She drops to her knees on the stone in front of me.
She looks up at me from there, and whatever I was going to say goes straight out of my head.
“Relax,” she says, and I realize I’m holding myself rigid.
She wraps one hand around my shaft and holds it a moment—not hesitant, just getting the feel of it. Her thumb tracks the underside, and my jaw goes tight. Then she flicks her tongue around the head of it.
“Fuck.” The heat hits right away. She works the head first, lips dragging slowly across the ridge, and makes a low sound in her throat—interested, unhurried, like this is something she wants to be doing. She opens her mouth wide, and takes what she can, covers the rest with her hands, works both together in a steady pull. Suction building, her grip tightening in rhythm. No room for anything in my head.
I brace both hands on the stone behind me.
She pulls back for a breath and looks up. “Has anyone ever done this to you?”
“Not to finish,” I say.
She takes that in. Her hand keeps moving. “Bear-sized problem,” she says. Not a question, her own conclusion.
“Yeah.”
She hums and goes back. Takes me in deeper than before, and this time she doesn’t ease into it; she pushes past the limit she set at the start. My hand comes forward and fists in her hair.
She pulls back again after a while, hand still working. “Has it ever run before?” she asks. “The rut. With anyone else?”
I look down at her.
“No,” I say.
“Only with me?”
“Yeah.” It’s getting harder to speak.
She holds my eyes. Her face changes—she keeps it still, mostly, but her eyes go clear the way they do when her magic’s down, and she’s not managing anything. Then she goes back to what she was doing. I let her.
I know it isn’t the way of things, what she just heard. The rut has a duration. It runs and eases, and I go back to what I was.
But the bear chose her before the rut started.
He chose her at Aurora, before I’d said a word to her. He settled in a way I hadn’t felt from him in years. I told myself for days it was the investigation. I’ve stopped telling myself that now.
She does something with her tongue that clears out every thought I was holding. There’s only this—the heat of her mouth, the grip of her hand, the tight suction that’s been building since she started. Her eyes come up once and find mine. What I see in them is hunger, not duty. She holds my look for a full second, then drops back down and takes me deeper.
I stop trying to hold back.
“Grace,” I gasp, my hand in her hair as her head bobs faster. “God… Fuck!”
“Ummm…” she hums, the sound rippling down my shaft. My head drops back as the sensations roll over me. Wet warmth engulfing me, her small hand pumping my flesh. The heat coils in my balls and starts surging up my length.
“Wait,” I choke, reaching down to pull her face up before I empty in her mouth. She bats me away with one hand and pushes her lips further down, gagging as my head hits the backof her throat and then further. Her breath is hot against the curls around my base, saliva drooling down my flesh.
It’s all just too much. My hips pump up, no longer caring that she’s choking and gagging. I don’t think she cares either because she’s humming small sounds of encouragement.
I come with her name in my throat—the rest of it has no words—one hand fisted in her hair, the other flat to the stone behind me. She stays through it, takes what she can, pulls back slow. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Sits back on her heels. Looks up at me, wet dripping down her chin.
Fuck. That’s so goddamn hot.
I pull her up before either of us can say anything. She comes without argument, presses her face against my chest. Her hands flat against me. We stay like that, breathing.
After a while: “You okay, sweetheart?”
