Page 74 of Cross To Bear

“Shh…” he said as he settled on the bed, his arms going around her, though not just to cuddle. He lifted her top leg, slotting his into the gap.

No, more than that.

“Rafe, I can’t…”

She was rousing from sleep like a swimmer surfacing from underwater, and for some reason I didn’t want her eyes to flicker open.

“I know.” He shifted until I caught the unmistakable hitch of his hips as he pushed himself inside her. “We’re not fucking anymore, but you’ve gotta keep me warm right now, like I will you. Go to sleep.”

She relaxed against him, burrowing her head in the pillow, and I reached for a blanket and flicked it over her.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed.

“Keeping my cock warm. I can’t stand to be outside her, not now. The bond’s too fresh and rather than wake her up and make her take me again, I’m… letting her sleep with me inside her. I’ll be there when she falls asleep and when she wakes up. I’ll always be there for her.”

I envied him that certainty, still frowning as I watched the two of them, but when her breathing evened out, I lay down beside her. What he did made a perverse kind of sense. If Maddie had let me be the one to claim her, I’m not sure if I could bear to pull out of her either. To sleep with her snug little cunt wrapped around my cock? I heard Razor sigh, pushing his face into her hair before going to sleep himself. Yeah, that’d be heaven.

I fell asleep at some point, and even then only in fits and starts. My body, the bear, were both on high alert, waking sometime in the very early morning to the sounds of her snuffles. I jerked my head off the pillow, staring into the grey gloom until her form came into focus.

Maddie was still asleep. Her eyelids fluttered against her cheeks. I caught that, then her lips pursing, moving, mumbling out some nonsense urgently. It was when her hands reached out, limp and unfocussed, and trailed across my chest that my heart rate started racing.

“Mphh… I need…”

I caught that much in the word salad she was mumbling and those two words had me leaning closer. Was she uncomfortable? Unhappy? Sore? Needed something to drink? As I swooped closer, I caught it. That seductively sweet scent that always had me moving in, right as my cock hardened so fast it hurt.

Maddie smelled horny.

She was obviously dreaming something, her tits swelling against that fucking low cut top, threatening to spill out, even as her nipples burrowed against the cotton. Whatever it was, it was disturbing her sleep. I looked down and saw that Razor had pulled free of her sometime in the night, his cock lying limp on his thigh. Was that what it was she was missing? Her fingers raked across my arms, gripping them, then tangled in my beard before she pulled me closer.

And I did as she demanded.

My head hovered over hers, my mouth going dry as it hung suspended above hers. I wanted her to tilt her lip up, to claim mine, take something from me, because that’d ease that persistent ache inside me. Maddie moved restlessly, getting closer and closer, blindly seeking me like a tiny newborn bear cub might his mother, but right as every nerve ending came alive, sure she was going to kiss me, she mumbled something else and fell back against the pillow.

She was so beautiful and lush, I wanted to kiss her, touch her, yank down that stupid top and free her tits, then gorge myself on everything contained there, but I didn’t. One day, I promised, trying to reassure myself, though that affirmation had an edge to it that cut more than healed. Instead, I let the backs of my fingers trail along her bare shoulder, right before I tugged the blanket up and over her.

Sleep took a long time to return. I followed the gentle intakes and exhales of her breath with my mind, sucked closer and blown away by each one. Back and forth, back and forth, it felt like I swayed until finally, I fell asleep.

Chapter 44

I was dreaming of being smothered.

In the formless grey no man’s land between sleep and being awake, I struggled. I couldn’t take a full breath, my lungs tight and burning with the effort but with little reward. I frowned, wriggled, tried to find a way out from under this oppressive weight, and failed. Each time I moved, it slumped closer, pinning me to the ground. So my subconscious did its thing and filled in the gaps.

Dense walls of mud fell down on top of me, a small sob escaping my lips as I tried to avoid it. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, a thin thread of hysteria weaving its way through my dream. I tried to shove it off, but more replaced it, and every attempt just buried me deeper. My hands slapped down on dense walls of earth which made no difference. My fingers sunk into them when I tried to gain purchase. My legs were caught, bound tight by the inexorable suck of quicksand, dragging me under, and I knew what would happen if it got a hold of me. I’d go under, deep, deep under this heavy weight and then I’d…

My eyes flicked open as I gasped for breath and, rather than seeing a muddy wasteland, I saw him. Razor, my mind supplied belatedly. Rafe. At the sound of those names, memories were summoned: of his smile, those too full lips always quirking up, of blue eyes that saw straight into me, of hands that gripped my waist, held me still as we… I sucked in a breath for real then and the source of my nightmare became apparent. Both of them had me pinned, having rolled over on my blanket in the night. The heavy weights of their bodies kept me bound to the bed, something I fought right now. Carefully at first, trying to ease free, but my strength was no match for their collective weight, neither of them moving an inch until I was forced in desperation to shove at Razor’s chest.

His eyes flicked open as his hands went around my wrists. For a moment he just held me there. I resisted the urge to pull free, the frantic desperation of my dream still riding me. Razor, I told myself again and again. Rafe. Mate. At that last word, I stiffened. Before I could work out what the fuck that was, he blinked and saw me properly.

“Hey, you OK?”

“Had a nightmare.” I supplied a justification for my crappy behaviour on automatic. I wriggled under the blanket. “You guys have got me pinned to the bed so I—”

“Shit.” He rolled away, and while the physical pressure on my body released the instant the blankets were pulled free, the one inside me wasn’t. My heart was still pounding a mile a minute, my limbs quivering in readiness, but for what? “Sorry. Are you OK?” Those too keen eyes took me in, seeming to take in everything I didn’t want to see.

“Just really need to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I need a shower, stat. I’m all sticky and gross.”

So why did his expression change in an instant? Those eyes became even heavier lidded, right as a very smug smile spread across his face.

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