A Mate For Orion (Forbidden Shifters Series Book 5)

by Selena Scott

  She had a ceiling fan stirring the air above them, but it was, in fact, really hot. He took a deep breath, dropped the towel and turned the lamp off, crawling into bed. Deeply conscious of being naked, he didn’t pull her to him this time, allowing her her space instead. Was this insane? Yes. Should he just go? Probably. Was he going to? Not on his fucking life.

  It was too hot for a sheet, but he pulled it up anyways. Her deep, even breathing from the other side of the bed assuring him that she was asleep already. Resolving to keep the sheet on all night no matter how hot he got, Orion drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

  He woke up laying on his side, his hand flat on her stomach, her ass pressed hard against his crotch, and his dick literally inside her underwear.

  The sun was just coming up and Diana was stretching lazily, that must have been what woke him. He didn’t know how the hell his dick had gotten in between her legs, pinned between her pussy and the crotch of her underwear, but here they were. He’d been an utter idiot to think before that she’d soaked her panties so much that her pussy couldn’t possibly feel any wetter. Because lord god this was wetter. This was torturous molten silk and he was starting to see spots, either from the adrenaline in his veins or the fact that he was holding his breath. She was definitely awake. She stretched again, her arms over her head this time and her shirt whispered over the back of his hand. The way she moved her body had his hand accidentally moving an inch or two up her ribs toward her breasts. He wished like hell he could see her face.

  But then all thoughts of seeing anything promptly disappeared from his brain because she was tipping her hips forward, just a little bit, and for the briefest of seconds, almost immeasurably, the head of his dick parted her pussy and dipped inside a quarter of an inch.

  And then she was rolling away, standing up beside the bed and stretching again, a lazy-sweet sleepy smile on her face as she turned to face him. The sheet had fallen back over his dick and she didn’t even glance down.

  “Sleep all right?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair.

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “Mmm, me too.” She turned on her heel. “I’m gonna get ready for work. I think I have enough stuff for more vegan waffles if you wanna stay.”

  And then she was gone.

  For the second time in three days, Orion stared down at his own dick in shock. He had never, in his entire life, been more confused.

  ***

  Diana had had an absolute living hell of a day. She’d had two separate clients completely freak out and shift in the middle of the center. The center didn’t have a ton of rules, and they catered to shifters with all levels of control. But shifting, without permission or warning, in the middle of a common space? Big no no.

  Her staff was well-trained but she’d been deeply relieved that Quill had been there. Not only was he one of her longest-running and most trusted employees, he was also a bear shifter. Unfortunately it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d had to shift in order to restrain a client. Luckily today, she’d been able to talk both clients into shifting back to their human forms without further incident.

  Still. Any incidents like that came with a boatload of paper work and the vibe of the center usually buzzed along uncomfortably for a few days afterward. It was almost like everyone remembered the unfortunate reputation shifters had for being naturally erratic and dangerous. This was not something that Diana believed to be true. She believed that all people who’d been shunned from society, locked up, feared, tortured, ostracized, and bullied would have some erratic tendencies. That was not limited to shifters.

  The second part of her day was a mess because twice a week the center held a free dinner for any client who needed a hot meal. Only this time the food delivery service had come on the wrong day. Which meant either storing the food over night and finding a way to reheat it all for tomorrow night, or trying to get the word out to a ton of off-the-grid shifters that if they wanted dinner, tonight was the night.

  She’d called Phoenix, as his full time job was to be an ambassador of sorts for the center, and put him on the task of notifying as many of the dinner-regulars as he could. She also tweeted, made some phone calls, sent some texts, and then went out on foot herself to a few of the regular hang outs to notify people.

  By the time the dinner hour rolled around and her employees were serving hot meals to a slightly smaller than usual crowd of shifters, Diana’s feet felt like they were going to fall off. She was exhausted, starving, irritable, and completely on edge.

  She took her shoes off in the car on the way home and had an extremely potent daydream about the love affair she was about to have with her bathtub. She’d even picked out the specific cocktail of bath salts and essential oils she was planning on adding.

  She pulled into the driveway and immediately groaned, dropping her forehead to her steering wheel. Because there was a very large man sitting on her front steps.

  She groaned because her stomach absolutely flipped at the sight of him. So large and handsome and everything she wanted to curl up with. And she also groaned because something extremely weird was going on between them and she, in no way, had the energy to address it tonight.

  Frankly, it was a miracle he’d given her three nights of this sexy weird not-quite sex thing they were doing. She didn’t expect him to give her a fourth without finding out what the hell was really happening here.

  And what the hell was really happening here?

  She was burying her head in the sand was what was happening. The lovely, sexy, warm, good-smelling sand. Where she got to pretend that nothing was going on with Orion and she still got to wake up in a beautiful man’s arms every morning. Meanwhile, she could feel his confusion growing.

  She was taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t want to mess up what they had going on. She was taking advantage of the fact that he hadn’t been born into human culture. She could practically feel him trying to figure out if this whole, fall asleep together, wake up with his dick in her panties thing was something that even happened in human culture. How was he supposed to know? Maybe it was common. Or maybe it was just a result of their very odd dynamic. And he was trying to figure it out without asking her. Because even asking her might have her sending him away again.

  This thing they were doing was supremely unfair. And also supremely hot.

  He rose up from where he was sitting as she banged out of her car, her shoes in one hand and her briefcase in the other.

  She almost groaned as he met her halfway down her walkway, divesting her of both the things in her hands.

  Did he have to be so sweet?

  She wanted to fold into him just the way she had the other night. His sternum was apparently the absolute perfect place for her forehead. But she didn’t.

  “Late night,” he said in that perfectly deep voice of his.

  “Yeah.” She heard herself, the tonelessness. “Hell of a day at the center.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  Yes. No.

  “How long were you sitting on my porch?” she asked him instead.

  “An hour or so.”

  She glanced sideways at her neighbors’ houses. Wondering if they’d seen the huge man lingering on her property. She winced at her own petty thinking.

  She let them into her dark house and jolted when he turned on the lights. She wanted darkness. She wanted to slither into a pile on the floor. She wanted to lay face down on her living room floor until all this just went away.

  “I brought noodles,” he said from behind her, holding up the takeout container she hadn’t noticed. “We’ll have to heat them up again, but I think they’ll be pretty good just the same.”

  She burst into tears.

  “Diana—” He cut himself off by tossing the noodles on the kitchen counter, grabbing her by the hips and setting her up there next to them. She covered her face with her hands and just cried.

  His hands stroked over her shiny hair, down her shoulders,
over her back. Her skirt was too tight for him to step between her legs but he was so large that he just sort of melted over top of her. She felt like she was in a tent. A huge, warm tent that was attempting to protect her from the entire world at once. The only issue was that she wasn’t crying because of the world. She was crying because of herself.

  Because he was him, patient and sweet, he didn’t push her to talk. He let her cry for a good long minute and then, when she was gathering herself up, he got her a glass of water. She drank it down to the bottom and slid off the counter.

  She wetted a paper towel and just pressed it over her eyes for a moment, leaning over the sink. She turned back to him and let the paper towel fall onto the ground with a wet splat.

  “I need a bath.”

  He looked mystified but still patient.

  Diana marched into her bathroom and drew a bath. She mixed in all the essential oils and bath salts that a woman could possibly have wanted at a crossroads like this. She sat on her knees next to the tub, mixing the water with her hand and thinking of her mother. She knew that Orion was behind her, in the bathroom door, and she didn’t turn. She flicked off the bathroom lights, lit the candle next to the tub, and quickly stripped off her clothing. She knew he was watching her. There was nothing on this earth comparable to the electricity of his gaze. But she wasn’t trying to put on a show. She was merely at loose ends. Unable to make this situation into something appropriate. It was already so far off the rails there was no hope of getting it back on. They couldn’t even see the rails from where they were. Their traincar didn’t even use rails as far as she was concerned.

  She stepped into the bath and pulled the bath curtain so that he couldn’t see her anymore. The swirling oils were magic, she’d always thought so. The scent and spiral of them. Her mother would have said a prayer before she’d gotten in the tub. Diana said nothing. She didn’t know any prayers to say. She let herself sink under the water completely before she sat up and brushed the scented water from her eyelids.

  “This isn’t normal,” she told him through the shower curtain, knowing full well that he was still standing in the open doorway of the bathroom. “What we’re doing together isn’t normal.”

  “Okay,” he said gently.

  She yanked open the shower curtain a few inches so that they could see one another’s faces. She almost yanked it back closed. For the first time that night, she was letting herself get an eyeful of him and it was almost more than she could take. He was so beautiful. His shoulders pushed against the seams of his T shirt, his feet planted far apart, he was in need of a haircut because it was starting to fall onto his forehead and she knew he liked to keep it shorter than that. His eyes were dark in the dim light, every feature blunter than the last. He looked like someone had carved a man into the bottom of a rubber stamp and then smacked him onto this earth with the richest ink. Every line was complete, official, inarguable.

  This here, was not a man you played games with. This was a man you thanked god you got to come home to. This was a man you womaned-up and told the truth to.

  She took a deep breath and pulled her knees up to her chest. “I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me to just tell you how I feel.”

  His shoulders loosened an inch. “Oh. I know why.”

  She pulled her head back in surprise. That had not been the reply she’d thought he’d give her. “Oh, you do, do you?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a casual shrug. “Because you’re in charge of everybody in your life. All the shifters at the center. All your employees. Even the ones you consider friends. Ida. Quill. You’re in charge of the people who were supposed to be in charge of you, too. Robert. You’re in charge of everyone and everything.” He cleared his throat. “Except for me.”

  She pulled her knees tighter against her chest.

  “And I think, Diana, that you can’t tell me how you feel because you never tell anyone how you feel. Because people who are in charge of everything don’t get to have complicated feelings. They’re just supposed to make sure everything gets done. That’s their only job. And if they can just do that, then everyone else gets to live their wonderful, complicated lives. And that’s supposed to be a reward enough.”

  His words rang a bell deep inside of her. She both felt as if he were teaching her something she’d never known and reading a part of her private diary all at once. He was explaining something to her that she’d never fully let herself see before. It was wonderfully painful. Like a good, hard massage on muscles she hadn’t known were tight.

  “How…” she trailed off. “How could you know that?”

  He slanted her a look through the candle light. “I’m the oldest of three orphans, Diana. A hunter who hates killing animals. You don’t think I’ve learned things about hiding my feelings for the greater good? You don’t think I haven’t spent my life trying to make sure that my siblings got to have the best of everything, only to lay down at night and wonder who made sure that I got to have those things?”

  “I’ll make sure you have those things!” The words were out of her mouth before she could even register that she’d been thinking them.

  He laughed and took a step into the bathroom. “Diana, that’s the whole problem. You thinking that you can give everyone everything while you live on the crumbs.”

  He took two more steps and plunked down on the closed toilet. She pulled the shower curtain back a few more inches so that they could still see one another.

  “I just meant that I want to make sure you’re all right,” she said quietly.

  “I want to make sure you’re all right,” he replied with a small smile on his face.

  She let out a long breath. “It’s dumb but… I never realized that you and I were so similar in that way.”

  “It’s not dumb,” he said with a shrug. “We’re completely different in most ways.”

  A quiet descended over them and Diana instantly recognized it as him giving her a chance to gather her thoughts.

  “I’m not proud of it, Orion,” she said eventually. “But I’m scared of what the neighbors think. What Robert thinks. What my employees might think. My mother…” she trailed off and made a pattern in the essential oils pooling at the surface of the water. “My mother was so looked down on in this community for the way she interacted with men. Having men come and go. Getting pregnant but not married. I decided a long time ago that I’d be involved only with reputable men with whom I definitely had a drama-free future ahead. I never, ever thought I’d be doing … this… with a client. Ugh. It makes me feel so unprofessional. But I couldn’t ignore you. Couldn’t completely step away. I thought. Maybe I could just be friends with you. So, that’s what I’ve been trying to do but now I’ve catapulted us into this weird alternate reality where we’re not friends and we’re not lovers, we’re something very much in between.”

  Orion surprised her by laughing, leaning forward with his long arms and pressing two fingers to her lips. He leaned back, that soft smile still on his face. “Diana, I don’t know much about the human world, but I’m pretty sure that if my dick has touched your pussy, we’ve left the whole ‘friends’ thing pretty far in the dust.”

  She blushed to the roots of her hair and buried her eyes in her upturned knees.

  “But I think I understand what you’re saying,” he continued. “You want to do this right. One way or the other. Ideally, you wanted to do this right in a friendship way. But we couldn’t fight the way we feel and we woke up with my dick in your panties. You were worried what the neighbors would think about you having a man sleep over at your house for sex. But instead of cutting out the sleepover part, you cut out the sex part.”

  She groaned and buried her face even deeper.

  “The way I see it,” he continued. “We have two options. We can completely cut each other out of our lives. Which is, you know, never going to happen as far as I’m concerned. Or, we could start over and try to do this thing right.”

  “What do you mean?�
� she asked carefully.

  “I mean that we could forget about the whole friendship thing and just date. Or, you know, court.”

  “Court?” The word was almost foreign to her ears.

  “Sure,” he shrugged. “I mean, we could cut out the gray areas. I could tell you how I feel. You could tell me how you feel. I could show up here with flowers and a clean shirt and make sure you eat a nice dinner. We could, you know, kiss like normal people. After a little while, we could start sleeping together. And maybe after that we figure out how to live together or something. I don’t know. I’ll be in no man’s land a little because I’m obviously no expert on any of this, but I could learn.”

  “Right,” she said, her stomach suddenly turning into a joyful dolphin flipping circles in the moonlight. He wanted those things with her. She’d suspected for a while that he wanted those things with her, but to hear him say it out loud… well, that was something else. “Right.”

  She took a deep breath.

  Hearing him lay it all out like that, say it out loud and with no fear, it made her want to match him. It made her want to be better. It made her want to to give both of them exactly what they wanted. It made her, for once, not worried about protecting herself. She felt like an oyster slowly opening toward the sunshine, showing the pearl it had worried it’d lost years and years ago.

  “Or…” she started breathlessly. “Or you could get in the tub with me.”

  She stared up at him through the crack in the shower curtain, refusing to let her eyes drop, to even let herself blink. Her knees were up at her chin, her hair in wet stripes over her shoulders and down her back. There was something about having wet hair that had always made her feel both vulnerable and powerful at once. Like she was unprepared for the adult world but also like she was some ancient nymph or mermaid, floating in her natural element. She supposed it was her natural disposition doing some sort of battle with her mother’s ideology. Practical and magical all at once, a constant tug of war in Diana’s heart.