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Chapter 32

Will

What do you do when your girlfriend turns into a huge fucking bear? You hold your boyfriend’s hand and tell the bear how pretty she is.

Or, that’s the best I could do. Turns out, Davy was better at this part than me.

“Master is right,” Davy told her. “You’re beautiful. Can I see how your paws and claws work? Are they like a cat’s, or a dog’s?”

She sat in front of us and offered a paw, and Davy let go of my hand to grasp the entire paw and fiddle with the claws, totally trusting. “Oh, so more like a dog’s. Why did I think they would retract? Can I sit on your leg and be hugged by my very own Micca bear?”

Micca opened her arms in invitation, and Davy somehow managed to sit on her leg and lean against her. The bear gently put one arm around him and looked at me, clearly pleased with Davy’s response and wondering about how I might be dealing with her.

“I don’t know what to say. You’re beautiful, and much bigger than I expected. I guess this explains the huge numbers on the wall and the great big cushion in your living room. Do you really watch television in this form? Should we…” I shook my head. “That conversation can wait until you have a voice box again.”

She made some vocal bear noises that I suppose was her telling me she has a voice box now, and I grinned at her. “Okay.Point. I adore you, Micca. In all your forms.” I touched her foot, and then realized I was making this awkward.

“I’m sorry I’m being a dork.”

The bear moved her arm in slow motion until the pads of her hand — foot? — touched my cheek, and I put my hand on the outside of her paw — oh, it’s a paw, right? Not a hand or foot.

“Do you want to show off for us? Can you, like, rip trees out of the ground?”

She sighed, oh-so-gently moved Davy off her, stood, ambled about fifteen yards from us, and thenpoofedback to human.

“Rip trees out of the ground? Really? Why would I destroy a perfectly good tree just to show off?”

She sounded genuinely upset, and I tried to figure out what the problem was. Meanwhile, she’dchangedback to human beside her clothes, and she started putting them back on.

“He’s an action guy, right?” Davy told her. “You were just sitting there, which was fine because Ilovedbeing held by you, but he wanted to see you in action, is all. It’s one of the reasons he’s so successful — he sees something and fully explores it, if it interests him.”

She sighed. “I’m a very efficient killer. I can also have fun, especially in the water, but mostly, I’m built to kill anything in my environment so I can eat it. Trees don’t make good food. I could probably push some of them over, but why would I?”

She finished putting her clothes on, and Ranger walked to us. “First priority with shifters after achangeis to feed us.”

Davy immediately walked to the picnic basket and said, “Looks like a bucket of fried chicken and a stack of roast beef sandwiches.”

“I’ll eat with ya’ll now,” Nathan said, “and then Mira and Panda can eat in the chopper.”

“And I shall take my leave,” Jupiter said, and then he was gone.

* * * *

Davy

It tookforeverto fly home, and I was itchy the whole way. Nearly a week of being Master’s partner instead of his slave had me all out of sorts. We put our phones on airplane mode on the plane, but before we landed in Atlanta, I had a text all ready to go, and I sent it as soon as I turned airplane mode off.

I’m supposed to tell you of my needs, so I am. I don’t want it to sound like a demand, but a notification, so I hope it’s okay for me to tell my Master that I need a physical reminder of who we are to each other.

I don’t think my text was the first he read, though I can’t be sure. At any rate, it was several minutes after he looked at his phone before he looked at me and said, “I know.”

What did that mean? Was he going to do something to reassert our relationship? Was he going to make me wait a week? Was he going to make me clean the pool and bathrooms and then work out as soon as we got home?

He’d made me work out with him while we were at my grandparents. We’d actually helped them with some projects around the house, repairing the chicken coop area inside the barn, adding more insulation, painting the barn, and a few other things. Malcolm hadn’t expected us to, but once we saw the supplies that had come in with us, we all kind of insisted. We’d have been doing push-ups and pull-ups and running sprints and all kinds of other stuff if we hadn’t put our muscles into real work.

I hadn’t had an orgasm the entire trip, though I’d given Master plenty. I didn’t think Micca had any orgasms, either, though that was totally her choice.

I hadn’t been allowed to touch myself, and no one had touched me, so — no orgasms for Davy. I guess that in itself was a reminder of my station, but I neededmore.