The Shifter's Shadow_Shifters Of The Seventh Moon

by Selena Scott

  This time when he licked at her bottom lip, Ansel didn’t hesitate. He swept his tongue into her mouth, searching mindlessly for hers. That breathless sound came again, louder this time, and Ansel outright groaned in response. Her sweet little tongue pressed against his and time simply stopped for him. Shy and unsure, her tongue retreated.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured against her lips before, unable to stop himself, he dipped his chin and took another stroke of his tongue through her mouth. “You even taste red.”

  Ruby sputtered a little, partly because she had no idea how to respond to his words, and partly because he’d just started kissing his way down her neck. She trembled in his arms as his tongue swept over her pulse point and she vaguely felt as if she were a new person. Nothing she was feeling was familiar. She’d gotten tingles from the boys she’d dated in high school. She’d seen a few men in her life who were hot enough she’d turned a head to watch them walk past. And she’d thought, here and there, that she’d like to have a partner someday, completely understanding all that came with it.

  But this? This was foreign and terrifying and nothing she’d ever even imagined. Her pulse raced, her mouth tingled, every inch of her skin was pulled tight. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, and perhaps most alarming, heat was pooling between her legs. She felt achy and needy and, lord, her underwear was wet. So wet she could feel it between her thighs.

  She was both mortified and exhilarated by that. Ruby tipped her head back and looked at the sky blue ceiling of his front porch. She simply could. Not. Believe. That Ansel Keto was sucking on her neck right now. That she was wiggling in his lap. That she wanted to crawl inside of him. Her brain was working a mile a minute but her body was giving itself over.

  Ruby found herself sliding one hand onto his shoulder, just underneath the collar of his shirt. The heat of his skin startled her. The man was hotter than a sunburn; he burned. When her palm skimmed a little further, Ansel groaned and dragged her tighter, his mouth landing on hers again. His tongue swept through her mouth and this time Ruby searched for him with her own tongue. And, oh God, did that feel good. He was a strong, dominating presence inside her mouth but so responsive, every stroke of Ruby’s tongue against his had him forming to her, tangling. She had the strange feeling that she might be affecting him as much as he was affecting her.

  But that couldn’t be true. He was Ansel Keto. The man who’d caught the eye of most of the women in Greenlake County. He had his pick of any of them. There was no way that shy, reclusive Ruby Sayers was taking him apart piece by piece with just a kiss.

  Just a kiss.

  The words echoed in her mind as she pressed further into him. Snuggling closer to him, her ass pressed against something hard and demanding. She froze. Holy God. This was not just a kiss. For a man like Ansel Keto this was an invitation. And she had no business issuing an invitation for a party she wasn’t sure she could throw.

  She tore her mouth from his, trying to think of something, anything to say, but he simply dropped his lips back to her neck. She needed to tell him that she was a virgin. That she’d never really done this before. She didn’t know if she wanted to stop things or keep going, but she didn’t have enough experience to know what came next. She needed his help.

  “Ansel,” she tried and got a grunt in response. “I don’t– I don’t… date.”

  He lifted his head so that his nose traced up her neck to the back of her ear; something warm flicked at her earlobe and she shivered. “I know. That’s the only reason I’ve been able to keep my distance. I got word you were dating, I’d have been on your porch with a bunch of flowers or something.”

  Well, that boggled her mind. She had no idea what to think of it. So she pushed it away and went back to the matter at hand.

  “No, I mean… I don’t know how to do, oh God, any of this. I’m really, really inexperienced.” There. That oughta do it. She deserved a medal for being able to piece together a coherent thought while he was sliding that tongue up the side of her neck.

  But if her words made him hesitate, she didn’t notice. If the movies were accurate, then telling a guy you were a virgin was pretty much the equivalent of jamming a massive pause button. She expected him to freeze, unhand her, maybe ask some questions about how she got to age 28 never having slept with a man.

  None of those things happened.

  “Alright,” he muttered against the sensitive skin of her neck. “Then why don’t you just lay back and let me kiss on you for a little while.”

  With that, he shifted them across the love seat so that she was on her back and he was over her. He gave her more of his weight than she’d expected, and she was shocked at how good it felt to have a man over top of her in this way. He settled himself between her legs and Ruby’s mouth fell open in surprise when pure instinct had her knees falling apart.

  A hardness pressed insistently against her hot, wet core, but he didn’t move, he just pressed. His mouth fell back to hers and their tongues tangled again. He kissed and kissed and kissed her. One of his hands tangled in her hair and the other traveled up and down her side, ribs to knee, over and over again.

  Time sprawled out as Ansel heated her up, melting her like wax under a magnifying glass. When he seemed extremely content to keep doing exactly what they were doing, her mind eventually quieted. Ruby stopped asking questions or trying to catch up. She began to simply enjoy the feel of him. The taste of him. The heat of his skin. His rough hardness pressing into the heat between her legs like the most erotic hug of her life.

  Ruby was in a warm cocoon of heat and safety that Ansel had spun around her. She lost any sense of place or time. She didn’t even notice when she began to make those little helpless sounds again in the back of her throat. Ansel noticed. He swallowed them down, burned them into his brain. He held his hips completely still with ruthless intensity. The woman had just admitted that she was inexperienced. He was not going to dry hump her on a love seat an hour into their first kiss.

  But she apparently had other ideas. Ansel groaned when her hips started to move. First it was just her legs moving, restless and pressing into his sides. One of her legs hitched over his hip. Soon she’d hooked her ankles together around his back.

  His brain short-circuited and he felt dizzy from lack of blood to his brain as his cock strained to get to her. It was a few minutes later when, her hands in his hair, she started to rock against him. He wondered if she knew she was chasing pleasure, or if her body had just completely taken over the reins.

  He could feel her heat searing him through her dress and through his jeans as she rub, rub, rubbed against him. Yeah. No. He was strong. Maybe even a master of control. But this was too much.

  He sat up, taking her with him, and dragged her into his lap. There, that was better. This way he could kiss her without– Nope. No, well, she was straddling him and she definitely didn’t stop rubbing herself against him in this position.

  Ansel tore his mouth from hers and sucked in air. He noticed dimly that the sun was getting low in the sky. Jesus, how long had they been at this?

  He tangled his hand in her hair and pulled her face back. Her eyes were blurry and hooded. Her lips were ravaged and raw from his attention. Her neck was raw in a few places from his beard.

  He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips; she tried to chase his mouth but he chuckled and pulled back. “We need food, darlin’. And water.”

  “What?” she asked, as if he’d been speaking another language. Her eyes were on his lips and his cock jerked in his pants. Well, that got her attention. Her eyes flew to his. He chuckled again.

  “I need to feed you, darlin’,” he tried again.

  “Oh.” She shook her head for a second. “What time is it?”

  Anchoring a hand around her waist, Ansel lifted his hips up off the love seat to get to his phone in his back pocket. The movement made both of them gasp, Ruby’s legs clutching either side of his hips.

  He woke up his p
hone and they both gaped at the time.

  “6:45?” she gasped. “Oh my God, we’ve been kissing for four hours.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. You look like it, too.” She blushed and brought a hand up to check her hair but he batted it away. “Sexy as hell.”

  His eyes dropped to her neck and a little chagrin crossed his face. “Darlin’, you want me to shave my beard before this goes any further?”

  “What?” She looked at him like he was insane.

  “I mean, I gave you some road rash on your skin here.” He traced a hand over her neck.

  Ruby shook her head again like she was trying to keep up. “Don’t shave your beard. It’s… really hot.” She blushed. “And I liked the way it felt. Rough. Good and bad at the same time.”

  His cock jumped again and on a wave of boldness, she wiggled herself into it just a little bit.

  “Dinner,” he bit out the word, commanding himself to be a damn gentleman.

  I hope you enjoyed this sneak preview of Ansel’s Game. Just click here to check out the rest of this series.

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