“I was afraid and confused, mam.”
“You love him.”
“I do.” Mateo wouldn’t have believed it possible, but no lies could be spoken here, only the truth as perceived by the speaker. He couldn’t have said it if it didn’t come from his heart. The more he turned it over in his mind, the more he realized his grandfather was right.
“Then marry him. Your parents will be thrilled.”
Mateo nodded. To the shamans he said, “If I marry Dazi, he shouldn’t be exiled then, correct? Some members of your tribe must have taken Outsiders as spouses at some point in your history. What do you do then? Alter both their memories and kick them out? Your gene pool would dry up after a century or two.”
Nattusu said, “Yes, members of our tribe have married Outsiders, but they had to come live with the tribe and never speak to their families again.”
Mateo’s grandfather snorted. “Well, I have seen you, which means you would have to come alter my memories, too, and my daughter is a skilled practitioner herself. Plus her husband, while human, wouldn’t let her forget their son. Then there’s everyone else in our community who would wonder why Mateo, who has had to live under their protection for over thirty years, suddenly moved away. We’re too interconnected. You can’t simply pick one out and expect the rest not to do something about it. Furthermore, if you decided Mateo is trustworthy enough to leave your tribe on his own, he should be able to marry Dazi and keep in touch with his family.”
The three shamans deliberated quietly again, though there was noticeable tension caused by the shadows that still stalked the mist. “Mam, send them away,” Mateo told his grandfather. “You have shown them our family’s strength. Let us not give them reason to fear us just as they decide to trust us.”
Mateo’s grandfather nodded. With a low rumbling roar, he dismissed the shadows. They returned to the unseen jungle in the mists. The shamans’ puha relaxed immediately. Mateo, on the other hand, felt colder, more exposed. It was better this way. He wanted to earn the respect of the Mukua’poan by his own merit, not simply because they were scared of his grandfather and the power of his ancestors.
“You are right, b’a-yal. I am proud of you. Should I tell your parents about your upcoming nuptials or wait until you tell them yourself?”
“Tell them I am well, and have made lasting friendships, and I may be bringing one home to meet them. Until everything is cleared up here, the Mukua’poan might want to keep a close eye on him if they don’t exile him.”
“They shouldn’t exile him. That is a foolish punishment. If you were the first person he met at that convention and he told you he was a skin-walker to impress you, I would have exiled him without question. You are something else entirely. Frankly I’ve been meaning to connect with these shamans for a while, but as I have said, it’s not that simple. You and Dazi have brought us together. This will benefit both our peoples.”
“I hope you are right, mam.”
The shamans’ puha all looked to their respective humans. “Dazitam will not be exiled,” Tuku’isa said. He smiled at the joy and excitement that burst from Mateo’s heart. “You have our blessing for the marriage, if it is what Dazitam wishes.”
“He wouldn’t have suggested it if he couldn’t live with it,” Mateo said. “I promise to love and cherish him. In a sense I watched him grow up these past few days, and I will gladly continue to do so for years to come. Divorce is always an option as well, though not one I think we will need.”
“So you will come live with us?” Natiam asked.
Mateo’s grandfather cocked his head to one side. “I thought Dazi was going to live with us instead, as an alternative to exile.”
“That is possible,” Tuku’isa said. “We should leave that choice up to the new couple.”
Mateo nodded. “I will speak with him.”
“You had best do that soon,” Natiam said. “I sense that poor Dazi is worried sick.”
The mists around Mateo took on a dull glow from the emotions that image conjured. “I cannot bear to think of him suffering. Have we finished here?”
“You are,” Tuku’isa said. “However, I want to speak with your grandfather a while longer, if that is alright.”
“Fine by me,” Mateo’s grandfather said. He put a paw on Mateo’s shoulder. “I will assure your mother you are well. Let us know if and when you’re coming home.”
“Thank you, mam. And thank you, Tuku’isa, Natiam, Nattusu. I will see you in the waking world.”
Tuku’isa gave a slow nod. “Until then.”
Mateo fell to his four paws and ran into the mists. Hang in there, Dazi. I’m coming back for you.
* * * *
Chapter 17
Dazi had run out of tears. When Kuhma first dragged him to his house, his mother was there with a tender embrace and soothing words while Kuhma explained, but Dazi had felt and heard little. His heart was pounding too loudly in pain for that. With a blank stare he had gone to his room, curled up on the bed, and cried. His mother took on her bobcat skin and came to give him further comfort, purring reassuringly as she nuzzled against him.
“Thanks,” Dazi had said, “but I need to be alone for now, okay?”
His mother nodded and gestured that she was going out for a walk. Dazi let her outside, leaving her clothes by the door so she could retrieve them when she returned. The air was still tainted with the smell of smoke. It made Dazi feel sick. After closing the door behind her, he slumped back to his room, dropped onto his bed, and lay there silently letting his tears flow.
Time crawled by. Every time he checked the clock a minute had barely passed, though he swore it had been an hour. The faint sound of drums echoed in his ears, so no matter how hard he covered them, no matter how far he buried himself under his pillow and sheets, he could still hear the pounding. Please, let this nightmare end.
The front door opened, and a few seconds later someone knocked on his door. Dazi thought it might be his father home early from work, or his mother back from her walk. He pulled up his shirt to wipe his eyes and said, “Come in.”
With all the force and grace of a jaguar, Mateo strode into the room, closing the door behind him. Dazi was speechless, but words wouldn’t have made a difference. Mateo walked right up to him, pinned him down on his bed, and kissed him with a confident passion that took Dazi’s breath away.
“Hey,” Mateo said with a sensual smirk.
“Wh-What happened?” Dazi said, his head reeling. “They took you into the Spirit World. I thought they were going to…to…”
Mateo shook his head. “I went, they followed. We had a nice chat. I’ll explain later.” He kissed Dazi again, losing none of his carnal fervor. “Right now, I have a question for you.”
“O-Okay?”
Mateo’s smirk became a grin. “What’s the Mukua’poan policy on couples having sex before their wedding?”
Dazi was dumbstruck yet again. As if to clarify, Mateo pressed the bulge in his pants against Dazi’s groin. Dazi’s cock immediately responded in kind. “It’s…not illegal,” Dazi said haltingly, unable to believe what was happening.
“Good, because if I’m going to marry you, I need to know if you can keep up.”
* * * *
If Mateo hadn’t already had a semi when he burst into Dazi’s bedroom, when Dazi stopped kissing him long enough to say, “Mount me like a jaguar, but you’d better stay human or I’ll bite your ear off,” Mateo would have gone from limp to rock hard in a heartbeat. At last he had a partner with whom he could be himself, all of himself. With Alejo, Mateo had ignored his bestial side to match his human mate. Dazi was new and exotic yet familiar, and he even encouraged Mateo to be as rough as he could.
“Let’s find out who’s stronger,” he had said cheekily between panted breaths. “Come on, nagual, show me what you’ve got.”
Mateo did just that. Old habit made him timid at first. The sting of chagrin lingered from the last time he mounted Dazi. Dazi didn’t seem to
have that problem. He turned and presented without hesitation, pushing back into Mateo as Mateo entered him. The universe suddenly became a lot smaller, shrinking rapidly to only include Dazi’s bedroom, but conserving all its energy. Mateo could feel it in the way the fine hairs on his body stood on end, the rushing tingle in his blood, the loss of care for anything except the man beneath him.
As Mateo got into his rhythm, his concentration began to slip. Adrenaline added itself to the hormones flooding his brain when his hearing faded. No! Stay human! This is something I absolutely cannot do as a jaguar.
Dazi sensed Mateo’s hesitation and blindly groped for Mateo’s hand. “Mateo,” his gasped. “Mateo, you can do this. I know you won’t hurt me.”
That was exactly what Mateo needed to hear. With Alejo, his human mate had often said things like that, but he would flinch at Mateo’s touch or cower when Mateo climbed on top of him. He saw Mateo as something greater and more powerful than himself. Dazi, on the other hand, treated Mateo as an equal. There was no hesitation, no fear, only passion. He wanted all Mateo had to give, and he constantly reminded him of that when he felt Mateo faltering.
By the time Mateo finished, Dazi had gone from all fours to flat on the mattress, his hips still arched while Mateo got in those last few strokes. “How was that, skin-walker?” Mateo whispered into Dazi’s ear.
Dazi took a deep breath and hummed in contented pleasure. “I don’t remember the last time I felt this good with another man.” He smiled and chuckled softly. “Very glad you don’t have a jaguar’s stamina.”
Mateo laughed. “No, fortunately I am human in that regard.” He gently rolled Dazi over and kissed him. Dazi’s erect cock rested impatiently against Dazi’s hip, pointing in Mateo’s direction as though begging for attention. Mateo gladly gave it. He nuzzled his head against Dazi’s shoulder and aligned their bodies so he could tenderly pump Dazi’s cock while they cuddled. He watched Dazi’s foreskin ebb and flow from around his cockhead. Precum slowly leaked from the slit.
Dazi put his arm around Mateo and gripped his ass. Mateo used the pressure of his fingers and breathy murmurs of “Ohh” and “Mmm” and “Fffuck” to gauge how close he was. It didn’t take long for Dazi’s fingernails to dig deep into Mateo’s skin, his breathing to become shallow, and his entire body to seize. With a final sigh of “Mateo!” Dazi finished, leaving a thick trail up his own chest. He settled back into the bed. His arm released Mateo and flopped to the side.
Mateo was about to suggest that they get cleaned up when Dazi suddenly tensed and shot up. “Shit!” he exclaimed. “I’m supposed to meet Chief Werama! He said that once the shamans were done with you he was going to make a final decision about my—”
“Hey,” Mateo interrupted. He reached up and gently tugged Dazi’s shoulder with his clean hand. “It’s okay, come on, lie back down,” he said in a soothing whisper. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
Dazi panted a moment, then said, “What?”
“It’s a long story, but the short version is I already discussed this with Tuku’isa. You’re being pardoned because you technically didn’t reveal your secret to an Outsider.”
“B-But you—I—”
“Shhh.” Mateo pulled on Dazi a little more firmly, just enough to guide him back down to the bed. “I’ll tell you more about it later. Not to brag, but chances are you wouldn’t be able to walk well after that anyway. Your bathroom was that door to the left when I came down the hall, right?”
“Uh…right.”
“Are there spare towels in there or do you have a separate linen closet?”
“The…the linen closet is in the bathroom…”
“Okay.” Mateo kissed Dazi on the cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
Dazi was still stunned on his back when Mateo returned with the rattiest washcloth he could find. He offered it to Dazi, who slowly propped himself up on his elbows to wipe off the mess. Dazi was silent for another moment, which Mateo could understand. Their whole relationship had been a roller coaster moving at lightning speed. Mateo himself had trouble believing they had come so far in such a short amount of him.
The first thing Dazi said was a confused, “You do want to marry me?”
“I would be honored.”
“And you remember who I am? What I did?”
Mateo chuckled. “If you’re asking did they alter your memories so you’d forget all the stupid shit I did? Then no, they didn’t. I can clearly recall everything that happened this weekend, from our talks by the fountain to our afternoon in the hotel to waking up with your arm around me and feeling utterly at peace.” He grinned. “Then I noticed your morning wood against my ass and worried maybe we were moving too quickly.”
“And…now you’re going to be my husband.”
“Yeah. That is, if you’ll still have me. I realize you made the offer because you thought they would let me keep my memories and you could stay in the tribe, but this wouldn’t be the first time in lore that a shapeshifter seduced someone in human form to trick them into marriage.”
Dazi frowned. “Are you talking about me or you?”
“Either or. We’re both the stuff of legends, I guess. Oh, that reminds me, we…kinda have to figure out where we’re going to live, your place or mine.”
“Okay, okay, slow down one more time.” Dazi took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He sat up and looked into Mateo’s eyes. “I lied to you, kept secrets from you, and almost got the both of us mind-fucked by shamans, and you still want to marry me?”
Mateo cocked an eyebrow and smirked. “Okay, if we’re playing that game, I almost raped you with a jaguar dick, basically called your entire tribe backwoods bigots to your face, shouted at you when you came to make peace, and last night you woke up to Kuhma accusing me of trying to eat him, which I did not by the way. I was only up getting a drink and happened to be a jaguar at the same time he was an elk.”
Dazi snapped to attention briefly. “Kuhma told the chief to give me another chance.”
“Really?”
“He did. Not only that, he said I deserved it because if you were trustworthy, then I did nothing wrong.”
“That’s what my grandfather said!”
Dazi furrowed his brow. “When?”
“I’ll tell you later. I thought Kuhma was staying out of this?”
“So did I. Well, I expected him to ask Werama to spare me but kick you to the curb with your memories erased. From what Werama told me, it sounds like Kuhma was sticking up for both of us, not just me.”
Mateo smiled. “Aww, I need to thank him next time I see him.” He snuggled closer to Dazi. “He kept you around for me.”
Dazi pouted pensively. “So, one more time—”
Mateo put a hand up to silence him. “Yes, I want to be your husband, because you showed me tenderness and friendship when I showed you fear and aggression; you forgave me for something that you knew was…well, still technically my fault, but you didn’t let me beat myself up about it; you opened your mind for me, and when I burst in here unexpectedly you opened the rest of yourself without question.” He stroked Dazi’s hair. “There’s something between us. I know you care about me, and I care about you. We’ve both wronged each other, but now that that’s out of the way we can find ways to do right by each other.”
That put a heart-warming smile back on Dazi’s face. Mateo wanted to kiss him, but before he could Dazi said, “I think we were meant to be together. When I was young, before I chose my skin, I had a dream I was a mountain lion, or so I thought because my shadow looked like one.” He bit his lip, more bashfully than anxiously. “Except, it was black, and…I’ve been thinking a lot about that dream this weekend, and the more I think about it, I remember my shadow had bright yellow eyes, like yours.”
Mateo blinked in surprise. His tail curled up in delight. Why didn’t he tell me about this before? I would have asked him out on the spot. “That’s very compelling evidence,” Mateo said. “Are you ready to find out if
it means what we think it means?”
Dazi grinned. “I am if you are, but…where are we going to stay? Did they expect me to go live with you?”
Mateo shrugged. “There were arguments for and against it. Naturally, I want you to come meet my parents, see where I grew up, and there are things they need me for down there.”
“Such as?”
“Well…technically, I help the crops grow.” Mateo smiled at the look of surprise on Dazi’s face he had seen so often this weekend. “As I’ve said a few times before, modern Pagans like to find scientific support for their beliefs. They’ve done studies of crops my family blessed, crops a random person blessed, and crops that were left alone. The crops we blessed grew faster, hardier, and bigger than the others. So I at least have to be home for planting season and the harvest. I could bless your crops, too, if you want.”
“Our shamans do that already, but I’m sure they would appreciate the help.” Dazi tilted his head to the side and thought. For once, he didn’t bite his lip. “If I moved down with you, I’d need to find work. I do like my job here though…”
Mateo took Dazi’s hand. “What if we worked out a rotation? A season with my family, a season with your tribe, a season with my family, a season with your tribe, that sort of thing.”
“I think we could make that work.” Dazi grinned and squeezed Mateo’s hand. “So long as I’m with you, I don’t care much about where we are.”
Mateo’s heart fluttered, and his stomach growled loudly. “Oof, I was going to suggest another big cat grooming session, but I think if I changed now I’d end up eating my own paws.”
“We can do that later. I’m hungry, too, now that you mention it.”
Mateo smiled. “Why don’t we throw an impromptu engagement dinner? I’ll help cook, so long as I get some snacks first.”
Dazi laughed. “You’re lucky I’m an excellent hunter. I don’t think another husband could keep up with your appetite.”
“Perhaps.” Mateo grinned mischievously. “Come on, let’s get something to eat, then I’ll show you how ravenous some of my other appetites can be…”
Beasts Like Us Page 17