Between a Bear and a Hard Place(63)

“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.”

Those last words came from a trembling mouth and were punched with pauses, moans, and gasps.

All the tension built up inside her erupted with a wave of cool, then hot, then cool again. Her pulsing body tugged at Stone’s fingers, and pushed a little more juice out of herself and against Fury’s lips. He moaned deeply, and when he did, the vibration of his mouth pushed Claire to yet another level of helpless pleasure.

She squealed, she squirmed, she cried out their names. When it was all over – when the white-hot release faded into memory, Claire opened her eyes and realized that she was where she was always supposed to have been. As weird as it may sound, she’d never felt more comfortable, or more at peace.

As the three of them curled up into a big heap, and the wetness all over Claire’s thighs cooled in the gentle breeze going through the tent, she closed her eyes and counted her blessings.

Just as her consciousness began to slip, a jingling noise at the door caught Claire’s half-dreaming attention. Cleo jangled up, licked Claire right across the face, and then lapped at a childishly giggling Fury. Then she, too, joined the heap.

“Never in my life did I imagine this,” she said with a yawn. “But somehow it all makes sense.”





-19-


“How do dead phones buzz?”


-Claire


Time had ground down to such a horrible boredom, that when Claire’s long-dead burner phone buzzed, she thought it must have been a dream.

Stone rolled over, pushing her gently off of him as the pile of bear and mate dissolved. Fury rubbed his eyes. “Not even dawn,” he said with a big yawn. “Why are we up?”

The larger, more sullen bear didn’t say much of anything – just a grunt of assent as he looked at the phone, which had been out of power for at least a week – and stepped out of the canvas flap.

“What’s with him?” Claire asked. “And how is this thing ringing?”

She picked the handset off the ground and stared at it for a second. She felt Fury shrug beside her before he sighed heavily and tromped out after his co-alpha. Though it had been cold, there hadn’t been much snow lately – only enough to dust the stubbornly attached evergreen needles. A shiver crept through Claire, prickling her skin and making her wish for all those warm, fuzzy, comfortable winter coats she’d left behind when she left her former life. And then, for some reason, she started thinking about the hot wings and beer from trivia night, which she decided immediately that she missed even more than the jackets or sleeping in a bed.