Nailed (Black Mountain Bears Book 3) (5 page)

Fuck, she was in denial already, though. It meant everything if she wanted to have anything with them. And she had to at least admit that to herself. She
did
want them both. Sten’s hungry response to her kiss was only the smallest piece of it. Orrick’s level-headed reactions to her drove her mad, but beyond his words, she’d been aware of his measured self-restraint all along. They
respected
her, she realized, which was far more than she could say for he rude awakening she’d had back in high-school with her first kiss. And she hated herself a little bit for belittling that.

“Fine!” she yelled, stalling their progress yet again and turning to look at them both, terrified about what she was prepared to share, but knowing she needed to do it anyway.

“I’m a virgin, at twenty-six,” she said. “I’ve only ever been kissed twice.” Sten raised an eyebrow and she rolled her eyes. “Until today, anyway. You guys terrify me, because you know more than I do. And I am so, so attracted to you both, but that just isn’t enough for me. I hope you get that. I figured out a while ago that wanting and having are two very different things. And what I want is something
real
. Real doesn’t happen if you force it.”

“I wasn’t lying about your ass,” Sten said. “For what it’s worth. You are perfect, Jade.”

She let a little breath out through her nose and gave him a sad smile. “Thank you, but that doesn’t exactly tell me how you feel, you know. We barely know each other. Beyond this little physical attraction, there has to be more. So much more. It can’t be forced because some other party wants it to happen.”

“I don’t think we’re capable of forcing it,” Orrick said. “Don’t let your mother’s involvement ruin this trip, all right? Trust me when I tell you we’re not doing this for her. We’re doing it because we want to be here, with you.”

Jade took a deep breath and nodded. “Good. Now, how far are we from the falls?”

“A couple hours still, but it’s nearly sunset, so we can stop soon to camp and reach it in the morning.”

“Fuck that,” Jade said. “We’re hiking to it tonight. We’ll stop when we get there.”

She turned resolutely and started walking again, surreptitiously wiping a stray tear from her cheek. They really were the sweetest guys, yet she knew they were trying hard to be less deferential, for her sake.

Chapter Five

T
he sun had fully set by the time the roar of the waterfall became too deafening for Jade to hear herself think over. They came through the trees to a view more spectacular than any she’d seen so far inside the Sanctuary. There was no moon that night, but the stars were out in full, sparkling force, the arc of the Milky Way painted across the deep, velvet canvas of the sky.

Jade stopped short and must have made a small sound of amazement. Beside her, Sten let out a light laugh.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait for sunrise.”

“It’s fucking spectacular. We had a view to die for at my house at night, but never was it anything close to this.”

“No light pollution in here,” Orrick said. “Makes it easier to see in the dark, too.”

“Can’t you guys see in the dark anyway? Like cats?”

Orrick moved to stand in front of her. He grinned at her, his white smile nearly as bright as a crescent moon would have been, if it existed. His blue eyes gleamed with mirth. “You mean like you? It’s been full dark for hours, and you’ve never once tripped or asked one of us to hold your hand.”

Jade’s eyes widened as she realized he was right. Even though he was in shadows, she could make out every feature of Orrick’s face, right down to the extra few hours’ growth of stubble on his square, dimpled chin.

She laughed out loud and reached up to graze her fingertips over the short, rough hairs, fascinated by the way they still managed to catch what little light could be found.

Orrick’s intake of breath made her realize that she’d never so much as touched him before. She’d laid that kiss on Sten earlier to make a point, which had worked, and had been wonderful. But somehow, this tiny bit of contact with Orrick seemed so much more intimate than the rough, quick, there-and-gone kiss she’d shared with Sten. Now her own breath seemed to have abandoned her as Orrick stared back into her eyes.

She felt like she was in a kind of stasis in that moment, unable to move, or breathe, or anything. The only thing going through her mind was:
will he?

He moved incrementally closer, and Jade heard pounding in her ears, even stronger than the steady rush of the waterfall behind them. Was that her heartbeat, or his? If her eyesight was that keen, was her hearing, too?

Her hearing was at least sharp enough to hear Orrick’s whispered “
fuck
” just before he drew her into his arms and pressed his mouth onto hers. She let out a little gasp and a moan, then sank into him, sliding her hands up the sides of his neck and tangling her fingers into his hair. His toyed with her mouth softly, gently, as his tongue swept along her lips.

The anticipation killed her—she had expected something as rough and quick as the kiss she and Sten had shared, but Orrick didn’t seem inclined to make it fast. He savored her lips until another small groan drawn from her throat caused her to open to him. That was when he made it count, sinking his tongue into her mouth and taking over entirely.

Oh, God, yes. This is what I want.

She wanted to feel so overwhelmed by a man that she would let herself surrender to him. This came so close, and she might have, except for the sudden stiffening of his posture when she pressed closer to him and deepened the kiss.

He pulled away slowly, giving her lip an impulsive nip, then growled low in his chest.

“I didn’t get a chance to say it before,” he said softly. “But I
do
want you, Jade. If we need to be different than we are to have you, please give us a chance to try. You’re nothing like the ursa females we’re used to.”

Jade’s skin itched with the desire to be touched by him, to have his mouth all over her. She glanced at Sten, who stood only a foot away, seeming to hold his breath while he watched them. A single stroke of his tongue over the lip she’d devoured earlier made her clench her eyes shut in an effort to contain her hunger for them both.

“Wow,” she murmured, too overwhelmed by the heat radiating off them to think. She extracted herself from Orrick’s arms, biting her lip when she pressed against his hips by accident and felt how much he’d really enjoyed that kiss.

Her entire body was on fire from it, and she shakily turned and jogged the last few yards up the path. Spying the perfect rocky ledge that jutted out over the pool the waterfall fell into, she dropped her gear and started stripping.

“I’m going for a swim,” she said. “I’ll help set up camp after, okay?”

Heedless of where she stood or what lay between her and the water, she simply left all her belongings in a big pile. With only the stars lighting her way, she managed to find the lip of the rock. Taking a deep breath, Jade stared down at the dark, rippling surface. Without the light, she had no idea what lay beneath, but had learned to trust every inch of the Sanctuary as safe. Maybe a little treacherous at times, if their climb were any indication, but the most treacherous things inside were the people. The pair of enticing males she’d left behind made it so hard for her to think. Her own mother had apparently attempted to engineer a mating between Jade and those two sweet guys, too.

She dove into the water and came up laughing. “Sweet” was one way to describe them, but after kissing them both, it was probably not the first word she’d use anymore. Walking time bombs, was what they were. Wasn’t it dangerous for a guy to get so turned on without release all day?

Rolling onto her back, she basked in the starlight, letting the tension out of her limbs bit by bit in the vibrating roar of the nearby waterfall. She simply floated in the darkness, feeling weightless and imagining herself floating among the stars, as remote as a constellation. Would she be Ursa Major or Ursa Minor? She could see both tonight, crystal clear. Impulsively, she said a little prayer.

“Whoever is up there, help me be what I need to be to find happiness here. I’m pretty fucking confused at the moment.”

She couldn’t hear a thing over the constant din of the waterfall. A shooting star arced across the sky just then. At the same moment, she heard a pair of splashes from the shore. She almost groaned in annoyance at the interruption, but her entire body tingled at the idea of being naked with them again after a day of discoveries.

She swam away from the splashes and turned, treading water, to watch them. They laughed together, splashing a little as they swam out into the middle of the pool and murmuring breathlessly together. She couldn’t discern what they said over the sound of the waterfall from that far away.

When they reached the center, the slighter-built body that could only be Sten dove beneath the water and didn’t come up for some time, but Orrick let out a harsh gasp and tilted his head back, struggling to tread water for a second.

Sten burst up a moment later, laughing. “Two minutes isn’t long enough, I guess,” he said, and Jade didn’t have to wonder what had happened while he was beneath the surface.

“Not even close,” Orrick said, snaking an arm out and pulling Sten into a deep kiss that made Jade just a little bit jealous to watch. Their bodies seemed to merge into a solid shape in the darkness, Sten’s slightly smaller form pressed into Orrick’s larger one.

After a moment, they finally pulled apart and Jade let out the breath she’d been holding. It came out in a loud rush and they both turned to look at her.

“Jade,” Sten said, swimming toward her. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“The fuck you didn’t. What was that?”

Orrick swam up and said, “You know we’re a couple, right? Sten and I have been paired for years. This is how it works with us. The males have the option of pairing when they’re young. It ensures less risk of impregnating unmated females if we have another outlet.”

Jade’s eyes widened. Her mother had told her a lot about the place, but in none of her brief lectures had it come up that the males paired up that way. Everything made so much more sense suddenly.

“You still like females?” she asked.

Sten laughed. “You have to ask?”

“Don’t let me stop you from whatever it was you were doing,” she said, half-sulking, but half-intrigued.

They closed the distance through the water, coming together with a kiss that made Jade feel a little uncomfortable to watch. Soon, it wasn’t discomfort, but arousal that made her want to turn away. They were only kissing, but,
fuck,
they loved it.

They broke apart and looked at her expectantly.

She just waded in the water, stunned beyond recognition.

A glint in Sten’s eyes reminded her of the kiss she’d shared. Did he remember it?

“Jade,” he said, beckoning to her.

Remembering everything her mother had said about ursa mating, she held back. Condoms didn’t work for them—something about the latex simply dissolving when it contacted female ursa fluids. And if they decided to mate, she’d have to
mark
them. She hadn’t even learned to shift yet, so that couldn’t happen anyway.

Watching them now, she had an instinctive urge to do just that—to make them
hers
in spite of her wish that just the opposite would occur.

Either way, there was one thing that needed to happen before she could make that decision.

“Will you teach me to shift tonight?” Jade said, moving through the water toward them. She let both men wrap their arms around her, her wet skin brushing against theirs and sending little zings of pleasure through her.

“Does this mean you’re going to choose us?” Sten asked, sliding his hand down her back beneath the water and cupping her full bottom. He simply held her without moving, but the touch made her breath catch in her throat.

“I haven’t decided yet, but I can’t mark you without knowing how, can I?”

“True,” Orrick said. “But you don’t need to rush it.” He moved his own hand down her back and pried Sten’s fingers off her, and she caught him casting a glare at the other male. Sten only grinned.

“Come out of the water,” Sten said, swimming away toward the small campsite they’d set up by the water, illuminated by the pleasant, orange glow of a fire. He climbed out and stood by the flames, their leaping tongues making him look like some kind of wild native, with his long hair hanging in wet tendrils over his shoulders. Dark tattoos she hadn’t seen before adorned both hips.

Jade followed with Orrick behind her. Once out, she grabbed her blanket and wrapped it around her, suddenly self-conscious about being naked with them.

Orrick’s deep voice brushed against her ear as he stood dripping behind her. He tugged at the edge of the blanket. “The first step is being comfortable in your own skin, which I know you are, Jade. You spent half the afternoon naked with us without any sign of modesty.”

Jade let the blanket fall in a pile around her feet. Sten made his way around the fire and her heart pounded harder with each step he took, until he was standing just in front of her, close enough for her to make out the shapes of the two charging bears on his hips. She wondered if Orrick had similar tattoos.

“Like what you see?” Sten asked.

Jade’s gaze shot up and her cheeks heated when she realized she’d just been casually staring at the man’s groin. Irritated by his remark, and particularly by her own embarrassment, she narrowed her eyes and quirked her mouth.

“Do
you
like what you see?” she asked, squaring her shoulders so that her breasts jutted out farther.

“Very much,” Sten said. “But seeing and being fully
aware
are two different things. It’s your body that needs to learn to inhabit its true shape. The she-bear that drives your instincts is inside you. We simply need to draw her out.”

As he spoke, Orrick trailed a warm hand down the center of her spine. He paused at her low back and traced a shape just at the top of her buttocks, exactly where her tattoo was. The action was as light as a breath, but lit a heat inside her that began beneath her navel and seeped through her lower abdomen. The most intense ache pooled between her legs.

“What do you feel, Jade?” Orrick asked, his lips close enough to her cheek that his thick stubble tickled her skin.

“You touched my tattoo,” she said. “Why did that do what it did?”

“Tell me what it did.”

“It made me want . . .
sex
.”

He let out a low growl into her ear. “It spoke to your she-bear, made you want to
breed
.”

“I thought that could only happen during estrous? And I’m not fertile now, am I?”

Sten chuckled in front of her. “Your she-bear always wants to breed, even when you’re not in estrous. It’s the way your magic works. If she wants it badly enough, then it can happen even if it isn’t your fertile period, but there simply won’t be enough magic for the child to be viable. It would be a waste of your resources to risk it.”

Behind her, Orrick murmured, “But in order to shift, you need to accept that urge, open yourself up to it as though giving into a lover, let it fill you the way he fills you.”

The warmth in Jade’s core grew and her breathing became ragged. The sensation made her feel strangely full in a way she couldn’t decide if she enjoyed or not.

“I don’t know what that feels like,” she whispered, though she was beginning to have an idea.

Orrick slid his hands around her hips and rested them against her belly.

“Lie down,” he whispered. “Let us show you.”

“But you can’t . . . ” she began, shaking her head.

“We won’t fuck you,” Sten said. “There are other ways to bring out your she-bear.”

Jade let herself sink down to the blankets, hyperaware of Orrick’s warm strength behind her. She leaned back against him and looked up into his blue eyes. Her mouth watered as she remembered their kiss. As though sensing her craving, he lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers.

Another pair of hands gripped her knees and urged them apart. She relaxed and let Sten slide his hands up her inner thighs, the soft caress causing the heat in her core to grow molten. This was more than simply being horny, though. She’d felt that before, like a hot little knot that she could easily abolish with five minutes and a bit of privacy. This was akin to that intense pressure just before orgasm, only multiplied by a thousand.