Chapter 19 Not You
not you
RAVIK
Thwack!
I brought the axe down again, splitting another round of the fallen red cedar that had crashed through the roof of this fixer-upper. I'd moved in anyway just because the house was directly across from where Bell was staying. The two halves fell away, and I immediately reached for the next piece.
The wood chopping wasn’t helping.
I was still hard. Still aching.
Still unable to get the smell and feel of Bell sliding that delicious sugar cookie pussy up and down Boone’s dick out of my head.
I brought the axe down harder than necessary on the next swing, splitting the wide log with a crack that echoed through the trees.
Should’ve been exhausted by now. I’d already bucked the fallen tree into rounds and split half of them into fire logs nobody needed right now with June around the corner. Not to mention frantically jerking off in the shower. Twice.
The fresh bite on my right forearm that connected me to Boone meant I’d felt everything that happened in Bell’s bed this morning. Every roll of her hips. Every desperate grind. The way her arousal had spiked sharp and sweet right before she came apart against Boone’s length.
My third maul’s orgasm had hit me like it was my own. Lying alone in bed, I’d spilled a back-caving load into my pajama pants. Calling out Bell’s name.
With Boone’s emotions dialed back down, I could no longer see, scent, hear, and feel every single thing he did after he woke to our mate’s pussy hugging his erection.
But even after a cold shower, her scent remained embedded in my nose.
Sugar-cookie arousal making my bear growl: Go over there…
. Put her on her hands and knees…. Claim her, claim her, CLAIM HER.
My bear was losing its damn mind.
It had never been like this. Not with Niska. Not even in those early days when I’d been young and naive enough to think my late wife might come to love me instead of tolerating me because her father’s word was literally law.
Niska had never made my bear rage. Never made it claw at my insides, demanding I claim and mark a female who wasn’t remotely ready for what I had planned at the end of Operation Sugar Cookie.
She was so small. Too thin. Fragile.
Which made the things I wanted to do to her feel especially depraved.
I wanted to cage her against my chest, my arms wrapped around her while I took her from behind.
Slow and deep. Wanted to feel her stretch around my cock as I came inside her, teeth sinking into her shoulder, finally marking her as mine.
Wanted to hear my name on her lips—not Boone’s, not Zion’s, mine—as she came apart beneath me.
Then I wanted to glory in her complete and utter surrender when she stopped fighting what I’d known from the moment her scent hit my nose: that she was ours from the start.
And that there was no running away from what had already been written in the stars.
The horns of the “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Regimental March” interrupted the dirty fantasy.
I set down the axe and pulled my phone from my back pocket.
TAKODA: Hey, Dad. Know you’ve been busy lately, but reminder that Holly’s and Noelle’s double baby shower is tomorrow night at the Grill.
You coming? Also, I know I said that you wouldn’t have to go to Minnesota, but we might actually need you to apply for a passport.
Uncle Walker’s stopped returning our calls.
Guilt made the hot images of what I wanted to do to Bell fade.
Takoda had no idea that his future mother-in-law was less than a few kilometers away.
But Bell wasn’t ready to see her daughters yet, and right now, what she wanted was my number-one priority. Also, tomorrow night was my day to watch over her.
I thumbed out a response.
Can’t tomorrow. Will get back to you about the passport.
I was about to push send when Boone’s voice suddenly boomed inside my head.
“INCOMING!”
I winced. Even if he’d exchanged bites with Zion nearly thirty years ago, Boone was new to actually using the maul bond and hadn’t learned to regulate his mental volume yet.
I hadn’t bothered contacting him on my phone since we’d exchanged bites ourselves, but I had the distinct feeling he was one of those guys who texted in all caps.
“SORRY. I WAS PLANNING ON LETTING ZION EXPLAIN YOUR NEW PROTOCOL TO HER, BUT...”
A flurry of Boone’s most recent memories flooded into my mind. Bell scrunching her forehead in that cute way of hers, demanding to know what “sentry duty” meant. Boone’s hand going to the back of his neck—right before he blurted out the truth we’d all agreed Zion would break to her tonight.
Ursa dammit.
I barely had time to process the footage before a voice called out from the direction of the structurally unsound two-story cabin I’d only claimed to stay close to her.
“Ravik! Ravik! Where are you?”
Bell. And she sounded pissed.
I turned to see her shadowed form in the front room, looking all around until she spotted me through the back window.
A few seconds later, she stormed out the sliding door with a freezer bag clutched in one hand.
“I made these as a thank-you gift.”
She practically hurled the freezer bag into my chest.
The impact made me take a half step back. Not from the force—but because if I didn’t step back, I’d reach for her.
She’d touched me. It didn’t matter if there was plastic and fabric between her hand and my chest. The pressure made my bear surge, wanting its rightful turn. Only the fact that she'd brought me a present distracted it from its bone-deep hunger to sink its maw into her neck.
Cookies.
I clutched the bag against my chest. She’d made me cookies. She’d baked for me before coming to confront me.
Something in my chest pulled tight, and despite the fury radiating off her in waves, my bear perked up at the smell of real sugar cookies that could actually be eaten.
“You slept outside my house two nights ago?” Her question brought my head up from her gift. “And you made Boone do the same thing last night?”
My house, she’d said.
I gritted my jaw. That tiny hovel was meant for widows in their sunset years, not for our mate. But she’d claimed it as hers, and now she was defending it like territory.
“I didn’t make Boone do anything.” I fell back on my RCMP training to keep my voice level. Pretended like her proximity wasn’t making my bear go crazy inside of me. “He wanted to follow the safety program.”
"The program?" Her eyes narrowed. "You mean your program? And why was Boone acting like he didn't have a choice but to go along with it?"
Because on one hand, Boone was doing an excellent job of falling back into the third maul position, despite being the one who’d found Bell originally. On the other, Way to throw me under the bus, Third.
“Because I’m the first maul,” I informed her in the same voice I used to write out tickets. “It’s my job as the first maul to ensure your safety,”
Then I finished ripping off the Band-Aid Boone had already partially unpeeled. “And that’s why, starting tonight, one of us will be staying overnight. Inside the house with you.”
She stared at me for a stunned second, those pretty brown eyes flashing even angrier than they had the morning before last when she’d actually thought we were kicking her out.
“What?” She stepped closer, jabbing a finger in the air between us. “You told me I could have my privacy, and now you’re, what? Closing in?”
Bad idea. Her stepping closer—not my insisting that one of us stay with her overnight.
Her sugar cookie scent wrapped around me, spiking with that faint arousal she apparently had no idea she was giving off, according to Boone,.
My gums tingled with the threat of an incoming maw, and my cock throbbed so hard it ached. She was right there, close enough to…
I stepped back. Wrestled my bear down. Then said, “Bell, we’re trying to protect you—”
“You’re trying to control me.” She cut me off, her eyes blazing with accusation. “Just like my ex!”
That comparison punched me in the gut.
“I’m nothing like him.” Rage flashed through me—not at her, but at the bastard who’d made her think care and control were the same thing.
She had every right to be scared. That bastard had trained her to see threats everywhere.
But the words came out harder than I intended. “If I wanted to control you, Bell, you wouldn’t be in the widow’s cottage, keeping us on standby while you play out your dying-alone fantasy.”
Her face went carefully blank. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Pretending to want to be alone?”
“I know you’re scared of us.” The words escaped before I could stop them. “Even more scared now, after this morning. Because Boone showed you how good it could be—and that terrifies you.”
“What, no…” She took a step back, even as her sugar cookie scent spiked.
I stayed where I was, for both our sakes, but something mean and petty made me point out, “I’m a bear, sweetness. I can smell your arousal. We all can. You’re the walking scent profile of ‘My mouth is saying no, but my body is saying yes.’”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I guess she was smart enough to figure out I wasn’t lying about this.
She closed it again. Reset. Then lifted her chin high to insist, “I don’t need your protection. I’m only here because I don’t have anywhere else to go. Thank you for the safe space. But I’ve got it from here. I can take care of myself.”
“No, you can’t.”
She looked so damn fragile—standing there, insisting she could do this on her own after everything that piece of shit had put her through. Like something made of glass pretending to be stone.
Every protective instinct I had fired inside of me, and before I could stop myself, I stepped forward and cupped her shoulders.
“Baby, you can’t take care of yourself. Not right now.
Boone saw you last night. We all did, through his eyes.
You were terrified. Trembling and begging that bastard not to hurt you. You were crying—like, real tears.”