Grace
I wake to his warmth at my back. That part I know now, before I’m fully awake.
The rest of it takes me a second.
His cock throbs there, thick and insistent, pressed into the curve of my lower back. No shift or apology, just the steady pulse of it, heat bleeding through skin on skin. I go still, registering the weight and the way it nudges every time his breath evens out behind me.
A laugh slips out before I decide.
“Good morning.”
He grunts something that could pass for a reply.
“Is that for me?” I ask lightly, pressing against him.
“Depends,” he says, lips moving against my neck.
“On what?”
“On if you want it.” He pushes his hips forward, his shaft pulsing against me.
I lick my lips, sensation building between my thighs.
“Oh, I want it.” My voice has turned husky. I reach for him. His skin feels like it burns beneath my palms, his flesh toned and hard. I press back into his chest. The cot is narrow, but it doesn’t matter. Warmth covers every place we touch. Cold air waits in the gaps.
His hands move to my front, one arm banded over my torso, holding me against him, while the other hand explores me.
He starts at my ribs. Slow passes, palms flat, the bear’s heat pushing through. He runs hotter than I do. Every degree registers.
He works lower, fingertips trailing over the curve of my belly to my mound.
Finds my clit with two fingers, circles once, then again, steady pressure that pulls a sound from my throat.
His fingers dip in, one finger sliding through slick, then two, filling and stroking in the same rhythm.
I feel it all at once—the pull outward, the push inward, the way wetness coats his knuckles.
I slide my hand down to cover his, and he grasps it, threading our fingers together, and guides it down.
My own palm presses against the heat there, his fingers moving with mine so I can feel every stroke, every slide through the wet.
The sticky sound is quiet but clear in the cave.
I leave my hand there, feeling how soaked I am, how his fingers keep working without pause.
I can’t tell whether it’s his thumb on my clit or my own, but either way, it’s making my toes curl.
“God!” I choke out. “Are you always this—?”
His fingers press harder on my clit. The sentence breaks.
He keeps the pace, learning what makes me push back, returning to it. My hips start to move without asking. I push into his hand, writhe against the fingers inside me, and the thumb circling above. The cave air sits cool on my skin, but I barely feel it.
He pushes two fingers into me, taking mine along with them, and I know what he’s doing this time. The steady stretch, the spreading. My breath comes in short bursts as he works me wide. Because now I know what to expect next. Him. All of him.
His thumb circles more firmly, and a jolt runs through me.
“Decker! Fuck!” My head is thrown back into the broad curve of his shoulder, my thighs clenching around his hand as I try to find the elusive sensation that would push me over the edge.
He waits. Waits until my back bows and my hips chase every pass of his hand, until I’m grinding down on my own fingers and his, chasing friction.
He eases his free hand from where he’s been gripping me and cups my breast, tweaking and rolling my nipple until it’s hard and throbbing.
The stubble on his chin grazes against the back of my neck, and a fresh wave of gooseflesh raises the tiny hairs on my skin.
“God! Oh, God! I need… I need… Please…” I’m begging now, but I don’t give a damn.
I untwine my fingers from his and reach behind me, grasping his hip as I press myself back and grind against his cock.
It slides between my thighs and bumps up against my pussy just short of sliding in, and I’m mewling with frustration.
He’s using his fingers to spread my lips open, letting the heavy head glide along my seam until it nudges up against my clit.
I tilt my hips to give him access, but he keeps up the steady sliding.
“Goddamn you, Decker,” I choke out. “Stop teasing and fuck me!” I’m grasping at him now, nails raking the back of his thigh as he keeps taunting me, so close and yet not there.
His response is a low chuckle. He lines up and thrusts in from behind, slow but relentless.
“Fuck!” I blurt at the short sting, but my ass is pushing back to meet him.
The angle is different than last night—deeper reach, the stretch sharper.
He’s still huge, splitting me open, the burn riding right at the edge of too much.
I feel every inch as he fills me, the way my body gives around him.
His arm locks across my chest again, pinning me back against him.
His free hand stays between my legs, still working my clit in the same steady circles.
I rest my palm against my lower belly, fascinated by the fact that I can feel him there.
Each thrust pushes under my hand, the pressure inside pressing outward so I can track exactly how deep he goes, how thick he feels moving there.
“You like that, sweetheart?” His voice is low in my ear.
I nod quickly. “Yes! God, yes!”
The pace stays measured at first. I learn it, the way he impales me and still lets me push back. I do. He meets it. The sounds coming out of him drop lower, rougher, the bear closer now.
I come the first time with his fingers on my clit and his cock driving in. It hits hard. My pussy clamps down, pulsing around him. He doesn’t stop. Keeps thrusting, keeps circling, holds me pinned with that arm across my chest until the aftershocks roll straight into the next climb.
“I like it when you come for me,” he rumbles into my ear, sending a shiver through me.
“Good. Because…because I’m doing it again.
” I’m gasping. The second one builds faster.
My body feels loose and buzzing at once, every nerve lit but heavy.
He lets me ride through it, still thrusting deep, still rubbing that tight spot above my entrance.
It’s getting to the point where it’s almost too much until he changes the angle and drives directly against that spot that sets me off again.
“Oh! Oh, sweet Jesus!” I’m practically sobbing now. The wave that builds this time comes from deep in the pit of my belly. I come again, harder this time, if that’s even possible.
He doesn’t let me drop. Keeps the rhythm just enough to hold me on the edge, each deep thrust sparking another small fire that doesn’t quite die.
I’m limp against him, head tipped back on his shoulder, but my pussy keeps clenching every time he bottoms out.
The sensation stays right there, hovering.
“Mmmm…” he rumbles against the back of my neck, his breath fluttering my hair, his mouth opening against my skin, and for a moment, it feels like he’s going to grip me with his teeth to hold me steady. The thought makes me quiver.
“Fuck. So good…” he rasps. I feel him getting close. His thrusts shorten, rhythm stutters once. He starts to pull back, about to pull out. I reach back, grip his hip.
“Stay in. You can come inside me.” My voice comes out rough. “My line only conceives with our own kind.”
He grunts, low and animal. Rams forward hard, the deep, blunt pressure unmistakable against the end of my channel.
Fuck, he’s huge.
My eyes are watering, but it’s a pain that’s too close to pleasure to make me want to stop him.
“Grace,” he growls, and then stiffens and thrusts deep, gripping me so tightly I can barely draw air. He pulses there, thick spurts flooding hot inside me, filling me until it feels too much. The sensation tips me again. My inner walls milk him in tight, rhythmic pulls, dragging more out of him.
We stay locked like that, breathing ragged, until the pulses fade. His forehead rests against the back of my neck. My hand stays on my belly, feeling the faint throb where he still sits inside.
He pulls out slow. Cum gushes after him, warm and slick down my thighs.
It’s hard to believe there’s so much of it, but then I guess bears are built that way.
His hand cups my mound, scoops up the stickiness, and rubs it into the skin there—slow, deliberate strokes that spread it over my lower belly and the inside of my thighs.
The motion feels oddly right, possessive without being overbearing.
I watch his fingers move, shiny with both of us.
“You good, sweetheart?” he asks, and I nod, trying to find my voice.
His mouth grazes the back of my neck again.
Teeth or lips, I can’t tell. A shudder runs through me.
Then his mouth settles, just lips, pressing once.
A kiss that’s gentle enough to make my throat tighten.
He draws back and gathers me against his chest, arm still around me, heartbeat steady under my ear.
“I like this,” I murmur, not quite sure what I’m referring to. The hot sex? The sense of being protected? After the months in the Syndicate facility, touch is something I’ve grown suspicious of. But not with him. With him, it feels… right.
“Mmmm…” he murmurs, the sound reverberating deep in his torso.
And I like that too. There’s a depth to his sounds that echoes the rest of him, big, strong, unyielding.
Yet gentle. I take his hand and press it up against my cheek, and he doesn’t withdraw it.
His thumb brushes over my lips, and I press a small kiss to the pad of it.
The quiet holds. His chest rises and falls at my back, unhurried.
“You said your line is different,” he eventually says. “Earlier. When you told me to…”
“To come inside me?” My lips curl against his chest.
“Yes,” he says. “You only conceive with your own kind. What is your kind?”
“The Sangrey line,” I say. “We’re wolf and witch, not magic-blood.” I pause.
“So your blood is different.”
“Yes.” I nod. “It’s why only some lines are compatible.” I feel his breathing against my shoulder, steady, listening. “I guess you could say that we’re rare.”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t push.
“Serenity knows it better than I do.” The words feel strange coming out here, in the warm dark, with his arm across me.
“She memorized the whole family history when we were girls. Could recite bloodlines going back eight generations, who carried the witch-line and who ran wolf-pure.” Something shifts in my chest. “She was always the one who kept track of what mattered. I was the…protector.”
His arm tightens. Just that.
I press my face against the side of his wrist and close my eyes. He smells like us now. It should feel strange. It doesn’t. I heave a small sigh; soft, contented.
God, be careful, Grace.
I barely know him. This is dangerous territory. But I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the release of stress after being terrified for so long.
Or maybe his magnificent cock has scrambled my brain. Maybe both.
After a while, he shifts. Sits up. The absence of him feels sharper than I expected.
“I’ll check outside. Walk the slope, make sure nothing’s moved in.”
He dresses in the dark, knows every piece by feel—jacket, pants, boots. The boulder opens. The cold mountain air cuts sharp against my overheated skin. Stone grinds shut behind him.
I stay under the covers. His warmth lingers on me, the bear’s heat slower to fade. For a while I can pretend the space beside me isn’t empty yet.
Walk the slope.
He said it the way he says everything, level and finished. But he doesn’t waste motion, and he doesn’t check ground he already trusts. Something out there is worth his attention, and he isn’t telling me what.
I should be doing what I’ve always done. Working the angles, counting what stands between me and the door. Instead I slept the whole night with my back to a man and never once woke to check where he was or what he was doing.
Serenity would laugh at me. You, trusting a bear? Then she’d want every detail, and she’d braid my hair while I talked, and she’d tell me I deserved it. She’s been in a room I can’t picture for months, and I’m lying on a fur with her whole share of the luck.
Is that what this is, Grace?
He built this cave into something that felt safe. Safe things end. I’ve had good things before. I’ve held them. I’ve watched them go.
This is the part where I know better.
Nothing this good is allowed to last.
I’ve been right about that every single time.