Bearly Begun (BBW/Bearshifter Romance) (Bachelor Bears of Yakima Ridge Book 1) (7 page)

She was wearing the oversized tee-shirt Cord had on the last time he came home. Some nonsense about borrowing it because all his own shirts were dirty. She had washed it, of course, but instead of giving it back to Len, she was sleeping in it. She inhaled and thought she caught a whiff of Len, some essential essence of alpha male. Laughing at her wayward heart and hormones she drifted off to sleep.

Big hands gently fondled her starved, long neglected flesh. A deep rumble in her ear explained to her exactly how lovely and enticing her abundant curves were to the male who was caressing her. Erin moaned in her sleep and adjusted herself so the delicious sweep of rough palms could find her secrets. The rumble deepened even more and assured her she was the most alluring of all women.

The hands were replaced by a worshiping mouth that kissed its leisurely way from chin to toes and back again. Erin moaned and panted and the mouth delicately tasted first one plump breast and then the other. A big tongue swept across her tender, straining aureoles and laved them until they were stiff and aching.

The tongue left her nipples bereft to explore her navel. The warm damp lips first kissed and then blew hot arousing breath into the little hub. Erin jumped and the deep rumble became a laugh that vibrated to her core. Her passage was clenched tight, her sex was wet, but the kisses stalled at her bush. A tender puff of air and the voice favorably compared her scent to the headiest of perfumes and the lips moved on.

Erin’s legs fell open but, although big hands lightly squeezed her thighs and she felt a brief kiss where they met her pussy, her dream lover did not touch her sex. He moved his big hands down her legs telling her all the while how perfectly formed they were for love, for him.

She squirmed when the warm mouth enveloped each toe. And by the time her lover had dried them with a strip of velvety fur she was bathed in sweat and begging for release. The deep voice in her head was regretful. She was of all women the most desirable, and soon, very soon, he would claim her. But not tonight. The fur flicked swiftly over her tight, hot bud and was withdrawn.

Erin woke to find Len’s tee-shirt up around her neck. Her body was tender and frustrated and as slick as if she had really taken a lover. Her nipples were aching peaks and she was pulsing with unsatisfied need. She looked around, but she was in her empty apartment, the street lights shining through her curtains.
Fantasy time.

* * *

Len was broad awake on his mattress. His dick was an iron spike and his balls were aching spheres of tightly wound need. He was dripping with sweat as if he had just labored hard in a hot bed. He couldn’t believe the dream he had had.

In his sleep he had lost his little peach pit, and he groped around in the damp and tangled sheets until he found it again. He kissed it in the dark. He didn’t know if his magic had succeeded. But he felt sure that tonight he had touched all the glories of his mate and found her ripe and luscious flesh beyond his imaginings.

CHAPTER NINE

“Gotta get the roof fixed before it gets real cold,” Len told Erin. “Some of our kinfolk are coming next weekend to help out. My cousin’s fiancée has offered to have us all to supper Saturday evening, and again for lunch on Sunday.

“I wonder if you would give her a hand with the food? For sure my cousin Jack will bring Hannah, and her kinfolk. Our cousins Asher and Gideon are coming too. We expect about ten workers, plus Joe and the boys and me. That’s a lot of food for one pair of hands.”

So now she was going to have to spend the weekend with Len’s cousin’s fiancée who owned a business and was Joe’s employer. She was a fair cook, but she didn’t do fancy. And how did you dress to go cook in some rich woman’s kitchen? Should she borrow a coverall from Diamond or just wear her jeans?

* * *

Erin tried to look at the face of her secret lover who crouched over her and massaged her body with some slippery and delicious substance. But her eyes would not open. His expansive chuckle resounded through her entire body as he kissed her eyelids and continued his enchantment.

Her unknown lover swirled exotic, arousing patterns on the delicate skin of her belly, dipping into her navel, and stroking the sensitive undersides of her breasts. He murmured worshipful words about the bounty he was anointing. Erin moaned and tried to press into his taunting hands, but his resonant whisper admonished her to be still.

The big slippery hands kneaded her flesh, here tugging, here pushing, wakening every inch. Erin felt moisture spring on her face, back and bottom. Belly and thighs and breasts were now so slick she could not tell if she was sweating there as well.

Long fingers pulled and pinched her nipples, applying just the right amount of pressure, until they were unbearably stiff and tender. His warm mouth soothed them with leisurely swirls of his tongue. He pressed one and then the other against the roof of his mouth until sensation shot directly from nipple to pussy. Erin came in a great convulsion. She drifted again.

Erin roused as, without apparent effort, her lover’s immense muscular hands turned her. Her back and bottom were blessed with the same unguent that had hallowed her from chin to muff. The potent scent of a spicy, woody fragrance mingled with the lush perfume of her own body.

Her dream lover brought his face close to her buttocks and audibly sniffed. He licked her cleft once. She heard his deep rumble inform her of the delights of her own bouquet.

Her twin globes were pushed together and then apart so that her juicy, flowing passage made greedy noises. Her lover kissed her sex with the barest, briefest grazes of lips to lips. She murmured protestingly and tried again to buck. He gentled her with a firm stroke on her spine.

He kissed her just beneath her buttock where it joined the thigh and moved down to the crease at the back of her knee. He nuzzled her there as if he could detect some ambrosial aroma. She felt his lips salute her there and his teeth nibbled once or twice before he sucked.

She cried out and tried to rise to her knees but he held her legs in place. His chuckle came on the back of her knee and he kissed his way down to her calf which he bit lightly. Soothing the spot with a gentle lap of his warm tongue.

“Mine,” the reverberating voice in her head said low and certain. “Mine.” He kissed her other calf. “Sleep now, dear heart.”

Erin found the small love bite after her morning shower. The tiny purple bruise was dead center in the crease of her left knee. She looked in the mirror. Her body was glowing and her skin seemed smoother and more luminous as if she really had been rubbed all over with oil. But that was crazy. Wasn’t it?

It had been five years since she had had a sex life. Five years of inchoate yearning. But never in all that time had she had dreams like the ones she had started having since the boys started sleeping at Len’s house. She had never woken to discover that she was aching with unsatisfied, sensitized skin. That her nipples and her clitoris were throbbing with need.

This unfulfilled feeling did not go away when she took care of business. Afterwards her desire was unassuaged. What she wanted, no make that needed, was the touch of Leonard Benoit’s big hands on her body. She woke with his name on her lips. She thought about him all day. And when they met, he greeted her as if she was his sister.

She was insane. That was the only explanation. Who but a lunatic had orgasmic dreams about a man who had zero interest in her? But no matter how sternly she lectured herself, she couldn’t seem to fall out of love or lust with that big bear of a hunk.

* * *

Len zipped his jeans with careful hands. He had a woody as big as a Douglas fir. If his bear magic was working on Erin it sure didn’t show. She was friendly but not the way he wanted. He on the other hand was walking around with his dick on fire day in, day out. How the hell was he supposed to do a day’s work with a flagpole in his pants?

He put his billfold in his back pocket and his keys and change in his front pocket. He picked up his little peach pit. It felt like a hot ember. He half expected to see smoke rising from his palm. Maybe carrying it around in his jeans was too much of a good thing?

He decided to leave it on the floor beside his bed. But somehow it found its way into his pocket where it nestled up cozily beside his package.

* * *

“Do you mind peeling the potatoes? I thought we could cook and mash enough for two days, but that was before I realized I didn’t have big enough pots.” Madeline St. Clair was hot and flustered and overwhelmed by the logistics of cooking for twenty.

Erin exchanged a look with Hannah Enright who was waddling around the kitchen bumping things with her belly. “If you sit at the kitchen table, Hannah,” Erin said, “You can peel potatoes. I’ll cut them up and they’ll boil quicker. We can mash them in the stand mixer. Warm the milk in the microwave.”

Maddie looked at her in relief. “What she said.” She laughed. “I’m glad one of us is organized.”

“I work in food assembly,” Erin said, proud of thinking of an upmarket term for sandwich making. “Splitting tasks always makes them go faster.”

Hannah was already sitting down and wielding the potato peeler. “I’m just glad to get off my feet,” she said. “Honest to God, I didn’t expect to be this big, this fast.” She sighed.

“How many?” asked Maddie, just as Erin said, “When are you due?”

“Three,” replied Hannah. “February.”

“Triplets!” said Erin. “Gosh, I feel sorry for myself that I have twins to raise. I can’t imagine three.”

Maddie and Hannah laughed. “Big litters run in the Enright family,” Maddie said rubbing her own apron clad tummy.

“You too?” asked Hannah. “Triplets?”

“Uh huh.” Maddie voice was proud.

“Congratulations. Doug must be over the moon,” Hannah said.

“He is. Katrina too. She wants us to move up the wedding,” Maddie informed her sister-in-law.

Hannah laughed. “Just give in. It’s easier to let Momma have her way.”

“Well my own mom has been hinting that she can arrange one for Thanksgiving.”

Hannah gurgled and passed Erin more peeled potatoes.

“Who’s Katrina?” Erin asked as she cubed.

“Our mother-in-law. She’s a force of nature, and she always knows best,” Hannah said fondly.

“Or at least she is sure she does,” laughed Maddie.

“She sure sorted Jack and me out,” Hannah said soberly. “You have no idea how badly we had messed up our relationship.”

“This is true.” Maddie knew that story. “But look at Roman and Vanessa? How long has she had it in her head that they are a couple? She didn’t like the way your brother cut that girl out of the herd at your wedding.”

Hannah had run out of potatoes. “Are we done?” she asked.

“You wish,” said Erin bringing her another bag.

Maddie picked up the thread of their dropped subject. “I don’t know about that. But Doug’s cousin Roman is totally smitten with your clan sister. He danced with Gabriella Malcom at both your weddings. All night.”

Erin exclaimed, “You had more than one wedding?” Was this how rich people lived? Maddie’s ranch style house didn’t look like she had expected. It was smaller and plainer than she had thought it would be. Cozy more than fancy. And the other women were wearing jeans and tee-shirts too. But two weddings?

“My sister and I married two of the Enright brothers,” Hannah informed her. “Martha and our brother Rob and I were separated at birth and we only found each other recently. The Menominee elders in Wesheno wouldn’t hear of Martha and me marrying in Washington State. So we had a ceremony in Wesheno followed by a reception for the whole community.”

“It was lovely,” said Maddie dreamily.

“And then we had a Ukrainian wedding in Hanover and did it all over again. Thank goodness Momma made my dresses. Because I kept expanding.” Hannah patted her belly. “We reused the bridesmaid’s dresses. And of course the guys wore their dress uniforms for both.”

“We should have joined you at the altar,” said Maddie. “I am worn out with wedding plans. I’m tempted to let my mom and Katrina sort it out between them. Although I do have an idea for my dress that should work even if I’m huge on the day.”

Erin drained potatoes and loaded up the stand mixer. “I’ll need butter and a half-cup of hot milk,” she told Maddie. “And one of those foil bakers.”

Hannah and Maddie looked at the baker in dismay when Erin dumped the bowl of mashed potatoes into it. “It’s only half full,” Maddie said in dismay.

“Yep. But I’ve got another batch coming right up. Want to cube the potatoes Hannah’s peeled? Then we’ll make two more batches and have tomorrow’s potatoes sorted.” Erin reassured her hostess.

“I’m on it,” Maddie said. “You and Len are a pair!”

“What?” Erin blushed.

“Len is the most competent man I’ve ever met.” Maddie told her. “And I include Doug in that number. And he’s a colonel. But Len can get a crew working together in nothing flat. And without making anyone feel put upon or bossed. And you are making this cooking thing work. I am almost convinced that we will be serving ham and mashed potatoes tonight.”

“My brothers certainly feel bossed,” said Erin. “They are fetching and carrying every free moment, and every time they moan, he gives them another job to do.”

“And what have they learned from all this bossing?” Hannah asked quietly.

“To work hard and complain less,” said Erin. “He’s so strict, I thought for sure they would rebel. But every time Hunter pushes, Len just stands pat and Hunter does what he’s told.”

“How old are they?” Hannah asked.

“Eleven—going on twenty-seven. But it’s like they’ve become little monsters in the last few months. Right up until Len took them in hand. Now sometimes I think I see my darlings again.”

Maddie laughed. “That’s our Len. He’s good people. Your brothers are in good hands.”

“What about your folks?” asked Hannah.

“My mom is dead, never knew my dad. The boys’ father is a waste of space. Right now he’s in jail on parole violations, but sooner or later he’ll be out and trying to turn Hunter and Cord into career criminals just like him. Naturally they hero worship this deadbeat.” Erin had decided there was no point trying to lie about her background.