Bearing Your Burden (BBW Shifter Erotic Romance) (2 page)

Some time later, what seemed like an
eternity
later, she remembered the basics of how to breathe.

///\\\

\\\///

What have I done...?

Bryan stared at the little woman down below him, and finally, the self-hatred and frustration in him turned more into shame and regret, rather than anger.

What had possessed him to do this to her? It was all over from the moment she said she knew he was a shifter, but this? From this, she might never recover...

It dawned on him that he had done it to hurt her... to hurt her in the only way he could (for there was nothing in the world that could have made him strike her)... for having hurt him. For having given him hope, which she then cruelly took away from him along with the secrecy with which he shrouded his power. He had, for a few, brief minutes, allowed himself a dream he had repressed for so many years – that he could actually live with people... no, a person... again.

But in the end, something like this would have happened. She would have caught a glimpse of it, and recoiled in horror. Or, even if she didn't... eventually, someone else might discover, and while their words or actions couldn't harm him anymore, they could harm her. So, it never could have worked. And so, he ruined it himself, before it even started...

And he did so in the worst possible way... to punish her, because she had dared to make him dream... and more than anything else, to punish himself, because he had been stupid enough to let her.

And now it was too late.

He went down on all fours, so that his eyes were level with hers.

In a deep, impossible voice – more landslide than growl – he spoke.

“
Is this what you think you knew, girl? Is
this
what you want to live with
?!”

\\\///

///\\\

Lizbeth's mind was blank, her vision clouded in fear and blood pounding in her ears.

All the breath had been squeezed out of her, and she only remained standing because she had backed herself into the table, and gripped at its sides.

She had thought she would have been ready for something like this. She'd told herself she'd seen it before. But it was one thing to “see” it from afar, in the pitch black of night, for a second... and have it happen right in front of her now.

She didn't scream and run out of the house... simply because she couldn't. She would have only been able to whimper, and fall over. As it was, all she could do was stay rooted there, in horror...

It was his eyes that snapped her out of it. She had been staring into his massive maw, and the long, thick, glistening teeth within it, as he spoke, and trying to push away fearful visions of it snapping her neck in two. She stared straight into the cold, uncaring law of nature, in all its bestial brutality.

But when she flicked her glance upwards a moment – perhaps only to faint – she saw something else.

Unmistakable pain, and sorrow, and loneliness. The things she'd seen in Bryan every time he'd come to see her and her father, all those years ago... every time he'd played with her, and given her advice, and not tried to judge or shame her.

She saw the things she'd always wished she could soothe away in him, from the very first moment she noticed that he was soothing them away in her.

She didn't have to think twice about it – or even, think about it at all.

She simply reached forward, and caressed the side of his great, bear's head – what she still thought of as his cheek.

“Yes... I...” she faltered a second – out of residual fear, or shyness, she couldn't tell. “I do want to live with... this.”

///\\\
\\\///

Bryan didn't know what to do.

He wouldn't have known what to do, no matter how she'd reacted. But in those fearful seconds after he'd spoken, a half dozen scenarios had flashed through his head: her screaming, and running out. Her fainting, and him having to make sure she was alright, but leaving before she woke up. Or, if she just stood there frozen, he'd imagined himself turning around and cutting a dramatic exit... though how he would have navigated the closed door was beyond him...

But certainly, he hadn't imagined this.

And now, his mind had been reduced to the state of white shock which he had inflicted on her earlier – if anything, he was worse off than she had been.

“I... I...”

The sound of his voice shocked him. He didn't know what he wanted to say, only that he didn't want to say it in that unearthly boom.

Hesitantly, almost bashfully, he shifted back.

His tremendous, fearsome muscles folded into themselves, and shrunk to merely huge proportions – large and powerful by human standards, but nothing on the scale of his bear form.

He shrunk down – if the word “shrunk” can ever be used about such a large man – and into the alien comfort of the skin he had been born in. The fur retreated – though his chest, forearms, and legs were still covered in thick hair, but of a totally human variety, this time.

It was only then that he remembered what had happened to his clothes.

He looked down, to see himself as naked as Adam.

He hurriedly looked back up.

Lizbeth's eyes had gone larger and rounder than they had when he had transformed into a 10-foot tall bear in front of her. Her mouth hung open in a totally un-selfconscious gawp, as she stared somewhere between his legs.

With a panicked jerk worthy of a schoolgirl whose skirt had just been flipped, he moved his great (human) paws in front of himself, to cover the last remnants of his modesty.

“I... I... Oh fuck...”

Lizbeth's mouth still remained in that gaping... almost inviting O, but she flicked her eyes up to meet his. Somehow, that was even more embarrassing, which shouldn't have even been possible.

“I'm sorry. I... I'll put on some clothes...”

He turned to go, before realizing he had instinctively headed towards the front door.

He did a heel turn, considerably gracefully under the circumstances, and almost shyly tried to scamper towards the bedroom. It was a disconcerting motion to see, in a man so confidently large.

“W...wait!”

That one word took Lizbeth more courage to say than anything ever had in her life.

More courage than it had taken her to spend weeks planning her escape in secret, hunting down clues to track down the only man she knew would understand how she felt toward her father. More courage than it took her to walk out of everything she knew in her life, and hitch-hike the countless miles all the way here, to the back end of nowhere...

And with that word, she reached out, and laid a delicate, trembling finger on his great bicep as he tried to rush past her.

Somehow, that tiny force managed to hold him back.

Bryan could only dumbly force out a few words. She had totally depleted his daily stock of shock.

“I... you....... what?”

Lizbeth's face, which had so few seconds earlier been blanched white, now flushed a bright shade of crimson.

“It's just... I meant to say... that I guess you don't have to put on clothes if you... if you don't want...to...” And then, in a flurry: “I mean, umm, I've seen it all before, right?!”

“You have...?”

“Yeah, though, umm, I guess you were a bear at the time, so maybe it doesn't count...”

She laughed weakly, wishing secretly that people could die out of sheer shame.

Bryan, though, after so many months and years without meaningful human contact, had been dealt one too many sucker punches to the mind, and was reeling internally, his tongue cruising on auto-pilot.

“I... don't understand. You want me to... not get dressed?”

“Aaaagghhh, Bryan, you
idiot
!”

She usually would have dealt with this better. But going from heart-clenching terror to heart-throbbing embarrassment was just a little bit too much...

And the next thing he knew, Lizbeth was hitting him, with all the force she could muster in her distracted state – which, against his corded muscles, wasn't much. She stood there, flailing weakly at his chest, shouting that he was a “dummy”, and a “jerk”, and an “idiot” again.

He stared dumbly down at the commotion for a few seconds, totally lost, until one of her exasperated punches unbalanced her, and she stumbled. He reached out to steady her, his hands wrapping almost completely around her arms.

She let her head fall against his chest, and took in a few breaths, inhaling his deep, clean, manly musk. If anything, it made her even more dizzy.

She looked back up at him, opening dewy-wet eyes.

It was at this moment that Bryan really registered that he was completely naked, holding a beautiful, young woman in his arms.

He felt the panic rise in him again.

“Lizbeth, I–”

“Just kiss me already, you stupid man.”

And with that, she stood as high as her 5 feet 4 inches would let her go on her tippy-toes, reached her hands up around his neck, and pulled him down to meet her.

He let himself go down, and felt softness blossom on his lips.

It was so unexpected, on both their parts, that it was a little awkward at first, but Lizbeth's heart was too full of the rush of first fulfillment that she barely even noticed.

Her calves started to ache from the position after a few moments, though, she let herself drop, breaking the kiss.

She reflexively looked down, saw Bryan's thick member stirring between his legs, and hastily looked off to the side.

“Sorry Bryan, I–”

But she didn't get any farther than that. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she felt a hand wrap gently around her chin, tilting her face upwards and to one side, while another hand grabbed the small of her back, and pushed her up and into Bryan's leaning kiss.

This time, their lips met perfectly, and any doubts or embarrassment dissolved in the pure transport of physical love.

His lips pressed against hers firmly, then softly, then he nibbled gently at her lower lip, bringing a gasp from her. His stubble rubbed against her cheek, the wonderful rasp of it sending shivers running down her neck and radiating all over her back.

Then she opened her mouth for him, and he took her invitation, sliding his tongue smoothly and insistently into her, swirling it along to her lead in wet, swooshing motions.

He took his tongue out, and she following it back, tasting the inside of his mouth – a faint, fresh trace of pine, with a barely detectable hint of fresh meat...

They broke apart for a second, enough to take in a breath, then kissed again, and again, to feel the pleasure of their lips meeting.

After what felt like hours, but must have been minutes, Bryan broke the lock of their lips, and stood up.

He gazed intently into her eyes, which were clouded over with the glowing embers of growing lust.

“Lizbeth... are you sure you're OK with this?”

It took her a while to register what he was saying, so lost was she in this wondrous new world of his body.

“OK... what... this... oh! Yeah, yes, um, I'm OK!”

He seemed to have taken her hesitation for something else, though, because he started to look troubled. After a second or two, he looked away.

“Bryan, what's wrong? Please, no, I want this...”

“But...this isn't right...”

“Why? Why wouldn't it be right?!”

“I... Lizbeth, you were a child the last time I met you...”

“Maybe I was, but I was old enough to fall in love. And I'm damned well not a child anymore, that's for sure...”

“I... I suppose you aren't... but–”

“Bryan Knudsen. If you don't pick me up and carry me to your bedroom right now, I swear to you I'll... I'll... I'll set your house on fire.”

He seemed taken aback, and for a moment Lizbeth was scared that she'd said something weird, or way too forward. But the next second, she heard his low, hearty laugh – the first time she'd heard it in so many years – and knew everything was going to be just fine.

“Well, if you put it that way, I guess I don't have much of a choice then, do I?”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and stooped to slide the other one along the back of her legs.

An unpleasant doubt flew through her mind for a second.

“I, oh, no, you don't have to actually do that, I'm maybe a little heav–
eeeeeeee!
”

Before she could finish the word, he had flipped her into the air, and she lay snugly against his chest in a princess-carry. He looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You've got to be kidding me...”

She didn't have anything to say to that. She had double vertigo: once from being pulled up into the air so abruptly, and a second time, from falling just that little deeper in love.