by Zoe Chant
Fleance caught her face with one hand and turned her to look at him. *You’re still you,* he sent to her, and the mate bond hummed with concern. *As long as we have this.*
Of course. She must still be wooly-headed, to forget that. The cold retreated as he kissed her and this time, she couldn’t quite manage to pull away as she tugged at his jeans. The button was stiff and she almost growled against his lips as she tried to free it. As soon as it was loose Fleance shucked his jeans off and kicked them over the side of the bed. His hands were busy, stroking along her thighs and veering dangerously close to shorting out Sheena’s senses entirely.
She ran her fingers under the elastic of his boxers, and he groaned. He rocked on top of her, his hips bucking as he swore under his breath, but he didn’t tell her to hurry up or slow down or any of the things she could feel teetering at the edge of their connection. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against her. She could feel exactly how big he was, but her eyes still widened when she pulled his boxers off.
Whatever Fleance picked up via the mate bond made him growl and pull her close.
“Mate bond or not,” he growled. “You’re mine. I won’t let anyone take you from me.”
His breath was hot against her neck. When he kissed her, her whole body thrilled. She wanted to slow down, she wanted to speed up—she wanted everything, all at once.
“Oh…” She trailed one finger down his chest, from his collarbone to the deep v of his hip and stopped at what she hoped was an infuriatingly short distance from his cock. He moaned and sank closer against her and she relented, wrapping her fingers around his thick length. Heat pulsed between her legs.
She tipped his head back up, one finger under his chin. “Your turn.”
His eyes went black with desire. “Does this mean you’re done looking?”
Sheena bit her lip. “Yes?”
He pulled at her robe, unfastening the belt, peeling the fluffy fabric away inch by inch. “Then it’s my turn.”
This would normally be the time she got a horrible sense of self-doubt. The timing was right, and the background—she should have been writhing with embarrassment that she wouldn’t live up to whatever expectations of lissome womanliness he had in his head. But she was strangely, unbelievably confident. She didn’t even have a slight sense of foreboding, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She told herself it was because Fleance had already seen her naked, but that wasn’t it. There hadn’t been anything sexual about that.
Maybe it was something to do with the intense concentration on Fleance’s face. He made her feel so special that there was no way she could disappoint him. Or—
*Sheena.* Fleance’s voice brushed against her mind like a particularly amused breeze. *Whatever you’re thinking about, stop.*
“What?”
He touched the space between her eyebrows and she realized she was frowning. She relaxed and—oh, God, at last, something normal—blushed.
“All right,” she said, tripping over her words a bit, “I’ll stop thinking about how amazing you are, then.”
“Was that what you were thinking about, before you got distracted?”
Her blush deepened. “How do you know I was distracted?”
He didn’t reply out loud, but the mate bond hummed as though someone had plucked it.
Oh, hell. This was it. The other shoe. She’d been so busy congratulating herself for not being a total dickhead that she’d fallen right into the trap of her own brain.
She had raised herself up so he could slip the robe off her shoulders; now she sank down, as quickly as her stomach was dropping.
“I really am sorry,” she said, “And—I wasn’t joking because I’m not taking this seriously, I was—”
She hoped he could feel the truth of that, through the mate bond. Oh, bloody hell. What else could he feel through the mate bond? If he knew how much of a fuckup she really was…
“Stop,” he said again, and kissed her. That, finally, made her brain derail. However briefly, she thought, and Fleance made a noise that might have been a choked laugh. “I can see I’ll have to do a better job of keeping you occupied,” he said. His voice was a low growl, full of promise.
“What do you—”
He pinned her wrists to the mattress. Excitement spiked at the base of her spine. She’d felt a burst of his hunger before, but this…
He’d been holding back. For her, because she’d told him she wanted to move slowly. And now she realized that wasn’t what she wanted at all.
She let go. Everything she’d been holding back, all the walls she’d built around herself. If this was the only chance they had to be each other’s mates then she wanted all of him.
Fleance’s pupils enlarged, until there was only a hint of sky blue around the edges of his eyes. Their darkness pulled Sheena, black fire that threatened to consume her. That she wanted to consume her.
He pulled her up and kissed her so passionately she lost all sense of where she was. Her head was still spinning when he moved down, hungrily laying kisses down her neck and across her breasts. He bit gently down on one nipple and she gasped. It hurt, but… good.
“Is that all right?” Fleance asked her, and she sure as hell hoped he saw her nod or felt her absolute yes telepathically, because she wasn’t up to talking right now. He must have, because the next thing she felt was his voice growling *Good* into her mind and his hands on her hips.
The calluses on his fingers grazed against the soft skin on her thighs and butt as he caressed her. She moaned as he slipped one finger between her legs and found her already wet. He teased her, adding another finger as he kissed her shoulder. The slightest scrape of his teeth on her skin made her shiver.
Sheena wanted to let her eyes roll up in her head and give in, but she had to make an effort, damn it.
She wanted this to be as memorable for Fleance as it was for her.
She pushed him gently onto his back. He let her, although now that she’d felt the hunger in his mind his every movement seemed coiled with barely restrained power. It took her breath away as she straddled him and felt his strong, hard body beneath her.
His cock pressed against her inner thigh; she rubbed against it as she lowered herself over his body, making Fleance growl and send flickers of need along the mate bond. When she took it in her hand his rush of desire was so intense her own body tightened.
He was… big. She left it at that. Measurements couldn’t describe the heavy weight of his cock in her hand, or the way his fingertips sank into the blankets as she stroked it. Or the way her heart leaped, half trembling and wholly excited, at the thought of taking it inside her.
A tangent threatened to open up in her mind: He wouldn’t be too big, would he? Come on. The Universe made us for each other, surely it would make sure we fit each other…
She yanked her mind back before it could get any further—seriously, her brain needed a freaking leash sometimes—and looked up at Fleance.
If seeing the hunger in his eyes before had almost been too much for her, the expression on his face now almost broke her in a different way. His fierce, possessive passion was still there, but mingled with the vulnerability she thought she’d glimpsed when she pulled away from him in her aunts’ house.
She hadn’t imagined it, then. Despite his strength and power, and the action-man face he put on, he was as human as she was underneath. Or as… whatever.
The noises Fleance made—half bitten-off gasps, moans deep in his throat—as she lowered her mouth over his cock reverberated down her spine. She used her tongue, and her hands, until his hips bucked up from the bed.
She would have kept going, but his fingers grazed her shoulder and one look in his eyes told her he wouldn’t be able to hold back for long.
She uncurled and kissed him, pressing her body against his. He moved against her like he knew every inch of her body already, where to touch, where to squeeze and hold. They lay side by side, facing each other. He
r breath caught as she hooked one leg over his hip.
Words weren’t necessary. Which was good. She didn’t have any left. Just need, and desire, and the light of the mate bond coursing between them like a river of stars.
Afterwards, aching and exhausted and more dreamily content than she could ever remember being, Sheena just managed to turn the shower on and step underneath it. Sometime later, she shook herself awake, and just managed to step out of it again.
The hotel towels were huge and fluffy. She wrapped one around herself and stepped back into the bedroom.
“Are you coming to bed?” Fleance asked from the tangle of blankets she’d left him in. “Or I can take the sofa…”
A hiccup of laughter surprised her. “I think it’s a bit late for that.”
Her laughter turned into a slow smile that Fleance returned. Warmth rose through her body like the dawn—and dissolved just as quickly.
She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to go to sleep. She felt empty inside, lonelier than she’d ever believed possible without her sheep. Her world was crashing down around her and Fleance was the one sure thing she had left to cling to. He’d turned up out of nowhere, a magical shifter like she’d never seen before, and saved her life.
But it was more than that. The mate bond had hit her like a hammer, sure, and she’d never had sex that good before, but underneath the magic and fate and related bull, Fleance was a person. A person she liked. His smile, his kindness, the way he listened to her even after he found out she was a tiny sheep. The hints of softness under his strong exterior. She wanted to get to know him better, find out his habits and what he liked and didn’t like, what he was like in the mornings. Whether he snored. Whether, if he snored, he was embarrassed about snoring. If he liked to have his ears scratched in hellhound form.
And she would have, if she hadn’t walked straight into Angus Parker’s trap.
She didn’t know how much time she had, but if she got into bed now, that would be it. Hours, wasted to sleep. Her body didn’t care that she wanted to stay awake. Exhaustion was already dragging at her and even keeping her eyes open was almost more effort than she could manage.
The wound in her leg ached as she put weight on it. How could it hurt more now than it had before? Fleance had told her it would leave a scar, and suddenly she was glad it would. Even though the bite was the reason everything was going wrong, it would remind her of him. The careful, tender way he’d cleaned and bound it. The touch of his fingertips on her skin. The way they’d locked eyes and she’d known, and had seen that same sudden wonderful understanding reflected in his face, and there was no way they weren’t meant to be together because how else could you explain the way they’d both started macking on each other right then and there without stopping to think that, oh, they were in the middle of a fire, and it might not be the best time to act like they’d snuck behind the bike sheds. He might be a magnificent fire-breathing beast but somewhere deep inside he was as much of an idiot as she was.
Maybe if they hadn’t been so perfect for one another, she wouldn’t have ended up like this.
She must have tensed or sent a shiver of the hurt in her heart down the mate bond, because Fleance was suddenly alert. He half-raised himself on one elbow, his eyes glowing like cooling embers.
*What’s wrong?*
Sheena walked over and pushed him back down, gently, and then found a place to curl herself against his side. He was warm and solid and she was going to be a goddamned grown-up about this, she told herself, and not cry.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
His hand swept up her side and came to rest on her shoulder. “I’m here for you, Sheena. No matter what happens.” His breathing caught, then he added: “I was alone when I first changed. You won’t be. I promise. Whether it happens tomorrow or days from now, I’ll be with you.”
Her eyes closed. Mistake. She was still hunting for the right words to say when sleep finally took over. The last thought in her mind was, If I wake up tomorrow and I’m part of Parker’s pack…
She put a wall around that thought and sleep dragged her down.
It wasn’t words that woke her, but a feeling. Like fire kindling inside her.
She jerked awake.
Fleance was still deeply asleep, his features relaxed in a way that made Sheena suddenly realize how the deep stress lines on his forehead and around his mouth made him look so much older than he was. She froze, partly not to disturb him, partly to focus on the strange crackling under her skin.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.
Heat roiled inside her. The soul-paddock where her sheep used to live churned, bubbling and writhing like a pot about to boil over.
“Oh God,” Sheena gasped as it disappeared in a burst of sulfurous yellow smoke. “No!”
7
Fleance
Sheena’s scream echoed in Fleance’s dream. Then the smell of burning filled his nostrils.
That wasn’t a dream.
His eyes flew open. The first thing he saw was fire. Flames poured out of the sky above him—no. Not the sky.
Sheena had fallen asleep nestled against his chest. She must have shifted before she was even awake enough to get out of bed.
Fleance sat up. There were legs in the flames, he could see that now—four legs tipped with heavy paws and, somewhere in the billowing yellow fog that smelled of brimstone and ash, a sleek body and a long head with too many teeth in it. A hellhound, wild and fierce and trapped.
He could imagine how she felt. He’d felt it himself, only a few days after his eighteenth birthday.
The mate bond was jangling with tension. But it was there. He wrapped his relief around it, then reached up into the inferno that Sheena was the heart of. His fingers brushed against rough fur.
Light burst above him, a shiver that made the flames look dark, and then Sheena was human again, falling into his arms.
He wrapped himself around her. She clung to him, her chest heaving, and he could just make out her words as she gasped for breath.
“You were right about—one thing,” she began. “That was—I thought I was going to—”
It’s fine, he was about to say—needed to say—I’m with you, I promise I won’t let you do this alone.
There were tears on her cheeks. “My stupid sheep—I never thought I would miss it so much—and now—”
She pressed her head against his chest, and he braced himself for her grief to crush into him. Sharing feelings with her last night had been like bathing in sunlight; this would be like…
Ashes. Not fire, not smoke, but the gray, dead remnants of her old life. Fleance almost choked.
And then—there. A glow in the darkness. Sheena’s fingernails dug into his shoulders as she held onto him, and something surged behind the mate bond.
Fleance’s heart stopped. Sheena had turned. She wasn’t the woman who’d fallen asleep in his arms the night before. Her hellhound was a creature of fire and smoke, terror crystallized into a shape meant to strike fear into the hindbrain of any human who set eyes on her.
And the first person it was hunting down with that fear power was Sheena herself.
He reached for the mate bond, his hellhound straining to protect her, but before he could think of how he could defend her from something that was part of herself, Sheena sat up.
Her eyes were wide. They were the same warm hazel-brown they had been when he first saw her, outlined by fire as it closed in on them both. But now the fire was inside her. She stared at him, he stared back—and something new looked out at him from her eyes. Fire and rage.
“He’s coming,” she whispered. Her face was pale, and despite her eyes there was no trace of hellhound in her quiet, tense voice. “I can’t explain it, I just know that he knows exactly where I am, and he’s coming.”
Fleance remembered what that was like. How could he forget? He looked out the window, his senses straining to pick up any trace of the alpha hellhound.
Nothin
g. The sky was clear, a tapestry of unfamiliar stars above the city lights. It should have been reassuring, but instead a prickle of dread crept up Fleance’s neck. He checked in with his hellhound, which growled unhappily.
“I believe you,” he said quietly.
“We have to go!” Sheena leaped off him and dashed to his suitcase. He blinked. The air around her was smudged…
The smoke alarm on the ceiling burst into screaming life and Fleance swore. Sheena didn’t react: she was busy pulling on clothes. Fleance joined her. Voices from further down the corridors filtered through the alarm’s shrieks. Shouts of surprise and complaint filled the hotel.
All at once the alarm cut out and was replaced by a robotic voice telling them to leave the room and gather in the car park.
“So much for staying put,” he remarked.
“We’re not staying.” She pulled out a shirt and tugged it on. “Forget what I said last night about not running,” she said, tying her sneakers. “He’s coming and when he finds me—we can’t still be in the city. He’ll burn it all down.”
Fleance believed her. He knew what that was like: to feel his alpha’s plans in his head, curdling the air he breathed. Caine kept his thoughts and his power to himself, but Parker had never seen the benefit in holding back when the alternative was putting the boot in.
“How far away is he?” he asked. “We shouldn’t react without thinking. What you said last night, about doing what he expects—”
“Fleance.” Sheena grabbed his arm. Her fingernails dug in, and he could feel her trembling down to her toes. “I can hear him. He wants the audience that he didn’t get yesterday. We need to go. Now.”
Fleance’s blood turned to ice. They were in the middle of town. It was still early enough that he couldn’t hear any cars on the street outside, but all that meant was that people would be trapped in their houses if Parker tried here what he had done in Silver Springs. And that was without a carpark full of hotel guests, huddled in the dark. The perfect audience for whatever Parker had in mind.