A Change To Bear (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) (12 page)

Liam explained that he could feel that something had changed in him, but he didn’t know what. It wasn’t until he was scared one night, lost in the woods after foraging for a medicinal root at his father’s request, when he first changed. It was a reflex; the shift was something he couldn’t control, but he could control the beast. He didn’t know what he had become. He couldn’t see himself. But he thought of that bear, and when he calmed, he changed back into a boy.

The words floated around in Terry’s head, but she wasn’t really listening. She was lost in her own thoughts, trying to reconcile rogue feelings of jealousy, of rejection. Did she really expect to be his first? She thought that was it, a silly schoolgirl’s thought, but it wasn’t. She had already reconciled the fact that he could have been with countless woman.

It was something else, and something she couldn’t really shake. He had been married, and his wife had been taken from him. She couldn’t imagine the kind of hurt that would cause, the kind of scars that would leave. It was almost as though she were angry at him for even allowing himself the time he had spent with her, as though he were betraying his wife.

And that was where Terry realized her reservations lay. Her thoughts, though not crystallized, were that of lingering doubts, a new cloud on the horizon. She wasn’t sure if she’d get over it. She wasn’t sure anymore if this wouldn’t be just an impromptu friendship, a tryst-that-never-was between two travelers, two backpackers that would end sooner rather than later.

“I don’t know what it was, but as soon as I saw that bear, something changed. And when I first changed, it was like I found a new muscle I could control.” The words snapped Terry out of her thoughts.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t respond. He looked out at the lake again. Terry felt a kind of frustration start to well. Why couldn’t he just make a move? What was all this dancing around accomplishing? She was perfectly cognizant of the fact that the more she waited, the more her own doubts would begin to color the way she looked at him. And she wanted him, to be with him. She didn’t want to reach that stage where they couldn’t be together, without having been together.

“Liam,” she began, but his dark gaze was fixed upon her, and cutting off her words, he kissed her. It was the sort of kiss that told her he had claimed her lips, and doing so in between his. Her breath froze in her throat. She hadn’t been expecting that. She didn’t kiss him back at first, but instead let his soft lips explore hers, feel his warmth radiate through her.

And just like that, her thoughts of resistance turned traitor to her. Her turbulent doubts and unending questions were silenced. And she kissed him back, a little reluctantly, but that was all the permission he needed.

His hands were on her body then, exploring her every curve and line, and where his skin met hers, there was left a static tingle that sucked her breath away, and made her heart hammer.

“Liam,” she breathed, half a moan. “Wait.”

And though his hands slowed, and his lips no longer captured hers, he did not stop, he did not pull away. He looked at her, and she saw a burning desire in his smoldering eyes, a hunger that she had not seen before. It was like the seal to his depths had been broken, and pouring out was everything she had wanted before, and, she was forced to admit, what she still wanted now.

She pushed her chest out, met his body with her bosom, and her arms were around him, roaming over his firmness. “Liam,” she breathed into his mouth before recapturing his lower lip unconsciously, sucking on it. “Liam, wait. I’m-”

He pulled back, looked at her. “I’ve wanted you since I first laid eyes on you.”

“Hold on,” she stammered. Insecurity flooded into her. What she had secretly craved before, the attention she had wanted, now that it was upon her, doubts were doing their best to thwart it.

“I know,” he said, his voice low. And then his mouth was on hers again, taunting her with his tongue, daring her to open herself to him, to let him in just that half inch.

And she did. Their tongues met, danced, and shivers erupted along her body. She could feel his urgency in each movement of his hand, now exploring her underarms, pulling on threads of wanting and desire from her core.

She craved him at that moment. She did. She wanted to resist, wanted to reconcile what they had been talking about, but she was caught in a clutch of sudden and intense passion, and she was unable to shield herself from his sweltering advance, let alone her own body shouting at her not to stop.

Their bodies entwined together, dry leaves the color of October crunching beneath them as shifted, writhed, and hooked their bodies together. She could feel his heat through his clothing, feel the energy he held in his taut body, the ultimate tease of what he could do for her.

Terry shivered as he pressed her back against the ground, as with one hand he held both of hers above her head, and with his other he explored the curves of the insides of her thighs, up and over them, her hips and her lower back.

That hand slipped under her dress, and was running along her abdomen, up to her breasts, teasing her nipples to tender, sensitive points, leaving her breathless and dizzy and wanting for more. His urgency, her body that he laid claim to, was potent and heady, like a tornado it eradicated any remaining doubts she had, any lingering worries. Her ramparts crumbling, she knew she was his. She knew that, somehow, through the silkily deft touch of his lips, his hands that left trails of fire in their wake, that she was utterly, completely his.

And that knowledge filled her with a sticky anticipation, a yearning that, now unleashed, could never be quashed.

He eased the shoulder of her dress down, freed one of her breasts, and she gasped as he plucked from her bare bud sweet sensations from her very core, the part of her that, moment by moment, was growing more sensitive, more anxious.

And then his hand was roaming downward, back to her thighs, and at first she had tried to keep her legs closed, but his impassioned touch melted that fleeting notion of modesty.

How could she refuse him any longer when his every touch, every swirl of his tongue against hers, the way in which he pushed his body into hers, urged her ever upward, insisted that she explore the new world which he had to offer. Though it had all been so sudden, he was like a feral beast had been let loose from his cage, and he was determined to sate his pent-up hunger.

And when his fingers brushed over her short curls, found the hardened nub below, it sent rockets of longing roaring through her, tendrils of wanting thrilling through her. Her body stretched out, like a cat wanting more, a request for him to put to rest her longings, to prod and stimulate her desire.

All she could hear in her mind was a voice telling her that he had wanted her all along, and that he wanted her now. Every doubt she’d had was distant now, on the horizon and zooming away. The voice told her to recognize that she wanted him too, and so to touch him, to feel him, to take from him what he was taking from her, and to give to him what he was giving to her.

She arched her back, pushed her hips upward, and rubbed them against his groin where she felt his manly iron readiness. He let her own hands explore his hard body, converge on his crotch where she cupped him, allowing her feminine pride to bloom as she felt the hardness there, heard him groan, and waited for his lips to come crashing back down onto hers.

She writhed with impatience in his arms, and frantically worked the buttons of his shirt, pulling the thin fabric over his round and rolling shoulders. She craved for him to get in between her legs, to drive himself into her and grant her body the rapture and release it sought so strongly.

Her fingers at his buckle, she freed him then, gasping and moaning softly as he continued to caress her heated sex. She wrapped her hand around his impressive girth, felt his tip already slick, and then he was above her, a nipple in his mouth, sending taunts and teases through her nerves as he elicited from her ever more desire.

“Liam,” Terry groaned, her voice throaty, lust-laced. Her inhibitions had crumbled, her little worries and nags and doubts swept away in the storm that was his urgency and his unrepentant need to explore her with his hands and with his mouth. He was in between her legs then, and he devoured her like a starving animal. He drank from her like it was the one thing that would keep him from perishing. And she soared to heights she couldn’t remember having experienced before, and was overcome with the potency of his passion.

And then he was gently easing himself into her, setting her insides aflame, a flash of pain gone in the blink of an eye as she grew accustomed to his width. Her body came alive with a throbbing, dangerous need, and she whimpered for him to bring her to bliss, begged for him to as her hands raked down his back, nails scratching into the taut skin and hard muscle, to find his round ass and squeeze it.

She wanted to cry out, awaken all of Hanoi, but it was what remaining modesty her occupied mind could still marshal that stopped her from doing so, that kept her moaning through her teeth, or kept her clamping onto Liam’s shoulders so that her thrown vibrations of pleasure went into his body instead of the night air. Her womanhood was on fire, and she matched him, stroke for stroke, holding onto his body, lifting herself to the rhythm that he set.

And with his hand still in between them, still setting her bud ablaze, it was like a match struck and bursting into flame. She reached her crisis, toed the precipice, and he drove her off it, filling her up, and that imprisoning knot of need burst into flame and freedom, a turbulent tempest of ecstasy and thundered in her center, and sent ripples and waves to her fingers and her toes.

Liam lowered himself, and she could feel the heat of his body as he thrust between her quivering thighs. His hands were insatiable, deftly leaving her oversensitive nub, and now eating up her body with pinches, squeezes, and slaps.

“I love your body,” he groaned beside her. His voice had become even more gravely, scorched with the need which she had unlocked, or reawakened. And through the hazy aftermath of her completion, she gleaned through his movements that it was only the beginning. Soon enough her needs realigned with his, and she chased, with him, after the prizes and pleasures that lovers pursue in the writhing, entangled, breathless embrace of night.

“S
o tell me about Borneo.” Terry held his hand as they walked around the lake, going the long way back to the guest house. Just moments ago they had been lying together, panting, and naked. But it was after the tide of lust had ebbed, been pulled away by the moon, that Terry hastily put her dress on, and urged Liam to return to the guest house with her.

Their pace was relaxed, almost meandering, and she mused on the thought that this was only the second time that Liam seemed to be enjoying their casual chatter. The first had been the Tam Coq boat trip, but even there, he’d seemed to be holding back.

“What about it?”

“What were you doing there?”

“Same thing I’m doing here.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Apart from ravishing women in the woods, she thought to herself. Wrong, she corrected herself. One woman.

Liam shrugged. “Living.”

Terry wondered if he was regressing back to his one-word-answer ways. “So why did you leave?”

“The hunter.” He looked at her, just a glance, and she knew that he saw the look on her face. “I left because of the hunter,” he explained.

“See,” Terry chirped. “It’s not that difficult! So I’m guessing he found you?”

“Yes. For a while, I was doing fine in Borneo. He tracked me down, but I lost him in the jungle. I heard rumors of a monster living in the wild, and so I went to find it.
He
was another like me.”

“Another?”

“Yes, a man named Leon. He’s strange. He’s a wolf, but stuck, somewhere in the middle, half way between.” Liam looked at her, narrowed his eyes and shook his head. That one obviously stumped him.

“Half way between a man and a wolf?”

“Yeah.” He looked away, his head cocked a little to the side. “It’s odd. I’ve never seen anything like it. He says he’s forgotten how to shift.”

“Do you believe him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. People have forgotten their own names. But shifting, it’s like flexing a muscle.” He squeezed his fist in front of her to demonstrate. “I’m not sure how you simply forget that.”

“Maybe it’s psychological,” she suggested. “Psychosomatic, or whatever.”

“Maybe. He’s really old, too. I’m not sure how old, but I reckon he’s probably breaking a record.”

“Among shapeshifters.”

“Yeah. I get the impression that he’s lived twice my lifetime, and that’s something I’ve never heard of.”

“How can you tell if he’s lived longer than you?”

“You can just tell. There’s no secret message or code or whatever. It’s a bit like when you see someone and you know they’ve had a hard life. It’s the way he holds his body, the way he speaks. It’s everything, really.”

“So what, did you just stumble across him?”