Chapter 12
BLAKE
After fixing the fire for the night, Ollie pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it on, judging by the chimes that sounded after he hit the power button.
"Shit," he said a moment later. "I need to call my mom."
He stepped outside on the porch to make the call. I would have frozen my balls off, but he didn't even zip up his parka. He sat on the pile of wood he'd gathered before dark, looking like he belonged on a beach chair from the way he kicked out his legs and crossed his ankles.
It wouldn't be long before the fire blazed too hot for me to stay in the living room.
I flipped open my new purple notebook and ran my fingers over Ollie's bold signature.
Everything he did exuded confidence, even when I asked him to do something I bet he'd never done before.
No random weirdo had ever asked me to sign a notebook before, that's for sure.
Half of my high school classmates hadn't wanted me to sign their senior yearbooks, either.
Ugh. High school had been the worst fucking time in my life. Graduating had been a relief. Getting to college and discovering most of my classmates had been outcasts like me had given me hope for the future.
How had I wound up working a dead-end job for measly pay and no joy?
In college, my RA had pushed us to find a hobby to help with stress.
I'd joined Carving Delights, a woodworking group.
An art professor ran it and provided the wood and access to his classroom filled with tools of every kind.
Shop had been my favorite class in high school, and the group had been a wonderful escape from studying my notes.
When I graduated, I'd promised our professor I would continue wood crafting. Now, I couldn't remember the last time I picked up a woodworking tool. I'd never intended it to be more than a hobby, but now, I couldn't even call it that. Former hobby was more like it.
Well, it was Christmas Day. If there was ever a time to see if anyone checked the Carving Delights group chat, today was it.
"Merry Christmas!" I typed.
My phone pinged a moment later with a reply, and then an image of a beautiful sleigh crafted completely from walnut from a name I didn't recognize. "Present to myself this year. Next year, a horse to go with it."
I wondered if horse shifters existed, and if Ollie would know.
It seemed strange to think another world existed alongside the human one, where shifters hid in plain sight.
Strange, but it didn't scare me. I was in awe of Ollie's bear form and his ability to shift before my eyes, but somehow, I knew he was still in there when his bear looked back at me.
More pings followed, most with "Merry Christmas" greetings, some from names I recognized but most I didn't. I wondered if any of my friends were shifters.
Would they even tell me? My best friend in the group, Tomas, had mannerisms like an otter sometimes, especially when we camped together and swam in the lake. Was he an otter shifter?
Ollie returned from outside, shoulders hunched, a sullen look on his face. "Glad that's over."
"How's your family?"
"Great without me, I guess." He sighed. "I wanted them to have a good time, but they're acting like it's the best Christmas ever.
My mom barely said a word before she passed the phone around to my dad and brothers.
Then the phone got passed back to her to say goodbye.
When I said I loved her, she hung up on me. "
"That sucks." I moved my notebooks into my lap and patted the cushion beside me. "I take it that's not how it usually goes. How's your relationship with them?"
He sighed as he sat beside me. My cushion sank toward him, dumping me onto his lap. I tried to push off his chest, but he held me in place, sniffing my neck as he did so.
"You smell good."
"Thanks." I'd forgotten my usual body wash, so I'd been using the cedar scrub bar in our shower.
"I mean really good." He pulled me closer.
I adjusted the notebooks so they fit against my chest, hoping I wouldn't bend any pages by accident.
"My parents live five hours south of Chicago." Ollie's breath tickled my neck. "It's about six hours from my house when traffic's bad. I hate going home for the holidays. They want me to do all the chores. They have six other sons!"
I snuggled against his chest. Despite coming in from outside, he felt so warm. As a guy who was always cold, unless the fireplace sweated me out of the living room, I couldn't resist. "What chores?" I wanted him to keep talking, loving the rumble of his voice.
He detailed his grievances with each item on his yearly to-do list. They all seemed perfectly normal to me, an only son, though my parents hadn't owned some of the amenities Ollie's family wanted him to clean, check, polish, etc.
"It could be worse," I said, thinking back to my horse shifter question. "You could live on a farm."
He laughed. "True. A neighbor tried to sell us some goats to take care of the underbrush in the woods. Thank goodness my dad said no."
"Are there goat shifters?" I asked, hedging toward what I really wanted to know.
"I've never met one, but I imagine there are."
"Horse shifters?"
He laughed. "Yes. If you've ever been to an ethical rodeo, they're all shifters." I certainly wouldn't put ethical and rodeo in the same sentence, but if they were shifters, it made sense that they wouldn't need to be shocked or hurt. They could buck, and stop, whenever they wanted.
"Speaking of shifting," Ollie stood and adjusted my legs around his middle until I was straddling him. He balanced me with his hands on my thighs, and my underwear was wet in all the right places. "Would you like to meet my bear?"
His question made me forget all about my leaky parts. "Yes! I'd wanted to pet him this morning, but I didn't know if you wanted me to touch your ass or not."
Ollie laughed, and his hands slid a little closer to the dampness around my hole. "I wouldn't mind." He winked at me. "I'm vers."
I blinked. "You are?" I'd thought I would need to give up topping when I met my alpha, but apparently not. "You'd let me fuck you?"
"I will," he said. "When you're ready."
His unwavering confidence made my cheeks burn. He was certain we had a future together, even now when I was so unworthy of him. I gripped the back of his neck and made a silent promise to become the man who deserved to be his mate.
He carried me to the door, where he set me back on my feet and bundled me in his parka. "I won't need it, and I don't want you to get cold."
I shook my head. No way would I be cold in his coat.
"Don't you get too hot wearing this?" I asked.
"Yes." He laughed. "That's why I brought my jacket." He blinked. "I should have given you my coat from the start. I'm so sorry! I wasn't thinking."
I cupped his face with my hands to calm him and shook my head gently. "No. I screwed up and forgot to bring my coat. I wouldn't have accepted this. It's too much."
I loved the silky texture of his beard as he rubbed his jaw against my palm. "You can wear it tonight. Come on."
I followed him to the bedroom, but I didn't go inside. The sound of his clothes rustling was enough to make my mouth water. I didn't want my ass to get any more ideas.
When Ollie walked out of the bedroom, my mind tried to commit every ripple, curve, and slab of muscle to memory.
My gaze traveled from his hairy shins to the thicker pelt on his chest before settling on the gorgeous cock framed by a darker triangle of pubic hair.
He was the hottest person I'd ever seen naked.
I adjusted my cock in my pants and followed him to the back door.
The first frigid blast chilled my libido back to a manageable level. I followed him off the small deck and down a well-worn path through the snow into the woods. After a few feet, I looked back over my shoulder and could barely make out the yellow light over the back door.
I bumped into the hind legs of a giant bear. On all fours, Ollie's tail came up to my navel. His brown fur stood out against the snow-covered trees. If I'd been paying attention, I wouldn't have run into him.
Here in the small clearing, he had room to turn around and face me. His eyes were larger in this form, but they still held his intelligence. He leaned forward over his front paws and bumped his nose against my chest.
I tugged off my mittens, not caring that my hands instantly turned red from the cold. Running my fingers through his fur, I relished how thick and warm it was. "You're magnificent," I said.
He huffed and pressed his head against me again.
I lost my balance and toppled backward into the snow.
He pounced on me, his heavy body pressing me into the snow as he studied me.
His face was so close to mine, my eyes couldn't focus.
I felt like I would go cross-eyed trying to meet his hypnotic gaze.
He shoved his nose between my neck and the hood of his parka. His wet tongue dipped into my ear, and I shrieked. "Stop licking me!"
A hot puff of air filled the hood, but he pulled back. It was even worse when he licked from my chin to my forehead, his saliva catching in my nostrils. "Gross! No! Bad bear!"
The rumbles in his chest sounded a lot like laughter. Finally, he got off me and ambled toward the trail leading back to the cabin.
"You don't want to go for a walk?"
He shook his head, which led to a full body shimmy.
Then, he tilted his head back toward the cabin.
When he reached the deck, he rose up on his hind legs.
This was the second time I'd seen him shift back to his human form, but my brain didn't know how to process what I saw.
He morphed from being a bear to being a man, and my brain registered only a blur in between.
"Thank you," I said once we were back in the warm cabin. "It was lovely to meet your bear."
"He wanted to mark you," Ollie said from the bedroom. From the muffled sound, he was pulling on his shirt. "I convinced him to lick you instead."
"Did he have to lick my nose?" I continued down the hallway, pulling off his coat before I overheated and tossing it over the back of the loveseat. "I didn't mean to wipe it all over your parka. It's a mess."
He laughed. "It'll smell like you now. It's no problem at all."
I washed my hands and face in the bathroom before setting about making us some hot chocolate to go with the last of the cookies. Then, I stared at the fireplace, wondering why I'd asked for a cabin with no television.
Of course, I knew why. I couldn't be trusted to do any work with a television remote in hand.
Not only that, but it would be too sad to see all the bowl games on television without being able to hear my dad yelling at the players, coaches, and even the commentators.
He'd loved all college sports. Cassie was the sportsball member of our family, with her field hockey scholarship and her quick grasp of rules.
I didn't understand anything beyond how damn much my dad loved his alma mater, THE Ohio State, and how often they made it to the top of every NCAA competition, from football to basketball and everything in between.
Still, it would be nice to watch my favorite Christmas movie of all time. The night was still young, even though it had been dark for a few hours.
Ollie must have felt the same way. He propped his laptop on the countertop next to the remaining plate of cookies. "Do you still need to write? I can put on some Christmas music—"
"I'm done for the day," I assured him. "What did you have in mind?"
"Christmas movies?"
"That depends."
He smirked. "On?"
"Do you agree Die Hard is a Christmas movie?"
"It's the only Christmas movie," he said. "It's already cued up."
I blinked. "Did we already talk about this?" With most potential boyfriends, I didn't launch into my praise of Die Hard until we'd shared at least two orgasms.
He pulled out a stool and motioned for me to sit on his thick thighs. "Come here."
We sat like that, munching on cookies, sipping our drinks (milk for Ollie, lemonade for me), and watching the movie until Ollie squirmed beneath me. "Shit. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
Both of our glasses were empty, and I was stuffed with too many cookies. "We can move to the loveseat."
Ollie angled it so it wasn't directly facing the fireplace, and I dragged a stool over and set Ollie's laptop on it.
Then, we sank onto the loveseat together.
The seat tipped me over onto his lap again.
This time, he draped his arm over my shoulder and angled our bodies so we could both see the computer screen.
Would I have preferred a big screen? Sure, but laughing with Ollie through the funny parts and clinging to him during the tense moments made up for it. I never wanted to watch a movie without him again. My chest ached when I remembered we had to return to our lives on opposite sides of Chicago.