I couldn’t look away.
Shame and humiliation burned through me as Hawk spelled out our future. And arousal. So much arousal. My cock throbbed dangerously, straining against the urge to come.
“Don’t come,” Hawk warned me out loud, his voice low and menacing. “Not until she’s done. Not until she’s ready for you again.”
I groaned but clenched my fists in the blankets, forcing myself to hold on.
And as Holly cried out, her body shuddering beneath Hawk’s rough, demanding rhythm, I knew one thing for certain:
I’d do anything for her.
Anything.
Which was how I managed not to come like a very bad boy. Even when Holly’s lips instinctively found mine, her third orgasm breaking against my mouth as a muffled cry while Hawk released into the wet, gripping heat of her pussy.
His tone had been derisive earlier, but the intense pleasure flooding our maul bite told me everything I needed to know—he more than approved of the new dynamic he’d ruthlessly unearthed from inside me.
“Way to keep things interesting for our new maul, puppy,” Hawk said with a wicked grin as he collapsed to the side of us.
But his grin faltered when another wave of emotion swept over the bond.Doubt. Humiliation.This time, it wasn’t coming from me.
It was Holly.
She was surfacing from her estrus haze, the realization of what had just happened hitting her hard. Her shame and confusion rolled through us in thick waves, and she tried to pull away, her thoughts spiraling.What’s wrong with me? How could I have done that to him?—
“No, no, you’re perfect,” I assured her, wrapping her tight in my arms before she could go down that dark path. “I’m not going to pressure you to bite me back, but if you could feel what I feel, you’d know you did nothing wrong.”
Her face pressed against my chest. “I humiliated you,” she whispered. “And worse, I got off on it.”
“It’s okay, baby,” Hawk said, reaching out to rub her back. “It’s okay to feel this good.”
“Is it?” she murmured, her words muffled against my skin. “I mean, I get that this is some kind of biological imperative for bear shifters, but I barely know you two. We just met.”
I felt everything come rushing back now that the estrus had let go of her—her uncertainty, her guilt, her lingering wariness.
I scrambled for something, anything, to say to convince her I wasn’t just some stranger. “Well, like I said, I’m a made bear—got turned after a hunting accident three years ago. I’m from Vancouver, born and raised. You met my grizzly earlier—uh,sorry about that, by the way. Other than that, this is my first year as a RCMP. Might be my last if Takoda carries through on pressing charges for that bar fight.”
“He won’t,” Hawk interjected, cutting off my spiraling thoughts. “Mauls supersede laws.”
“I hope so,” I muttered. “I really like this job. It’s so much better than my last one.”
Hawk’s gaze sharpened. “What did you do before that could possibly be worse than patrolling a boring-ass mountain town in hibernation season?”
He had no idea. And unlike with my nearly non-existent sexual past, I kept my mental shields firmly locked around that topic.
Luckily, Holly distracted him with another question. “Wait—so you and Koda are both Mounties. And, Hawk, you’re…”
She turned her face to Hawk, her shields snapping back up as she trailed off.
A beat of tension. Then Hawk’s hand tightened on her hip, his voice steady but resigned as he admitted, “Guess this is where I fess up. Not my first time inside a jail cell. I’m an ex-con.”
A new brand of wariness spilled over our bond as Holly stilled against me. “How long?” she asked, her voice tight, guarded.
Hawk didn’t answer right away.
My bear thrummed, wanting to break up the tension with a joke or something. But I stayed quiet, bracing myself for Hawk’s response.
“Ten years,” he admitted, the weight of those words settling heavy in the space between us. “Should’ve been twenty, but they cut my sentence short for good behavior.”
