“I know you’re scared, but don’t take this away from us.”
He held up the large hand that had been on my thigh, showing me he wasn’t going to hurt me with it before curling it over my cheek with more gentleness than I would have expected from any man, much less one of his size.
“You did so good, sugar. You made us both feel so good. Can I kiss you? Just on the forehead?”
His question startled me.
I nodded, nonetheless. It was touching, but a forehead kiss felt chaste compared to what had just happened.
Boone pressed his lips into my forehead, and I felt something in my chest unclench. All the shadows in my chest faded away. The forehead kiss grounded me somehow. Left me feeling clean.
Made me wonder if polar bear shifters also wielded magic.
“Thank you.” Boone pulled back with a soft twinkle in his bright blue eyes. “Thanks for taking what you wanted. Made my morning.”
Taking what I wanted.
Is that what I’d done? It hadn’t felt like wanting. It had felt like drowning. Like my body had made a decision without asking my brain first.
But Boone was looking at me like I’d given him a gift, not used him like some kind of?—
There was no universe where I’d answer that “Thank you” with a “You’re welcome.”
But instead of spiraling like I’d been about to before he gave me that forehead kiss, I asked, “Wanna help me make sugar cookies?”
Boone was a heroic bear who’d spent most of his life saving others from disasters. Including me.
But he was a terrible sous chef.
I quickly regretted letting him back into the widow’s cottage after he ran over to the house on the left of me and came back dressed in cargo shorts and his SMOKE HAPPENS t-shirt.
The little kitchenette was way too small for the two of us to navigate around, and he had a penchant for posting up exactly in front of the place I needed to get to in order to complete the next step of the baking process.
After the fourth time I had to ask him to move so I could reach the drawer with the freezer bags Ravik had sent over, I politely asked him to leave once his portion of the first batch of sugar cookies was ready to go.
“Sure thing,” he said with a wide grin, taking the freezer bag of cookies from me, as if he’d been expecting me to kick him out.
“I’m eating these with my lunch, but Zion’s got auditions for the pageant rehearsals. He’ll probably swing by before he goes on sentry duty.”
“Cool, then I’ll just leave Ravik’s on his porch,” I began to say, only to scrunch my forehead when the rest of what Boone said caught up to my logistics planning. “Wait, what do you mean sentry duty?”
Boone grimaced, and I should have known I would not like what he said next when his hand once again went up to rub the back of his neck.
19/
not you
RAVIK
Thwack!
I brought the axe down again, splitting another round of the fallen red cedar that had crashed through the roof of this fixer-upper. I'd moved in anyway just because the house was directly across from where Bell was staying. The two halves fell away, and I immediately reached for the next piece.
The wood chopping wasn’t helping.
I was still hard. Still aching.
Still unable to get the smell and feel of Bell sliding that delicious sugar cookie pussy up and down Boone’s dick out of my head.
