Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(23)

He was beaming by now. "Your Aunt Maude blew a hole in the roof of that bar with a shotgun that she had back there. Soon as she shot that thing off, everyone froze, and she laid the sucker holding me down out with a half-empty bottle of cheap Scotch. Then, she poured a drink for me and for her, and that was that. Never felt more loved in my life."

Ryan was staring, mouth agape, at his uncle. "She seems so... so sweet."

"She mellowed in her old age. Though you won't ever catch me saying that within earshot of 'er. But that's how I knew. In that instant, with her holding a bloody liquor bottle and yelling, I felt that lump in my throat, the knot in the pit of my stomach. I knew she was the one for me."

Ryan was silent.

"I take it you've felt the same lump?"

Hurriedly, Ryan hopped off the log. "It's getting late. Early, whatever. I gotta get this thing back before the sun comes up."

Boston sat in silence as his nephew finished unloading the stolen food and filled the van from a gas tank he kept on site for the farm equipment. He climbed in the cab and had just started the old engine when his uncle finally stood up and sauntered over to the van, sticking his head through the window.

"That's the other thing Drake boys excel at," he said.

"What's that? Starting cars?"

A smile crept across his uncle's lips. "Not answering direct questions. Though I suppose your lack of an answer was just as good."

"You know me too well," Ryan said. "I just hope I'm not making a mistake."

"And this is why I tell you to listen to your heart. Even if you do screw up, you'll never regret tryin' something and failing the same way you will never taking a chance."





-8-


“This is a lot harder than it looks.”


-Jamie


Sweat ran down Jamie's temples, and her cheeks. Her hair hung in plastered sheets, stuck to the sides of her face, her neck, and her bare back as she tossed and turned, unconscious and asleep, but as active as ever. One of the things she had practiced for most of her life was lucid dreaming - she was aware she was dreaming, and able to manipulate them.

But this one? This one didn't need any help.

Ryan's hands were running up her back, clutching at her sides. She groaned, softly at first as his lips caressed her neck, her breasts, and the soft skin above her sex, but when he dove in, hungrily lapping at her, she gave up trying to be demure.

She let out a wail, the sensations of her dream as close to reality as anything that didn't happen after a long romance. Except this one would end with no commitments, no frayed feelings, and no paranoia about her overactive reproductive system giving her two weeks of panicked worry. Not even condoms helped very much. It was like her ovaries were magnetized in just the right way to pull those swimming jerks through the latex and... then again, that had only happened the once. That was sufficient enough terror.

He slid his hands up her stomach, cupping her breasts and pinching her nipples gently between his thumb and forefinger. "Har...der," she whispered, her voice getting thick as he took her higher and higher.

There was something magnetic, something about his presence that made her feel like the attraction wasn't just lust, or the fact that she'd gone without a good doin' it session in about four years. There was more to it.

Much more.

"I wish you could feel this too," she whispered, before he closed his lips around her other nipple and circled her with his tongue.

"I don’t' need to feel anything. Just seeing your face, smelling you, tasting you, that's good enough."

The warm, slow heat creeping out from between her legs felt like lava in a long-overdue eruption. At first it came slowly, testing whether or not it was time. But then he sucked a kiss, and the intensity of her desire frightened even Jamie. She clawed at him, digging her nails appreciatively into his hard, thickly muscled shoulders. He grunted a laugh and smiled more the harder she dug in.

It was Ryan's turn to ask for her to get harder and rougher. His breath, like his beating heart, came faster and faster. He kissed up between her breasts, along the curve of her neck and the sharp line of her jaw. When he stood, she felt his nakedness against hers; he was long and thick and so hot he could have melted iron.

A finger slipped inside her, curled deeply, and her knees went weak.

Ryan dragged a deep breath through his nostrils, rolling his eyes back and shivering slightly. His breath grew ragged and hot, dripping from his lips in sweet gusts that prickled Jamie's nipples and sent a wash of goose bumps up her neck.

He pushed deeper, rotating first the one, then a second, finger inside her.

"I'm safe with you," she whispered as he slid his fingers along the spot at her front that made her shiver. It was almost a question, but wasn't. He smiled in response.

"I am. I feel it, I feel like you aren't going to take me for granted and make me feel like nothing six months from now when you're done with the novelty of... of me."

Ryan reclined and pulled Jamie into his lap. He nuzzled her chest with his whiskery, scruffy face, and kissed her again. The prickles of his stubble were more thrilling than painful, though they did tickle a little.

"Even you giggling in the middle of me trying to be romantic," he said with a smile, "I doubt your 'novelty' is ever going to wear off."