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  “Our first time together won’t be in a hotel. I’m not going to penetrate you today. But can I come on your body? Is that okay?”

  He wanted to come on me? My breath quickened. “On my body? Umm...I guess that’s fine.” I licked my lips again, staring right at his cock. His hand fisted at the base for a second, trying not to come too early, I suppose.

  “I’m going to come on my mate. My sweet gorgeous mate with the hottest pair of tits and the sexiest ass anyone ever saw. All the other bears will envy me when I take you home. But this luscious little body belongs only to me, isn’t that right?” Kneeling beside me, he jacked his cock, with rough and quick strokes.

  I watched him unblinkingly. “Yes, I belong to you.”

  At my soft words, he came with a shout. Spurts of cum landed on my belly and chest. He groaned and shuddered as his balls emptied. When he was done, he said, “Don’t move. I want to mark you.” Painting the cum across my breasts and belly, he scooped some more cum in a finger.

  “I’m going to rub some in your pussy, is that okay? I need to know you’re coated in me.”

  My breath hitched, but I nodded, hips moving restlessly. “That sounds really…sexy.”

  He ripped off my soaked panties and groaned. “You shave?”

  “I wax. Max and I have regular full body waxes,” I said shyly.

  Holding his breath, he parted my soft pussy lips with careful thumbs, and smiled at me. It was a carnal, predatory smile.

  “You’re dripping,” he growled as he stroked my clit.

  I blushed but tried to play it cool. “That’s normal. I just climaxed a minute ago, you know.”

  “This is more than that. You’ve been lusting after me since you laid eyes on me. Admit it,” he said.

  How could he be so sure of that? My lashes dropped, and a faint smile tugged at my mouth. “Maybe,” I said noncommittally.

  His eyes flared and a touch of weregold flashed in them; his bear was close to the surface. Mating was one of the occasions that weres’ animals were close to the skin or so I’d heard.

  Dropping a kiss on my bare mound, he rubbed circles on my clit, which made me gasp and fidget. He pressed his cum-covered finger between my tender inner labia, into my small opening, With small, slow thrusts he thrust inwards and stopped.

  “Jasmine, are you a virgin?” His expression was stern.

  I jerked, shaken out of my lustful daze and swallowed. “I’ve dated, and you know, done stuff. But it didn’t feel right with anyone, so I’ve been waiting,” I admitted in a tremulous voice.

  He looked pleased and then tender. “I’ve been waiting, too,” he said. “I wanted my first time to be with my mate.”

  My eyes widened. “You’ve never been with anyone, either?”

  Reuben nodded. “That’s right. I’ve been waiting for you for twenty-eight years because you were the only woman for me. I’m glad you waited too. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

  My eyes searched his and softened. “I know. I trust you.”

  We stared at each other, smiling. A rush of affection poured into my heart for this big, tender man who made me feel so safe and beautiful.

  He moved his finger inside me. “I’ll stretch you a bit. And make you come once more. Then we’ll eat and talk. I’m going to find most of the ways to make you come tonight, my Jasmine.”

  Careful not to damage my hymen, he thrust in and out of me, forcing his cum as far as it could go. Moving his face to hover just above my pussy, he inhaled, enjoying the musky smell of womanly arousal before subjecting my swollen clit to forceful lashes of his tongue, interspersed with gentle sucks.

  I came again, this time a prolonged climax. He kept me on the peak for a while, nibbling at my clit and pumping his finger in me, rubbing against that rough, velvety spot. Afterwards, he held my trembling body in his arms next to his heart, and we just breathed each other in.

  “Are you hungry?” he murmured, against my hair.

  “I could go for some pizza,” I breathed, eyes closed. My head rested on his chest and he ran his fingers through my mane. When the pizza came, I sat in my lap while he fed me. We talked.

  I told him about Dad being in the shifter armed forces. About how close I’d been with Mom. My job as a dentist’s receptionist. “Yesterday was my final day with Dr. Markey and Max and I were celebrating it with cake. I’ve decided to spread my wings and do what I’ve always dreamed of doing.”

  “What’s that?” He kissed my nose and smiled at me.

  “Gardening! I’ve always dreamed of doing something in sustainable and organic farming. I wasn’t sure whether I’d opt for a hobby farm or start a small business, but for now I’ve decided to start a nursery.”

  He was an attentive listener and seemed happy for me. “That’s great! I’m proud of you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!””

  I took his hand in mine and kissed it. Smiling, I said, “Thanks. Mom would be proud of me, too. She’d scold me for having waited years to take this step.”

  “Really? Was this a life-goal you shared with your mom, or something?”

  My smile faded. “No. She knew the one thing I yearned to have was a loving marriage like my parents. Plus loads of kids. I hated being an only child. Other goals…were secondary.”

  He grinned and kissed my forehead. “Consider your life-goals achieved. I’d be happy to give you as many babies as you want.”

  I cocked my eyebrow. “Be warned. I might take you up on that,” I warned mischievously.

  “No problem. I meant what I said.” He fed me more of the pizza and answered my questions about his work and family. Both his parents were dead: they’d had him late in life and had passed of old age. He told me about how metalworking started as a hobby and now it was a lucrative trade. About the projects he most enjoyed working on. About Clearwater.

  “It’s full of werebears. We live a relatively normal life. Bears are solitary animals and werebears are pretty much the same. Our alpha makes us work together if there’s anything that needs a group effort, but otherwise he lets us be.”

  “I’ve heard of the place. Haven’t ever visited, though. But Dad’s friends mentioned it, said some of the bears even have human mates?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Yeah, some human men and women are happily mated to werebears. It’s a great place. I think you’ll like it.” He squeezed me closer to him.

  We spoke more about Clearwater. When I asked why he was in Florida, he only shared that he was in town to check on his aunt and to help with some sort of family problem.

  Max texted me around dinnertime, checking in on me and I let her know that things were good.

  The rest of the night, we explored each other’s bodies. There was no sex. But we tried almost everything else. We discovered that I liked it when Reuben was bossy in bed. It made me wet. He made me come so many times that I begged for a break. It was late when we slept.

  Just before we fell asleep, Reuben murmured in my ear, “I love making love to you…Watching you come for me is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. But what I love best of all is this: you naked in my arms, our hearts beating in sync.”

  I smiled at him, eyes wet.

  Chapter 4

  Reuben

  Around early morning, something woke me up. I was curled around Jasmine, my thigh between hers and a hand cupping her breast. Her head was on my bicep.

  I checked the time, it wasn’t even five in the morning. My phone blinked with a message. It was from Hank — he wanted me to meet at their pack headquarters. Getting up, I dressed quietly so as not to disturb Jasmine. I wrote her a note, telling her to order breakfast from room service and to wait for me. There was an errand related to my aunt I had to attend to. Perhaps afterwards I could take her out to lunch, introduce her to my aunt.

  Her phone lay on a chair next to her jeans. I entered my number in her contacts folder and sent a text to myself, so that I had her number as well.

  As I rea
ched the door, I gazed back at Jasmine. My heart gave a pang. She now hugged my pillow, with a mop of wavy, red hair visible from under the bedsheets. She looked so cuddly and warm. It was beyond tempting to linger under the covers with her. But my family was counting on me to handle this. I promised myself to make Jasmine come a few extra times today, to make up for missing out on morning sex.

  My hand clenched on the door. My heart misgave me, my gut insisting that meeting Hank alone was a bad idea. It could be that I was walking into a cougar ambush. It wouldn’t be the first time those fuckers had tried to pull a stunt like that.

  Down by the car, I made a call to a couple of local werebears I knew. The cougars would be in numbers at their headquarters. While I didn’t anticipate trouble, it was best to have some back up.

  *

  I parked my truck outside the abandoned church that was the werecougar pack headquarters. The building was a graying, ramshackle structure with a sloping, faded roof that reflected the dawn light. A rotting wooden fence surrounded the property which was overgrown with tall grass. One side of the property opened into the forest line, which must have been the appeal of the place for the cougars. No other building stood on this deserted dirt road.

  This trip better be worth me leaving Jasmine — so warm and willing, curled up naked in my bed — alone and driving down here at this godforsaken time.

  The moment I got out of the truck, a couple of werecougars flanked me as if by magic. Shoulder-height to my six-feet and nine inches, they had greasy hair and smelled unwashed, of day-old alcohol. So this was the welcoming committee?

  “You Reuben Duke?” The bleary-eyed guy, to my left squinted up at me. His eyes were spaced too close together.

  “Yup. Here to meet Hank Eddy. He called me, gave me the address.”

  “He mentioned it. Follow us.”

  I wrinkled my nose at what I saw when I entered the old building. Stale pizza, bottles of beer and harder liquor, half-naked women high on something draped over faded couches. Passed-out, snoring men with their bellies hanging out lay scattered here and there, like piles of trash.

  Not a pretty sight. Not easy on my nose either.

  “Good, you managed to find your way,” said the man I came to meet. Dressed in a crumpled suit, he was maybe in his late forties. With a wiry physique, he wore his ashy hair tied back in a pony tail and spoke with an accent I couldn’t place. Three more members of his pack crowded behind him. One wore a deadpan expression, the others displayed taunting smiles.

  “Hank Eddy, I presume?” I recognized his voice from our conversation on the phone. I straightened my shoulders and placed my booted feet apart. The cougars on either side of me took a step back. I wasn’t small, and it wouldn’t hurt to remind them I could turn into a five-hundred-pound bear and kick all their asses.

  “You’re Ellen’s nephew,” Hank sneered at me. “She’s an interfering human bitch who meddled in our business and so our women gave her a scare. In fact, I think we aren’t done teaching her to keep her sticky fingers away from cougar concerns.” His pitch rose. “That old bitch damn well spoiled our plans and hasn’t paid for it. She needs to compensate us — maybe by handing over that house or that nice new car that her son bought her? What do you say — hand them over and we’ll forget all about it? Or else she’ll pay with blood.”

  What the fuck?! I saw red and my hands fisted. I wasn’t an old lady — did they think threats or sheer numbers or not having the home-court advantage would intimidate me into giving in to their demands?

  Hah.

  I could handle half a dozen hungover cougars with one hand tied behind my back. But better to give reason a try first. I inhaled, trying to calm down. “My family has no interest in your pack business. Ellen may be human, but she knows our world — she used to be mated to my uncle who was werebear. All Ellen did was help out, when she noticed a child in trouble. No way we’re paying you for an innocent deed done with the best of intentions.”

  I was trying to put a pretty face on it, but for sure the cougars were involved in some nasty business – kidnapping or trafficking, who knew? I passed word to some key people and this pack would come under increased scrutiny, but that process would take time to come to fruition. For now, I just wanted to defuse the situation, so that my aunt was safe in her hometown. Not that these fuckers were cooperating. They actually wanted compensation for their failed criminal scheme. Did they think they were some sort of shifter mafia?

  Hank gave a menacing laugh. “That’s what we call meddling. Don’t we boys? We’re going to teach you a lesson so that other clans get the message that they better keep their nosy hands out of werecougar affairs.”

  Turned out, this invitation to meet was about the cougars wanting to make an example of me to show the bears they didn’t intimidate. My instincts had been right — this was an ambush.

  The bunch of them shifted and launched themselves at me. Hank’s claws came at me, but I stepped back a fraction of a second before contact and they only grazed my arm. One of them dived for my feet, and I kicked him clean across the room. He crashed against the wall and slid down to the floor, motionless. Another werecougar climbed onto my back, his jaws aimed at my artery. With my bare hands, I snapped his neck and tossed him away.

  My bear was furious. Let us show these cougars all a lesson today. End them all.

  My clothes ripped. Muscles expanded. Bones grew. In an explosion of energy, I grew taller, furrier and an enraged werebear faced them. My senses expanded till I could hear the brush of their boots against the boards, smell the rancid alcohol on their breaths, detect the quick beats of their hearts. I lifted a tattered couch above my head.

  “You wanna fight me? Fight me!” I roared towards the ceiling and I threw the couch at them.

  Hank and the other shifters backed away, eyes round. A scent of urine filled the air. Some of these cougars had pissed themselves in fear. The women had vanished, but the other men had woken and shifted, obviously planning to lend support to their packmates. They were right to fear me – they hadn’t seen the damage an infuriated werebear could accomplish. At my roar, some of them fled, but the remaining — about six of them — came at me in small groups.

  I swatted them back with a swipe of my arm. Two came at me from the front and I crushed their skulls between my plate-sized paws and flung them down.

  Wary now, the spotted cougars in their shifted form stayed out of arm reach, lunging into swipe at me with their claws before backing off. Always they aimed for the back and sides, and always they came at me in twos — trying to keep me occupied in two fronts and trying to stay out of my field of vision.

  Trying to make me bleed.

  At first, I wasn’t worried, knowing I would heal. Shifters could heal instantaneously upon shifting. As the relentless attack continued, the bleeding didn’t stop, and the wounds remained open. The tears in my flesh smelled unusual — of blood magic — and it sank in that the werecougars must have used some sort of spell that kept my wounds from closing.

  I was losing too much blood. I staggered, managing to snag one of the cougars and pull his head right off his body. Hank swiped at me from the back as I did so, his powerful jaws digging in, his jagged claws ripping through skin and muscle. My entire torso was a haemorrhaging wound.

  “Cowardly, backstabbing lowlifes!” The three of them kept me on my toes with swipes of their claws coming from random directions. It was like tussling with a swarm of treacherous bees. I roared again in pained fury. Ignoring the others, I twisted and lifted Hank off the floor with his neck. With my other paw, I dug my claws into his belly and ripped him open and bit his head off. His body dropped to my feet with a thud.

  Problem solved. Now Ellen wouldn’t have to live in fear anymore.

  Mouth bloody, I roared again, half-mad with rage and pain.

  “Reuben!” Fresh voices. Sam and Evan, had finally turned up. With growls, they also shifted into towering bears, and joined the fray. I was badly clawed-up by then.
As I swayed on my feet, dizzy and weak with blood loss, the few cougars who were left ran for it. Sam and Evan took care of them, which was the last thing I saw before I collapsed.

  When I woke, I was at a healer’s home. I shifted then, in an attempt to heal, but instead of the wounds vanishing as they should have, they had left scars. Try as the healer would, he couldn’t fix them.

  “No!” I bellowed in misery. My first look at myself in the bathroom mirror was a shock — my changed appearance seemed hideous to me. Deep, jagged scars marred one half of my face, my neck, and my back was covered with them. They’d even gotten the back of my leg.

  How could any woman bear to look at me, make love to me? How could Jasmine accept me like this? A memory of Jasmine’s appreciative eyes running over me slid into my mind. She’d blushed as she said she liked my body and I was so proud that I pleased my mate.

  Now I would only frighten her. I raged at this misfortune and my devastation threatened to bring me to my knees. Why did this have to happen just when I’d met my mate? My bear tried to console me, but I didn’t listen.

  Sam came to see me. “Here are the pieces of your phone. I’m sorry we couldn’t save it. Maybe you can get a new one.” He averted his eyes from me. “We found some sort of magical circle drawn in the basement of the cougar headquarters that prevented your wounds from healing fully. The cougars must have bought in a dark witch, but all of them are dead or have fled the state so we can’t ask them any questions. The good news is that Ellen doesn’t have to worry anymore. I’ve registered a complaint with the Tampa coven. Maybe they can identify the witch, get her to undo the blood magic, the scars.”

  Blood magic was almost impossible to undo without the blood of the witch who had originally cast the spell.

  Sam sighed. “The whole thing sucks balls, man. Anyhow, I got your things from the hotel and paid your bill. Evan is waiting outside to drive you home.”

  When I returned home to Clearwater, I barely cared if I was alive or dead. To a shifter, losing a mate was the end of the world. While I hadn’t lost my mate, it felt as if I’d lost all chance of a life with her. No way would I approach Jasmine while I looked so grotesque.