“Tell me and I’ll kiss you again. Maybe it will make you forget, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will help give you back a little bit of that strength.” Bear chuckled, rocking into me with the hardness between his legs that almost had me jumping back until he said, “Or maybe it will just add some more torture to my rock hard cock.”

Before he made it seem as though his erection was just a natural reaction. Now he was making it clear.

He wanted me.

The lightness in his voice, a tone I hadn’t heard him take in the last twenty-four hours helped to loosen the tight cogs around my brain and I reluctantly told him the truth. “I keep them on because I don’t want to see the bruises. I don’t want to be reminded of what he did.” My voice cracked with my admission. I hated the weakness in my voice. “I’m not ready to face it just yet.”

Bear’s nostrils flared, but when he caught me staring at his lips he reached out and grabbed my face, leaning down he pressed another kiss to my lips. This time harder and he was right, he was angry, but he fed the anger into his kiss, into every nip, suck, and dance of his tongue that I lost myself in his lips, in him, and within a few seconds there was nothing around us. No fire, no bay, no ghosts of terrible things.

There was just the two of us and our angry hungry lips.

“More,” Bear said, pulling away, kissing the corner of my mouth where it had just started to scab over. He trailed his lips to my collarbone softly brushing his lips over every inch of skin, leaving a trail of fire in his wake I didn’t even know was possible. He paused. “Tell me more,” he said as I leaned in and he leaned back. I frowned at the lack of contact.

“I was in a room with Chop. You look like him you know,” I started. “Not exactly, but in a way I could tell right away that he was your father.”

“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered. “But let’s get one thing straight. He’s been my old man since I was born, but he’s never ever been a fucking father to me.”

“I can’t imagine he was,” I said.

“Keep talking,” he ordered softly, trailing kisses down my arms and then over the few inches of bare skin between my tank top and shorts. I looked for my thoughts but couldn’t find them with his lips trailing their way toward a part of me that was throbbing with a need that was unlike anything I’d ever felt.

“Room with Chop,” Bear prompted.

“Right. Um… the prospect had already given him the ring. Your ring. He was mad. He threatened me. He…he hit me.” I sucked in a breath remembering when he’d thrown me to the floor. Bear must have felt my tension and hesitation because he stood back up and captured my mouth in another kiss. Each one more mind-numbingly perfect than the last. He opened his mouth to me and his tongue found mine. I couldn’t resist the urge to lightly suck on the tip of his tongue. He moaned into my mouth and the kiss deepened and grew heavier and faster. I tried to mimic his tongue’s movements but there was no rhythm, no pace except frantic need.

Sparks ignited in my very core, making me feel empty. I rubbed my thighs together, needing to feel something more. Friction. Anything. Just something more.

Bear hooked his fingers into the waistband of my shorts and pulled them down my thighs. “Wait!” I said, reaching for the elastic.

Bear grabbed my wrist when I tried to yank my shorts back up. “Ti, let me help you,” he said, looking back up to me and in that moment I saw the Bear from the Stop-N-Go seven years ago, the Bear I trusted. I released my grip on my shorts and he pulled them down to my feet and I stepped out of them.

I closed my eyes, waiting for whatever it was he was going to do next, but opened them again when I heard him say. “Stay here.” Bear jogged back to the apartment, appearing less than a minute later with a damp washcloth in one hand. He knelt down in front of me. “I don’t…” I started, but I had no idea what I was going to say.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” Bear said. And when he leaned in and swirled his tongue around my belly button in a move that had me bending my knees involuntarily, literally weakening from his touch. I swore I heard him mutter. “Yet.”

“Keep going,” he prompted again, sliding lower down my stomach, licking and nipping everything on his way, however he avoided my breasts entirely, leaving my shirt completely intact. He slipped his fingers into my underwear and I braced myself for what he was going to find. Most of my injuries were dull throbs, but everything he’d done to me down there throbbed like it was hours ago, not days.