So Much To Bear (A Werebear Erotic Romance) Read online

  So Much To Bear

  By Bethany Rousseau

  An Excerpt:

  “You… you’re gorgeous too,” she stammered, almost too satisfied and abashed by the compliment to speak. Damon’s fingertips dragged along her inner thighs, and Jennifer felt a rush of renewed lust. She reached down and tugged at the waistband of his jeans impatiently. “You’d be even hotter if you were naked too, though,” she said with a little smile. Damon chuckled and sat up, unbuttoning and unzipping the fly of his pants. Jennifer remembered the hot, hard ridge of his erection pressing against her—and as Damon pushed his jeans down over his hips, she gasped. Even feeling him straining at the confines of his clothing hadn’t prepared her for the size of him. Damon’s cock sprung free of his jeans, full and thick, longer than Jennifer expected, flushed almost purple from the height of his arousal and shining with precum. Jennifer’s mouth opened and then closed, as she tried to absorb the sight of Damon’s endowment; as she tried to imagine it inside of her. “Wow,” she said, her mouth opening and closing again. She tore her gaze away from his cock to look up into his eyes. “Uh… It’s sort of… it’s been a while for me, too… though probably not as long as it has been for you…” Damon smiled slightly, kicking his jeans down off of his legs and covering her body with his own.

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Copyright 2015 by Forbidden Fruit Press

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Jennifer peered out into the green-black depths of the woods, shivering slightly in a mixture of excitement, fear, and just a little bit of a chill. She had forgotten just how much the temperature dropped after the sun went down in the woods near her old home town. She had remembered to wear a thick overcoat along with her jeans and sweater, but she had neglected to wear any long johns underneath, and the woods were not only cold, they were damp. But as she, Liam, Robert, and a few friends kept moving, it wasn’t much of a problem. Alex and Lucy were telling a story behind her, the torchlight wavering as they laughed, almost spoiling the punchline.

  It was good to be home, Jennifer thought with a smile to herself; she had been hungry to get away. She had chosen to go to college in another town mostly because she had wanted to, as her dad used to call it, “stretch her wings.” It wasn’t so far away that she couldn’t visit on occasion, but she had seen very little of her friends in the years since she had first gone off. It seemed like everyone simultaneously stayed exactly the same and changed in immense, undefinable ways whenever she came back, as she had for winter break. She was a little disappointed in Robert; her long-time friend had opted to remain close to home in spite of her goading. Liam said something dismissive about the story Alex was telling and Jennifer rolled her eyes, her face safely hidden from the arrogant man. She wasn’t sure why it was that Liam was somehow always involved in the plans her circle of friends made; she couldn’t think of anyone who truly liked him other than Robert. But for Robert’s sake she put up with Liam, and Jennifer supposed that it was probably the same for everyone else. As long as Liam didn’t do anything too objectionable, nobody was willing to upset Robert by suggesting that Liam be booted from the group.

  Robert had become Jennifer’s friend in high school, shortly after both of her parents had passed away. Jennifer’s mother and father had both been killed in a car accident one night, coming home from an out of town visit to relatives that Jennifer hadn’t taken part in. At first, she had been devastated by their loss, and confused at the necessities that suddenly sprung up; under the age of eighteen, she had to scramble to find relatives who would act as her legal guardian. She’d found a cousin who was twenty at the time, who was willing to take on the role; Charlie had signed the paperwork and stayed out of her hair, checking in from time to time just to make sure she was safe and making the right grades. Jennifer had been an only child, and her parents, while they had cared about her and loved her, had given her much the same prerogative to make her own choices while they had been alive.

  Robert had made friends with her the first week of Freshman year, picking her to be his lab partner without any fanfare. “I’m really sorry about your parents,” he had said as they worked on a project together after school one day, after the new acquaintance shyness had worn off. “But look at it this way: you’re basically living the teen dream. No one to tell you that you can’t do what you want, no one to enforce a curfew, the house to yourself.” Jennifer had smiled at the observation. It was true, in one respect; Charlie didn’t get in her way, confident in her maturity and the sensibility of her decisions. She didn’t throw any wild parties, and she didn’t invite people into the house. Jennifer was determined to go off to college, and planned her high school schedule—with help from her older cousin—with that in mind, taking as many classes as she could, belonging to as many clubs as she could manage to fit into her free time. Robert had formed the core of her circle of friends, which gradually grew as she came out of her initial grief at losing the parents she had loved so much.

  Robert was the one in her group of friends who Jennifer felt comfortable going to with just about anything on her mind. When her hormones had begun to run high, her interest in the opposite sex cresting, Jennifer had gone to Robert. He had never presumed on their friendship, even when Jennifer had secretly wanted him to. Instead he had offered her slightly brutal honesty about the avowed objects of her interest—telling her that one of her crushes had a tendency to be aggressive with girls, or another would simply use her for experience and ditch her once a new interest came along. Jennifer had never told Robert that deep down, she wanted him to be her first; she dithered on the subject of ever telling him about her feelings for him, that she was attracted to him as more than a friend. She told herself instead that he only looked at her as a sisterly type of friend, that he would never see her in that way. She had never gotten any indication from Robert that he was really interested in her; at least, not sexually. He was definitely interested in being her friend, and Jennifer made herself remain contented with that.

  Liam, Robert’s long-time friend, was a slightly different matter. Jennifer had gotten the impression from Liam on more than one occasion that the other boy was definitely interested in her. But with Liam, the son of the town’s mayor, it was easy to evade his interest—it wandered from girl to girl like a hunter going after a target, and just when Jennifer thought she would have to let him down as gently as she could, he would shift his focus to another girl. Where Robert was tall and lean, with dark hair and eyes that always seemed a little soft and gentle, Liam was muscled, blond, and blue-eyed, classically good-looking and well aware of the clout he held as the son of the mayor. Girls flocked to him, and Liam availed himself of the privileges of his station in life without a single thought, dating and sleeping around, going to the next girl whenever he felt like it. It bothered Jennifer that Liam didn’t seem to have any limits on his life; his parents en
sured that he was indulged in everything, and he managed to pull a steady B average in high school in spite of the fact that he didn’t seem to ever be prepared for his classes. He was intelligent, but lazy, and Jennifer—who had worked hard throughout her school years to excel—only found his reliance on his father’s political power to be more annoying as a result. She thought grimly that there would come a day when his father was no longer around, or at least no longer mayor of the town, and Liam would have to face up to the fact that he had wasted the best opportunities of his life. But considering how set-up he was already, in spite of only attending the local community college, it seemed as though his comeuppance would arrive long after Jennifer was no longer in a position to enjoy seeing it.

  Jennifer wondered on more than one occasion what held Robert and Liam together. They seemed like an odd pair of friends, at least on the surface; Robert was charming and smart and funny, while Liam held himself above everyone, and his condescension was annoying. But Jennifer knew that in spite of his intelligence and charm, Robert didn’t trust his own opinions very much. He had grown up not poor but with parents that struggled to stay in the middle class, and valued the validation that Liam provided. In a certain light, Jennifer could see why Robert wanted to be Liam’s friend, but she didn’t know how Robert managed to avoid being aware of Liam’s glaring personality flaws. She could also see that Liam’s friendship with Robert was a matter of convenience; Liam liked having someone who would go along with him on his various plans and schemes, and who was charming enough to keep him included in a social life when people might otherwise have turned their back on him, his kinship to the town’s power structure notwithstanding. But there was still something about the relationship between the two young men that baffled Jennifer.

  “Hey, Jen—don’t wander off, there’s wolves in these woods you know!” Robert’s voice called Jennifer out of her reflections. She turned to face the group, forming a smile on her lips that was mostly for Robert.

  “Oh hush; no one has seen any wolves—or bears, for that matter—in years,” Jennifer said, rolling her eyes playfully and moving a little closer to Robert.

  “Doesn’t mean they aren’t here,” Liam said archly, giving Jennifer a suggestive leer. “So stay close, why don’t you?” Jennifer shrugged; content to be a little closer to Robert and at least a little bit willing to deal with Liam if it meant that she could be around her other friend.

  The plan had been to cut through the woods that surrounded the small town they all belonged to to meet up with another group of friends in the next town over. Robert and Liam had agreed that since it was only a few miles, maybe five at the most, it was worth the after-dark walk. Since everyone had been game for it, Jennifer had gone along with the plan. She had always had a kind of affinity for the woods; she had been exactly the type of girl to go exploring when she had been younger, even though her parents had always cautioned her against going too far into the green depths on her own. While they had mentioned bears and wolves as the reason for exercising caution, Jennifer knew that they were really more concerned about the hunters who had once flocked to the woods. Some of them got extremely drunk and would shoot at whatever moved; it would be too easy for a little girl to disturb someone and get killed for her troubles.

  The dark made the forest oddly spooky—more so than Jennifer would have believed if she had thought about it during the day. Somehow, the torches that lit their way made it even more eerie, illuminating only a few feet ahead of them. Jennifer had never spooked easily, but there was a stillness in the dark depths of the woods as they walked that gave her a tingle of vague foreboding, even as she listened to stories and responded with some of her own. The four friends who had accompanied her into the woods had all decided to stay fairly close to home, and they were hungry for tales of “the city,” even though Jennifer hadn’t exactly chosen a major metropolitan area for her college experience.

  It was still much bigger in scope than the town they all lived in, and Jennifer’s adventures—while tame compared with some of her college classmates—were hilarious, or thrilling, to her friends. Alex and Lucy asked about the bars where she had gone to school, and Jennifer told the story of getting her fake ID, and the tale of how she had had it confiscated. The bartenders in the town all knew the ages of the town’s residents, so in order to be able to drink underage, her friends had been forced to creative ends, sending in friends or family members who were of the legal age to buy alcohol and then carrying it away to an abandoned house for a party.

  Jennifer wondered again why Robert had stuck in town instead of going off to college; he was smart, and he could have easily—with a little application and effort—have scored enough scholarships and grants to go almost anywhere he would have wanted. It would have been good for him, Jennifer thought. He would have been on his own, independent, away from the influence of the small town; he would have become more confident in his ability to think for himself, just as Jennifer had become, and he would have learned that the world didn’t revolve around their little corner of it, that there were things well beyond the town that were worth knowing, worth visiting, worth seeing. He marveled at her adventures and the things she had seen, the opportunities she had taken advantage of to learn more, but he seemed too insecure in his own abilities and status to think he could achieve them for himself. It saddened Jennifer, but she thought that he would have to come into his own without the aid of an out-of-town college.

  “So tell us about the romance situation at your school,” Lucy said. Jennifer shrugged. While she certainly hadn’t suffered from a romantic drought, sex and romance hadn’t been the first focus of her time. Jennifer knew that a lot of the girls in her town thought that she had chosen a far-off college mostly to find an interesting husband; there was a kind of old-fashioned undercurrent to thinking in the small town, and many of the girls she had graduated with were already married, and some of them were starting their families. Jennifer didn’t have anything against marriage as an institution, and thought that perhaps one day she would have an interest in starting a family; but there were so many more things she wanted to do with her life before she finally settled down. Jennifer thought that maybe, by the time she was thirty or so, she would be ready for that kind of relationship, for that kind of commitment and settling. But that was still many years off; and in the meantime, she could only hope that she could have some excitement in her life.

  “Eh, I try not to date too much in the dorms,” she said, making a face. “Everyone seems to have dated everyone else. Picking anyone would be too much like sloppy seconds.”

  “Jen just needs to get some, clearly,” Liam joked crassly. “Too much studying and she won’t be any good to anyone.” Jennifer rolled her eyes.

  “Maybe I’ll be a nun, then. Anyone who wouldn’t want me because I was too educated isn’t someone I’d want to be with anyway.” Jennifer glanced at Robert, who had always encouraged her academic pursuits.

  “Jen’s pretty enough and fun enough to get whoever she wants,” Robert said, flashing a slight grin at her. Jennifer wondered idly if he had finally noticed the discreet signals she was trying to get across to him. Even if she had long ago given up—consciously at least—the idea that Robert would take her in his arms and love her, she couldn’t actually quite convince herself to no longer be attracted to him. Jennifer both wanted and didn’t want a fling with Robert; it would be satisfying to finally have him to herself, but she didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship to finally get him in bed. But that would probably never happen anyway, she reminded herself firmly.

  After a long stretch of joking and walking, it started to become clear to everyone that they were lost. It seemed impossible; they had all lived near the woods and walked through it countless times to get to the next town—they should have been able to navigate, even after dark, with no trouble. Jennifer knew by the brittle quality in everyone’s voices that they were not just starting to get tired, but were also more than slightly af
raid of the dark labyrinthine depths. “We should just go back, call it a night,” Lucy suggested, sitting on a tumbled-down log and easing her feet in the warm boots that encased them.

  “But we can’t be that far from the town,” Alex countered. “We could totally get there in just a few minutes if we could figure out where we are in the woods.” The torches were still bright, but Jennifer knew that they wouldn’t last at their current supportive level for too much longer—they were only rated for a couple of hours of use.

  “It’s cold though, and my feet are starting to hurt,” Lucy said, a whining edge entering her voice.

  “You should have picked more comfortable shoes,” Liam said, unconcerned. He leaned against a tree and Jennifer fought the urge to roll her eyes at him. Lucy should have picked more comfortable shoes, but she hadn’t; it didn’t matter at this point.

  “We can’t be that lost,” Alex insisted. “We should just press on and we’ll come to the end of the woods eventually.”