Chapter 18 Polar Bear
polar bear
BELL
Dennis raised the gun, pointing it straight at my forehead. “Time to die now, Belly.”
Tears immediately sprang to my eyes. “No… no… Please don’t!”
This wasn’t like the morning after his last beating, when he’d held the gun to my head and I’d felt nothing.
The apartment was freezing cold. And the numbness that had come with just wanting this hell to be over had abandoned me.
Even if the happiness I’d experienced over the last few days had only been an illusion, it now felt like I had everything to lose.
Like my life was actually worth something.
Dennis did not agree.
“Thought you could get away. Thought you could actually build your own life and be happy. Stupid bitch.” Dennis practically spat those last two words. “I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to go to Canada myself and kill Noelle and Holly. They don’t deserve to be happy. None of you do!”
“Please, no!” I choked out the words, tears streaming down my face. I could barely breathe. This was all my fault! I’d opened the door to Dennis, and now my girls would suffer because of it. Because of me.
I had to stop him. But all I managed to do was whimper out my pitiful pleas. “Don’t hurt them. Please…”
I was completely paralyzed for some reason. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t… couldn’t…
“Fuck, Bell, it’s okay! It’s okay! I’m coming!”
Those words sounded from somewhere in the distance. Right before a huge claw appeared out of nowhere, black paw pads surrounded by white fur.
The claw slashed through Dennis, and the ex who’d come into the room to torment me fell away in ribbons, dissipating into the ether to reveal…
A polar bear!
What was a polar bear doing here in my apartment?
“I’m right here. You don’t got nothing to be scared of,” the strong voice said in the distance, as if answering my question.
Meanwhile, the polar bear bit through the handcuffs’ chain.
The paralysis lifted, and my wrists were freed in the next instant. Then I was being pulled into the polar bear’s warm embrace. “I’m here. You’re alright. C’mere.”
The polar bear curled up around me, blanketing me in warmth. I sighed into his fur.
“Sssh,” the distant voice soothed. “That’s right. You’re safe. You’re protected. Go back to sleep.”
For some reason, I believed the voice, and that made it easy to follow his instructions.
“Thank you.” I burrowed my face into the polar bear’s chest as a beautiful black sleep stole over me.
The next time I woke up, it was still dark outside.
But this dark felt different.
This dark radiated heat like a furnace.
It was textured with coarse sprigs of hair.
And it smelled like forest and lake.
My heart sped up when I realized it wasn’t dark because I’d woken up too early. It was dark because I had my head buried in someone’s bare chest.
Someone with a massive erection. Pressed directly into my…
Oh… my… God.
I’d felt like such a good little Plan-ahead Polly last night after my shower when I put on Zion's button-up as a nightshirt and used the very last bit of energy I had to wash all my underwear and hang them to dry.
But I regretted that decision now….
The erection was covered by a layer of cotton fabric, but I wasn't wearing anything under Zion's shirt.
And apparently, I’d not only thrown my leg over this someone’s hip sometime in the night, but also decided to hug his log of an erection. With my folds. My very, very wet folds.
The someone I was hugging with the most intimate part of my body had gone completely still.
But somehow I knew that wasn’t because he was asleep.
Or unaware that I was awake.
I went completely still, too.
Well, most of my body did.
The part of me that had been dead—completely dead—for the months Dennis held me hostage in my own apartment was wide awake now, too. Aching. Begging for friction.
And throbbing against the fabric-covered erection. The frozen silence crackled all around me and the man I’d entangled myself with. Like ice about to shatter.
“You okay there, sugar?” a gruff voice asked above my bent head.
Confirming what I’d suspected from the start.
Someone was Boone. Boone, the heroic polar bear. Who’d already seen me at my worst. Twice.
Now thrice.
No… no, I was not okay.
But abject mortification clogged my throat so bad, I couldn’t answer.
“Need anything?” Boone’s voice had so much bass, the rumble of it vibrated against the face I’d burrowed into his chest.
“Feel free to take anything you need.” A note of amusement crept into his invitation. “You don’t have to ask. Anything you want…”
The heavy shaft cradled between my folds pulsed like it was keeping rhythm with his voice as he said, “Anything you want, it’s yours.”
Several responses to this predicament rushed into my head all at once, making it spin.
I could demand to know why he was here in my bed. I suspected he was the reason the polar bear had suddenly shown up in my nightmare, and I was grateful for the intervention, but I could point out that he could have left as soon as I calmed down.
I could apologize profusely.
I could remind him about my boundaries and that I wanted to be left alone.
All of those solutions began with me untangling myself from this… situation.
But I remained frozen right where I was.
My heart was beating like a drum in my ears. And there was a second heartbeat now. It throbbed against Boone’s erection and was somehow even louder than the one in my chest.
“C’mon, sugar.” Boone’s large hand splayed over my outer thigh, his calloused palm igniting the nerve endings beneath my skin.
No touching. I didn’t want to be touched….
But I couldn’t push his hand away. All I could do was shiver, my core clenching around his shaft, making the cotton fabric between us even wetter.
“It’s right there, waiting for you,” Boone crooned, his voice a dark promise of shadows and silk. “It’s yours. All you have to do is—”
A ragged moan tore from my throat before he could finish.
One of surrender, I realized, as my hips began rolling against him with primal need. Taking what I craved.
It felt so good—the hard ridge of him pressing perfectly against my swollen button. The delicious friction shot lightning straight to my core with each desperate rock of my hips.
“Fuck, yes, sugar, just like that. You’re doing so good....”
Boone’s praise scorched through me, pride and shame tangling like wrestlers in my chest.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I whispered against his heavily muscled chest. “I should stop. I don’t—oh!”
A sharp spike of pleasure stole my words. My mindless hips rubbed wantonly into the thick hard thing beneath the fabric. Taking and taking, with no care for my pride.
“Don’t stop.” Boone’s voice had turned raw with restraint. “C’mon, sugar, I’m trying not to move. I don’t want to scare you away. But I need you to be brave. You’re almost there. You smell so fucking good. Don’t stop.”
I had no idea how he knew I was teetering on the edge, but he was right. The pressure built low in my belly, coiling tighter with each desperate grind against him. My wetness made the slide of cotton fabric against my most sensitive flesh unbearably perfect.
“Boone! Boone!” I gasped out, suddenly terrified of the precipice I was racing toward. Terrified of myself.
“Bravest girl I know,” he reminded me, his voice thick with emotion.
Right before the entire world shattered into blinding light.
My body convulsed against him, wave after wave of pleasure pulsing outward from my core. My thigh trembled beneath his hand, and my back arched as I rode out the most powerful orgasm of my life against his straining length.
“Fuck, sorry!” Boone suddenly croaked. “I can’t hold back... I can’t—”
That was all the warning I got before his cock jerked against my sensitized flesh and his body shuddered violently underneath my thigh.
The fabric barrier between us grew warmer, wetter. Suddenly, I wasn’t the only reason it was soaked through.
Did Boone... did I just make him... come in his pants?
My mind spun with the aftershocks of both our releases as we came down together.
For a few suspended moments, there was no Dennis. No rules. No limits around what I deserved.
Then the pleasure abruptly vanished, replaced by a crushing wave of shame that burned dirtier than any desire—shame that made me want to crawl out of my own skin and disappear into the darkness forever.
Oh God. What is wrong with me?
I’d told him and Ravik that sex was off the table. And then my body had just... taken what it wanted anyway. Used him. Like some kind of—
“Nope. Nope. C’mon, don’t do that, sugar.”
Morning light flooded into my eyes, and a force pushed my body up Boone’s chest, so that I was no longer lodged against his erection.
It was Boone, using his own thigh to push me farther up his body so I could look into his eyes, burning like blue fire.
“I know you’re scared, but don’t take this away from us.”
He held up the large hand that had been on my thigh, showing me he wasn’t going to hurt me with it before curling it over my cheek with more gentleness than I would have expected from any man, much less one of his size.
“You did so good, sugar. You made us both feel so good. Can I kiss you? Just on the forehead?”
His question startled me.
I nodded, nonetheless. It was touching, but a forehead kiss felt chaste compared to what had just happened.
Boone pressed his lips into my forehead, and I felt something in my chest unclench. All the shadows in my chest faded away. The forehead kiss grounded me somehow. Left me feeling clean.
Made me wonder if polar bear shifters also wielded magic.
“Thank you.” Boone pulled back with a soft twinkle in his bright blue eyes. “Thanks for taking what you wanted. Made my morning.”
Taking what I wanted.
Is that what I’d done? It hadn’t felt like wanting. It had felt like drowning. Like my body had made a decision without asking my brain first.
But Boone was looking at me like I’d given him a gift, not used him like some kind of—
There was no universe where I’d answer that “Thank you” with a “You’re welcome.”
But instead of spiraling like I’d been about to before he gave me that forehead kiss, I asked, “Wanna help me make sugar cookies?”
Boone was a heroic bear who’d spent most of his life saving others from disasters. Including me.
But he was a terrible sous chef.
I quickly regretted letting him back into the widow’s cottage after he ran over to the house on the left of me and came back dressed in cargo shorts and his SMOKE HAPPENS t-shirt.
The little kitchenette was way too small for the two of us to navigate around, and he had a penchant for posting up exactly in front of the place I needed to get to in order to complete the next step of the baking process.
After the fourth time I had to ask him to move so I could reach the drawer with the freezer bags Ravik had sent over, I politely asked him to leave once his portion of the first batch of sugar cookies was ready to go.
“Sure thing,” he said with a wide grin, taking the freezer bag of cookies from me, as if he’d been expecting me to kick him out.
“I’m eating these with my lunch, but Zion’s got auditions for the pageant rehearsals. He’ll probably swing by before he goes on sentry duty.”
“Cool, then I’ll just leave Ravik’s on his porch,” I began to say, only to scrunch my forehead when the rest of what Boone said caught up to my logistics planning. “Wait, what do you mean sentry duty?”
Boone grimaced, and I should have known I would not like what he said next when his hand once again went up to rub the back of his neck.