27. Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
My fingers compulsively tightened in his hair. Ursa must have mistaken that for excitement on my part, because with a grin, he pulled back to show me he was hard. Well. The idea clearly excited him.
“Ursa put cub in Mina now,” he said, holding eye contact with me as he reached down to give himself a long, firm stroke.
“Pronouns,” I reminded him weakly, trying to gather my thoughts.
“I put cub in you now.”
As he began to raise up over me, I held up my hands, stopping him. “Well, about that. I rather thought you knew . . .” Which was stupid, really. I could be so utterly dense sometimes. The man had been raised by bears; how would he have possibly known? “I have a birth control implant.”
Ursa stilled. “Birth control implant?” he repeated slowly, clearly confused.
“It’s, well. It’s a little device inside of me that ensures I can’t get pregnant when I, when we, are intimate together.
” Such things were standard-issue on Haven 3, of course, even for people like myself who had little to no experience with sex.
One couldn’t be too careful in a settlement where pre-birth genetic modification was so highly prized.
If one accidentally fell pregnant with an unmodified child . . . well, talk about uncivilized.
Ursa paused for a long moment, absorbing this. Then abruptly, he knelt down before me again and began patting my body. At first, I assumed he was trying to arouse me again, but I quickly realized this touch was much more methodical. He was trying to search for the birth control implant.
“It’s not somewhere you can feel or touch,” I informed him.
“It can only be removed by a doctor.” Which was, technically, true.
There was an override sequence I could activate if I wanted to turn it off without a physician’s assistance, but .
. . well. I didn’t think that was something Ursa needed to know quite yet.
Not until I knew how I felt about the entire thing.
I wasn’t opposed, in theory, to having children with him someday, but it wasn’t something at the forefront of my mind.
My life had been devoted to science first and foremost, and when I’d become engaged to Rawley, he’d made it very clear that he was not interested in offspring (his word).
I’d resolved myself to a life without them, and in some ways, that was a relief; it was so much pressure, to decide for a child what its eye color should be, how it should speak, its height, its gait, the color of its skin.
For most of my life, that was what I’d envisioned having a child would be: creating a specimen in a lab that would become a person. That was how things were done on Haven 3.
But having a child with Ursa would be altogether different.
A gamble. Everything about it would be left up to chance.
Would it have his beautiful eyes? My stubborn streak?
My mother’s chin? We wouldn’t know who this new person was until they were already out in the world, and then they would be ours. Mine and Ursa’s.
I didn’t hate the thought entirely. But I would need some time to wrap my mind around it.
“Come now, Ursa,” I murmured, stroking his forearm. “This isn’t the place for us. We don’t even know if there are mushrooms on this planet!” I took a moment to collect myself before continuing, more calmly, “There will be other towns, gentler towns, with less abrasive people.”
“A-bray-sive?” Ursa wanted to know.
I switched the pitch of my voice, mimicking the greedy, grabby tone of the vendors we’d passed on the street. “Right this way, little lady, for the finest chili in all of Amazonia. Wow, ain’t you a big fella—bet you need a big mug, huh? Homemade right here from gen-u-ine Amazonia clay!”
My very accurate and skillful impression coaxed a reluctant laugh from Ursa. “Towns not all a-bray-sive?” he wanted to know.
“Havens, no! Each place has its own personality. We’ll just need to find the personality that suits us best.” I paused, hesitating a moment before adding, “Maybe . . . a nice little house on the outskirts of a town, close to nature. So I can have my teapot and books and bed and things—” Indoor plumbing, was what I demurely refrained from saying.
“And be close enough to town to get to a library and some laboratory equipment. But you can disappear for as long as you like into the wilderness, whenever you need to, as well.”
I’d been imagining us in this exact sort of place over the past few weeks.
The best of both of our worlds. I had no idea if such a place actually existed, but .
. . surely, it must? Surely, if Ursa and I had found each other in this great, wide galaxy, there had to be a way for us to live happily together.
Holding my breath, I waited for Ursa’s response. “Town has doctor?”
That . . . wasn’t where I’d expected his train of thought to go, but it wasn’t a bad question. “Yes, I imagine most towns have a doctor or someone at least skilled enough to—Ursa!”
Quite suddenly, Ursa pushed me backward so I was prone once again on the rock. The thin material of my skirt was lifted with determination—then he paused.
Lifting my head, I saw Ursa staring underneath my skirts.
All at once, I remembered the state in which I’d left our quarters that morning.
Feeling a flush rising into my cheeks, I cleared my throat.
“Ah, yes. I’m not wearing any underpants.
They didn’t look totally right underneath the dress, you see, so I—”
Ursa continued to stare, his chest rising and falling in a way that seemed slightly agitated. He blinked, shook his head. Blinked again. “Mina . . . you . . . walk in town . . .” He seemed to be searching for his words. “With . . . no underpants?”
I had no idea what was going through his mind, why he seemed so tense. He wasn’t angry, though—that much became clear when he reached down to take hold of himself again and stroke once, twice.
Oh. Oh. Was he aroused by the thought of me not wearing underwear underneath my dress?
That thought, in turn, made me feel quite aroused.
And also quite heady with the knowledge of this power I had over him.
I’d made my choice earlier that morning quite practically, not out of any intention to seduce anyone.
But one glance at me bare underneath my dress had put big, strong Ursa into quite a stupor.
Clearing my throat, I drew his attention upward, holding his gaze. “I’m not wearing a bra either, see?” Feeling quite bold, I tugged down the material of my dress until one of my nipples popped free.
His chest and shoulders were rising even more rapidly now.
“I’m not wearing anything under this dress, Ursa,” I told him.
The next thing I knew, my legs were being hoisted high up into the air, my heels snagged over Ursa’s shoulders, and my bottom lifted off the rock, though my back was still prone against it.
Ursa slid into me without warning or preamble, and I was just ready enough that the roughness of the gesture felt agonizingly good.
He snapped his hips against me, again and again, his hands gripping me so tightly I was sure I would bruise.
I could not bring myself to care even in the slightest. This new angle was .
. . something else. “Ursa,” I whined. I reached out for somewhere to find purchase, but there was nothing to hold on to except for the smooth surface of the rock.
His forearms. Somehow, this feeling of being detached from almost everything but him, being completely at his mercy, increased the intensity of the sensation, the pleasure almost unbearable, even so soon.
“In town, doctor breaks implant,” Ursa told me. “Ursa puts—I put a cub in you.”
There were too many things to process at once. The intense thrust of our bodies against each other. His tight, unrelenting grip on me. His seeming agreement to my plan, our town. And his statement, almost order, that he would impregnate me there.
Naturally, I focused on the least important part of it, which was the grammar. “For future present tense,” I informed him breathlessly, “you should add in a qualifier. I will put. And cub is a term for bear offspring. Humans call them babies. A baby, singular.”
Ursa tightened his hold on me, his dusky blue eyes darkening to midnight as he held my gaze hostage. “I will put a baby in you.”
My sharp cry of pleasure echoed throughout the canyon.
1. Not exactly a sign of an upstanding individual, I think you’ll agree.
2. Apologies, my love, if you’re reading this. I really was—and am!—so impressed with your progress. Truly.