Melted By The Bear: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (10 page)

He heaved a sigh, and I could tell he was just itching to rake his fingers through his hair, but he didn’t.

“I don’t know. I should have handled this whole thing differently from the start. I should have demanded that my people and my staff members treat you with all the respect, courtesy, and friendliness that you deserve, and I’m ashamed that I didn’t. I wish I could go back and think all this through a little better and take the time to consider your feelings more. It’s no excuse, but when I got the call that your tank had been drained and you had to be thawed right away or you’d die, I felt more than a little blindsided. A little panic-stricken, even, and I’m not too proud to admit that.

“Like most of my people, I felt panic-stricken and scared, and then when I saw you... when I saw how utterly gorgeous you are... I felt doubly panic-stricken and scared, knowing that because of Laurel’s cryptic final words, I was going to have to keep you fairly close to me... was going to have to keep temptation right in front of my nose. Then I heard your story about your life before you were frozen and the tragedies you had to overcome, and it... it turned my heart toward you in some profound way, and I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. Then I heard about how you carry yourself in town... with dignity, confidence, and sweetness, even being very kind to the children of the people who’ve given you nothing but dirty looks. This turned my heart toward you even more, until I began to hate how my heart, not to mention my loins, seem to act of their own free will and accord whenever I’m around you, despite my best efforts to control them.

“Despite me lying awake most nights, trying to focus on
not
focusing on the fact that you’re in your bed just a room away, surely looking just as beautiful as you always do, with that cupid’s-bow mouth of yours, and your sparkling ocean-blue eyes, and...” Now Cormack gave into the urge and raked a hand through his hair, twice, actually, frowning so hard he was nearly scowling. “You have every right to be hurt and angry, Aria. In fact, I think lesser women would have told off the entire town, and me, ten times over by now. But, unfortunately, the fact remains that until AntiCormack and all his shadow bears are dead-”

Cormack’s words had been abruptly cut off by me kissing him. I hadn’t really even meant to do it; I’d just been looking at his full, delectable lips, and then I’d felt myself rising on my tiptoes, and then my mouth had been on his. Now my mouth was still on his, and though I fully realized what I was doing at this point, was fully aware that I
should
pull away, I didn’t. A big part of that was because Cormack was kissing me in return, and with enthusiasm. He was also moving his hands to the small of my back, pulling me closer to him with a soft groan of clear pleasure.

Before I knew it, I was making a few noises of clear pleasure myself, quiet sighs and whimpers as he parted my lips and began kissing me with what felt like weeks of pent-up passion and frustration. Though his kisses were intense and hungry, there was still a tenderness about them that made me curl my toes into the hardwood floor. I knew we were both quickly hurtling to the point of no return, but I didn’t want to stop. Could barely even remember the reason why we should.

Soon my towel fell to the floor, leaving me completely naked, skin still damp from my shower and my dripping hair. I didn’t even know if Cormack had pulled my towel loose, or if the end I’d tucked into the top had just come undone, but I didn’t even care. All I knew was that the feeling of my bare skin pressed against the length of Cormack’s hard body and his already-hard manhood was heavenly. I didn’t want it to end, would have wildly fought anyone who tried to make it so.

Hands on my rear, gripping it and kneading it, Cormack began walking us into my bedroom, then shut the door behind him. Now I knew for sure that
it
was happening, and I didn’t have any sense that
it
would be wrong. I knew that might have been simply because I wanted
it
so badly, wanted it to be
right
, but my gut told me this wasn’t the only reason. My gut told me that what we were about to do
was
right. Any sense I’d had that we were doing something dangerous had completely evaporated. And when Cormack broke our kiss and began all but tearing his clothes off, I wanted to tell him my thoughts, wanted to see if he felt the same way.

“It’s not wrong, Cormack.
This
isn’t. We’re not doing anything bad, and we’re not putting anyone at risk of ruin. I just know we’re not. This feels right, perfectly right. I can feel it in my gut. Can you?”

He’d undressed faster than I’d ever seen anyone undress in my life, and he now pulled me back into his arms. “I can feel it in my gut, too. This isn’t a mistake. It’s perfect.
You’re
perfect.”

His voice was incredibly low and husky, a masculine growl that sent a little current of something electric racing through me.

He began kissing me again, and I felt his hardness pressing against the soft curve of my lower stomach, a sensation so exquisite that I moaned into his mouth, becoming desperate to feel his hardness inside of me. When he’d been ripping his clothes off, I’d gotten a glimpse of it, and that glimpse had almost made me stop talking mid-word. Thick and long, his member was just how I’d imagined it would be, and had hoped it would be. His hardness, which was the hardest I’d ever felt a man in my entire life, was an extremely nice bonus, to say the least. We tumbled into my bed, neither of us even bothering to turn my fairly bright desk lamp off. I
wanted
it on, actually. I wanted to be able to look at Cormack’s face and eyes while we made love. This was something I’d never really been too concerned about with any of my previous boyfriends.

With me on my back and Cormack kind of hovering above me, allowing a little space between our bodies to let one of his hands roam, he continued kissing me, twining my tongue with his in slow, rhythmic motions that had me whimpering with desire. At the same time, he began caressing my stiffened nipples, paying a little attention to each one in turn, which served to stoke my desire, not that it could be stoked very much further. As it was, I was already drenched in slickness, with the most sensitive spot of my anatomy positively throbbing, crying out for release. When Cormack’s fingers wandered a little lower, connecting with this spot, and then began stroking it with firm-but-not-
too
-firm movements, I felt my passion nearly come to a peak right then.

Having broken our kiss, I cried out, digging my fingers into his muscular back. “Please, Cormack. Please-”

What I’d been going to say had been cut off by another cry of near-ectasy bursting from my mouth, a sound that tapered off into an anguished-sounding whimper.

“Please make love to me. Please. I need to feel you inside of me.”

With his eyes glassy and his breath coming in a series of ragged gasps, he seemed all too happy to comply with my request, giving my sensitive little bud a few more strokes before spreading my legs wider and positioning the head of his thick shaft at my slick entrance. Without so much as a brief pause, he slid into me fast and fairly hard, filling me completely in one swift movement. With my most sensitive spot still tingling, that one movement was enough to send me right over the edge, faster than I’d ever tipped over it in my life. Faster by a stunning five minutes or so, actually.

With my entire body shuddering, I ground my head back into the pillow, unable to even make a sound for several seconds. I could only gasp, again and again, those gasps becoming a prolonged moan when Cormack began moving inside of me with a growl, intensifying the intense pleasure that was rolling over me in waves more powerful than I’d ever felt before.

Once my pleasure began to ebb, I struggled to find my voice, managing something like a throaty whisper. “I want to feel that again, but next time, with you.”

With a grunt, he accelerated the pace of his thrusting, but didn’t change the depth, nearly pulling out of me completely before sliding back into my slippery depths once again. Soon, amazingly, I began to wonder if I was even going to make it as long as him, despite having already reached a peak once, and not even two minutes before. I’d never been able to achieve two climaxes in one day before, not even when alone and completely free to do what I liked, exactly how I liked.

Cormack was managing to do what I liked, but somehow even better. The feel of his hardness and his thrusting got even better still when he hiked my legs up on his broad shoulders, allowing him to penetrate me even deeper. After several minutes of near-rapture, a few seconds of Cormack looking deeply into my eyes, grunting softly with each of his strokes, was all it took to send me spiraling into full rapture once again. And this time, he spiraled along with me, groaning out his pleasure with his eyes squeezed shut and his head thrown back. I watched his face, my hips bucking up to meet his, until my last spasm of bliss had passed.

After, he pulled me into his arms and held me tightly, almost a degree away from
too
tightly, as if he never wanted to let me go. But very soon, once our breathing had slowed a bit, his hold on me relaxed, and he twined his fingers with mine.

“It’s all going to be okay.”

I nodded, stroking the back of his hand. “I know.”

Smiling, I rested my head in the crook of his arm and closed my eyes, suddenly tired in a lazy, warm, delicious sort of way. A single minute probably hadn’t passed before I was fast asleep, dreaming something hazy and pleasant.

Hours later, some beeping electronic noise pulled me out of my contented slumber, and I opened my eyes, irritated. The bedroom light was still on, and Cormack was sitting up in bed, phone to his ear. With all color draining from his face, he listened just briefly before jumping out of bed. He then grabbed his clothes from the floor and began dressing just as rapidly as he’d undressed, hands and clothes flying.

“Cormack, what is it? What’s-”

“We were wrong. Our gut instincts were wrong, and now everyone is going to pay for our mistake.”

Confused and still shaking off sleep, I rolled on my side to see him better. “Well, what specifically-”

“AntiCormack and all his shadow bears have been spotted heading straight for the village. We’re all going to pay now; we’re all going to come to ruin. The prophecy is about to be fulfilled.”

Now dressed, he flew out of my bedroom without another word, leaving me sitting up in bed, alone and trembling.

CHAPTER TEN

After Cormack sprinted out of my room, I just continued sitting in bed, stock-still except for full-body trembling making me move almost imperceptibly. Beyond being stunned by what was happening, I felt almost literally frozen with fear. Fear and something else. Shame, maybe. Shame mixed with something like horror.

Everything I was now feeling was a direct result of realizing that everyone in Blackthorn City might be slaughtered, or be “ruined” in some other horrendous way, and it would be all my fault. Mine and Cormack’s, really, but mostly mine, the way I saw it.
I
was the woman who’d been prophesied about.
I
hadn’t taken the prophecy seriously enough, or at least hadn’t
believed
in it enough when now, it was clear that I should have.
I
had kissed Cormack, not the other way around. Then, when things had heated up even further,
I
had insisted that what we were doing wasn’t wrong.

I’d been a fool. I knew now that I shouldn’t have tempted fate. Shouldn’t have tempted Cormack to tempt fate with me. Not when the lives of many innocent people were at stake. Sure, I knew that Cormack had been a more-than-willing participant in our night of fate-tempting, but this didn’t make me feel any better, or less guilty, or less horrified at what might soon happen.

I only remained frozen for a few seconds, body still but mind racing. Then, with some unseen force seeming to be willing my body to move, and move fast, I flew out of bed, grabbing a sheet to wrap around my naked form, then tore out of my room to chase Cormack down the hallway.

“Cormack, wait! Please wait!”

In the span of just a few seconds, just the short amount of time I’d remained sitting in bed, he’d made it down the long hallway, then the shorter hallway, and across the foyer. I caught him at the front door, where he seemed to have paused, hearing my shouts.

“Please wait, Cormack. Just please wait.”

He’d turned to me with a scowl, and now he scowled even harder as I took a second to gulp a lungful of air, knotting the sheet around me, before speaking.

“Look. I know there’s no time to waste, but I’m sorry for my part in all this, and I just want to say something ultra-quickly before you go. I—”

“Aria, I need to join my men
now
. At the rate they’re going, AntiCormack and his men will be approaching village limits within ten minutes or so, and I—”

“I know. I understand. You need to get out there. But just listen. Five seconds. All I want to say is that I want you to promise me that you won’t just accept that the prophecy is a done deal. I want you to promise me that you won’t just accept it as fate. Because, see, we may have royally screwed up by sleeping together, and we may have sent the prophecy rolling downhill, but maybe it’s not too late for us, and everyone else. Maybe we can fight fate, fight the prophecy. Maybe we can create our own fate. Maybe that’s what we’re
meant
to do.”

Cormack snorted, glowering. “The prophecies issued by Laurel and her kin have always come true.
Always
. When are you going to understand this?”

I grabbed his free hand, the one not on the door handle, and clutched it in both of my own. “I’m begging you. Please don’t go out there with the mindset that we’re all finished. After all, there’s several hundred of you bear shifters, and, what? Eighty or something shadow bears? Just promise me that you’ll fight like fate can be changed, because I think there’s a chance it can be. We have to hope for that, and believe in that. Promise me that you will.”

He all but wrenched his hand free from both of mine. “I’m not just going to lay down and die; I can promise you that much. If AntiCormack and his men bring us all to ruin, I’m going to make sure it comes at a price to them.”

Knowing this was as close to a promise as I was going to get, and also knowing time was very much of the essence, I nodded. “All right. Fight hard, Cormack, like I know you will, and just know that I feel like we’re going to see each other again.”

I really did feel it. I wasn’t certain, couldn’t be, obviously, but I felt it in my gut.

To my surprise, Cormack’s stony expression suddenly morphed into one of anguish, and he grabbed my hand, cringing, as if what I’d said about seeing each other again had physically hurt him. He then lifted my hand and kissed it, letting his warm, firm lips linger for a very long moment, an exceptionally long moment, actually, considering the circumstances and the haste he needed to make. Wanting to stay in that moment forever, with the feel of his mouth on my skin, I cringed myself when he released my hand and spoke in a low voice thick with emotion.

“I want you to know that I want that, Aria. I want that more than anything... for us to see each other again.”

Deep green eyes full of pain, he looked into my own eyes for a second before grabbing my hand again and giving it another kiss, though this one much quicker.

“I have to go now.” He dropped my hand for the second time with his expression becoming stern once again. “An alarm siren will soon sound to warn all citizens of the danger. As long as this siren is still pealing, you are to remain in the house, all windows and doors locked. Understand me? And, in fact, I want you down in the basement, where there’s a panic room of sorts with a steel door. One of the staff members will take you down there when the alarm sounds.”

I nodded. “Okay.” Just a split-second later, I had a sudden thought and shook my head. “Wait, no. Not okay. I’m not going down to the basement. I’m not even going to stay in the house. I’m going to help fight the shadow bears off. Just give me a knife, or—”

“Oh, for God’s sake. They are
bears
, Aria.
Shifters
. Any one of them could rip you limb from limb as easily as—”

“They won’t, though. AntiCormack doesn’t want me harmed. He
wants
me to stick around, remember?”

“He
did
, past tense, because he wanted us to mate and cause the prophecy to be fulfilled, and we’ve already done that.”

“But
he
doesn’t know that.”

“Maybe not for
certain
, but he obviously knows me better than I know myself, because clearly, he’s been able to
guess
that in the amount of time that has passed, I haven’t been able to resist you.”

“So, he’s guessed that we’ve slept together by now, but he’s not certain, so he may be a bit
un
certain about wanting to kill me. That’s good enough for me. As long as there’s even a chance that I could wound some shadow bears without them being able to fight me back—”

“No, goddammit, Aria. No. Do you understand me? You’re staying right here in this goddamned house.”

He’d practically growled the words at me, but I didn’t care. I growled a few back.

“I’m
not
staying in the house.
I’m
partially to blame for all this, so—”

“My men and I will surely get things under control. We don’t need your help.”

“Well, it sounds like you do. You’re afraid the prophecy coming true is going to lead to ‘ruin’ for you and all your people, remember?”

“Well—”

“And if the prophecy really is about to come true, if this is all really happening, then I, the one partially and maybe even mostly responsible for this whole mess, am not just going to sit here and let the very few friends I’ve made in town be hurt, or killed, or—”

“Then promise to stay in the house and let me go help them right now!”

I began trying to push him out of the house through the half-ajar door. “Then, go! Go and help everyone!”

Despite trying with all my might, both hands on his chest, I hadn’t even been able to push him an inch. His black boots remained firmly planted on the shiny pine-planked floor, as if the only thing pushing him was a light breeze.

Strong jaw clenched, he took my wrists to get my hands off him. “You listen to me. You are not leaving this damned—”

His words had been cut off by the sound of a siren pealing in the distance. At the same time, Cormack’s phone began going off, the sound barely audible above the siren.

He swore under his breath, glancing over his shoulder toward town, then turned his gaze back to me, green eyes glinting as if they held some sort of fire. “You stay in this house, Aria. You understand me? I’m warning you. You had better stay in here, so help me God.”

I didn’t say anything, and after a moment, this seemed to satisfy him.

“And you lock the door behind me when I leave.”

Again, I didn’t say anything, just kind of snorted a little. But again, this seemed to satisfy Cormack. After one final hasty kiss, this one on my lips, he was gone, tearing out the door and down the driveway, shifting into bear form, massive and black, as he ran. Praying that we really would see each other again, I watched him for just a few seconds in the pale, predawn light before shutting the door and bolting all the locks. I didn’t want a shadow bear to be able to get in the house before I was dressed, armed, and ready to face it.

*

I was going to try to hurt as many shadow bears as I could, and I was going to try to defend everyone in town as best as I could, even the people who’d spent weeks doing nothing but glaring and staring at me. After all, I may not have asked to be part of a prophecy, and
that
wasn’t my fault, but clearly I’d made a mistake in sleeping with Cormack. I was becoming more and more convinced that the prophecy was a real thing, and I had a feeling I should have believed in it from the start, but like when I’d been pleading with Cormack, I felt that it could be something that could and should be fought against. I just couldn’t accept that because of what we’d done our fate was sealed, along with the fates of everyone else in the village. And even if our fates
were
sealed, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I had to make amends for what I’d done; I had to fix things. I had to at least try.

I was scared of AntiCormack and his shadow bears, of course. I was terrified. I figured any sane person would be. But, despite this, my muscles were still moving. I wasn’t freezing up like I’d briefly done in bed. My legs were rubbery, to be sure, but they were carrying me across the pine-planked foyer just fine as I began sprinting toward my room to dress in something other than a sheet.

No matter what, I wasn’t going to let myself freeze up. I was determined not to. I felt like as long as I just kept moving, I’d be fine. However, soon I came to a dead, screeching halt just at the entrance to the shorter hallway, hearing my name.

Clutching the knot of my sheet, because it was quickly loosening, I whirled around, already knowing who I was going to see. “What is it?”

Dressed in a pale blue nightgown that covered every inch of her petite frame from ankles to neck, Hazel stood glaring at me from across the spacious foyer, appearing to have come from the direction of the staircase. “We’re all going down to the basement, and I’m sure Commander Blackthorn expects you to come with us, for whatever reason. If
I
were him, I’d personally toss you in the direction of the shadow bears, for them to do whatever to you they wish.”

My knee-jerk reaction to her was to want to scoff, but I didn’t actually do the action, realizing that she had every right to be angry with me, even nasty to me. I’d slept with Cormack, putting Hazel, her son, and everyone else in danger. Really, I couldn’t believe Hazel wasn’t being even
more
venomous to me.

Dragging half the length of the sheet behind me, I took a few steps closer toward her. “Look, you have every right to feel toward me how you do, but—”

“And to think, Jane from the hospital was telling everyone in the village that she had absolute faith that you and Commander Blackthorn could control yourselves. She believed in you.”

Cringing inwardly, I recalled how Jane had expressed that faith and belief to me directly. I recalled her kindness to me. Now I’d betrayed all of that.

Arms folded across her narrow chest, Hazel advanced a few paces, chocolate brown eyes like slits. “Jane said there was no way you or the commander were going to let this community come to ruin, but now look. The sirens are confirmation to me that clearly, you and the commander thought more of having a night of selfish pleasure than about protecting everyone else. You both should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves.”

I was, and I said so. “But, look, Hazel, there’s still hope. See, even though I’ve definitely come to believe that the prophecy is a real thing, I think we can still fight against it. Maybe we can change it, and to help fix things, to at least try, I’m going to get out there and fight myself. I’m going to try to hurt as many shadow bears as I can, with a knife, maybe, or—”

“Foolish girl. Only shifters can kill other shifters. Not that you’d even get close with a knife.”

She’d all but spat her words at me.

“Well, I didn’t say I’m going to try to kill them; I know I can’t. But I
can
try to hurt them, to disable them until one of our shifters can get there to finish them off. I have to hurry, though, because Cormack said that AntiCormack and his shifters are heading straight toward the village, and they’ll be here within minutes. So if you want to try to prevent ‘ruin’ with me, you could help by getting some knives from the kitchen for me while I’m throwing some clothes on. Or maybe if you could grab a fireplace poker for me. Probably a knife and a poker each will be enough weaponry to at least—”