Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(44)

He pushed, testing her, but being gentle in the way only a giant who knows his strength can be. "Too much?" he asked.

Jamie laughed out loud, her canines growing longer with each slow, deep stroke. "If by too much," she said, nipping at Ryan's forearm where he propped himself beside her head, "you mean not enough?"

She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles and pulling him in, deeper, harder, faster, matching the pace of the pulse beat she felt in his throat. She bit at him, careful not to do any feeding, just enough to be fun. As she felt herself begin to crest, Jamie closed her eyes, letting the motion take her away.

"Open them," Ryan growled, voice rumbling low in his throat. "I want to watch your face when you..."

With a grin, Jamie let her eyes fall open lazily, though all she could manage was to keep them halfway open before the effort was too much. Ryan locked his fingers between hers, holding tight. The mat of clothes underneath her shoulders slipped forward and back with each of his increasingly intense, urgent thrusts, and before she knew it, that sweet tightness in her belly spread to her chest, her shoulders, her neck.

"Keep them open," Ryan said, sucking at her throat when her eyes closed again. "I want to see you, see your face, your smile."

Jamie bit her lip as the pressure mounted, but with a gasp, and a soft squeal, she didn't have any choice but to let go.

She screamed out, letting go of Ryan's hands in favor of clawing the hell out of his muscled shoulders, then ran her fingertips down the lines between them. He stiffened, his joints all going hard and tight at once. As Ryan started to tremble and shudder, Jamie reached for him, pulled him out and squeezed tightly as his entire body shook with climax.

"No fair," Jamie finally said, when her heartbeat exited the red zone.

"What's that?"

"You closed your eyes. Fair is fair." She grabbed him, but he gently pushed her back.

"I ain't that young anymore," he said with a grin that told her he was, in fact, still that young. The stirring down below made it clear. "But the rain's breaking. I don't want to leave."

"Then don't," she grabbed his shaggy hair and kissed that stubbled chin, then his stubbled neck. "Don't leave, don't ever leave. We can just stay here forever." She glanced around. "You know, forget all our creature comforts and the rest of our lives and just bed down in this cave and never leave. Just wear each other out until we're both dead."

Ryan shot a raised eyebrow in her direction. "I'm down with the last part of that, although maybe without the dying. But, this is gonna be strange to hear me say, I admit... but I kinda like TV and air conditioning."

"Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't like our little cave house. It's got so much charm. We can host parties and," Jamie was interrupted by one of the possums from earlier scurrying past, and startling her enough for a squeal. "Yeah, okay maybe you're right."

Ryan was already on his feet, pulling his jeans back over his beautiful hips, and trying to rig some way to keep his pants buttoned. "Oh," Jamie said, hopping to her feet and plucking a chopstick from her discarded handbag. "Hold 'em together."

She snapped the stick in four pieces, crammed one through the buttonhole, and used one of Ryan's many hair ties to make it into a serviceable clasp. "It'll work for a while, anyway," she said.

"That's... who are you, Jamie?" Ryan asked, as though he'd never seen anything so inventive and exciting before.

She sucked a deep breath and stared into his eyes. "Who is it asking?"

That got a grumble and a grunt, and then something approximating a nod of appreciation. "I don't," he started, then cut himself off. "I don't know how much I should let you in. It's dangerous."

"You said I broke your walls," Jamie shot back, hand on her naked hip. Ryan's eyes were going up her body and down it, drinking her in, but she didn't mind much, except that he was using her as a distraction. "Up here, big boy," she wiggled her fingers at him. "Or was that just some bullshit to get me naked? Or wait, was I already naked?"

He smirked, and so did she, but the seriousness of the question was real. "Spill it," she said. "Or wait, do you want me to go first? Because my story is pretty damn boring. Here, I'll start, then you go."

With his jeans hitched up, Ryan invited her to sit. "I talk better when I walk around, especially if it's a monologue like this." She took a deep breath, and let it all hang out. "To start with both of my parents were full shifters. I caught the recessive gene that apparently makes me "special" although to me it's far more of a curse than anything positive. I can only change into a bat when the moon is new, and sometimes if I try real hard, I can do it a day early or late.

"Keeping notes?" she asked, a little pricklier than she meant to sound. "Sorry, I'm just not used to doing this."

Ryan responded with a friendly smile and a nod for her to continue.

"I lived here most of my life, went to high school here, got a degree at the community college between here and Clinton, and briefly considered going off to some big state school for a Ph.D. in philosophy or something else I'd never have used. But, that thought lasted about thirty seconds until I remembered the wings. Turns out, having a pair of bat wings? Not the most normal thing in the world." She took a deep breath, gauging Ryan's reaction to this spurt of information. He was leaning forward, eyes fixed on hers. "You're actually paying attention, aren't you?"