Bear Mechanic: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (9 page)

It wasn’t totally healed, but it would be soon.

She noticed what he was looking at. “He called it a ‘mark’.”

There was a question in her voice, and he hated to answer it, but he had to. “That’s what it is. And it’s real.”

“What does it mean? It’s something shifters do?”

“When we mate—uh, when we meet someone we want to spend the rest of our lives with—we give them that mark. A mating bite. It helps seal the bond between them. For shifters, it means knowing when your mate is in danger. Sometimes, if you’re really close or if you’ve been together for a long time, you can feel what they’re feeling. At least, that’s what my mother said.”

“That’s what
Lyle
did?” she asked, a hitch in her voice.

“Well, sort of. It was against your consent. That’s wrong, and it also makes it weaker. And where he’s going, he’ll never see you again. The bond strengthens over time with lots of contact.”

“He said it would make sure I'd come back. Would it make me do that?”

He smiled, brief but genuine. “It's not mind control,” he assured her. “But he'd be able to find you anywhere.”

She made a disgusted face and tugged on her collar uncomfortably. “Is there any way to get rid of it?”

He hesitated. “Not exactly.”

She studied his face. “Not exactly? What is it? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“It can be overridden. With, ah, someone else’s bite. If it hasn’t healed completely.”

She turned as if to look at her own neck, and then remembered she wasn’t quite that limber. “Has it?”

“It’s not done yet, no.”

“Will you? Please?” She spoke with a surprising certainty, shifting so he could see the mark clearly and tugging her shirt away.

Noah startled. She couldn’t know the full extent of what she was asking, what it meant.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked gently. “I didn’t want it to happen this way, you know.”

“But you did want it to happen?” she said, almost sharply.

He exhaled. “Yeah, I did.”

She was biting her lip. “And do you still?”

“Elise…” He did. He wanted her. Forever. She was practically begging him to mark her, and it almost physically hurt not to.

“All I could think about after he bit me and called it his mark was,
I wish it had been Noah
.” Her blue eyes were glistening.

“I love you, you know,” he said quietly.

She sniffed. “I know. I love you, too. Maybe this isn’t how either of us imagined it, but… wouldn’t it have happened anyway?”

Elise tucked her hair out of the way and gazed at him with a look of perfect trust. His heart soared.

Her skin was pale and creamy in the moonlight. It took only slight pressure from his teeth to break her skin again. She gasped. He kissed her skin there and lifted his head to press his forehead against hers.

Her smile was tired but genuine, reflecting his own.

Mates.

Chapter Seven

Elise

The first thing Elise did the next morning, after she remembered, was look at the mark in the mirror.

She prodded it with a finger, frowning. It had completely healed over. How weird was that? It didn’t even hurt when she touched it. The bite had faded to a silvery scar, almost but not quite invisible.

Footsteps outside the bathroom door announced Noah’s presence. She shook her head and let her hair tumble over the side of her neck.

“Come in,” she said.

He opened the door and held up a mug. “I brought you some—”

“Coffee!” she said delightedly, seizing the cup and taking a sip. It had one sugar and plenty of milk. “Did you ask Cecil how I like it?”

“Actually, I was paying attention yesterday.”

“Smart man.” She closed her eyes, savoring the taste.

Noah cleared his throat, looking more serious as he leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed. “I thought we should talk.”

Her gut clenched. Was he regretting what he’d done the night before? “Talk about what?” she asked as neutrally as she could.

Noah looked uncomfortable. “Like I said last night, the mark doesn’t have to mean forever. If you don’t want it to.”

“I meant what I said,” she said softly.

A look of relief passed over his face. “Good. Good. Great!”

The smile that spread across his face could almost be called goofy, if it wasn’t so charming.

Setting the coffee cup down, she leaned up on her toes to kiss him and thread her arms around his neck. He nipped at her bottom lip possessively before his tongue swiped over it, and a tingle zipped through her body down between her legs. They’d been too tired and frazzled the night before to do anything but go to sleep, but now she wanted him badly.

She broke the kiss briefly to whisper in his ear, “You said something about the bond needing to be strengthened?”

His laugh puffed across her skin. His broad hands slid down her back to cup her ass, and she jumped into his arms eagerly, wrapping her legs around his back and squealing as he walked them both to the bed. His strength was so absolute she used her hands to explore the broad planes of his back and chest, mapping every muscle within reach. On a whim, she ducked her head—she could just reach—to run her tongue over one rough nipple, making him grunt and reflexively squeeze her ass.

“You,” he murmured as they stood at the foot of the bed, “are driving me crazy.”

“That makes two of us,” she whispered giddily.

They couldn’t tear themselves away from each other, biting and licking and kissing with increasing intensity until Elise felt like she was going to shiver out of her skin. Still cocooned in the safety of his arms, she held her arms over her head, arching to help as he pulled her nightshirt off and sent her hair flying in every direction.

Noah tugged on one of her curls and watched it bounce back into place. “Sorry,” he explained at her raised eyebrow, “I’ve been wanting to do that since we met.”

She burst out laughing. “When are you going to put me down?”

Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “Do I have to?”

An image flashed into her mind of Noah thrusting into her against the wall, holding her up, and her mouth went dry. “Not if you don’t want to.”

He appeared to consider it. “On the other hand, if I don’t set you down, I won’t be able to use my mouth on you. That’s a hell of a dilemma.”

Her fingers tightened on his arms with anticipation. “Either way sounds pretty good to me,” she said breathlessly.

He set her on the edge of the bed, and her heart began to hammer. Kneeling before her, he took her face between his hands and kissed her deeply, thoroughly.

“I want to taste you,” he said in a low, rough voice when they broke for air.

His hands skimmed down her sides and he hooked his fingers into the band of her panties. She lifted her hips and he tugged them down and off before spreading her knees so that her pussy was bared to him.

“You’re so wet for me,” he growled appreciatively, and placed a kiss on the inside of her upper thigh.

Elise fell back onto the bedspread with a soft ‘Oh.’

His hot, wet tongue traced the edges of her outer folds, making her wriggle.

“No teasing!” she gasped, but of course he didn’t listen.

He stayed frustratingly just on the edge of where she wanted him, licking and sucking every part of her except that tender, neglected bud. His tongue made circles around it, dipped down between her inner folds, and licked broadly across sensitive skin until her hands were twisted in her shirt and her knees were trembling.

“Noah…” she moaned, trying to lift her hips so he would be in the right place. But he laid one arm over her hips, pinning her. The other hand stroked the side of her thigh in tantalizingly slow circles, slowly making its way down to her hot, ready center. Until it stopped.

“Will you just—!” she cried out, and felt the vibration of his laugh through her lower body.

The tip of one finger slid to her entrance—almost inside, not quite. He teased her, pushing in slightly and then withdrawing. Her thighs were drenched. She didn’t know how much more she could take. She raked her hands through his short hair, gripping hard, and then he moved.

At the same time he sucked her clit into her mouth, he pushed two fingers all the way inside her. The jolt of sudden sensation after being denied for so long made her scream with pleasure.

His tongue lapped at her sensitive bud, first soft, then hard, then soft again, and he changed rhythms so that she couldn’t predict when the next spike of pleasure was going to come. Pleasure condensed like molten liquid at her core. Quickly, too quickly, she was shaking apart with her climax, crying out Noah’s name.

He growled with satisfaction as she came down, panting.

“Most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” he said, lifting his head from between her legs. His voice was rough with his desire for her.

Elise rose to her elbows to watch as he stepped out of his boxers, revealing the huge, rock-hard cock underneath. The sight made her bite her lip in anticipation
. I did that to him
, she marveled.
Me
.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and, feeling playful, leaned forward to run her tongue just over the tip of his cock.

“Elise,” Noah groaned, and caught himself on her shoulder.

In response, she licked a stripe down the underside of his shaft, following a bulging vein. Reflexively he bucked his hips, and she slipped her hands up the backs of his thighs caressingly until she could squeeze his ass. He shuddered, and Elise grinned. Turnabout was fair play.

Drawing back, she raised her eyes and saw his gaze dark with need for her. She ducked her head, letting her curls fall around her face, and slipped her mouth over his shaft, sucking.

He was so big, she could only take him in so far. But she gripped his lower shaft with one hand and began to pump in a rhythm steady with her mouth.

Fingers pushed her hair back so he could look at her. He was trying to hold himself back from choking her, but his hips still made small thrusts that pushed the head of his cock deeper, making her moan around him.

Suddenly he withdrew. Disoriented, Elise looked up in confusion.

Noah was panting. “If you’d kept going,” he explained, “it was going to be all over.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she replied.

“I would.” His hazel eyes were intense. “I want to come inside you.”

Oh
. And despite her recent orgasm, that was exactly what she wanted him to do. Working him into a lather had worked her all up, too, and she found her pussy aching to be filled by him.

She moved to her hands and knees on the bed, and shot a look at him over her shoulder, just in time to see him lick his lips as he stared.

He knelt on the bed behind her, running his palms over her backside appreciatively. “You really have no idea how beautiful you are,” he murmured.

“Why don’t you show me?” she whispered.

He rubbed the tip of his shaft against her clit, circling. Before she could do more than gasp, he lined up with her entrance and thrust inside to the hilt.

Even with how wet and ready she was, Elise cried out. She really had revved his engine, and he was ready to go. He didn’t give her time to recover, and he didn’t go slow. His cock pumped in and out of her in quick strokes that made heat build inside her.

His hips slammed into hers, making her clutch at the headboard to keep herself steady. On every down-stroke the head of his shaft rubbed against a spot inside her that made her see stars. She’d never been with someone who could make her come again so quickly, but she was almost at the edge again.

He moaned her name, “Elise.”

That did it. Her whole body clenched around him and she came again with a shout, white-hot pleasure spiraling through her.

Noah didn’t stop, his hips working faster, drawing out her peak until she almost couldn’t bear it anymore.

Finally his hips stuttered and his thrusts became erratic, and he groaned an animal sound as he spent himself in her depths.

Her hands and legs started quivering with the effort of keeping her body upright. With a contented sigh, Elise let herself slip belly-first to the bed, one hand still wrapped around the bed frame.

Noah’s larger hand covered hers, squeezing, and he lavished kisses along the back of her neck and shoulders as they came down from the high together.

“That was…” She trailed off, not sure if she could even find the words.

“Too much?”

Elise giggled. “Yes, but in a good way.”

He moved the heavy weight of his body to the side, letting air cool her overheated skin.

Every touch, every time their gazes caught each other, she couldn’t help but smile.

It was Noah who broke the silence. “Where do you live?”

“I have an apartment.”

“Not that house we went to?”

“That is—was—my grandfather’s. Technically it belongs to me, but like you saw, it’s unlivable.” The somber subject matter clashed with her good mood.

“What happened?” Noah’s question was gentle.

Elise sighed. “Cecil and I lived there for a while after our mother passed. My grandmother had already died a few years before. I think we were the last things holding him together. After we moved out, he… stopped caring, I think. We were the last of his family, and he was the last of ours.”

She cleared her throat. “Anyway, the house was already on the older side, and it started having problems. Major ones. Mold, plumbing, foundation, leaks. It couldn’t really be lived in. We didn’t know about all of this until after he was gone. He just hadn’t been keeping it up.”

She blinked away hot tears. Noah’s gentle hand on her back anchored her like a ship in a storm.

“It’s not your fault,” he said softly.

She sniffed and picked at the bedspread. “I know. He was really good at hiding the fact that something was wrong. He would always come out to see us instead of the other way around.”

Noah tucked a hand behind his head and looked at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up old hurts. I wanted to ask if you would come live with me.”

She was startled, but pleased. “Here, at the shop?”

“Wherever you want to.”

Elise considered this. “I’ve always wanted to repair the house,” she confessed softly. “Once it passed to me, we sold most of the furniture. What we could, anyway. But we never had enough money to really fix it up enough to live in. It has lots of problems.”

“We could try,” he suggested.

“Fixing it up?” She giggled in surprise. “Is that really something you’d want to do?”

“It’s a bear tradition,” he explained, rolling over on his side to face her. “When we find our mates, we build our home. The one we’re going to share with them. Well, that’s the old way of doing it. Some bear shifters nowadays remodel or something like that.”

“New family, new home,” Elise mused. “That makes sense.”

“What do you think?” He was watching her closely, earnestly, for her response.

She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “I think that I love you. And I would love to make a home with you.”

* * *

It would have been nice if they could spend all morning cuddling, but the day had other plans. Elise was roused from her doze by a knock at the door.

“That could be your brother,” said Noah, kissing her neck. “Or it could be Eric.”

“Who's Eric?”

He pulled away and began getting dressed. She followed his lead.

“He's part of the shifter police I told you about last night. He'll be taking your statement.”

“The Ranger?” Elise ran her fingers through her hair and tried to make herself presentable.

She was disappointed they wouldn't be spending the day in bed together, but then again, she was excited to meet more shifters. There was a whole world out there she hadn't known about, apparently, with its own laws and traditions. Clara, who'd majored in sociology, would have gone nuts over this.