Holly’s Grizzly (Monster Relations Bureau #4)

15

Holly

Whatever dam broke between Irving and me last night released a flood, a torrent of want and need as we spend the next day tangled up in each other.

We can barely keep our hands off each other from the moment we wake in the morning, fucking twice in bed before we finally drag ourselves downstairs for breakfast. Even then, it doesn’t take us long to end up tangled together in front of the fire.

“Gods, just look at you,” Irving breathes.

Straddled across his lap, I follow his gaze to where he watches himself disappear inside of me, eyes dark at the sight of his fat cock stretching me. Irving takes my hips in his hands and lifts me up, then lowers me, feral fire burning in every inch of his expression.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “So beautiful, sweetheart.”

It is beautiful. Beautiful and obscene and so many other wonderful things to be here with him like this. Held by him like this. Fucked and cherished and touched with such wild tenderness as he moves me on him again and again, lifting and lowering, controlling the pace. His lips find my neck, teeth pulling at my skin in a sucking bite.

I hope he leaves a mark.

I hope he leaves something physical to match the marks he’s already made on my heart, my soul.

It’s insanity. All of this is insanity. I’m sure once I leave here and get back to the real world, outside of this wonderland where everything is heightened and intense and so terribly perfect, I’ll snap back. I’ll be able to cherish this for what it was—a beautiful impossibility that was never meant to last—but right now, that doesn’t matter.

Right now I’m in the thick of it, and I want him.

I want his cock inside me and his mark adorning my throat. I want his arms around me and his sweet words whispered into my skin. I want today and tomorrow and forever.

I want all of it.

And even though it’s impossible, even though it’s not real, just for now I let myself have it all. Everything I want, everything I was ever too afraid to ask for, I take it and savor it and forget the rest.

Irving’s thumb finds my clit, pressing down firmly, and I let out a low, ragged scream and bury my face into the side of his throat. I drag my teeth over his skin, cry my pleasure against him, and surrender to the orgasm he draws out of me with masterful precision.

He follows a few seconds later, gripping my hips almost hard enough to bruise as his cock swells and he pours into me, coating my insides in a warm rush.

Irving grips the back of my hair and pulls my mouth to his for a desperate, messy kiss, both of us panting and groaning and entirely spent.

A few long minutes later, I lift off him and, completely unable to hold myself vertical, sprawl out onto the couch. I’m naked, fully exposed in the bright daylight shining in through the window, but I’m also so far from self-conscious right now it barely even registers.

At least not until I catch Irving watching me. His focused gaze devours me, and a satisfied flush breaks over my entire body. It’s a flush that deepens when he reaches between my spread thighs and runs a thumb up the length of my slit.

I don’t realize what he’s doing until he pushes it inside with a slow, wet slide.

He’s pushing his come back into me.

Still watching with a keen, possessive gaze, he uses his other hand to keep my thighs spread when I instinctively try to snap them shut. He gives me a squeeze and lets out a low growl, pinning me in place.

“Embarrassed, sweetheart?”

I give my head a hard shake, cheeks still burning, but also… really, really into this.

Who even am I?

I would have never, in my entire life, expected to find something so earthy, so carnal, to be so incredibly hot. I relax into his touch and he growls again, the sound of it echoing all the way through me.

“Good,” Irving says, voice warm with praise. “There’s nothing you ever have to be embarrassed about with me, Holly.”

He crawls over me, big body pressing me back into the nest of blankets on the couch, mouth taking mine in another long, slow kiss.

We spend all day just like that, lounging and fucking and scavenging from the kitchen when we get hungry, then collapsing into each other again.

Like we’re both well-aware of the ticking clock and trying to make the most of this time we have, neither of us holds a single thing back.

And even when we have to take a breather and let our bodies rebound, that closeness doesn’t ebb. It’s there, in the way we stay cuddled up together on the couch and in the softly spoken conversation in the fire’s light.

Irving tells me about the garden he grows in the summer and the plans he has for expanding his woodworking business. I tell him about my frustrations with my current job and my dreams about where my career might take me outside the bounds of corporate life. We talk about our families, our pasts, anything and everything and nothing at all.

We lose ourselves together in his bed as the sun sets over the mountains, and for a moment I can almost convince myself that it might last forever, this little slice of heaven we’ve found.

But I know it’s a dream, a fantasy, and reality comes crashing back in all too soon.

When we wake the next morning, the change in the air is almost palpable.

Even inside the cabin, the slight humidity from the melting snow and the rising temperatures are apparent, a fact that’s only confirmed when I slide out of bed and glance to the window.

All around the cabin, the snow is melting. Sun shines bright through the surrounding trees, and glistens off rivulets of water sliding down the snowbanks the storm left behind.

My stomach clenches.

Soon enough, the roads will be clear and there won’t be any excuse for me to stay.

The logistics of it all are still a mystery given what Irving mentioned about his truck being out of commission, and it still looks like it’ll be a little while before things have melted enough to be passable.

So we don’t talk about it.

We start the day just like we did yesterday, with a round of frenzied fucking in bed followed by a breakfast that includes a whole lot of excuses for touching and kissing. And even though it’s all still so painfully wonderful, I think I can see it in Irving’s eyes, too, the looming specter of what’s coming next, the inevitability of it.

All morning, I think I’m going to get the courage to say something.

But I can’t find the words.

What can I say?

Irving, I don’t know how you’re feeling, but I think I’ve fallen half in love with you, maybe more. I’ve never met anyone like you. I think all I want is to…

What?

Stay here with him? I barely know him, certainly not well enough to move myself in like some kind of love-struck idiot.

Ask him to come to Seattle? I can’t imagine he’d ever want to leave this place, especially when I remember what he told me about not being a fan of living in the city.

Try to make things work long distance? I feel vaguely nauseous just thinking about it, about only having little bits and pieces of him. Stolen weekends and long phone calls, the eventual taper as I get busy or he realizes I’m not worth the headache or we both decide it’s just not working out.

I don’t say anything, because nothing seems like enough to fully explain how I’m feeling, to make this magick between us make sense.

Or maybe it’s because some part of me fears giving voice to that magick is going to ruin everything. Once we start talking about what a future between us would look like, maybe it will all fall apart. Maybe this is all we were supposed to be—a few enchanted days in a forest over Christmas.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

In the end, all those maybes prove to be too much, so I take the coward’s way out.

I don’t say anything at all, and neither does Irving.

And maybe that’s more confirmation I’m not so far off the mark. Maybe he knows just as well as I do that this thing between us can’t last.

It’s all a tangle, so I make myself push it aside and savor these last few hours, minutes, seconds I have with him, heart growing heavier and heavier as the day wears on.

Sometime late in the afternoon, Irving and I are tangled up on his couch, dozing in front of the fire. The light outside is already getting low and long, and even more snow has melted throughout the day, though we’ve both stubbornly remained silent about what that means for us.

I rouse from a light sleep and stretch my arms over my head, every single one of my muscles aching in the most delicious way. A small smile turns up the corners of my lips as I survey the wreck we’ve made of the room around us, though it dies immediately when I catch sight of the world beyond the windows.

My eyes widen, and my mouth falls open on a gasp.

There, in the middle of the clearing outside Irving’s cabin, is an enormous wolf.

It’s at least twice the size of a normal wolf—huge and hulking with gray and russet fur, beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

And clutched in its jaws is…

“My pack.”

I whisper the words, and Irving stirs where he’d been dozing on the couch with me. He tightens his grip around my waist and tries to pull me back down beside him, but my attention is still wholly fixed on the wolf as all that fur starts to ripple and distort.

Between one blink and the next, there’s another incredibly hot, incredibly naked man in the middle of the snow-covered forest.

He looks younger than Irving, with a lanky build, rich brown skin, and a head of messy black hair. Scooping up the pack from where he dropped it during his shift, he lopes forward through the melting snow, apparently as unbothered by the cold as Irving.

I lose sight of him as he approaches the back door, but a rap on the wood and a muffled voice from the other side quickly follow.

“Irving, you home?” the shifter calls out. “I found some hiker’s pack washed up on the river a mile or so from here and caught a scent trail back to—oh.”

His words cut off in surprise as I swing open the door. His gaze sweeps up and down my blanket-wrapped body, and he takes a quick inhale before a wolfish grin spreads across his face.

“Hi,” I say brightly. “That’s mine.”

“So it would seem,” he says, and glances into the cabin. “Is the big guy around here some—”

“Vic,” Irving grumbles. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He’s somehow managed to get his boxers back on, and pulls his tee haphazardly over his head as he steps between me and Vic, holding out his discarded pajama bottoms.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ve got company.”

“I can see that,” Vic says, accepting the pants as his eyes dance with mirth. He hands over the pack, and I keep my gaze tactfully averted as he slips on Irving’s pants and cinches the waist tight to keep them up.

“Thanks for bringing this back to me,” I say, hands immediately searching for the outside pocket where I keep…

My keys.

Right where they’re supposed to be, my ticket down off this mountain once I make it back to where I parked at the trailhead.

Perfect.

Just great.

“Of course,” Vic says with a wide, endearing smile. “I’m just glad that you’re safe. When I found the pack, I was worried something bad might have happened to whoever it belonged to, but…” He glances to Irving, that smile growing even wider. “Looks like you’re just fine.”

I flush, but Irving saves me from having to explain what exactly it is we’ve been doing up here for the past few days.

“She is,” he grunts, something strangely husky in his voice as he rests a hand on my hip.

“What happened?” Vic asks, looking between the two of us.

One glance at Irving’s face makes it all too clear he’s not thrilled with being interrupted and ready to send the wolf on his way, but I cut in before he can keep being all grumbly.

“I fell in the river.”

Giving him the cliff-notes version of the story, Vic’s eyes widen, and he barks a laugh when I get to the part about a huge, naked man appearing in the woods to save me.

“So I’ve been stranded up here,” I finish with a small, chagrin smile. “We’ve been waiting for the snow to melt and to find a way to get me back to my car at the trailhead.”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Vic says helpfully. “I can bring my truck around and give you a ride.”

Problem solved.

It’s incredibly kind of him to offer, and gives the perfect solution, especially now that I’ve got my keys back and have nothing stopping me from climbing in my car and driving back home.

But…

My stomach sinks to somewhere near my feet, then drops all the way through the floor when I glance up and find Irving nodding, a grim, determined expression on his face.