Bear With Me (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) Read online

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Men?”

  “Yup!” she said, triumph in her voice. “You might know a hell of a lot more about the world, Lyle, but boys, I know. And if one of them is making grumpy Lilah this happy, then he’s something special. Oh, and also, when – notice I didn’t say if – this works out? That little cub is gonna be the cutest thing in the world when she climbs all over you. Although you might watch out.”

  “Yeah? For what?” I was beaming, even though I had to be up in five hours.

  “Getting crushed next time captain Amazing-tongue gets on you. Bears are a hell of a lot bigger than raccoons, Lilah.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I never thought about it before, but that’s part of what I like so much. Damn if he isn’t big.”

  She spit something – whatever she was drinking. “What?” I asked innocently. “I’m talking about his arms. They’re huge.”

  “Oh-kay then,” Dezzy said. “That’s wonderful. Right-o, that’s just awesome. Monsoon season, huh?”

  “It’ll stop eventually,” I said. “But for now? Definitely monsoon season.”

  *

  Laying back against one of the eight pillows that I used to turn my bed into a nest, I shot a glance at my ancient clock radio one last time before closing my eyes. Almost half-past four.

  I had an early morning tomorrow, relatively speaking, though I also had a bunch of stuff to do to get ready for another gallery showing as soon as I dropped the musketeers off at school. Mentally, I started making a list of everything that needed doing, but as soon as I got to the part about making a list of the paintings I wanted to sell and the ones I wanted to save, something much bigger and much more interesting flooded my mind.

  A cool breeze, followed by the scent of oncoming rain, flowed through my open window and caressed my senses. The soft gust slid down my body, prickling my nipples as I lay there naked with the sheet only pulled halfway up, right under my bellybutton.

  This was one reason I never had a roommate. I couldn’t get used to the idea of sleeping naked with anyone else in my apartment, but I also would never stop sleeping like this. Life is just a series of compromises, taking what you can and giving up what you have to give up.

  But nudie sleeping? Nope, that’s the one thing someone would have to pry out of my cold, dead fingers. Charlton Heston can have his guns, I want my naked sleep.

  I bet Rex wouldn’t mind.

  Rex.

  Just thinking of his name made the chill running down my chest feel warmer.

  “Really not what I need right now,” I said. “Or maybe... it’s exactly what I need.”

  I slid one hand down my chest, over my belly, and between my legs. Tracing my fingertip up one side of me, then down the other, I imagined it was Rex’s finger, the way he did earlier. So slow that it was almost a game.

  Warmth crept out of my sex, as a hot flush went down my neck. I squeezed one breast gently, letting my thumb slide over my stiffened nipple. Taking my hand off for just a second, I put two fingers in my mouth and ran my tongue between them. Somehow, the scent of Rex’s cologne was still on them, just barely. No doubt I’d never have smelled it without my raccoon nose, but even the bare hint of him was enough to make my warm wetness turn to wet heat.

  Back down, my hand went, cupping my breast. I encircled my nib with the two wet fingers, and pinched – slowly at first, then faster.

  “Yes,” I moaned softly. “Yes, just like that.”

  Images of my bear lover putting his fingers, soaked with my juice, inside me danced in my head. Before I knew it, I was swimming with the pleasure, floating along a warm, patient river.

  I eased two, then three, fingers inside and turned them just like he’d done.

  Sucking a deep breath, I could still smell him a little bit on my skin, his sweat and his musk filling my nose. I grinded my fingers harder, deeper in, and settled my palm on my clit. With each push, I imagined his face, and with each pull, I ached to have him back.

  The hand on my breast trembled, and my mouth fell open slightly. My lips shook as I hooked my fingers deep and dragged them out. I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming, but when I dug my canines in, the little surge of electric pain made me gasp anyway.

  Harder I squeezed, pinching my sweetly aching nipple as hard as I could.

  Another gasp, hotter and shorter than the one before, took me.

  Warmth slid from my neck to my sex, and then all the way down my bare legs. Goosebumps quickly followed.

  “Oh,” I groaned. “Oh God, Rex, yes... yes...” my voice trailed off in a hiss as I pushed my fingers deeper, wishing they were him.

  His heavy thickness swelling inside me filled my imagination. His thickly muscled chest, and the way our skin stuck together just a little as our sex and sweat mixed between us sent a shock up my back.

  “Harder,” I whispered. “Don’t stop... don’t ever... ever...”

  In my mind, I could see his burning eyes, devouring my body, watching my face for a sign to tell him what he should do. I dreamed of dragging my nails down his back and feeling the hair come out of his arms and his chest and rub against me.

  Then I imagined him yanking me up off the bed and slamming me backwards against the wall. The prickly texture scraping my back raw, but instead of hurting, it just made me burn hotter to have him. To have all of him.

  In my mind he pushed his cock into me, wrestling it deeper and deeper, and in reality I pushed my fingers as deep as they’d go. I let out a quailing groan and took the hand from my breast, dragging my fingernails from my neck to my belly, like it was Rex scratching me with his teeth as he pushed against me.

  I was helpless.

  Completely, totally, uselessly helpless.

  Spreading my legs out wide, I grinded my palm hard against my button. Every inch of me shook, just like I had when he caressed me with his tongue.

  Was this what it would be like? Was he going to take me just like this? Desperate, wild, hard and furious?

  I didn’t care.

  In that one moment, I didn’t care what he did or what it took. The muscles deep inside me clenched tight. I fought against them, spreading my fingers out as best I could. I let my mouth hang open as my breath got more ragged.

  My nostrils flared and I scratched myself again. The hot track of my nails burned sweet.

  “Yes!” I gasped. “Yes, yes, oh my God yes I need you.”

  I imagined his lips on my throat, sucking at me. They’d go down my chest and he’d circle one of my nipples with his tongue and bite just a little.

  “Har...der...”

  He’d suck desperately. I’d clutch his head against me as he swelled between my legs.

  “Hard...er...”

  He’d thrust, and my back would scrape the wall. Rex would hold me as tight as he could, and when he was about to explode, he would kiss all the way up my neck and we’d lock our lips together in desperate, hunger-stricken wildness.

  “I’m... Oh... Oh God!”

  I screamed out loud before I could bite my lip.

  All the pleasure, all the pain, all the vivid fantasy, it opened me wide. I felt hot, then cold, then hot again, as wave after wave of tension and relaxation overwhelmed me.

  I purred as the sensation began to subside, and then I tickled my chest with the fingers on both hands.

  Another breeze blew through the window and cooled the sweat that had beaded up all over me.

  My legs limply fell to the sides, thumping onto the mattress. My heart pounded, but it was an honest, clean, beautiful sort of heartbeat. I knew that when I woke up, I’d be all worried about something or other again.

  But right then, that didn’t matter.

  I closed my eyes, shoved one of my three body pillows between my legs and rolled to the side. Clutching another one of them against my chest, I let myself imagine that, for once, I wasn’t in bed alone.

  For once, I was with the person I had been trying to find since I was little – the person wh
o’d make me feel safe... the person who’d make me feel like being me was good enough.

  “Rex,” I said again. The word trickled down the back of my tongue, the way the spicy part of chai tea does if you drink it slowly enough.

  “This is nuts,” I said. “But... I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  Just getting it out in the open felt like a weight lifted off my chest.

  My body shook involuntarily as a shudder of relaxation worked through me.

  The smell of rain outside filled my nose again, and then seconds later, the gentle patter-patter of water against the glass met my ears.

  Monsoon season, huh? I thought. I hope this is one rain that never ends.

  The world went fuzzy, and all my senses mixed up together in a warm, soft, fuzzy blanket. I pulled my real blanket up to my chin and took a deep breath, then held it for a moment.

  Doing the thing I’d done since I was a little girl, I let the breath out, counting down from twenty as slow as I could. It usually took eight or ten times doing that before I could relax enough to try and sleep – if I ever got there at all.

  Life on the streets wasn’t easy on me. I never slept deep enough that I didn’t wake up eight or ten times when a squirrel skittered across a windowsill, or some wind whipped through a tree.

  That time? I made it to twelve before I drifted off.

  And I didn’t wake up until my alarm started getting really pissed that I hadn’t paid any attention to it until it had been buzzing for eight minutes.

  Something had changed. Something major.

  I just wasn’t sure exactly what, but my head was definitely going on one hell of an unexpected journey.

  -13-

  Langston C. Graves, J.D., Ph.D., D.Phil

  “Oh, and what would you have me do?” Langston Graves growled. “I can’t rush this or they’ll become suspicious. And if these fools become suspicious I’ll never have – ah, I mean, we – will never have what we want.”

  He stood and unbuttoned his black sleeves, rolling them halfway up his thin, sinewy forearms.

  “No, no, no,” he continued, apparently to himself, “this mustn’t be done quickly. If I’m going to suck the life out of these ridiculous creatures and give myself their power, it must go slowly. I’ll lure them, seduce them, let my incantations and spells caress away their worries, and then...”

  He smiled, grimly, as a tress of black hair fell in his face, blown by the wind coming through his office window. Outside, a storm was gathering. Black clouds and white blasts of lightning made him smile almost as much as the plan he hatched. Turning back to his office, he looped his arms behind his back, gripping his elbows.

  The man’s dark, almost sodden eyes scanned the space, pausing briefly on each of his various academic honors, degrees, and plaques.

  He was more proud of those than he was of anything else – because, of course, they were all fakes.

  “It’s almost too easy, I think,” he said. His voice was a curious combination of very proper blue-blood New England and something broadly identifiable as Midwestern. “All I have to do is lure some half-witted college girls in, suck their hearts dry and take all their shifter powers?”

  He chuckled to himself softly. Then, Langston Graves looked at himself in the reflection off of the Doctorate from Oxford he’d faked so perfectly. His eyes flashed green, then blue, then gray. “I can be whoever they want, whatever they desire. They’ll never know what’s happening until it’s too late, until I’ve drained their essence... taken their power, I’ll—”

  “Hopefully shut up at some point,” a voice snapped.

  Langston Graves looked irritably toward a glass box on his shelf and at the book inside. The cover twisted, the words “Ancient Rituals of the Mesopotamian Occult” twisting, distorting, swirling, until finally they formed a face.

  “So glad you could join me, Eldred,” Graves said to the book. “I was beginning to worry I’d have an entire day free of your prattling.”

  “Prattling?” the face on the book asked in an echoing, ancient voice that sounded like it was made out of dust. “Who uses words like prattling anymore? Are you trying to impress a girl from the eighteenth century?”

  Langston clicked his teeth and then hissed, intent on not antagonizing the book any more than necessary.

  They’d had an uneasy relationship since Graves found Eldred at a dig outside of Baghdad ten years earlier. He used to be a simple, if ambitious, archaeologist who wanted to teach at a nice, small liberal arts college. His dream was to find a wife, have two children, and then ignore them to go on far-flung digs under the guise of it being a necessary part of his job.

  When he found Eldred, however, things... changed. The mild mannered archaeologist tasted tendrils of power that emanated from the ancient being trapped in the book. That’s why he had him encased in glass at present. That was the only way to keep his mind clear of Eldred’s meddling.

  It was like wearing a tinfoil hat to keep mind control beams out. Except that the mind control was real, and he’d been accidentally taken over by it on more than one occasion.

  But, even with their constant jabs and snipes at one another, the two had fallen into an uneasy alliance. As Langston’s power as a self-taught sorcerer grew, so did Eldred’s chances of convincing Graves to give him a body.

  For ten thousand years, or at least, that’s when he gave up trying to count, Eldred had been in that book. His spirit sealed in the tome by an ancient wizard from a time long forgotten. Speaking of forgotten things, Eldred had forgotten what it was like to have a body outside the tanned-hide cover and strange, unearthly pages.

  “Why not try it my way, for once?” Eldred intoned. His voice was smooth, silky – gravel worn smooth with age. “You tried with that bear back at home, and... well, he got away, didn’t he? Seems to me that’s how that ended.”

  “That was different,” Langston snapped. “I had just started my... my learning. You didn’t exactly help. You were trying to use him to kill me, thinking that would somehow get you free of that book you inhabit. It isn’t that I let the bear go, dear Eldred, it’s that I refused to let you kill me.”

  The book in the box fluttered its cover and riffled through its own pages. The Professor was at least kind enough to give him room in his glass cage to move. It was really too bad the box wasn’t made of wood or iron or something Eldred could latch onto. If he was, he would have been free and wreaking havoc a long, long time ago.

  Langston pinched the bridge of his nose. “You... may have a point, though, as much as I hate to admit it. I’m not sure I can handle being surrounded by so much power just ripe for the plucking, and not take a little for myself.”

  “That’s it, Langie-boy,” the trapped djinn said softly.

  “Did you just call me Langie-boy? What is that?”

  Eldred coughed, obviously wanting to move on. “It was nothing, I mean, no – I didn’t say that. You’re hearing things.” He finished by warbling his voice and making it sound spooky, going higher and lower.

  “Do you want me to start calling you Eddie? Teddy? Yes, that sounds good. Pumpkin? Sound good? We’ve been together for so long, it’s a shame to keep up this formality.” Eldred let out an irritated groan, and Langston grinned. “We’re supposed to be the best of friends, Pumpkin, so why don’t we act like it?”

  “If you don’t stop this foolishness,” Eldred’s voice grew very serious and angry. “That storm outside your window is going to be the death of you.” He started chanting in an ancient language, older even than the desert where he’d been found. “You’ll rue the day, you’ll—”

  “The only thing that will happen if you try to make a storm is that you’ll get your pages wet. And if that happens, you’ll mold and start to smell and I’ll have to clean you up again. Do we really need that?”

  Eldred’s pages fluttered slowly. Then, he closed his cover. “I need some time to myself,” he finally said, before opening the cover and clapping it shut loud
ly.

  Langston was already past the angry book’s scheming though. He hadn’t been listening since his old friend-enemy started in with calling him... whatever familiar name he’d been spouting. Langston had already forgotten that in favor of more useful and nefarious planning.

  He grabbed the attendance roll – the one with the pictures of everyone in class – and ran his finger along the names. A couple of them he’d already picked out. “Mitzi Schwarz,” he said, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “Winter Ginger... what a ridiculous name, but I’ve heard you’re the rarest of the rare. A once in a century unicorn child. Foal? Cub?” he shook his head, smiling. “It hardly matters.”

  “But... I’ll need more than those two.” He scanned past a bunch of square-jawed men, some incredibly mousy-looking women. After all, he didn’t want to kill them, just drain them. Drain their power and take it into himself. He could do that without murdering them, he could do it without anyone even noticing.

  They became shells. In the past, the one time he tried, he worked his book-learned magic, and the victim simply grew despondent and distant. From what he understood, college kids frequently indulged in wild mood swings and other sorts of mental gymnastics. How could anyone tell whether it was just that, or whether some warlock had his fingers in a shifter girl’s brain?

  “They can’t,” he said grimly, smiling to himself.

  Still sliding his fingertip down the page, he came to a pair. One other girl caught his attention. She was slight, and had a pink streak and a purple streak running through her hair. Through one nostril was a thin loop ring, and she had a bandage on her forehead. A rough, scampy, scrappy girl.

  “Oh that’ll be fun,” Langston said under his breath. “Desdemona Jorgenson. Jorgenson... something about that name...”

  He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Eldred,” he called.

  The book did not respond.

  “Eldred, stop being a petulant infant. I need something that is actually topical to whatever plan you have to dominate me as you pretend to help me.”

  The words on Eldred’s cover swirled, and the djinn let out a long sigh. “Why can’t you just use Google?”