Fearless Bond (Bears of Beauville #1)

Chapter 11

11

CALVIN

I’d heard about bonds. Everyone had. Instant fairytale love, everlasting… But for people, they were rare. And with shifters mostly keeping to themselves, many staying in hiding, it wasn’t something you encountered often in real life. I’d heard the stories since I was a kid but didn’t personally know anyone who’d bonded with a shifter.

It explained so much. Why I felt so calm and even happy with Barclay from the first day. With only a few inhalations of his scent, all my worries miraculously disappeared.

Another incredible thing was my physical need. Barclay’s pheromones were aggravating my heat by the minute. My belly looked swollen. My womb must be growing and sinking lower. I was slick even between waves, and my nipples were super sensitive. Even my pecs looked bigger.

Yeah, I was mated to a bear shifter, and my body was swiftly changing for its new purpose.

If you had told me a few weeks ago that I’d be getting pregnant at twenty years old and giving birth at twenty-one, I’d have been like hell to the no. I loved kids and wanted to have a family. But I’d always thought that for that, I would have to pull myself together. My anxiety had always made me feel weak—something Father and Damian used against me whenever they could.

With Barclay, I felt healthy, my body and my mind. I was ready. I could do it. I could have my own family.

With a strange alpha.

But Barclay wasn’t a stranger. He was my mate, and I was getting to know him.

We had time to kill between waves but couldn’t go anywhere. When I woke up from my nap, Barclay offered to show me what he was working on, and I eagerly agreed.

I sat on a desk in the grand palace he called the “shed,” my feet dangling as I nursed a mug of peppermint tea with honey. The building was nearly the same size as the chalet, with a garage to fit a truck, a room to dry the wood where the temperature and humidity had to be regulated, another for storage, and the woodshop itself with a high ceiling and specialized lighting.

Barclay was bent over a ten-foot-long half of an oak trunk with a long hollow running along the middle. He was scraping away what looked like rotten pieces from the inside.

“See, the cavity is caused by fungi. Even with a hollow trunk, the tree can live for decades, but slowly, the main branches start to die, and it’s time to let go.”

“Did you cut it down yourself?”

“No. This one is from a guy who runs a big woodshop in Green Peaks. He sends me stuff he’d normally put into the chipper. People around here know me and call when they have something they think I’d like, so I don’t have to hunt for material anymore.”

“And what are you going to do with it?”

“Monty and Jordy have been bugging me about a dining table for the B&B.”

“Monty and Jordy?”

“Montgomery Wolf owns the Beauville B&B and the only pub in town. Jordy, or Orson Jordan, is the guy who runs the pub for him.”

“Are they your friends?”

“Yeah, I guess. They’re shifters too. We play poker and help each other out. Anyway. Monty saw some video online with a cracked wood filled with blue resin, and now he wants a table that looks like a lagoon.”

“It could be pretty.”

Barclay wrinkled his nose. “Nah. I don’t want to hide the wood under a bunch of resin. I’ll clean it, even out the edges, polish the top, and then I’ll put glass on it. Leave it natural.”

“That’ll be one huge piece of glass. How will you even get it here without breaking it?”

“It won’t cover the entire table. With dining tables, you want to be able to feel the wood under your hands. The hollow is seventeen inches where it’s widest and four feet long. I’ll make an indentation along the edges and cut a piece of glass to fit the shape.”

I could see it. It would look amazing.

The shop was filled with all kinds of machines and gadgets, including some complicated pulley mechanisms and hooks hanging from the ceiling. I expected Barclay would use something like that to move the large pieces of wood he worked on.

Then I gaped when he walked to the end of the oak trunk, grabbed it with his bare hands, and lifted it. He rotated the trunk a fraction and set it back without even a grunt.

Bear shifter strength.

That piece must have weighed a ton, and Barclay manipulated it as easily as if it were a cardboard cutout. The only thing betraying his exertion was the tightening muscles of his arms. He wore a threadbare gray T-shirt with a faded logo of an eighties rock band, and it stretched over his torso, hiding nothing.

All that raw power… and this man was bound to me for the rest of my life. He would use that incredible strength to protect me . The knowledge was intoxicating.

Barclay reached into the hollow with some kind of metal brush, and his shoulders and biceps bunched up. The sinews on his forearms rippled. Then he crouched, inspecting the underside of the would-be table, and I was amazed by the durability of the seams of his jeans over his powerful thighs.

And his chest… I couldn’t wait to put my face between his pecs again. Barclay had a sizable, furry stomach, but it was firm, not hanging over but jutting out the same way his pecs did. His torso looked like he could walk through walls without a scratch, leaving just Barclay-shaped holes behind him.

When he stood again, he caught my gaze.

“Aren’t you bored?”

“Nuh-uh.” No way. I’d never been less bored in my life. Could I ask him to take his shirt off?

I want to see what’s mine.

Since when was I a greedy, possessive horndog? I mentally shook myself.

“How do you decide on designs?” I asked, happy to come up with a neutral question. “Do you work with a designer or do everything yourself?”

He scratched his neck, reached for a different tool, and began chipping away on something at the base of the trunk. “I ask the wood. It knows what it wants to be.”

That made me chuckle. “You talk to wood? Is that a bear thing?”

“Oh, I wish! But every piece I get is different. I look at it, at its strengths and imperfections, and it turns into a chair in my head or into a cabinet. When this trunk landed here, it told me it was the tabletop for Monty’s party room at the B&B.”

“Witchery,” I joked.

Barclay snorted. “As long as it works, I don’t question it.”

He reached for something on a shelf, and his T-shirt rode up, revealing his furry stomach. The pelt thickened into the happiest of trails, and my gaze inevitably landed on the bulge in his jeans.

Then he began smoothing something out, rubbing back and forth, and back and forth, his body rocking in a very suggestive way. I swallowed thickly. All those muscles stretching and hardening…

“Ooh.” Shit . I moaned out loud.

Barclay paused and threw me a confused look. “Come again?”

“Um. Nothing.”

“You’re blushing.”

“It’s warm in here.”

“It’s not.”

Barclay stood and folded his thick arms over his chest. That was not helping my situation. He looked like a damned gladiator.

I licked my lips.

“Eyes up here.”

I blinked up.

“Another heat wave?” he asked.

Shaking my head, I crossed my legs. My blush must have been visible from space.

Barclay put the tool aside and walked around the would-be table. He hugged me around my waist and sniffed the crook of my neck. With his warm body pressed against mine, I sagged with relief. My legs fell open, and he nestled between them.

“It’s not a heat wave,” he murmured, kissing my neck. His beard tickled my skin, and I bucked against him. “But you’re hard, sweetheart.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you want me to do something about it?”

“Can you? Even between waves?”

He stepped away, and I felt bereft. But then he set me on the floor and turned me around in a single smooth move. He tugged my jeans down my thighs and spread my ass cheeks. With a soft hum, he ran his nose through my crease. I loved the scrape of his beard on my skin. He kissed my hole, just a chaste press of lips, and I cried out as if he’d shoved his dick into me.

“Shh. I’ll make you feel good. Patience.”

He began licking over my pucker. Firm presses of his tongue and teasing swipes, over and over. It was maddening and so amazing I lost control of the sounds I made. Until Barclay, nobody had ever done this to me.

My cries and whimpers must be audible outside.

“You don’t have… any close neighbors? Oh God!”

He swirled his tongue around my relaxed rim. “Nope.”

With that, he pushed his tongue inside me.

I melted. Low groans spilled out my throat, and I came and came, my hole clenching, while Barclay ate me out like he’d been starving for me. He didn’t stop, not until I started twitching from overstimulation. He soothed me with slow kisses to my hole and cleaned me up with tender licks.

Then he pulled my jeans back up, lifted me, and sat me back on the bench. After wiping his beard with his T-shirt, he kissed my forehead and went back to scrubbing the inside of the oak.

Dazed, I watched the play of his muscles and wondered how soon I could have this man’s cum in my womb.

He’d turned me into an animal, but I considered it a gift.

I’d never felt more alive.