A silver haze had settled around us, shimmering as if the light of moonbeams were trying to create localized ambiance just for the two of us. I didn’t think it was something Gray was even aware of, but I marveled at the sight of it for the both of us. If I had to put my finger on what it was, I would say it was the physical embodiment of our potential mating. As if the possibility of things to come could hang in the air around us like a shimmery cloud.
The need to be claimed and mated by the man before me was so overwhelming that I almost took matters into my own hands in order to move this little song and dance along. The only thing that stopped me, besides a modicum of common sense, was the twinge of pain in my legs as I shifted to get even closer to him.
I had forgotten about the extent of my injuries for a brief moment before the reminder had me slinking back and into myself as I hissed.
“Are you okay?” Gray asked as he released his hold on my throat and allowed me to slip out of his reach once again.
“Yes, just an unexpected twinge from moving too quickly,” I admitted.
“Should I leave you to rest?”
“No, you should not.” My answer came out as more of a demand than anything. I leaned in once more, moving so that our lips were only a breath apart. My eyelids dipped heavily with lust, as I stayed there, waiting for him to come to me once more. He had to make this move. I had chosen him. I needed to know that Gray was choosing me too.
8
Being careful with her was always at the back of my mind, but only just. Something about the woman, the call of the bond we would soon share, or maybe just pheromones, made me ache with a need I’d never felt before. My cock was already hard and heavy, pounding against my jeans for release, for her. The breathy sigh she exhaled on my lips as I pulled away told me she was feeling the same way. That didn’t stop me from checking for myself though, just to be sure. I slid a hand down her body until my finger plunged into her saturated depths. Jesus. There was no way she was this wet, and I had to check.
I was pulled from the moment immediately when I realized I couldn’t feel her need in the supernatural way I usually did. She wasn’t hinting from her mind to mine exactly how she wanted to be taken. Her impatience wasn’t battering my resolve. No, the urge to speed forward was all me, all for her, but not because it’s what she was leading me to do.
“Is something wrong?” she finally asked after staring at me for a few moments. I hadn’t realized I’d just halted everything and sat there contemplating what was happening between us. It was just so fucking exasperating, I didn’t know what to do with the feeling.
“It’s just that,” I started to say, but how the fuck was I supposed to explain to my intended mate that I’d always been able to feel a partner’s wants and desires as if it were a palpable part of me before? No one wanted to hear about their mate’s prior sex life, but especially not when they were just about to get down to business.
She cocked a brow at me in question. “It’s just, what?”
I growled and ran my hands through the shoulder length russet brown hair that laid in unruly waves against my neck.
“I have an ability,” the explanation stumbled from my tongue as if I were a prepubescent boy talking to a girl for the first time in his life. Fuck’s sake. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs of insecurity that blanketed my mind all of a sudden. “I can usually feel what someone wants, what they need, if they’re lying, if they’re honest, excited,” I rattled on, only to have her fingers brush against my moving lips to stop me. Her slight smile nearly stopped my heart mid-beat.
“I understand. Most abilities of other shifters do not work on my kind. I don’t know why. My grandmother was never able to tell me the ‘why’ of it all. She just hinted that it didn’t seem to be possible for the most part, but also not to rule it out.”
“Will that ability follow you into the body you’ll gain from me?”
She nodded her head. “With one exception. You will be able to use your abilities on me, to an extent. It will be lesser than what you feel with others, but enough to give a balance.” She shrugged her shoulders. “This is only what I learned from my grandmother. I never knew what my grandfather’s abilities were since he came from the older generation. The ones who didn’t speak openly of them, for fear of exposing a weakness or a strength to be used by others.”
That, I understood. “Okay,” I agreed with her because I didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s okay to not know. You knew anyway,” she offered her reassurance as she leaned in and kissed my bare shoulder. Hell, I didn’t even know when we managed to get my shirt free from my body, that’s how swept up in our little tryst I had been until realizing I was flying blind.
“It’s not that I don’t think I can handle myself without using the ability, it was just…”
“Jarring to realize you weren’t in use of it?” she asked while grinning those sexy lips of her against my skin. The image of her pale skin and rosy red lips against my tanned flesh sent a shiver down my spine, but when her teeth raked across the cap of my shoulder, I was done for. Grabbing hold of her face, I pulled her from my shoulder to my face where my lips met hers and plundered into her mouth, seeking the relief that I needed more than my next breath. You grow up as a shifter hearing about the mating call, the need to bond, and how it all consumes you at the moment when you find your mate. I never understood the truth of what I’d been told all my life until it consumed me.
“Gray,” she hissed into my ear as my mouth moved off of hers to nip and suck along the column of her neck. Her quicksilver eyes penetrated to the depths of my soul when we made the connection. It wasn’t the same as I’d always felt, but in that moment of eye contact with her, I felt her desire, the need to be one with me. Either that or the need I saw in hers simply matched what I was already feeling. “Please, Gray!” She whimpered into my neck. The vibrations of her plea against my throat snapped the last thread of sane response in me. I was off of her in a flash. The disappointment of her look settled in until she realized I was getting rid of the rest of the clothing that was holding me back from sinking into her heat.
The moment my boots, jeans, and socks hit the floor I was back on top of her, settled with my hips between her legs, elbows rested on either side of her shoulders as I cradled her face between my palms and stared deep into her eyes. “You’re sure this is what you want?” It was the last time I’d ask, because after this, she would be mine in every way. There was no way for me to hold back any longer.
The slightest tip of her head, indicating it was what she wanted, was all I waited for. Once I got it, I slammed home inside of her. “Oh Goddess! Gray!” My name on her lips was like slipping your naked body across the finest silk. Pure pleasure pumped through my veins in response. My lips found hers and took any more words away in a kiss so devastating I didn’t know how I would find my way out again. Once I did, I knew nothing would ever be more right than the feeling of being completely connected to Chantal.
“Have to take you, Moonbeam,” I grunted into her ear before licking down her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered as her own, slightly smaller set, of elongated fangs teased over the spot where my shoulder connected to my neck. I found that same sweet spot on her and together, as I continued to pump myself inside of her, we both bit down and took of one another, the essence that would fill us both until our dying days.
I thought I knew bliss before. I was wrong. Nothing compared. Not one fucking thing on this Earth or beyond could come close to the feeling of becoming one with my mate. I felt the bond forming between us with the first sweet, coppery tang of blood on my tongue. A groan from her as she pulled harder and deeper on the bite she’d placed upon my neck made me harder than ever.
I pounded into her body as I took her into me and she returned the favor. We both released our bites at the same time, feeling an overwhelming sense of the other flood through us as it happened. I was in every part of her being for that brief moment o
f connectivity before it was lost. She was in me the same way. I could feel every cell overfilled with the both of us and then it shattered down around us in an explosion of orgasms and blinding light. I collapsed on top of her for a quick second before I remembered she was just a slight thing, then I rolled us so that we were lying on our sides, still connected. I was careful of her legs, even though I knew they had healed already in this form. I wasn’t sure what having them messed up in her animal form would do to her, if it caused pain.
“I’m not in any pain, how could I be?” she asked.
My head snapped back as I looked at her a bit more carefully. She laughed. “I had a similar gift to yours. I think our link has made this possible.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing, being able to tap into one another’s thoughts, Moonbeam.”
“If you hadn’t been thinking it so hard, maybe I could have ignored it.” She ran a fingernail down my pectoral and traced the line she made with her eyes. “That was…” she started to say, but it was my turn to share our mutual thought.
“Mind-blowing,” I huffed out. I meant it too. The experience left me reeling and not quite knowing what to do with myself or her.
“I’m curious,” she told me, almost giddily. “Do you want to see?”
For just a split second, I didn’t realize what she was talking about, then it all hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. She would be changed after what we’d done. “Yeah, babe!” I smacked her ass as I said it and pulled out of her body. Reluctant as I was to do that, I knew I needed to see my mark on her more fully. With Chantal, my mark would run deeper than the bite we each shared of each other. This mark would change the way her animal looked and responded for the rest of her life. It would match mine. A spark ignited inside of me at the thought. Pride swelled my chest as my woman changed into her new form before my eyes.
Before me stood the most beautiful leopardess, I had ever laid eyes on. Her fur was a slick silver, that matched the knowing eyes full of quicksilver as they took in my reaction to her. The sleek black spots on her coat were something else altogether. They weren’t simply black, they appeared to be swirling masses that could pull you into their depths at any given moment. She was truly something to behold. Sure, she had been gifted with the form of a leopard to match her mate, but there was little doubt of what she had been previously. She was still made of shadows and moonbeams. At least, she was until my eyes gazed down at her paws.
Where the damage started, she had new fur growing in, but instead of being the silky moonbeam silver or the void-deep black of the rest of her coat, it abruptly shifted to a thick, light heather-gray coat. It almost appeared as if the magic of her fur was being leeched out from her feet. She glanced down where I was looking and I could see the devastation of the loss in the slump of her shoulders, and tail as well as hearing it in the distinct whine coming from her.
I moved to her, running my hand down her coat, fingers slipping easily through the supremely soft surface. “It will be okay, sweet girl. My shadow cat, you will be loved so completely, it won’t matter.” With that promise hanging in the air, I transformed and introduced my mate to her new partner in crime. My leopard was born of snowy places, or at least that’s the dominant gene that pulled through. My mother had possessed golden fur with black spots while my father had apparently been a snow leopard. In my animal form, I took after the piece of shit who left a trail of unclaimed children behind him. My snowy fur was mostly white with the telltale black spots dotting my coat. The blue of my eyes shone more brightly in my leopard form than they did when I walked on two legs as a man.
None of that mattered in the least as Chantal rubbed her flank against my own, getting to know me, scenting me, making me hers in this version of us too. I welcomed the touch, craved it, needed it, needed her. The bond was completing. I knew this, from all the times I had others explain how the bonding happened. Still, it was surreal to be experiencing it for myself.
We were given an hour longer to bond as mates before we heard a knock on the door. “Gray, Wooly is back, we need you now. Might want to bring your woman too.”
“Hear ya, brother!” I called out to him. I heard him chuckle as he walked away.
9
Gray glanced away to speak to the man on the other side of the door who summoned us. I leaned into him once more, enjoying the heat of his body as it wrapped around me, making me feel more secure than I ever had in my life. “I hate to sound like a whiney ingrate, but I really don’t want to leave this room right now,” I admitted.
My mate leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t say that. You are neither whiney or an ingrate, Chantal. You just verbalized my own desire too. I’ll be damned if I want to go out there and deal with whatever shit show awaits. The only thing that could possibly move me from this room is the fact that it sounded a lot like new information might have come in about who abducted you in the first place, and that is something I very much want to find out.”
I nodded my head. “I do too. They didn’t seem to know what I was when they took me, or at least not when they attempted to skin me. It doesn’t make any sense. If that wasn’t the reason, then why?”
“How about we go find that out, so we can put the whole ordeal behind us and work on more bedroom time together?” Gray’s whole demeanor changed as he teasingly suggested the things we could get up to in here if we didn’t have other things to worry about. It was only then that I realized we would have even more issues to iron out once my life wasn’t in danger, and the people who harmed me were brought to justice.
“Gray, there are other things to discuss too,” I warned him.
The ruggedly beautiful man before me simply gave a solemn nod of his head before turning his back on me so he could pull his boots on his feet. “What do we have on the agenda?”
“After this business is sorted, my job is something we need to discuss.”
“What is it you do, again?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Do you need to call in and let them know something?”
“I do. They need to arrange for a substitute, and it’s not like I have a tenured position or anything. If I just don’t show up, I’ll be out a job, and be unable to use them as a reference for another position somewhere else.”
I may not have been teaching long, but I still knew what the politics of the public school system looked like. They needed warm bodies in each classroom, and there was always another 22 year old, fresh out of college, willing to take $30,000 a year to replace me. I’ve always loved working with children, but the public school system was nothing if not unforgiving toward staff.
“Well, we can’t have that. As soon as we see what’s going on downstairs, I’ll give you my phone. You can make whatever phone calls you need. Let them know that you were in an accident or something and that you’re healing. If you need a note from a doctor, we can get you one.” Gray winked at me when he told me the last part. I wasn’t surprised that these men could fashion excuses out of thin air, nor was I going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Thank you,” I told him as I adjusted my shirt and moved to stand beside him at the door.
“Are you ready for this?” He asked.
I shrugged my shoulder. “I don’t know what we’re walking into out there, but for some reason, I have the feeling that everything will be just fine.” I took hold of his hand and squeezed his fingers with my own.
“I can’t believe that you weren’t meant for me all along,” he hissed out as he returned the gesture.
“Maybe I was,” I countered. That earned me one of the biggest, most genuine smiles I’d seen play across Gray’s features yet. I knew without a doubt that my returned smile was just as large. I also knew that even if he wasn’t meant for me originally, I could no longer imagine my life with anyone else. I was smitten, to say the least. I also loved seeing that feeling reflecting back when his eyes were on me.
“Maybe,” he toss
ed back as he opened the bedroom door and we walked out into the hallway hand in hand.
10
Dead silence greeted us as I pulled Chantal along beside me through the hall and into the main room of the clubhouse. All eyes were on us, despite the quiet. I could feel the sweat begin to bead up between our clasped palms as we entered the common area. She was nervous, and while I could feel the underlying hum of the emotion in the back of my mind, I didn’t need the connection to notice.
“Good to see you up and about,” Bomber called out to my woman.
“Thank you,” she offered him as she ducked her head shyly, not used to being the center of attention. For someone who had been in hiding all of her adult life, I understood her still trying to hide, but I also wanted her to know that the boys of the club were my family, and that meant that they were hers now too. She needed to understand that they would have her back, just as they had mine.
“Everyone,” I addressed the rest of the room. Some members hadn’t been here when she’d been brought in. Those who weren’t here hadn’t seen her yet, even if they had received news that I had a mate that would be claimed. “This is Chantal, my mate,” I told them. A round of cheers and ‘hellos’ circled the room as each man present offered greeting or congratulations. Chantal cozied into my side, sliding her arm around my waist as she did so. It was only when she was tucked safely next to me, that she lifted her head and let the full weight of her silvery stare fall upon each of the men. They were immediately awed by her, I could tell, since half the usual wise-ass remarks were silenced.
Ridden by Darkness Page 4