Two Bears are Better Than One (Alpha Werebear Romance) (Broken Pine Bears Book 1) (8 page)

She swallowed the taste of bile as it crept up her throat with a second, then a third, impact. Whatever was out there wanted her fiercely, but not in the way she wanted Rogue.

For a second, she wondered
why
it wanted her. Wondered why all of this was happening. She was just Jill, just a dorky scientist who was too tall for most guys and not coordinated enough to play basketball very well.

Thunk!

And why wasn’t that thing trying to come through the window?

She shook her head, focusing. Questions didn’t matter right then, neither did doubts or anything else. Survival was all that mattered. Another slam sounded, the door began to creak. There wasn’t much time left, Jill knew.

If it breaks the door, I’m gonna be real screwed. Not much way to get new hinges out here.

She stood, approaching the door slowly, measuring her steps. She forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, consciously keeping her heart from racing. Sweat beaded on Jill’s temples, ran down the sides of her face where her lover’s fingertips had been only minutes before.

She swallowed her terror, and reached for the doorknob. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she focused her attention to a laser pinpoint.

With her hand on the door’s handle, she waited, listening for the next crunch. From here, she could hear the claws outside, scraping against the ground, like a dog digging after a half-buried bone.

“Come on you son of a bitch,” she whispered. “One more time, just come at the door one more time.”

She gripped the pistol, squeezed the handle with her thumb on the deadbolt’s latch. “Come on...”

The paws scrabbled, the beast charged. A split second later, another
thunk!
met her ears. In one smooth motion, Jill flipped open the lock, swung open the door and grabbed the gun with both hands. Her eyes narrowed, she pointed the revolver straight at the middle of the gray, fur-covered half-monster, half-man.

He lunged, diving straight at her.

She squeezed the trigger.

The entire thing took barely more time than a breath, but for Jill, it extended into eternity, like being pulled through the middle of a black hole and stretched out into space.

Every single action of the gun’s firing filled her mind. The click of the hammer, the sound of metal on metal, the blast of the exploding bullet, even the sound of the hunk of silver erupting from the barrel, all sounded plain as day.

The only thing she blocked out was the noise the creature made when the bullet hit him square in the chest.

Right before her eyes, the wolf stood on its back legs. They started flexing and twisting, as the monster lurched back and forth. Backing away, Jill couldn’t tear her eyes away. The wolf made a screeching sound, then a gurgling one, and when he finally fell to the ground in a heap, half his body was vaguely human.

Trembling, she sat on the floor, scooting backward until she felt her bed against her back. Not for a second did she take the shaking gun barrel off the dead wolf – at least, not until the body began dissolving.

A sizzling sound – and the smell of burning hair and cooking meat – hit her, and moments later, where once there was a huge, dead werewolf was only a pile of fur and bones. Her bullet was lodged into the back of the ribcage that lay on the rough wood floor.

“Jill!” she heard. The voice was hollow and sounded distant, though the man speaking it was right in the doorway. She looked up at him, unable for a moment to recognize the face.

“I... shot it,” she said. “It was beating on the door and I shot—”

“You did what you had to do.” Rogue crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. The fur on his massive forearm receded as Jill buried her face in his chest.

He kissed her fiercely, running his thumbs down either side of her face to wipe away the tears. “You’re fearless,” Rogue said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, as soon as Jill stopped shaking quite so much.

She let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know where you get fearless from me shaking like a terrified squirrel,” she said. “I’ve never actually shot anything before, I—”

“You ended a frenzy,” Rogue cut in. “You stopped the wolves from getting whipped up into a blood-fed rage. My brother, King, we were in the woods, watching them and waiting. We can take five or ten of the wolves each, but an entire pack? Not a chance.”

“So I saved...?”

He nodded, slowly and solemnly. “The two of us, our cubs, perhaps. It’s hard to tell what lupines are going to do when they get worked up like that.”

Jill shook her head. “I thought they were,” she swallowed. “Full moons, or something? I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this.”

A surge of fear, then anger at herself for being afraid, and then at Rogue for not being a normal bear, ripped through Jill. She pushed away from him, though he held her at arms’ length. “You’re not supposed to exist!” she said. “None of you are! None of this is! You’re supposed to be a bunch of bears that wander around the woods, eat berries, and I’m supposed to watch you and—”

Her mark burning stopped Jill’s tirade short.

“We
do
do those things,” Rogue said in his quietly powerful way. He regarded her cautiously, like he was trying to figure out the best way to say something that was rolling around in his mind. For a long moment though, the two of them just watched one another.

Jill chewed her lip, like she always did when she couldn’t think of anything else to do with herself.

“Have you never wondered about the mark on your chest?” he finally asked. “The one I know you feel burning? We both have them too. You’ve never—”

He said we
, she thought.
We.

“You said she—” Another voice, very similar to Rogue’s, but slightly deeper and calmer, broke the silence.

“Who is—” Jill turned to the left, toward the door, as someone she knew, but couldn’t place, stepped through. He too was nearly naked. Huge, muscled thighs flexed every time he moved. Jill felt her mouth fall open, but couldn’t do anything aside from stare.

She shook her head. She knew this man, just like she’d known Rogue.

“You’re...”

Running his hand over his wavy, black hair, King stared back. “King,” he said simply. “My brother told me he’d found you. I don’t understand how this is possible, though.”

Jill scoffed. “
You
don’t? The giant, magically transforming bear-man doesn’t understand how
I
am possible? Did I just step into la-la land?”

“No,” King said. “I don’t know where that is, but it isn’t here.”

He and Rogue exchanged a glance. “I don’t know either,” Rogue said. “Is that like Virginia?”

A smile crept across Jill’s taut lips. That was the first time she realized she’d pulled them into a line. Just that instant of levity relaxed her enough to let emotions
other
than fear and anger come through. “It’s just an expression,” she said.

She laughed for a moment, then she smiled again, and then before she knew it, a tear was rolling down her cheek followed by another and another.

“This
is
real, isn’t it? I’m not going to wake up from this like it’s one of my dreams?”

Rogue stroked her cheek. His hands were quickly joined by one of King’s, pressed flat on Jill’s back. The heat from his palm burned through her shirt, warming her skin. “But she’s a human,” he said. “This can’t be right. Can it?”

The shorter, more muscled Rogue, turned his face to the other bear, then back to Jill. “Don’t you feel it?” he asked the other man. “When you look at her, don’t you feel your mark burning? When I kiss her, when I taste her lips,” he paused to do just that. She felt him warm her to the core, and then when he pulled back, immediately chased him for another.

“When I taste her, when I smell her, I can’t explain my emotions,” he said. “All I know is that I haven’t felt this since
they
were taken.”

Rogue’s voice had a strange down-turn when he spoke. King cocked an eyebrow, and Jill noticed that even with his skepticism, he hadn’t taken his hand away. “I,” he began, then trailed off.

“What?” Jill urged him. “If you’re going to barge in here and tell me I shouldn’t exist, you can at least finish a sentence every now and then.”

King turned to her, confusion on his face. “She certainly reminds me of our last mate,” he said to Rogue.

“I
am
right here,” Jill said, pinching him hard enough to get a reaction. “You can use my name instead of talking like I’m livestock.”

It was King’s turn to smile. “I don’t understand this,” he said, “but you
are
right. She – Jill,” he said, catching himself. “She makes me feel like I’ve not for a long, long time. But Jill,” he turned to her. “You’re human.”

Slowly, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad we’ve established that. And you are a giant magical bear who isn’t supposed to exist.”

“We do tend to stay to ourselves,” Rogue said. “But I think he’s referring more to the difficulty you’re going to have in delivering our children.”

He said that with such plainness, with such complete matter-of-factness, that it took a second before Jill actually realized what he’d said. “I met you a week ago and you three minutes ago,” she said, looking at King, “and you’re already talking about babies?”

“Cubs,” King corrected, helpfully.

“Right, yeah, cubs. I mean, don’t you think that’s a little forward?”

Rogue obviously got the joke, but King stood there, shaking his head. “I’m not sure why? We’re fated to be together, why would it be strange for—”

“Ah,” Rogue patted the other bear on the shoulder. “I think maybe this is one of those times where me being worldlier than you is a very good thing. Brother, I say this as gently as I can, but I think that she might be joking.”

King furrowed his brow and shook his head.

How can anyone be this serious without having an embolism?

“But the joke,” he said. “It wasn’t funny.”

For a moment, the three of them sat in silence before King broke it with a loud, single laugh that sounded more like a cannon going off. “You see?” he asked. “I pretended like I didn’t understand the joke, and then when I fooled the two of you, I said that I did, but that it wasn’t very funny.”

Rogue smiled an easy half-grin, and began nodding slowly. “Sure you did, sure,” he said. “I’m sure that’s exactly what happened.”

The two of them turned their attention back to Jill, who was still in more than a little shock. She let her arm flop limply down.

“Oops,” she said, as she squeezed where it landed, and realized what she had her hand around. King swelled larger in her palm, his shape apparent through the flimsy fabric covering he wore. “Sorry, I—”

Rogue silenced her with a kiss that forced her head backward against King’s chest.

The intensity, the power, with which terror had gripped Jill when the wolf was baring down on her melted away, replaced by a longing, a yearning, that was just as hard to swallow. “I want,” she whispered, then paused to gasp as a hand – she didn’t know whose – massaged between her legs, against the soft denim of her old jeans.

“What is it?” Rogue whispered as he kissed her neck.

“What do you want?” King asked, pulsing the fingers she just realized were his against her sex. “Tell me anything at all.”

Jill felt her mouth fall open again, but this time it was to draw in a hissing breath. “I want... this,” she whispered. “I want you, just like in the dreams.”

Rogue tilted her head backward with another ravishing kiss, and then nibbled on her chest. He grabbed her shirt and yanked the collar, popping the top two buttons off, sending them skittering to the ground.

His neck sucking kiss was halfway down her breast. He wrestled her bra off, ripping it slightly, and the kiss afterward swirled slowly around her nipple before he took her nib in his mouth.

She took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of these two massive creatures, as the cock in her hand swelled harder. Jill reached out with her other hand and found Rogue’s thigh. He adjusted his position, leading her hand to his bulge.

Her breath quickening, Jill tried to reach inside Rogue’s jeans, or underneath King’s strange garment, but instead found herself being moved and then laid backwards on the floor. “You’re big for a human,” King said. “But for a bear?” He smiled and kissed her foot, then slid a hand up her leg, before unbuttoning her jeans and sliding them off, over the gentle curve of her hips.

She tried to open her mouth and form some sort of reply, but before she could manage, a mouth opened around her, a tongue slid along her opening, warming her through the soft cotton of her panties.

“Her smell, brother,” Rogue said in a detached, intoxicated sort of way. He lowered himself between her legs, and inhaled her deeply. “She makes me feel things I’ve never felt before. She makes me burn, makes me ache.”

“She feels as good as she smells,” King whispered. “And she tastes...” he paused. Jill arched her back as a tongue slid down one side of her, and back up. She gasped when a finger pushed between her folds.

He groaned a long, low, rumbling groan that vibrated Jill to the core of her being. Delicious waves lapped up her stomach, raising a hot flush as they went. Rogue kissed her belly softly, then nibbled again at her breast before sucking her nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around her sweetly aching nib, and pushing a finger inside her, right alongside King’s.

Jill threw her head back, gasping at first, and then letting the attention, the pleasure, carry her away. She spread her legs, and took handfuls of both men’s hair, grinding both of them deeper.

Rogue’s tongue circled her clit, then flicked over the top. King sucked eagerly, harder than before. His hunger puckered her nipples, and before she knew it, the waves sliding over her body turned tight.

“Oh... oh God!” Jill gasped. “I can’t believe this, I’m... you’re making me.”

Another groan escaped King’s lips, as he and Rogue curled their fingers inside her.

“Squeeze,” she whispered. “Bite, squeeze, yes!”