Page 17 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)

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sex, sleep, eat, repeat

holly

S o...

That was how my first full day on Bear Mountain began.

But over the next few days, I fell into a routine: sex, sleep, eat, repeat.

Koda was barely around. And when he was, it felt like I was dealing with the animatronic Mountie version of the guy I’d met that first night at the detachment station. He’d swapped out his formal uniform for a rotation of dark-washed jeans and either a slate-gray or charcoal thermal button-up, but the vibe was the same: stiff, efficient, all business, absolutely no play.

Every morning after breakfast, he’d “service” me in what I could only describe as the most clinical way possible—efficient, no frills, and completely detached. Then he’d disappear to a place he referred to as Mak’s workshop for the rest of the day.

In the evenings, he’d return for dinner, and like clockwork, I’d be asked to present on my hands and knees for another round of mechanical sex. With a few minutes of efficient pumping and deft finger work, he’d bring me to climax, grunt out his own terse release, and then head back to Mak’s workshop to work on what he called “den projects.”

More than once, I wondered if I’d just imagined the heat from those first few sessions. Maybe he was only having sex with me out of some misplaced sense of duty—like a sailor legally obligated by international maritime laws to rescue a stranded enemy ship at sea.

Except... whenever I looked up after breakfast or dinner, I’d catch him staring at me. His gaze molten—and heavy with hunger. Like there really was a ravenous bear beneath the stiff, animatronic exterior. And that look? It never failed to kick off the post-breakfast and dinner waves of my estrus.

But then he’d just robot-sex me, zip up, wash his hands, and walk out without so much as a second glance.

Not that Leif and Hawk didn’t keep me plenty busy. And thoroughly sexed up.

Unlike Koda, they were all about spontaneous fun and games.

On my second full day in the death trap den, Hawk declared that Leif could only leave the nest for essentials, like using the bathroom—which, long TMI story, wasn’t something female bears in estrus had to worry about. Apparently, no male wanted their female to leave the nest during estrus. According to Hawk and Koda, it was Ayaska protocol for the female to stay put while the males attended to her every need.

So essentially, Hawk was making Leif wait at my beck and call like a dog.

Or, more accurately, a 6’6 surprise submissive.

That second day, Hawk blindfolded him and ordered him to lie still, on standby until I needed him. On the third day, Hawk let Leif move around—but duct-taped his mouth and instructed me to choke him while riding him. It was wild and a first for me, but I’ll tell you this: neither Leif’s nor my bears were mad about it.

On the fourth morning, I thought maybe we were taking a break. Hawk didn’t give Leif any commands after Koda left for the day, so I settled into a nap.

But when I woke up, there was a wooden chair on the border of my nest, Leif tied to it, with a Post-it note on his forehead that read: Whatever you want, baby.

Thank goodness Leif always enthusiastically thanked and praised me afterward for “making him a good boy.” Otherwise, I might not have been able to reconcile the woman who climbed into his lap with the woman I thought I was.

By the fifth day, though, we actually did take a break. I was sore everywhere, including my toes—something I hadn’t known was possible until my estrus taught me there really was such a thing as too much toe-curling sex. Hawk declared a 24-hour moratorium on anything more adventurous than me lying there while he and Leif took care of everything.

That was when I discovered something new: sex could be both a pain and a balm, depending on how you used it. My aches and pains melted away under their soothing licks and massages. Then they ended in the kind of slow, sensual sex that finally made me understand, on a soul-deep level, what J. Holiday meant by “put you to bed.”

But by the sixth day, my worry began to eclipse the pleasure.

I’d only cleared my schedule for a week, and I had a life in Vancouver waiting for me. Falling into a sex-thrall every few hours wasn’t exactly conducive to driving home—or getting back to my job of delivering babies for a living.

Hawk and Koda had assured me I’d definitely know when it happened. Apparently, bears were super in tune with their bodies, and I’d feel it in my ovaries when my bear decided to fertilize an egg. Not exactly something I could easily wrap my head around. Human ovaries didn’t twitch, and the only way to confirm conception was by getting pricked with a needle, peeing on a stick, or missing a period—which female bears, like their all-animal counterparts, didn’t have.

Not going to lie, I was really looking forward to the no Aunt Flo part. But so far, I hadn’t felt my ovaries so much as a twitch.

I’d gotten tingles everywhere else —including places I hadn’t known could tingle (like my poor, overworked toes). But my ovaries? Crickets.

“Does estrus usually take this long?” I asked Leif and Hawk after another vigorous midday session that curled my toes but left my ovaries stubbornly silent.

“No idea,” Leif replied casually, licking at the shoulder bite Hawk had reopened.

That was another thing: Hawk loved re-biting. I’d lost count of how many times he’d clamped his teeth down on the marks he or one of the other two bears had already made on me. It wasn’t even a dominance thing; he just seemed to favor whichever bite was closest.

And Leif, who didn’t have permission to do that, always handled the cleanup. He seemed to love using his bear magic to reheal the wounds after every session.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Hawk said, kissing the shoulder Leif wasn’t working on. “Whatever your bear decides, we’ll figure it out. We’re your maul.”

It was a nice—obviously estrus-biased—sentiment.

But it wasn’t really an answer.

Before I could press him further, Hawk distracted me with a deep kiss—the kind Koda never bothered with—and a pat on the thigh. “Get some sleep,” he said, leaving me in the nest to doze off in Leif’s arms. “That construction mess around the stairs isn’t going to clean itself, and I’m at a good part in Legends & Lattes .”

That was another weird thing. Koda had somehow managed to install a wooden cover for the pool and an entire banister on the front stairs while I was napping—like some kind of oversized, animatronic Mountie elf. From what I could tell, he liked to build, and Hawk liked to clean up after him.

Which was one of many surprising things I’d learned about Hawk over the past few days. He was 42 and absolutely obsessed with reading. Audiobooks, eBooks, physical books, magazines—it didn’t matter. If his local library app had it, Hawk would read just about anything—and sometimes even quote it—whether it was Clara Quinn, celebrity biographies, Gabriel García Márquez, the memoirs of famous generals, or cozy fantasy writers like Travis Baldree.

He also cooked like a gourmet chef and cleaned the den from top to bottom every day with a level of dedication I might have called obsessive if he didn’t immediately drop everything as soon as one of my estrus waves hit.

Koda, on the other hand, seemed to be looking for every possible excuse to get away from me.

That night, he actually complimented Hawk on the dinner he’d made and even bantered a little with Leif. But he barely acknowledged my presence.

Well, there was always the post-meal smolder and inevitable estrus wave. Except this time, before I even finished my meal, Koda set his plate in the caddy Hawk used to ferry dishes between the nest and the kitchen. No heated look, no estrus-triggering eye contact. Instead, he rose to his feet without even looking in my direction.

“I’m almost done with the balcony railing upstairs,” he said, his voice clipped and stiff. “I’ll just get back to the workshop since you don’t seem to need anything.”

“Seriously, Horse?” Hawk asked, frowning at him.

“Sir, maybe you should consider…” Leif began tentatively, throwing me a worried glance.

“See you in the morning,” Koda said, cutting them both off with another terse nod.

And just like that, he was gone.

Leaving me behind with the distinct feeling that his patience—and whatever sense of duty had made him agree to help with my estrus—was wearing thin.