Page 69 of Bear With Me

Dennis shrugged. “We’ll make it work. Just don’t hulk out while we’re in there.”

Oh, good, something else to worry about.

“Come on.” Dennis tugged on his hand, drawing him deeper into the house toward their room. “You can stare at me like you’re an idiot while we’re getting clean just as well as you can while we’re standing here.”

Staring like an idiot just about covered it, yep. Bjorn allowed himself to be led and soon found himself in the en suite. The blue tiling and duck decorations didn’t exactly scream sexy, but…holy shit Dennis was taking his shirt off. Never mind the ducks!

Dennis clearly did physical work in his day-to-day, but he wasn't ripped, his belly relatively flat but padded by a layer of flesh. His chest was dappled with curling black hair that tapered toward his belly into a thinner trail that disappeared into his waistband. His brown nipples were drawn up in the slightly chilly air, and Bjorn had a sudden impulse to just lean down and…bite one. He gritted his teeth against the urge. No scaring his mate!

Dennis paused with his shirt in one hand and raised an eyebrow at Bjorn. “You gonna undress, or am I doing this alone?”

“Oh. Uh.” Bjorn gulped and pulled off his t-shirt. He'd been naked around Dennis a hundred times in the past week; why was he suddenly nervous about it now? And yet he was, nearly quaking with anxiety all over again about whether his mate found him attractive or not.

He jumped nearly out of his skin when a callused hand landed on his well-furred pec. His eyes flew open to find Dennis regarding him with plain lust. “God, I love bears,” his mate said, then laughed at his own words. “The human kind, I mean. Though the shifter kind is also growing on me.”

Bjorn let out a breath of relief at his obvious pleasure with Bjorn's form, then sucked it in again and nearly choked as Dennis flicked a finger over his nipple.

“You ok there, big guy?” Dennis asked, dropping his hand and moving it to the fly of his own jeans. He toyed with the button there and Bjorn felt drool pooling in his mouth. “Bjorn?”

Bjorn tore his eyes away from that button. “Uh, what?”

A deep laugh. “Good to know I affect you. I asked if you were ok.” He unbuttoned his fly and drew the zipper down, and was he…getting hard? Oh god, Bjorn thought he was hard under those jeans. Bjorn certainly was under his own.

“Uh…fine,” Bjorn managed, eyes fixed on the boxer briefs that had come into view as the zipper moved. “Perfect. Great.”

Dennis cocked an eyebrow doubtfully, but shimmied his jeans off his hips and stepped out of them, leaving them in a pile at his feet. His cock was tenting his underwear and Bjorn nearly swallowed his tongue.

“Now you, big guy,” Dennis said, nodding at Bjorn. “You can’t shower in sweatpants.”

Well, he probably could. Maybe he should? He didn’t want to pressure his mate into anything, and if Dennis saw how he was about three seconds and one more snarky comment from shooting off, maybe he’d be turned off. He fingered his waistband. “I…”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “Ok, man, enough.” And without further comment, he bent and yanked off Bjorn’s pants, nearly getting smacked in the face by Bjorn’s cock as it rebounded off the waistband. “Oops, shoulda seen that coming,” he said with a grin as he stood. “Dangerous weapon you’ve got there.”

Bjorn pressed his cock down, a bit too late. “Sorry. Sorry!” Wonderful, he finally got his mate face-to-face with his dick and he nearly took the guy's eye out!

“Hey.” Dennis set a hand on his arm and dropped his gleeful expression in favor of something more serious. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Bjorn met his eyes, fighting the urge to apologize again. He expected to see perhaps humor or mild annoyance at how uptight Bjorn had suddenly gone. What he found was…affection and heat? That couldn’t be right.

“Breathe. I’m here because I want to be, ok?” Dennis went on. “I want to get naked with you – on purpose for once – and I want to take a shower with you, and wash you, and maybe get you off once or twice. So relax. You’ve passed the test. You’re not going to do anything wrong at this point.”

Holy shit. Bjorn didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t even know what part of that to try to say something to. He could only stare pleadingly at his mate, hoping Dennis could lead him through his.

Dennis must have been able to read his expression, because he chuckled low, then stretched up to drop a kiss on Bjorn’s lips. “We’ll get you relaxed come hell or high water. Speaking of water…” He reached in to turn on the shower. “We’ll just let that warm up and then we can get wet together.”

Bjorn whimpered.

They stood there in silence, staring at each other, until steam started to pour out of the shower. Then Dennis took his hand and drew him into the enclosure, placing Bjorn under the shower head while Dennis stood behind him. The shower stall was square in shape, not ideally suited to hosting two grown men, and he knew they’d have to take turns standing under the single shower head. He thought wistfully of his shower at home, a double-width one that he sometimes used in bear form when he wanted to play. Would Dennis ever be interested in seeing his home…his shower?

A wet hand ran up his back, startling him out of his thoughts. He might have made a squeaking noise. A very bear-ish, manly one, of course.

“Can I wash your hair?” Dennis asked, and Bjorn could only gape and nod.

Dennis smiled and picked up the bottle that contained Bjorn’s two-in-one shampoo-conditioner. “Wait!” Bjorn said, grabbing Dennis’s hand. Dennis paused, looking at him inquiringly. “Can you…use yours?” Bjorn asked. He wanted to smell like his mate’s orange-scented shampoo, not his own generic-smelling one.

Dennis gave him a confused look, but shrugged agreeably and put down the plain shampoo in favor of the orange one. He poured a dollop into his hand and then raised it to Bjorn’s head, rubbing it into a rich lather.

Bjorn inhaled deeply, savoring the scent and the sensation of his mate’s hands in his hair. He’d started to think he’d never get to feel this, or really any deep, light-of-day contact with Dennis. Yes, they’d jerked off the other night, but that had happened so quickly, and in the dark. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself now that he was getting this sort of hardcore attention.