Nailed (Black Mountain Bears Book 3)
Read Nailed (Black Mountain Bears Book 3) Online
Authors: Ophelia Bell,Amelie Hunt
Amelie Hunt Presents
Nailed
Black Mountain Bears: Book 3
Ophelia Bell
Copyright 2015 Ophelia Bell
May not be replicated or reproduced in any manner without express and written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to author and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Excerpt
She didn’t see them go, but when she finally found the courage to walk back to the camp, they were gone and a small campfire burned near where she’d laid out her sleeping bag.
Loneliness nearly overwhelmed her. Maybe solitude was overrated. Maybe she should accept that they wanted her, choose them as her mates and be done with it. She knew she enjoyed their company and there was no doubt in her mind that they could satisfy her.
Mindlessly she cooked herself supper and went to sleep trying to ignore the ache of longing to find what the pair of them already had with each other. She didn’t think she could ever compete with that. No matter how much they tried to convince her they wanted her, she would feel more like the intruder than anything.
She slept fitfully and awoke in the early morning with a deep ache in her lower abdomen. Chilled, she discovered she’d kicked off her sleeping bag during the night and stripped naked without realizing it, but in spite of the cool morning air, her body felt inflamed from the inside out.
Groggily, she got up, clutching at her stomach groaning at the way it seemed to tighten under her hands. It felt a little like the moment she’d discovered the power to shift, except instead of the fullness of that sensation, this was the opposite. Now, she had the clearest sense of a void inside her that desperately ached to be filled. She wondered briefly if it was menstrual cramps, which she’d dealt with for years before coming here, but her mother had assured her that was a thing of the past. Once she had her first estrous, she would only have to deal with that kind of discomfort every four years.
My first estrous.
Was it starting now?
Oh, fuck, please let it not be starting.
Not after she’d willingly sent the only two males on the mountain away for the next few days. But maybe it was for the best since they had a hard enough time holding back when she wasn’t fully fertile. If she didn’t intend to choose them, it would be cruel of her to make them endure this with her.
Her eyesight wavered as she stumbled toward the shore and waded in, seeking to quench the heat in her. The chill of it soothed her but only for a moment before a clenching spasm gripped her and she cried out. Her nipples tingled and she touched them, craving the contact the way she craved cool water after a long hike.
Behind her, the steady, pounding pulse of the waterfall filled her senses. Teasing her nipples only made her core burn hotter. Touching her clit simply made her vaginal walls spasm painfully. All she could think of was how amazing Sten must have felt to be fucked by Orrick, to have that glorious cock pounding into him. She could hear the sounds just as clearly as the waterfall. Drawn to the rhythm of it, she waded to the base of the thick veil, somehow hoping that she could completely drown her need in that steady, violent rush.
She found a ledge to one side of it and grabbed ahold, using it to leverage her body so that her spread legs were on either side of the rush, the stream of white water hitting her core. This was no gentle flow of water, though. The force of it was too much and Jade lost her balance, lost her grip, and soon found herself plunged beneath the violent surge.
Struggling to find purchase on something, anything, she forgot her earlier ordeal, simply terrified of drowning. She found her way to the surface once, gulping for air and spluttering as the torrent of water forced her down beneath again. The sunlight had disappeared when she came up again, crying out in panic. A rock ledge loomed nearby, but the current kept pulling her back beneath the falls and it was too far to reach.
Before she got pulled under the third time, she thought she caught a glimpse of a face above her. She yelled out a plea that she wasn’t sure could be heard over the roar of water, even if she’d had enough breath to make a sound.
Suddenly something clamped hard around her arm and she felt herself being hauled bodily out of the water and pulled up onto a rough, rocky ledge.
“What the
fuck
were you thinking?” The rough male voice was unfamiliar and incredulous, and probably the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard in her life. She clung to his thick shoulders and simply sobbed in gratitude.
Join The Hunt
Moonlight caresses your skin. Your bare feet crush leaves and grass as you run. Your heart hammers in your chest and your breath burns, but you can’t stop. He’s so close now.
A flash in the corner of your vision! The chase is drawing to a close. For a moment, you feel a prickle of fear. But the feeling is fleeting. After all, you’re not the prey.
You’re the hunter.
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To my amazing and wonderfully supportive husband, who encouraged me to follow my passion.
Amelie Hunt Collection
Ophelia Bell’s Black Mountain Bears
Vivian Wood’s Winter Pass Wolves
Sennah Tate’s Sunset Glade Panthers
Maeve Morrick’s Arctic Station Bears
Cass Reynold’s Emerald Isle Tigers
Chapter One
T
he lethargic lure of solitary summer afternoons used to appeal to Jade. Especially in the middle of winter, when she was stuck inside with her family for extended periods. It often got to the point she forgot how much she loved her brother and her cousin and resorted to wishing Chinese water torture on them.
She understood what loneliness meant now—true loneliness. She had left her childhood home behind, come through a magical portal that had nearly killed her, and now lived in the most idyllic place she could have ever imagined inside the ursa Sanctuary.
It should have been perfect, but in spite of being surrounded by family and learning she belonged to an amazing race of bear shifters, she longed again for those winter days long past.
Her two favorite people had abandoned her in a matter of weeks since their arrival here. She may have wished torture on them during the winter months, but she missed them so much she’d have endured torture herself now to have them back.
Jade stared up at the ceiling of her room, watching the reflection of early morning sunlight flicker across the ceiling from the fish-filled pond beneath the balcony. As peaceful as it was, it still left her feeling out of sorts.
A delighted laugh carried through the wall from the bedroom next door—her cousin Emma’s room—followed by a low moan and distinctly male laughter. Sitting up, she stared at the wall and her eyes widened as the heavy wooden paneling began to vibrate with rhythmic thumping. Her cheeks warmed, and she scrambled out of bed, throwing on her clothes. If there was one thing that would make her feel even
more
out of sorts, it was
that
sound. It had been tough enough to get to sleep last night, what with Emma’s two surrogate males attending to her most of the night, but they were usually much quieter.
The sounds emanating from Emma’s room now were unmistakable and undeniably more enthusiastic than they’d been for the last two weeks. In spite of her mortification, she couldn’t help but smile a little with the understanding that Emma’s mates had returned, but that didn’t mean she was willing to stick around and bear witness to their reunion.
Their return meant her brother had found what he was looking for. The knowledge was bittersweet. It meant Jade was the odd man out again. Odd woman, anyway. And didn’t that detail matter even more here?
It definitely mattered to the pair of huge ursa males who lingered outside Emma’s room when Jade exited her own bedroom. They managed to tear their attention away from Emma’s door long enough to bow to Jade.
God, she hated how much the men deferred to the women here. To her, they seemed like broken beasts, cowed by their masters. They weren’t treated badly, but they acted like dogs, licking at their masters’ hands.
“My Lady Jade,” the dark-haired one named Sten said. He flushed bright red when an unholy sound came through the closed door.
The other male, Orrick, covered his face with hands and groaned. “She never made that noise with us. I knew we were doing it wrong.”
Jade stared at them, both amused and sympathetic. She’d spent the last two weeks listening to these two try to service her cousin. Emma was much more experienced than Jade—which didn’t mean much, really, considering Jade had barely even kissed a guy. But from Emma’s stories of her college years, Jade had a pretty good picture of exactly how much her cousin knew about sex.
The thing Jade found odd was that these two beautiful men couldn’t satisfy her cousin as well as the pair that were in there with her now.
That didn’t matter, really. What mattered was getting the hell away from here for a while. She needed it, and they obviously needed it, too.
Grabbing both their hands, she tugged like she would have done to her brother if she’d found him in a similar state.
“Come on. You guys don’t need to listen to this any more than I do. There’s a woman out there who
will
make that sound for you, I’m sure of it. In the meantime, food solves all ills.”
At that suggestion, the men both let out little rumbling growls that made her grin. One thing she’d discovered after living here was that the males tended to betray their excitement via growling. She liked it, and glanced over her shoulder at them both with a knowing smile.
Orrick paused when his eyes met hers. “Did I offend? If so, I’m sorry. I’m just hungry.”
Jade rolled her eyes. “No, I like it when you do that. It makes me happy, that’s all.”
They found their way to the banquet hall where a vast spread was laid out, and Jade’s mouth watered from all the scents. Spiced meats and eggs and toast. Bowls filled with fresh fruits were scattered down the banquet table. Several other ursa, including her family, were seated and already eating.
She noted the empty spot where her brother used to sit with a pang of longing. Then the other spot near the Queen where Emma would sit, were she not
preoccupied
. Jade kissed her mama and papa on their cheeks and chatted while she waited for Sten and Orrick to fill their plates and sit. She didn’t want to be near family just now; she would rather avoid the reminder that she was the only one of them who hadn’t found a mate. Not that she wanted one, necessarily. What she wanted was to figure out how to be more self-sufficient the way Emma had been for so long during college. To figure out how to get rid of the feeling that she’d been replaced by her two favorite people’s new mates.
Jade filled her plate and made her way to the end of the table, aware of the looks of dejectedness on the two males’ faces who sat there. If anything, they could commiserate over their shared sense of displacement.
They stopped chewing and stared at her, surprised, as she sat down.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Emma kept you up late last night, didn’t she? You need your strength.” She waved a hand at their plates and they dug back in, watching her cautiously.
“You’re not used to a female talking to you like this, are you?” she said, making sure to time her question while their mouths were stuffed full of food. “That bothers me a little, to be honest. Do you know in the human world, women love when a man is in control? I mean, we like our autonomy, of course, but we like a nice balance, some of us. Or even a nice
im
balance. As long as the man in control is gentle while he tells me what he wants.”
Jade couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. All she knew was that their nearly medieval deference bothered her. Their race was supremely matriarchal. They had a
queen,
for Christ’s sake. Even though her aunt Maia didn’t seem anything more than an incredibly intelligent, gentle, and caring older woman most of the time, everyone seemed eager to kiss her feet. Jade had seen her in action and had left the scene in utter awe of the woman’s power over everyone, not just the men.
Orrick chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up his mug and drank from it, swallowing deeply. When he set it back down, he rested his hands beside his plate and stared down at it, as though gathering his thoughts. A swath of sunlight fell across his strong face, casting a glow through the shock of dark-gold hair that fell over his brow and the scruff of his unshaven cheek.
His fist closed when he began to speak. “Forgive me, Jade, if I seem impertinent, but you are new here. You don’t understand our ways. Don’t belittle us simply because we live to serve our females. It does not make us lesser men. We believe it makes us greater to love our females wholly, and to be able to serve them well.” His lips twitched and he looked at her directly. “There are always exceptions, but that is the rule, and the code my brother ursa and I follow.”
Jade blinked, realizing she’d been holding her breath during his short speech. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the pure conviction and alpha spirit Orrick held was absolutely not it.
“Which one of you was her favorite?” she asked impulsively.
Catching her meaning, Sten happily raised his hand and grinned around a bite of toast.
“I bet it’s because she likes you tame, isn’t it?”
Sten choked on his toast, trying to suppress his laughter. When his throat cleared, he chuckled. “She said Orrick was too domineering. I love being told what to do. He’s not so good at it, and trust me, I should know.” He gave Orrick a gentle nudge that told the unspoken tale well enough.
Talk became obsolete as the three of them ate. After breakfast, Jade said goodbye to her dining partners with the plan to practice true solitude, to at least try to get used to the idea of being alone. Grabbing a soft, handwoven blanket and the handmade soaps her mother had given her, she headed toward the river to bathe.
Summertime, she was told, meant no water carried to the lodge for baths. They had no plumbing, no electricity. She felt like she’d landed in another era, if it weren’t for the scattered bits of modernity she found here and there. Solar-powered lights were everywhere around the lodge. Her mother told her they used to be powered by magic, but letting the sun do the work made more sense. Most of the lodge patrons showed up in jeans and t-shirts, or other clothing that could only have come from outside.
She hadn’t packed a swimsuit in her hiking gear, considering it had been Midwinter when she left her house, but skinny-dipping seemed to be the norm here. Some days, the waterfall was busy with other swimmers. That morning, it was thankfully empty.
Jade stripped and dove in, leaving her belongings on the sunny rock while she soaked and soaped herself thoroughly. Once clean, she let herself float idly on her back, staring up into the sky above her. The serenity of being in the wilderness wasn’t alien to her, but until only a day ago, she’d always shared that peace with her brother, at the very least. She resisted the urge to reach for that warm glow inside her that reflected his presence somewhere out in the world. Simply knowing he was out there and happy meant everything to her. Having to endure the absence of it again would be too much.
When Jade’s brother had died after passing through the portal, the light had gone out and she had died a little, too. They were twins, after all, connected in a way other siblings weren’t. And Jasper had died that Midwinter night when they followed their cousin through a portal they’d believed would take them to their missing fathers.
One moment, they’d been following behind Emma while she spun a tale of two brothers being seduced in the woods by fantastic, magical, nature goddesses, and the next thing she knew, the world went completely white and turned bone-shatteringly cold. Jasper had cried out her name over the din of a sudden blizzard and grasped for her hand.
The path was barely visible beneath their feet, but they kept on moving. Jade hoped that Emma wasn’t too far ahead of them. The cold was too much, icy tendrils seeped through even the tiniest gap in her sturdy winter coat, chilling her skin. When Jasper went down, she struggled to pick him up again, terrified at the way her connection to his consciousness seemed to fade as though a warm fire were sputtering out.
Once he was gone, Jade felt it the way she felt after losing a tooth as a child, except this sudden chasm left behind an ache that drilled down to her soul. She simply held onto him, the cold too great for her to even shed a tear. She grieved silently in her own frozen shell, unable to respond even when she sensed they’d been found and carried away on the backs of two furry beasts.
Their entire lives, Jade had always known Jasper was there, somewhere. Their connection went deeper than simply being able to complete his sentences—she could do that, too—but she always knew where he was, what he felt, even when they weren’t in the same room together. Even when he’d found pleasure and then deep loss after falling for someone who wound up ripping his heart out. To have that comforting glow extinguished made her wish for her own death. With a light breath, she had given in to the dark and the cold, saying a silent farewell to the world.
How quickly everything had changed during that endless darkness. After Emma had revived Jade and her brother, Jade had become aware of two other figures in the room, more due to Jasper’s longing glance at them and the sense of a deep hunger in his soul than for any other reason. They’d been introduced as her saviors, the pair who had rescued her and her brother from a wintery enchantment cast on them when they came through the portal.
Autumn and Gunnar were their names, and they had returned Jasper’s look with the same unmistakable adoration.
In that moment, Jade had understood she really
had
lost him, but thankfully not to a cold, wintry death. Only to love.
Jade let out a deep sigh of resignation and sent a silent thank you up into the heavens. The warm glow of her connection to Jasper had been relit and would live on. She let him go, swallowing the bittersweet lump in her throat and focusing instead on finding her own peace in the cool water and the waterfall she swam beneath.
Her meditative state was short-lived, however. A deafening roar sounded from the woods and a ruckus came through the trees. Jade spun in the water, swimming to the far side, away from the noise, uncertain what she would see. Everything was so peaceful here—were there wild animals in the woods she hadn’t been told about?
The thick foliage along the side of the water shook and another roar came toward her just before a pair of massive, black-furred beasts launched themselves off the ledge nearest the waterfall and came soaring through the air in her direction.
Heart pounding, Jade scrambled out of the water and crouched at the edge, waiting to find out whether or not her visitors were hostile. When they didn’t resurface for a minute, Jade took a deep breath and tried to remind herself where she was. If they were bears, then they were probably at least familiar to her, if not actual family. Still, she sat at the edge of the water and waited, willing her heart to quit pounding out of her chest.