Page 45 of Room 13: Bred By the Bears

“The next day they kept me home from school. Supposedly to make sure I was okay, but I think it was so they could control the story. I didn’t get any better. In fact, after a week I could barely walk, and the pain made me throw up. Eventually they had to take me to the doctor, which meant the caseworker had to get involved. Testicular torsion. He’d kicked me so hard it twisted my testicles inside their sac and ruptured the blood vessel.”

His story hung in the air like the remnants of a fire. Bitter. Stifling. The charred memory of its existence leaving its stain on everything in the area.

I couldn’t sit there, just staring at him. Not after that. It was a step and a half to where he sat but it felt like miles to reach him. The second my arms wrapped around his neck, he buried his face in my neck. His long, powerful arms wrapped around my waist and held me close against him.

“So you see, Sweetness. You and me? We’re the same. I can’t make babies either. Obi can. Armel can. But me? I’ll never be a dad. Not in the natural way anyhow. My whole life, I told myself it was because with all the shit in my life I’d never raise a kid right. Probably fuck ‘em up worse than I am. But now, seeing you with us, the possibility of a future has gleamed off in the distance for the first time in years.”

At some point Armel joined us, bringing with him platters of mouthwatering food. The conversation meandered over dinner. Though a conversation Joaquin and I had nagged at me.

“What would you say is the appeal, in your eyes, for seeking men with a breeding kink?”

The question caught me off guard. I’d never really thought about thewhybehind it.

“Don’t we all just have things that appeal to us?” I asked.

“Well, sure. But Casey, Odin, and I all have a strong thread of the desire to care. We’re natural daddies. But there’s always a reason behind why. It doesn’t have to be some huge trauma, but there is an explanation if we look for it. Casey was the oldest and only natural born child in his family. His mom leaned on him a lot to act as the caregiver for whichever foster children stayed with them. He loves to nurture and cuddle; he excels at making people feel safe. Odin as the son of a high ranking military man, likes control. But gives Clover the praise for toeing that line that he always wanted from his father but never got. And me? I’m the problem solver. I love to talk things through, help guide Clover into making wise decisions, because after my brother died, my parents kind of retreated into their grief. And as the next oldest brother my siblings looked to me to do exactly that. So while our kinks may have always been there, waiting to be explored. How they manifest can be, from my research, based on the situations that shape us.”

“You went quiet.” Armel cradled my hand in his, gently squeezing to get my attention.

“I was thinking about JP. Clover’s Daddy. I don’t know if you’re aware he’s a psychiatrist. His research focuses on kink and sexuality. He asked me one night why I play with men who have a breeding kink. What’s the reason that I sought this kind of play out. He was very Socratic about it. Like he knew the reason but wanted me to realize it, myself. And knowing your origin story, with Tammy it’s obvious why you like the captive slash primal, sci-fi breeder kind of stuff. But Ryker, he’s different. He’s like me. It’s more gentle with him.”

Ryker crooked his finger at me, and I was out of my chair and back in his lap in a heartbeat. Obi pushed his chair so he was as close as he could be without also being in Ryker’s lap. His body heat pressed against the back of me. Armel joined from the other side, a triangle of male heat and protection that poured the most soothing balm onto my tired and aching soul.

“What is your theory, my sweet?”

Ryker pressed his lips to my hair, taking a deep breath before trailing his lips down my jaw and affixing his lips to mine in a slow rejoining and exploration. I’d missed that. His softness. The way he cradled me, metaphorically, between his hands and helped me feel safe.

“You can tell us anything.” Obi nuzzled my neck, running his lips down the same trail Ryker’s had just taken. “With us, you can be whomever you want to be.”

Armel, my protector, held my hand, pressing wet kisses to my palm before kissing each fingertip. “If he hurt you, I’ll have a talk with Odin. I won’t tolerate you ever being made to discuss things you aren’t ready to. Even if it the name of counseling or working through things.” He vowed.

“We need to hear and feel the things we never received. Ryker and I pretending, it fills a hole where our version of our most fulfilled self, lives. By indulging in a fantasy where we are loved, adored, and with someone who wants to give us our most secret hope. I think it’s repairing that tear in some inexplicable way. We’re trying to dampen the hurt of our defects.”

Armel knelt at my side, scooping me up under my legs, and holding half of my body in his lap. “Do you know what the German word for a female bear is Little Cub?” Armel pulled me against his chest, and I immediately calmed, lost in his scent. The weight of his large hand on my back settled the tremor that always accompanied emotional conversations. “It’s die Barin.”

Barren.

“You were meant for us, Little Cub. Always. Since the first time we spotted you in the club. If I could, I’d mark you all over your body so everyone who saw you, stood next to you in line at the coffee shop, or ever thought about the possibility of fucking you knew, you were forevermine. All of ours.”

This was the moment. The one Casey said would come. The time to be brave and step off that dock into the exhilarating rush of the unknown.

“Babies don’t just have to come from your womb, Miele. If we ever wanted our breeding to becomemore,” Obsidian interrupted, “there are plenty of options we can explore. Look at our friends. We have resources and options beyond our wildest dreams. From surrogates, to adoption, and maybe even foster care, though they may take issue with a polyamorous couple.”

He shrugged, lips turned down, and far too kissable to leave in a frown. The moment our lips skid across one another my sweet, comforting peck turned into heated and full of desire. Lighting up every nerve in a cacophony of emotions and sensations.

“If breeding you is always just a fantasy that never materializes, then it’s just a fantasy,” Ryker added, snaking his arms around me and pulling me close against my chest. “Loving you, and you loving us, isn’t about us together indulging in a fantasy to make a baby. It isn’t about whether or not that baby will every actually exist or come to fruition. It’s about me and you, stripping ourselves down to the base of who we are: our hopes, and fears, and traumas, and becoming a single unit in every way. Not just when I lay on top of you and you welcome my cock into you. But when you unlock your heart and let me in there and open the door to your mind and let me in there too. It’s about me and you, and Obi and you, and Armel and you—as well as all the different cross sections, of trust and openness.”

I knew my answer way before Obi texted me asking me to come meet them. I’d had it back in Troublesome Creek when Ryker and the men showed up to see me. Even before that when they’d invited me to their home, cooked me dinner, and opened their world to me. And if I’m being honest, before that when they approached me at Club Sin and asked me if I was interested in playing.

Despite my protestations that I wasn’t looking for anything more than a sexual dalliance, somewhere deep inside, I knew these men would shift the axis of my world and show me I could live in technicolor.

“I want to try,” I told them. “To see where we go. No pressure tobeanything other than a committed unit. For now. But I want us to work. I want to trust in myself enough to accept your love and give it back to you. And in time, hopefully, I can.”

“Baby,” Ryker held my face in his hands, a warm smile splitting across his face, “we have all the time in the world.”

thirty-one

Eight monthslater

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