by Sophie Stern
I can smell his arousal and I’m just as turned on. Right now, it doesn’t matter that I’m here because I had a bad date or because some freak tried to hurt me. All that matters is that the two of us are together and right now, I don’t want anything more or less than what he’s offering me.
Somehow, in the midst of us making out, the blanket seems to slip down. I’m naked in front of him, but I’m not feeling scared or shy or upset anymore.
Now the only thing I want is to feel him touching me everywhere, and I want him inside of me.
Like, now.
I reach for his clothes and pull his shirt over his head.
“Felicity,” he says again, but I’m too far gone. I start kissing his neck and biting at his shoulder. My hands are on his thighs and then rubbing over his cock. He was obviously getting ready for bed when I showed up because he’s wearing the silkiest pajama pants I’ve ever seen in my life, but all I want to do is pull them down and off of him.
Why is he wearing so many clothes?
I tug at them, trying to get them off, but he grabs my wrists and holds them firmly in place.
“Felicity,” he says. This time, his voice is firm, and I look up at him. There are so many different emotions at place in his eyes.
Excitement.
Arousal.
Passion.
But there’s something else there, too.
Confusion?
“Felicity, you can’t just show up after five years and want to get me into bed. That’s not how this works. I get that you had a bad day, but you were the one that left.”
His voice sounds pained, and harsh, and I’m suddenly filled with complete embarrassment. He’s right, I know. Everything he just said is totally right. I did leave him. I walked away. I left, and I ignored him after the breakup, and I’ve made a point not to talk to him. Now, after one bad date, I’m at his house and I’m trying to sleep with him.
He must think I’m such a slut, huh?
Shit.
I slide off of his lap onto the floor, and I reach for the blanket and pull it around myself like armor. I wrap it tightly around my body, wishing more than anything that I had some clothes or something I could use to stay safe and to block myself from his view. I feel very, very naked right now, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem as sexy or as romantic as it did a minute ago.
Fuck.
How could I have gotten myself into a position like this? It was supposed to be a date. Just a date. I was supposed to go and enjoy myself and have fun. I wasn’t supposed to end up totally humiliated, embarrassed, and worried that my entire reputation was shot. More importantly, I wasn’t supposed to end up at Brendan’s house. I definitely wasn’t supposed to get rejected by Brendan. I don’t want to look up at him because all I’m wondering is what he thinks of me now.
Maybe he thought it was lame for me to show up at his place, but I don’t think he thought I was sleazy until now. He probably thinks I’m just a girl who goes around throwing herself at people. Maybe he’s forgotten what I used to be like: what we used to be like.
“None of that,” he says, and I feel him tilt my chin upward toward him. I look up into his eyes, but I don’t see judgment there.
I only see…
Acceptance.
Compassion.
Concern.
“This is a safe place, little fox,” he murmurs. “And it’s a place where you don’t have to be embarrassed about what you want.”
“But you said no,” I whisper.
“And that’s my right,” he says. He’s firm on this. “I am allowed to say no for any reason, and at any time, just as you are. Even in a relationship, saying no is allowed, Felicity, but that’s the problem: you and I are not in a relationship. We haven’t been for a long time.”
The words are honest, but they still sting. He’s not being especially cold to me, and I don’t get the idea that he thinks I’m some horrible person, but…
Well, I’m still embarrassed.
I still hate the idea that I hurt him, and I’m totally humiliated about the fact that I came here and basically threw myself at him.
“I know,” I say.
“Felicity, why did you come here?”
“I told you,” I say.
“Yeah, you said you were scared. I get that. Why me, though? Felicity,” he shakes his head. “You were the one who walked away.” He sighs, and then he stares at me like he really has no idea why we broke up all of those years ago. He looks at me like he’s really confused as to what happened between us, and I can’t…I just can’t take it anymore.
“It was for your own good!” I yell out the words, and the room falls silent. I’ve never told Brendan why we broke up. I never gave him a real reason. I just…ditched him. I told him I couldn’t do it and I lied to him. I said I didn’t want to be with him.
That wasn’t true.
That wasn’t true at all.
What I wanted more than anything else in the damn world was to be with him, but I walked away and I never looked back.
“What did you just say?” He looks at me carefully, calculating, like he’s trying to figure out exactly what the message is here. He knows that something wasn’t quite right about the way our relationship ended, and I can see the wheels turning as he’s trying to sort out the problem.
“I left for your own good,” I whisper. “You were going to go to grad school. You couldn’t be tied down.” It was what had to happen. Being trapped with a girl from your hometown isn’t a good way to live your life. It would have caused him too much stress. It would have bothered him far too much.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He asks. “I didn’t go to grad school.”
“What?” I whisper. Suddenly, my heart feels heavy, and it’s like there’s some sort of weight on my chest. The whole room seems to spin as his words start to sink in. “But you…you left, and you were gone for a year.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen. We didn’t talk about it before he left. He never brought up the fact that he’d applied to school or that he’d been accepted. If I hadn’t accidentally seen an enrollment packet on his mom’s kitchen counter, then I probably never would have found out the truth. She’d been the one who noticed me staring at it.
“Pretty fantastic, isn’t it?” She asked, jerking her head toward the thick white envelope.
“What is?” I stared at it, not wanting to know if it meant what I suspected that it meant. Brendan and I had been together forever, and we had big dreams, but none of them involved going to school out-of-state. We’d done our undergrad programs together at a local college in a nearby town. We hadn’t even had to leave our own town to move. We’d just driven over every day.
“That Brendan got into grad school. He’s going to be so good!” His mother smiled, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m so happy for him. You know, ever since he was a little kid, he always dreamed about pursuing higher education.”
“He did?” Everything seemed to blurry as I silently urged myself not to cry about what she was telling me.
“He didn’t tell you?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shook my head, not wanting her to know that he hadn’t filled me in on his big plans.
“Oh well,” she shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll have a few more months together before he leaves. He’ll let you know when he’s ready.”
“Who told you I was going to graduate school?” He asks. This time, his voice has taken on a deeper edge. His hands ball into fists, and before I can stop myself, I blurt out the words.
“Your mom. She said…”
Somehow, I manage to stop myself from speaking any more. I shouldn’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know that his mom broke his trust by sharing his graduate school secret with me. Then again, what could it hurt now?
“She said you were leaving, and that me being with you was going to hold you back.” The words sit in the air after I say them. The conversation that followed me discovering the grad school
packet is seared into my mind for all eternity. It was the day that every changed for me. It was the day that I realized I was going to have to grow up and give up on Brendan because he…
Well, he was giving up on me.
“Is that all?” He asks dryly. He’s staring at me darkly, and something has changed in his appearance. He doesn’t look worried anymore. Now he just looks pissed.
“No,” I whisper, squeaking out the word.
“What else did she say?”
I take a deep breath and spit out the rest of the story as quickly as I can.
“She said that if I held you back and made you stay in Claw Valley with me, that you’d resent me and never forgive me.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“And that if I loved you, I’d let you go.”
“And?”
He stares at me, waiting. The passion I felt minutes ago as we made out in his living room starts to fade and is replaced with something horrible, something ugly: regret. Suddenly, the weight of my decision all of those years ago comes back, and I wonder if I really did make the right decision. For years, I felt like I did what I had to do to protect him.
What if I was wrong?
What if I made a mistake?
He waits patiently, but his eyes never leave mine.
“Felicity,” he finally says, and then he repeats his question. “And?”
“And that I could never tell you about the conversation,” I whisper.
He sighs, leaning back against the couch. I’m still on the floor in front of him, and suddenly, I feel even more naked than I am. He runs a hand through his hair and closes his eyes, and I wonder what thoughts are rushing through his head.
“Son of a bitch,” he finally says. Then he gets up and starts taking off his clothes. “Stay here,” he says. “I need to run.” He gets all the way naked, and I try as hard as I can not to stare at the curve of his butt or the muscles in his stomach. He’s so fit and perfect, and I love the way he looks. A few scars cover his back: side effects from being a little wild in his teenage years.
“Where are you going?” I whisper.
“To the woods,” he says. “And I mean, it Felicity. Stay in the house, and don’t fucking move. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Chapter 4
Brendan
Running away from my problems probably isn’t the best move right now, but damn, I need to clear my mind. As soon as I’m on the porch, I close the front door, take a few steps, and then start running. As I move, feet against the ground, my body starts to change and shift into my animal form.
Being a lion has never felt so nice.
My entire body changes: first my skin, and then my bones. The shift happens in the blink of an eye, and it’s something that I’ve perfected over the years. I can change painlessly, almost instantly, and without even really thinking about it.
And then I run.
I soar away from the house and into the trees that line the area around my home. I chose this place on purpose. It took me a long time to save up the money for the down payment, but all of the hard work was worth it because this place is lovely.
I’m close to the forests that surround Claw Valley. I have easy access to rivers, to the darkness of the forest, and to the mountains. I’m close to town so I can get the supplies I need. I have everything.
Except for her.
And oh, walking away from Foxy tonight was either the best or the worst decision I’ve ever made, but I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.
As I run, I let out a giant roar. I can’t hold it back anymore. What’s worse is that I don’t want to. I was never meant to live without her. I know that. We both do. Me and Foxy…we were supposed to be forever, and now I’m getting all of this new information I never knew about.
What the fuck was my mother thinking?
She’s always been a meddler, but I had no idea just how far she’d go to interfere. When I left Claw Valley five years ago, it wasn’t for grad school. I left to live with my ailing grandfather, but the reason I left was because Foxy dumped me and I couldn’t cope with it. I always thought the breakup was strange. It never really made sense to me, but I also didn’t push it.
I was young, and I was naïve, and I wanted, more than anything else, for her to find her own happiness.
I guess I thought that by staying away, I’d ensure she was happy.
I was wrong.
Neither one of us was more happy, apparently. In fact, we basically wasted five years apart when we could have been…
I don’t know.
Married?
Having kids?
Spending all of our time together?
I’m filled with so much sadness, pain, and regret at this revelation, and I don’t know what to do.
That’s not true.
I know exactly what to do.
I run to my mother’s house. She still lives in the same little run-down cabin she’s always lived in. She raised me there, and she did her best, but she always wanted me to be something that I’m not.
Grad school?
Really?
That’s never been my thing, and she knows that. My mother and I used to fight about it. Once, I even found out she’d applied to several graduate schools using my information. I’d been accepted, too. She tried to enroll me for classes, though, and that was where I put a stop to things. I made it clear that wasn’t my style. It wasn’t what I wanted.
I went to college and got my undergraduate degree because I wanted to: because I thought it was important. Besides, I promised my grandfather that I would. That was it, though. My mother always dreamed of me becoming some big-shot CEO but all I’ve ever wanted was to work in Claw Valley, to live here, and to make a name for myself.
There’s nothing wrong with owning a bakery. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Working with my hands, creating delicious foods, and making sure I have a way to feed the people I love the most? That’s something I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid. I use all of my grandparents’ favorite recipes in my shop, and Lion’s Bakery has been a wild success.
Only now, I wonder what other secrets my darling mother has been keeping.
I run until I reach her house. It doesn’t take long. Even though I know that I desperately need to do this, I also know that I can’t take my time with this. Not tonight. Felicity is wildly upset, and there’s only so much a little fox can do when left on her own. If I leave her too long, she’ll wander out into the woods again, and this time, I won’t be there to rescue her.
I shift on the porch and grab one of the blankets my mother leaves on the porch swing. She says it’s for decoration, but it’s just in case someone comes over in their shifter form. This means we can communicate normally because I can shift back to my human self, wrap myself up in the blanket, and talk to my mom.
No nudity required.
I knock on the door and wait.
A few minutes later, she opens the door. She’s bright-eyed. There was no way she was sleeping. She might be in her pajamas, but my mother, despite being a lioness, has always been a night owl. She was probably up reading or surfing the Internet. She’s addicted to social media, if I do say so myself.
“Brendan?” She asks, confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Not much,” I say casually, but then I don’t hold back. “So, is it true that you told Felicity to dump me because I was going off to grad school and couldn’t be successful with her by my side?”
The look on my mother’s face says it all.
It’s true.
Every fucking word of it is true.
I thought at the time that the breakup seemed strange. We were young, yeah. We weren’t so young, however, that I couldn’t have predicted something like that happening. Our relationship had always seemed so stable and strong. It had always seemed so incredibly wonderful. Up until the night that Felicity dumped me, I never saw any future for myself that didn’t include her.
Now I’m discover
ing that it was all a lie, and damn, that fucking hurts. I refuse to let my mother cry, but I’m also not sure what I’m supposed to do now. The woman who was supposed to protect me, to care for me, has betrayed me.
“Brendan, I can explain.” She says the words, but there’s no emotion on her face. There’s no concern. There’s no sadness. She’s shocked that I called her out, but she doesn’t regret what she did. Why the hell not? She’s seen me suffering. She’s seen me being sad. She just doesn’t care. Is that it? She doesn’t care?
“No thanks,” I shake my head. “There’s nothing to explain, is there? You stole my mate from me.”
The thought makes me feel sick.
I never even suspected that my mother had been involved in the breakup. Never. There was never a time when I thought that she was the reason my mate left or abandoned me. I thought that there was more to the story, but I had been so hurt that I’d accepted Felicity’s words at face value. I had been so wrong to do that. I had been so, so wrong. Now I understood. Finally, I was in a place where it made sense to me. The missing puzzle pieces I’d tried for years to find were now right in front of me. It was my mom. It had always been her.
“You had so much going for you,” my mother says. “And you were too young.” She shrugs casually, as though you find a mate every day. You don’t. Fuck, you don’t! Felicity was it for me. She was fucking it.
“Do you think you were too young when you mated Dad?” I snap.
“Yes.”
“Well, I was 23, Mom. I was old enough. For fuck’s sake, I cried on your damn couch, and you called her names and told me what a horrible person she was for letting me down like that.” She had never let on that she knew. She never so much as hinted that she had an idea about that.
“She was never the right girl for you,” my mother tells me. She tries to reach for me, but I step back. “There were other girls who were better for you.”
“Who?” I snap. “Allison Erin?”
“Yes,” my mother nods. “Allison is exactly who I would have chosen for you.”
Allison is another cat shifter – a panther – and she’s gorgeous, but she’s never been someone who intrigued me or even interested me. To me, Allison has never even been on my radar. My mother always tried to push me towards other people, especially Allison. She always seemed to have this idea that anyone in the world would be better than Felicity, and I’ve never understood why.