood, and Fury stripped off the jeans he’d grown to love, she stopped worrying so much about embarrassment.

“How have we never done this before?” she asked, slightly awestruck. “We’ve been out here longer than it took me to fall for Jonathan Stapleton at senior year Chemistry camp.”

The two bears exchanged a quick glance, then a shrug. With him standing up, Stone looked even bigger, somehow, in Claire’s hand. She gave him a squeeze, then a stroke with a little flick of her wrist. Unexpectedly, he took hold of her wrist in his rough, callused hand. “Not yet,” he whispered before kneeling and kissing the inside of her wrist and then her elbow.

“Relax,” Fury said with one of his easy smiles. He sniffed the air and closed his eyes, relishing whatever he smelled. “Your scent, it’s... I can feel it in my chest, making my muscles tight, making me feel...”

Instead of speaking anymore, he unbuttoned the top of Claire’s jeans.

“Like an animal,” he finally finished, kissing on the outside of her panties as he unzipped her fly. “Like a wild, uncontrollable animal.” When he looked back up at her, his lips leaving a hot trail on her panties that mixed with her eager sex in the air, his eyes really
were
more feral than they were before.

He opened his mouth, closing his jaws around the sweet ache between Claire’s legs. He pushed the tip of his tongue against the cotton covering her slit, forcing the fabric between her folds. She threw her head back, awash in pleasure, as goosebumps covered her chest. With her nipples pebbled, Stone kissed the hollow of her throat, and followed the line down to the front of Claire’s bra.

“Oh wow,” she breathed, before biting her lip. “Oh that’s... so good, so good...”

“With everything that’s been happening,” Fury said, his breath warming Claire’s sweetest place, “we haven’t had time to do the things we should have been doing all along. This is one of those things. Taking care of you, giving you what you need. That’s what we do for our mate.”

“Mate?” Claire half-said and half-moaned. “I think I like the sound of that.”

Shoving her panties aside with a hungry growl, Fury slid his tongue up one side of her, and then down her center. He lingered over her clit. At first he massaged slowly, carefully, and when she started pushing her hips against his face, he grabbed her hard and opened his mouth around her, sucking and flicking.

“Unnnh... oh yes, yes, yes,” Claire hissed, grasping his hair and shoving her sex into his mouth. “Bite me, just a little.”

When he did, she let out a long, rumbling growl. The hair on the back of Claire’s neck, that had been standing up straight since Stone first kissed her, was growing.

“Am I... am I changing?”

Claire looked at one of her hands that was tangled in Fury’s hair, and saw that her nails were a little more claw-like.

“It happens,” Fury said. “Times when we lose control? We go bear.”

As if to punctuate that with an example, Stone slid two fingers inside Claire’s sweetly aching sex. She gasped, then growled. Fury licked faster, sucking at her clit and nibbling gently. Stone turned his fingers in slow, teasing rotations. When she hissed her pleasure, he hooked them upward, and a sizzling wave of heat stoked her core.

She couldn’t do anything except lay back against the mat, and lift her hips, hoping to give them even deeper access.

Pulling a nose full of air, Claire realized that her senses were more alive than usual. Sensations were a thousand times more intense. When her muscles went tight, preceding her climax, her entire body went rigid for just a moment.

“Yes!” she squeaked. “Oh my God yes! I’m... don’t stop!”

She didn’t need to worry about that.

Fury’s tongue milked a guttural, desperate sound from Claire’s lips. Stone’s churning fingers coaxed her to begin wildly shaking.

“Let go,” Fury whispered. She could smell her juice on his lips when he spoke. “Just let go. Trust us to protect you.”

“Like,” she swallowed hard and bit her lip for a second to stave off her orgasm for as long as she could. “Like I have any choice.”