Return To The Bear by T.S. Joyce Page A

Straining to stay in his lane, he gripped the wheel at ten and two until his knuckles turned white. He glared at the road, determined not to crash as Joanna’s head bobbed slowly against his lap. That would be an embarrassing police report.
    “I want to touch you,” he rasped. He was close and desperate for more than this. Coming from blow jobs hadn’t bothered him before, but it was different with Joanna. It felt like he needed to touch her or it wouldn’t feel as good in the end.
    She moaned and slid her hand between her legs and his eyes went wide. Damn, she was so sexy , just watching her rub her palm against herself brought him to the edge. “Wait. Stop, stop, stop.” His voice was airy and ragged, and his hips still bucked helplessly against her mouth.
    She eased back just in time and his chest heaved, breath shaking with every exhale. Confusion swam in her gaze and her delicate eyebrows drew down, making him want to smooth them wit h his fingertip.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    He couldn’t think straight, rutting like this, so he rolled down the window and took a long drag of fresh air. “I don’t want our first time together to be like this.”
    “It kind of already was.”
    “Yeah, but I don’t want to finish without…I want to make you come with me.” He sounded like an idiot and couldn’t match words to his actual thoughts, but the smile that formed on her petal pink lips said he’d done well enough.
    “Okay. C an we go straight to your house when we get there? I need this too.”
    He liked when she was direct like this, telling him what she wanted. He didn’t like games or hints. He’d been with women before who did those things and he found it tiring, always trying to figure out how to please them. But with Joanna, she had just told him exactly what to do to satisfy her.
    There was a back road to his house he could take off the main one through Bear Valley . It would ensure they could bypass the welcome party for a couple of hours. It would probably be better if he didn’t go into the community with three stiff limbs to shake anyway. Joanna came up with the best plans.
    “Yeah. I’ll take care of you as soon as we get there,” he promised.
    ****
    There was absolutely no way to feel rejected when Brody explained it like that. Joanna knew what he meant. He wanted them both to enjoy the intimacy, and he was tied up with driving. She was pretty sure she’d never met a man who would stop her right as he was about to blow his load just to worry over her own needs.
    And in that moment, she fell a little harder for Brody Bannister.
    Tying her hair back into a ponytail with a band on her wrist, she squinted her eyes at the row of no trespassing signs that lined a fence. There had to be thirty of them. Overboard, yes, but as she rushed to read them, it seemed like some of them at the end had been created with a sense of humor. Get yur buns outta here , and your momma didn’t raise no trespasser warnings were painted in neon colors, like someone was just putting an obscene amount of them up out of boredom.
    The road was long and washed out, and it seemed the rain had reached this side of the Big Horn Mountains too, because mud holes dotted the journey in. She began to realize the necessity for a fat tired truck out here. The land was beautiful. Pines that reminded her of Long Claw territory towered up toward the sky, but the terrain was hillier and everything seemed lusher and greener somehow. Maybe she just looked at it differently because she was with Brody, or because she didn’t feel scared coming here as she had been when she’d been brought to Long Claw land.
    Green and brown and earthy, the landscape just outside would inspire artists if they saw it. She rolled down her window and held her hand out. The breeze caressed her fingers and she smiled. Not the polite smile she’d had to plaster on her face for the past two years to avoid trouble, but the genuine kind that felt good down to