Joel (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 5) Read online

  "I've got no idea, but she's hidden it well," Ian agreed. "She's a fierce fighter, too. You should have seen her out there."

  "So where are the wolves now?"

  "Gone. Back to the caves, I think. And the storm's lifting, so we should be able to get away tomorrow morning." He explained. "Thank God."

  There was genuine relief in his voice, and Iris knew it was about more than just the wolves.

  "You shifted," she whispered, looking up at him, and he came and sat next to her on the bed.

  "Yeah."

  "For me."

  "I couldn't in good faith let someone's mother get hurt by one of those things," he shrugged. "It just sort of…came over me, all at once. I didn't have a chance to think about it, and by the time I had shifted, I just knew I had to take him down."

  "But you didn't lose control?" She prompted.

  "Not at anyone but that fucking wolf," he replied, his voice harsh. "It just confirmed to me what I already knew, I don't like the thing I become when I shift, and I don't want to make a habit of it."

  "Thank you," she murmured. "Thank you for protecting me."

  "What else was I going to do?" He shrugged. "Daughter of a bear shifter, I owe it to my kind."

  Iris cocked an eyebrow at him.

  "How do you know?"

  "I can smell it on you. I didn't know for sure until I had shifted, but I felt this…draw towards you. And that's when I knew."

  "Sorry I didn't tell you." She sighed. "I don't know why."

  "Hey, we all get to have our secrets," he smiled at her, and took her hand once again. She couldn't put her finger on why, but she felt calm with his hand covering hers. There was something comforting to his touch, and she savoured it. He skimmed his thumb over her knuckles, and a shiver danced down her spine, what was this? It had been such a long time since she'd felt those butterflies in her stomach that she'd practically forgotten what they felt like. But, as Ian leaned over to her and carefully placed his lips against her's, she knew exactly what she was feeling.

  The kiss was gentle, surprisingly tender, given the situation. She'd always imagined thank-God-we're-alive sex to be more passionate and wild and crazy, but all she wanted at that moment was to be cared for, to be looked after. She tentatively opened her mouth, twisting her head to allow him more access, and slid her tongue past his lips. He tasted good, God, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been kissed like this, the last time she'd felt truly desired. He slid his hands down from her arms and on to her waist, weirdly chaste yet at the same time intimidate. She shuffled a few inches closer to him, feeling like a teenager making out with the door open. She draped one leg over his and drew him closer, cupping his jaw in her hand, his stubble felt rough and satisfying against her skin.

  He deepened the kiss, letting out a long breath through his nose as he gently licked around her lips. It was a motion that made her shiver, made her feel as if she was entirely at his mercy-she ran a hand through his hair, enjoying the feeling of the gel and the spikes against her palm. Everything felt so new, but so familiar, and Iris couldn't get enough.

  The hands around her waist moved across her back, pulling her closer, till the two of them were chest-to-chest. Ian slowly pushed her down on to the bed, straddling her, and meshing a hand in her hair as he kissed her once again. Every single one of his movements was deliberate and careful, as if Iris was some delicate toy he didn't want to break. After everything that had happened that day, it was a relief to be with someone she trusted so implicitly, someone she knew would never hurt her, someone who would protect her. It was the fact that Ian had gone back on the one thing he had sworn he would never do again, shifting, just to protect her. That spoke to a connection beyond just the superficial, and Iris was happy to explore it.

  She pulled her legs up, resting her feet against him and grinding her body up against his. Waves of pleasure spread from between her legs and out across her entire body, and it felt different than the last time she'd done this, different from all the other times she'd done this. She couldn't put her finger on it for a moment, but then it clicked in her brain, it must have had something to do with him being a shifter. She had never (knowingly, at least) been with a shifter before, but here and now, it felt as if he was extra in-tune with her body, as if he knew exactly where to touch and move and stimulate. He slid his hand down her side, and it was as if his touched fulfilled some long-standing craving within her that she never even realized she had. Is this what she had been missing all along? Falling for a shifter?

  She barely had time to contemplate it further before he flipped her on top of him, leaving her staring seductively down into his eyes. She greedily took in his body, she wanted him naked, and she wanted it now. She slipped her hands underneath his t-shirt and pulled it up over his head, it got caught on his chin, somewhat ruining the sexy effect she had been going for, but he just laughed, and quickly threw it aside. She had to suppress the urge to lick her lips when she got a look at his body, it was as good as she had imagined, muscular and strong and toned. She ran a hand across his chest and along his arms, marvelling at the perfection beneath her.

  She could feel his erection straining against her through her dress, and she reached down to massage him through his jeans-she felt powerful, taking control like that, and couldn't help but smile as she saw the look of pleasure pass over his face. Feeling brave, she slipped her hand into her own panties, surprised by how wet she already was, she guessed that it had been so long that her body wasn't willing to wait another second to get what it wanted.

  She quickly undid his jeans and slid them down his body, moving her fingers against her pussy as she did so-usually, when she masturbated, it was a quick, perfunctory thing, but here she wanted to savour it, to lose herself in the feeling of her fingers against her clit. Pulling back his boxers, she wrapped her hand around his thick erection, and slowly began to jerk him off. He pulled her dress aside, so he could see her hands at work in her panties, and glanced between her and her busy fingers as his mouth fell slightly open.

  It wasn't long till she found herself teetering on the edge of an orgasm, it had been a long time since she'd felt turned on, really turned on like this, and she couldn't get enough of it. Even as she tried to stave it off for a few sweet moments longer, the orgasm crested and broke inside her, and she stilled her fingers as she allowed it to wash over her. She sighed softly, a sigh of relief and pleasure and a desire for more, and before she knew it Ian had taken the hand that was in her panties and raised it up to his mouth. Iris could do nothing but stare as he circled his tongue around her fingers, tasting her, licking her, sucking her. She immediately felt desire consume her once again and, before he'd so much as finished with her fingers, quickly straddled him, pulled her panties aside, and began to lower herself down on to him.

  "Condom..?" He began, but she shook her head.

  "I'm on the pill," she reassured him, unable to elaborate any more than that. She had been on strict birth control ever since condoms had failed her at a rather key point in her life, and she was glad for it at that moment. She was so lost in the flow that she wasn't sure she'd have been able to stop to get one either way.

  She slowly lowered herself down on to him until he was buried deep inside her. She paused for a moment, taking a long, slow, deep breath and exhaling, before she began to move. He grabbed her, one hand around her waist, one hand on her ass, and propped himself up on his elbows, staring up at her like she was some kind of goddess. She couldn't remember one point in her life when she'd felt more powerful than she did at that moment, with him inside her, spreading her open, her body coaxing him in and desperate for more. She snatched at his hand and guided it to her clit, he quickly obliged, working his index finger expertly against her sensitive nub, and staring up at her as she lost herself to the sensation.

  He felt so indescribably good, as if he was the perfect fit, as if the two of them were meant to be in some way or another. She rocked up and down against him, circling
her hips, dipping on and off of him, pulling out every trick in the book just to see the look on his face with each one. And God, was it satisfying, knowing she was turning him on so much, knowing exactly what he wanted, and knowing how to give it to him. Her heart began to beat faster, but this time, it wasn't danger, it was passion, lust, maybe a little bit of love. She slid down on his full length, enjoying the feeling of him buried deep inside of her, and rocked back and forth urgently, her body begging for some kind of release.

  And suddenly, it arrived, gentler than the first, but just as powerful, building slowly until it was the only thing she could focus on, her body going limp on top of his. He gripped her hips and trusted into her a few more times, pulling her down on top of him so she could hear his frenzied breath in her ear, and then he came, his cock twitching inside her before he slowly slid it out.

  The lay next to each other on the bed for a moment, until Iris looked over at him, and started giggling.

  "What? What is it?" Ian asked, pulling his jeans back up and trailing a lazy hand along her leg.

  "Nothing," she shook her head. "It's just…that was different. I've never done it with one of you before."

  "Think you might do it again?" He asked, pulling her on to his chest and stroking down her back. "And that I might be able to get you out of these clothes this time?"

  She propped her head up and looked at him, then placed a small kiss on his jaw.

  "I might be tempted."

  Breakwater: Hyde

  Star Bears IV

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Thalia Addams pulled her shirt down to get the wrinkles out, adjusted her glasses, pulled her shirt back up to preserve her modesty, made sure she had everything she needed in her bag, and, after careful consideration, pulled her shirt back down to show some cleavage. She had a feeling this job wasn’t going to go smoothly.

  “Okay,” she told herself. “Either you can do this or you can’t, but you’re not going to find out by hiding in the ladies’ room. Now, get in, ask questions, get answers, and write an award-winning article.”

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to step back into the club. The dull thrum of the music escalated into a slightly fuzzy-sounding cacophony as she walked back dim room lit by neon and made her way to the bar. She had to shove through a few sweaty, gyrating bodies belonging to giggling drunks to get there, but she chalked it up to an occupational hazard. Finally, she reached her destination and immediately caught sight of her target.

  Hyde Jones. Formerly a stand-up member of the Red Quarter’s guard on Serkot, currently a smuggler aboard the ITC Breakwater with a rather impressive resume for destruction, and, most importantly, the subject of Thalia’s next article.

  Thalia took a moment to study him, partially out of academic interest and partially because the holos she had of him did him no justice. There appeared to be a hint of silver shading his temples, though his dark skin was smooth. His dreadlocks hung loose around his shoulders and the vividly blue eyepatch covering his right eye—bar fight on Taldor, Thalia’s brain supplied—occasionally caught the dull light of the bar. Plastering a smile on her face, Thalia slid over to him.

  “Hey there,” she said in what she hoped was a throaty purr. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Hyde snorted. “You can. Doesn’t mean I’m going to leave this stool until my captain shows up to drag my ass off it.”

  Thalia pouted. “That hardly sounds like fun. What’s the point of coming to a bar like this if you don’t want to make friends?”

  “Maybe I just wanted a syrupy, overpriced drink before I’m spaceborn again,” he told her.

  “Then maybe you should let the pretty girl offering to buy you a drink to get you the syrupiest, most overpriced drink on the menu and see where the evening goes from there?” Thalia said, smile back in place, arching her back ever so slightly to thrust her chest out.

  Hyde finally turned to look at her. His eye ran slowly down her figure and then back up to her face. Somehow, the inspection managed to be more clinical than sexy, though Thalia could swear his gaze lingered a bit—just a bit!—on her cleavage.

  “You don’t exactly look the type to be hitting on random men in clubs,” he informed her.

  Thalia was well aware of this. She looked more like the “lives in a bookstore and has an encyclopedic knowledge of role playing games (the nerdy kind, not the sexy kind)” type.

  “Oh, I wasn’t really expecting to come here tonight,” she said breezily, tossing her hair over her shoulder. It was technically true. After she’d found the next place the Breakwater was bound to dock, she packed what she could and spent a good chunk of time and money making her way there. Once she managed to track (and definitely not stalk) Hyde to the club, she’d come to the realization that she hadn’t packed anything remotely appropriate. Or rather, she’d only packed things that were appropriate and found herself in need of something with a plunging neckline. “I just broke up with my boyfriend and decided I might as well go find myself some rebound.” Also technically true, if “boyfriend” was replaced with “university friends who thought crossing the depths of space to track down a criminal on the off chance of getting a story was a bad idea because they lack ambition.”

  “And you picked me, the surly one-eyed asshole, over the pretty boy who’s been checking you out since you sat down because…?” Hyde asked, eyebrow raised, ever-so-slightly tilting his head at a pale-haired boy who looked like he’d snap in half if Thalia breathed on him.

  “Maybe I like it when people play hard to get,” Thalia said. “Or maybe I just have the feeling that getting rejected by you is probably going to be more satisfactory than sex with him would be.”

  Hyde smirked and sat in quiet consideration for a moment. Thalia felt a pang of nervousness in her stomach and forced herself not to show it on her face.

  “You know, I just might let you buy me that drink after all,” he said after a pause. “But don’t think I’m going home with you just because of that.”

  “Not that kind of boy, eh?” Thalia asked, looking over the menu. As it turned out, the club didn’t advertise drinks in order of most to least likely to get a bear shifter drunk enough to share his secrets, or at least not where she could see, so she just flagged the bartender down and ordered “two of whatever’s strong enough that I can’t tell what you’re cutting your liquor with anymore.”

  The bartender, a lovely red-skinned Domian whose eyelids were coated in gold powder, returned a second later with two tall shot glasses of green liquid that seemed to glow when it caught the light, winked, and walked off.

  Thalia stared at it apprehensively for a moment. “Okay, so, I’m going to need you to act suitably impressed with me after I drink this because there’s a non-zero chance it’ll kill me.”

  Hyde just snorted and downed his shot, then made a face and shook his head.

  “Jesus,” he coughed, “where were they hiding that?”

  “I imagine somewhere the authorities will never find,” Thalia said, reaching hesitantly for her own glass.

  “Come on now,” Hyde told her. “If you want me to be impressed, you have to actually drink it.”

  “I was kidding earlier, but if this actually kills me I fully expect you to throw yourself wailing onto my casket,” she informed him primly. “I want full-on lamentation, can you do that?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Hyde said, nodding meaningfully at her glass.

  “So eager to watch me die,” she muttered as she tilted her head back and downed the drink in one go. Whatever it was, Thalia would bet her hard drive that someone had been looking the other way when this got shipped in. It burned all the way down her throat and sizzled in her stomach, the sensation riding the thin line between enjoyable and not. She looked down, letting her hair fall over her face so Hyde couldn’t see the expression she made.

  Almost immediately the bar got slightly blurrier. It was hardly something she couldn’t handle, her college years
being an experience in building up her alcohol tolerance. But the fact was it would be awfully hard to get Hyde drunk and question him if she was shitfaced herself. Shifters, as far as she knew, had a metabolism that helped process foods that humans would get sick eating but didn’t do much in the way of helping process alcohol, and he’d been drinking when she got there, but he had the luxury of not having to be careful. Thalia didn’t.