by Mason Sabre
“I don’t mind.” He held his hand out to her, his face full of smiles, happy to see her … happy to be there. She had to do this, though. Even as her hand hesitated beside her, she had to step forward, take that leap off the board and into the unknown. She put her hand into his and her heart in a cage.
His hand was warm, firm. The bones in his fingers were strong around her own. She stepped into him, allowing him that closeness that called to her tiger and tried to make a connection. “Inside or out, first?”
It was a nice evening, and the scenery was pleasant … a calling to her tiger to run. Maybe that would be too tempting. “I don’t mind. Inside?”
“Okay.”
The inside was just as magnificent as the outside. It was a house that held secrets. “I bet there are some ghost stories in here.” The hallway was long. To one side there was a grand set of stairs and to the other there were doors, and in the middle, right at the end there was an old grandfather clock. The pendulum in its belly swung back and forth. “It works?” she asked, letting go of Karl’s hand to go to it.
“It does.” He came to stand beside her, his scent alone was infiltrating her tigress mind and sending it into confusion. “I built it myself.” He pointed to the mechanics inside, opening the main door so Gemma could see. “I shaped it all.”
“Really?” She had never seen anything like it.
“I like machinery. It makes sense, you know? This goes here, that goes there. It’s either wrong or right. Nothing in between”.
“Yes.” She understood that analogy. It was a shame life wasn’t so simple.
“Come on. Let me show you the rest.”
He took her to the upstairs rooms first. The wood along the hall was all varnished and shining. The intricate detail in the beading alone was enough to make her gape at it with awe. There were many rooms upstairs, most of them unused. He had his own bedroom, which actually meant a room with a bed in it and then a room scattered with wires and cables and god knows what else from computers. The bathroom was next. The old kind with the centre tub, but Karl had obviously fitted modern commodities to it. The shower looked so out of place in the aged surroundings.
He showed her everything. The grand dining room, the lounge, the second lounge. The house was like her parents’ house with all the rooms. Something built for more than one person. He led her into a room at the back. It doubled as a sitting room and a kitchen, clearly where he spent most of his time.
“Sorry.” He darted around the room and picked up papers and cups, which he stacked near the sink. “I wasn’t expecting visitors today.”
Clearly, he’d not seen her bomb site of a home. “It’s fine. Honestly.” Even with the mess, which wasn’t really a mess. It was just a stack of lived in hints to the house, but the room was cozy, comfortable. Somewhere easy to relax into.
“Do you want a coffee or something?” He was in the kitchen so fast, opening cupboards, getting out mugs, then opening the fridge.
“Coffee’s fine.” She followed him in. He had a breakfast bar that split the room into two and Gemma hopped herself onto a seat. At the side, there was a bowl filled with fruit. Just from that was a bread-bin, and she could see the edges of a wrapper sticking out. She frowned. “You eat Human food?”
Karl cocked a brow at her. “Don’t you?”
“No….”
“Never?”
Gemma shrugged. “My mum used to give us apples sometimes when we were kids. You know, something to bite on, but otherwise … we’re tigers.”
“But we’re still part Human … kind of, anyway. I mean, we have all the same insides.” He filled the kettle at the sink and then took it to the other side of the room and put it on the stove. “Don’t you ever wonder why we spend our times starving when we could just eat whatever?”
It made sense. “Does it fill you? I mean, properly.” Gemma couldn’t imagine it. There was a satisfaction with hunting, not just the eating part, but the whole need and instinct in them to hunt and kill and provide.
“It makes it easier.” He went to the fridge just next to her, grabbed something, but before he pulled it out, he leant around. “Close your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“Yep.” He nodded. “You’re up for some adventure, right? Close them.”
“I just …”
“It’s just food. It won’t kill you. Close your eyes.”
She did. It was hard to keep her expression straight and her eyes closed when she felt him moving close to her. He put something down on the counter behind her and then he moved.
“Open your mouth.”
She went to open her eyes instead, and Karl hooked his finger under her chin, titling her head back.
“Keep them closed and open your mouth.”
He was a hot pulse in front of her. His firm thigh pressed against hers. His muscles were hard, but then all shifters were like that. They ran, a lot. “If you put something disgusting in my mouth, I swear …”
“Later. Now open.”
She gave a swallow, licked her lips and then opened her mouth slightly. Karl pressed something cold and firm to her lips, it felt puckered, rough and smooth all at the same time.
“Uh … ah. Closed,” he said when she tried to open her eyes again. “Bite.”
She did. Biting through something oddly soft yet firm. It fell into her mouth in a burst of juice and sweetness, making her open her eyes. Karl was right in front of her, her knees pressed against his thighs. Juice ran from her lips down her chin and she caught it with her hand. Karl grabbed her a tissue.
“Oh my god.” She could hardly breathe at the explosion of flavour in her mouth. “What on earth was that?” She had never tasted anything with such a sweetness … such a scent.
“Strawberry.” He took what was left of the fruit from where she had bitten it and popped it into his own mouth, grinning as he chewed. “Good, right?”
“It’s bloody amazing. Still not meat, though.”
“No.” He held up a basket of them. “Have another.”
She plucked one and held it by the green stem, then she turned it over. She had seen strawberries a hundred times, but she had never really seen one. She nibbled at the tip of it. “I feel like I've been robbed my entire life. You eat Human food all the time?”
“Between meals, kind of. Do you want to try something else?”
Dare she? She sucked her lip into her mouth, sucking off the sweet juiciness of the strawberry. If they all tasted so good….
Karl was watching her as she put the rest of strawberry into her mouth. “God, it’s so good.” Her eyes flared, alive with her tiger. Karl’s did exactly the same in response, the green around his pupils shone alive with his tiger ever present.
It sparked a jolt somewhere inside her … something rich and deep. One tiger answering another. She had never dared to open herself like this. Never dared to even consider the possibility of one of her own. Karl took something from the bowl and cut the top off. He ran a knife down the inside, scooping out bright green flesh–kiwi. “It smells so sweet and tempting.” Her voice almost a purr and she had to stop and get a hold of herself, but she didn’t want to. She had stepped into a world where maybe she could move on where she could feel something.
“Like you?” he said, raising a brow. She met his prefect green gaze. Eyes that were the colour of a deep ocean bed. She smiled, partly natural, partly forced as she dared to let herself travel into the unknown with someone new.
Maybe this was the difference between lust and love. People talked about it all the time. Shelley talked about it. How she could window shop and appreciate other men, but Tom was her love, her home. Cade was home to Gemma. That place … the safe spot in her mind and body where she could be free and be herself. Karl, though. She didn’t know him the same, didn’t feel him the same as she did Cade, but her tiger responded to him. “You only think I’m sweet because you don’t know me.”
He winked at her. “Try this.” He held a piece of
the kiwi on a small spoon, held one hand just under her chin, not touching as he offered her the fruit.
She leant in, and opened her mouth, but her eyes stayed fixed on Karl. He watched her with nothing but deep hunger in those perfect eyes.
She let the fruit sit on her tongue before biting it. Sweet, tangy, like an explosion of flavour invading her mouth. “Wow.” She put her hand over her mouth as if the fruit might fall, then she swallowed it down. It was amazing.
He kissed her then, unexpected and shocking all at the same time. Taking her mouth with his. He tasted sweet like the fruit, but earthly like his tiger and Gemma jolted, suddenly snapping out of the moment and that this was not Cade.
He paused, his mouth still against hers. “Sorry.” He went to pull away, but Gemma reached up, putting her hand at the back of his neck, his hair swept over her hand and she pulled him back.
Butterflies stomped a song through her body, riddling her with a combination of nerves and unease. It had been so long since she had kissed anyone else. “It’s okay.” Her voice was a whisper. She kissed him back, bringing her hand up to tangle in his hair. His tongue swept into her mouth and she trembled against him. He put his hand at her back, steadying her.
He kissed her hard, fast, suddenly with the acceptance of a tiger who’d just been given permission to take what he wanted. Karl …
She shuddered against him as he slid his own hands into her hair and held her in place. In response, she bit down on his lower lip, bringing out a moan from him that only sparked encouragement from her tiger. She drank him in … drank all of him in, kissing him with a kind of wild abandon and letting go of the mental barriers in her mind.
Karl …
It was Karl who broke away, broke the kiss and the connection, but he was standing in the V created by her legs as she sat on the stool. “I think I could do with that hunt now, what about you?”
She could hardly stand, let alone talk. Her head swam with so many mixed emotions that they rocked her down to her very core. “Hunt? Yes.”
Karl stepped back from her, giving her space, but he held his hand out in offering. Her stomach flipped. This was the one … the shift … the moment between them that would make her step off that ledge.
It was time to jump.
Chapter 8
Karl
The evening’s sky was a calming blue hue that had morphed itself into thick red and orange blotches across the horizon–like the wrath of the world was reflected in it. The warmth of it touched Karl’s skin, but it was already heated like something had touched it … something had—Gemma. He gripped her hand tightly in his, fear running wild inside him that she would wake up and change her mind. His lips still tingled from the kiss—the kiss she had allowed, and he had drunk it up like a desperate man. Her scent was thick in the air and it threatened to break the control and send him hurtling into the world, heart first.
All the colours were so vibrant … so bright. It was enough to make someone gasp, and if he could have transported what he could see into the eyes of any Human, they would understand why being a shifter was a blessing, not a curse. His tiger was awake … awake and ready, already roaring in the confines of his mind. His eyes had shifted with the pure emotion and arousal surging through his veins, heating his blood. It made the world darker, not sinister, but the kind that offered him safe passage into the night—a dark his tiger so desperately sought.
“I love the evenings,” Gemma said, pushing out her chest as she took in a breath and let the last remaining strands of sun touch her skin. They lit up her auburn hair like someone had taken every beautiful piece of nature and threaded it through like silk. Her eyes shone a deep green.
“Me too.” There was a river at the back of his house. Small enough now, but in the winter, when the rains came, it would bulge and fill, and sometimes burst at the banks, turning something so amazing into something so dangerous. It was poison to him–a double edged sword he didn’t know how to fight. Gemma stepped closer to it, and Karl went to call her back, but stopped.
It was blood, not water … blood. That’s what he saw. That and the sight of his sister. She’d been six … six years old, and they had found her there, one night when the bank had burst, and the water had flooded into the building. Karl could still smell the rich coppery scent now, even all these years later. His mother had never been the same after that.
Gemma kicked off her shoes and crouched down so she could dip her toes into the water. “I love water.” She swished her foot through the surface, and he didn’t say anything as he approached her. His mind fought with the images of the past and tried to replace them with now … with Gemma. Maybe she had seen something in his gaze, but when he got closer, she got back up.
Fire burnt in his veins as she stared at him. The way her eyes flashed across his body … she felt it, too. She let him come to stand behind her as she turned to watch the last bit of the sun setting. Her scent was intoxicating, addictive. He understood now why some males would kill each other just for the female close by. He was pretty sure he’d be capable of that if anyone came to disturb them just now.
“I used to come out here all the time when I was a child. Running by the stream was one of my favourite things to do.” He used to go lots of places. When he was small, he used to ask his mother if he could live as his tiger. Part of him always wanted to keep that feral roaming in his soul.
Gemma gave a calmed sigh. “You were very lucky.”
“Yes. I still am.” And he didn’t mean because of where he lived. He placed his hands against Gemma’s shoulders and dipped his head down so his lips caressed across her skin. She let out a gasp at the first piece of contact, making him jerk with excitement, and he paused before brushing her hair back and revealing bare shoulders, save for the straps of her summer top. Her skin was as hot as his, and she tipped her head, leaning into him as he trailed slight nips across her skin.
His tiger was demanding, pushing him inside to go on … take what he wanted, what they wanted, but he wanted to savour this. He wanted to make every part of her, his. He let out his own murmur when her backside pressed into the swell of his erection.
The world could vanish standing with her in his arms. He could be someone else—someone better. Her lips parted as he bit against her neck where her pulse beat. He lavished kisses along her skin and trailed them up until he reached her jaw. Cupping her face to turn her to him so he could take her mouth with his, he breathed her scent in. “You’re so amazing.”
A smile. She kissed him back, fully and completely as she turned in his arms, making him almost topple at the way she gave herself over. He could sink there and lose himself—lose himself to her. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined himself standing with Gemma Davies like this. She was ten leagues away from him … a blink in the eye he’d never grasp, yet here she was, with him.
When she snaked her own hands up to his head, burying them in a tangle of his dark hair, she opened her mouth letting him in there, too. He swept his tongue in, exploring every part of her, his stomach shuddering and his mind sure that in a moment he would wake up.
She was tiger. Their animals danced somewhere like shadows around them, wrapped together in claws and teeth, touching that hungry place in his soul. Karl gently fingered the edge of her vest, and she gave no protest when he slid it up her back and then over her head. The swell of her breasts between them was enough to make him crazy. Her skin … so soft, so hot, begging him to taste it.
He dipped his head down, cupping her breast in his hand. She still wore a bra, but it didn’t matter as he pushed up and nuzzled against her skin. Fingers dug into his back on one side as her other hand tightened in his hair, holding his head in place. “God, I love the sound of you,” he said as she murmured against him.
Karl broke away only to take his own shirt off and toss it to the ground where he’d discarded her top. She came to him, though. Her hand pressing against his chest, running lightly over his skin, exploring him.
He let her … embracing the moment where it was just the both of them. To anyone else watching, they would think that this was sex, but it was more than that. Something Humans and Others who weren’t shifters would never understand. There was an intimacy in shifting together … a trust that required such vulnerability at the same time.
Gemma sucked in a breath when his knuckles dusted across her stomach as she reached for the button on her jeans. He locked his eyes on hers, deep green eyes that were more tiger than woman. She opened her mouth, her lips parted enough to accommodate the canines that were pushing their way out. He paused for a moment in case she was going to tell him to stop, but she didn’t. Instead, she pushed her hands against his, pushing her jeans down her legs, and when they were off, and she had kicked them to the side, she brought her hand to his face to touch along the edge of his jaw. She touched him like she was blind … like she was tracing every detail of his face and casting them to memory. He tilted his head when she got near to his mouth and nipped against the tip of her thumb. “Are you ready to shift?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was ragged and husky, the way all shifters sounded when their animals were front and present. He slipped his hands around her back and found the clasp to her bra. When he released it, exposing her firm breasts to him, his pulse shot to dangerous levels, and he dipped his head down to claim one pert nipple. In response, she pushed her chest toward him, inviting him in to feast on her. She was so hot, so sweet. He sucked her nipple into his mouth and flicked his tongue across the hard nub of it. Her fingers dug into his flesh and she let out a trembling moan.
The sound made his tiger slam to the surface and Karl brought his hand up along Gemma’s chest and to her throat, holding her there, strong hand around her delicate neck. She swallowed against his palm … leant more into him. He was breathless. “If we don’t stop now, I might not. We need to hunt.” His tiger was wild inside him, alive, pacing, impatient. He could hardly pull himself away from her.