by Zoe Chant
“Shifted,” Ken said without thinking. Running shifted alongside Lynn in her lynx form would be—
Hold on a second. “Lynn the lynx?” he said.
Lynn made a face. “Blame my mother. Grandmother said she thought it was cute. And please do not make a single joke, because I have already heard every possible comment that there is to make.”
“Fair enough.” Ken shut his mouth on all of the puns that were dying to get out.
He was still determined to make her laugh somehow, but repeating jokes about her name that she’d probably heard all her life—God, Ken could just imagine what that would’ve been like in grade school, among the other shifter kids—well, that was clearly not the way to do it.
“Let’s go.” Lynn was obviously eager to leave the name topic far behind; she’d already taken a few steps away from the camp, frowning at the surrounding forest. “This way is best, I think.” And she breathed out, shivered a bit, and shifted.
***
Lynn hadn’t been sure about shifting alongside Ken. She wasn’t used to spending time around very large predators.
And the other predatory shifters she had spent time around—well, either they’d been her family, other lynxes like her sister and grandmother…or they’d been the local mountain lions and wolves, and Lynn tended not to get along with them. Being around them, knowing that they had the strength and power to give her a tough time if they decided to bother her, put her on edge.
So she’d been a bit worried that if she was in her lynx form, she’d be too wary of Ken’s lion form, or that she’d be instinctively aggressive toward him.
Which would…not be ideal. She was starting to realize that, more than just finding him interesting, she actually liked Ken. She was actually enjoying these private mornings together, alone in the encroaching dawn, surrounded by silent forest on all sides, talking softly with one another.
She definitely hadn’t anticipated this.
And, as it turned out, she hadn’t anticipated how she’d feel when Ken shifted, either.
All of a sudden, there was a truly enormous cat next to her. Lynxes were medium-sized big cats, not tiny by any means…but her size was absolutely nothing compared to his. When he padded up to her, she had to sit back on her haunches to look up at him. His physical presence was—was there a positive version of menacing? Like she could feel his heat, his lion’s breath, the long fur of his mane, all of it taking up what felt like the entire clearing, but it wasn’t frightening at all.
Because her lynx wasn’t upset about the nearby lion in the least. There was no fear, no aggression, not even any wariness or tension.
Nope. Her lynx was delighted.
Look at him, she purred. Look how big and powerful. Do you think he wants to play?
He’s working, Lynn said severely.
But her lynx was eyeing the lion in a thoughtful way. He’s so large. He could catch us fast, if we were running. He could catch anything.
Lynn had never heard her lynx even hint at the idea that being caught, or bested in any way, was a good thing. Normally she was even more wildly fierce than Lynn’s human side.
He could protect us from anything, too, her lynx considered.
We don’t need protection, Lynn told her firmly. She stood, twitched her ears at Ken, and started off at a trot into the woods. Clearly sitting around here and thinking wasn’t doing anybody any good.
Ken followed quickly, and Lynn found that her awareness of him wasn’t lessened at all now that they were on the move. In fact, it was the opposite. He was quiet, able like all big cats to move swiftly and silently when the need arose, but she could feel the air displaced as he moved, his quick breaths ruffling her fur when he got too close on her tail.
She made herself focus on her surroundings. She led him through clearings, through areas where the forest had come back as dense as ever, through the occasional spot where the underbrush had taken over before the trees could grow back, leaving a thicket of bushes open to the sky.
They did a circuit around the area that had been logged. Lynn wondered what the land here had looked like, a hundred years ago. Similar, probably, but the feel of it must have been so different—no offroad vehicles, no trails to get people back to town, almost no towns. Hardly any people at all.
A shifter, back then, would’ve felt like a real wild animal, with no fear of or dependence on human civilization at all.
A nip on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts.
It didn’t hurt at all—it was just a little playful bite, the barest touch of teeth. But she whirled anyway, to find Ken sitting on his haunches, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. His ears flicked twice, and then suddenly he was up and bounding away.
Before she could think too hard about it, Lynn had leapt up and was chasing after him.
She quickly realized that a lion wasn’t totally guaranteed to be victorious over a lynx. She almost caught him twice before he turned the tables and started chasing her, and she found that she could wriggle through thickets and dodge between close-growing trees more easily than he could, with his greater bulk.
On the other hand, he could bound and leap further than she would’ve thought possible, and if there was an open stretch of ground, their game of chase went in his favor very, very quickly.
There was a moment when she’d hauled herself up a tree by the force of her claws, and perched in the V of two branches, looking down on him, where she wondered, What on earth am I doing?
Playing! her lynx growled back, a playful growl rising in her chest as she stared down at her adversary, pacing around the trunk of the tree.
I don’t…play, Lynn thought. And it was true. She enjoyed herself, sure, but it was usually either quietly, sitting and appreciating the wilderness, or productively, hiking around with clients.
Expending so much energy purely for the sake of…fun…was a foreign idea to her. She wondered when she’d lost it—she’d definitely known how to run and play when she was a kid. But somehow, over the years, it had faded away.
Now, though, she was caught up in the sense of gleeful competition, this idea that she and Ken were locked in a no-stakes combat and no matter who won or lost, it was just a good time.
So she crouched on her tree branch, feeling her butt start to wiggle as she prepared to leap. Ken’s eyes were locked on her, and she stared back—right up until the last second, when she shifted her gaze to the next tree over, and sprang.
She landed sure-footed on a thick branch, then scrambled forward to hop to the next tree, and then the next, until she was able to leap down to the ground yards away from where Ken was, as he peered up into the branches trying to find her.
Laughing inwardly, she ran full-throttled out from their little thicket, ending up in a wide clearing.
She chanced a look over her shoulder—he must be following, but for some reason she just had to check.
And yes, there he was, pounding out of the forest with a gleam in his lion’s tawny eyes. Lynn froze, watching him—and then he pounced.
He landed on her, but must have broken the fall with his back paws on the ground, because it was a soft impact, not even knocking the wind out of her. They rolled over and over through the grass, crushing it beneath their bodies and sending sweet summer smells into the air.
Lynn didn’t struggle very hard, and they came to a halt with her on her back, Ken crouched over her. There was a long moment where they were scenting one another, breathing each other’s air—and then Ken’s form blurred and changed, and he was human again.
Lynn followed suit. When she came back into her human form, she was laughing.
Fun. It had been so fun. How had she forgotten what fun was?
Ken wasn’t laughing, though. He looked—happy, still, his eyes crinkled at the corners, the edges of his mouth tilted up. But he was watching her, rather than giving into laughter himself.
Lynn felt her laughter fade, until she was looking up at him, still feeling the swell
of joy in her chest. But it was changing, just like they had, from the rough, wild, animalistic happiness into something deeper, softer.
Lynn couldn’t help but notice, once again, how Ken’s eyes were exactly the same in his human form as they were in his lion form—warm and golden-soft, not clear and hard like her own topaz color always seemed to be. Right now, they seemed to burn with some kind of inner furnace, not just warm but hot.
The last chuckles had disappeared, and as they vanished, Ken leaned down and caught her smiling mouth with his.
Lynn melted under his kiss immediately. She hadn’t been expecting it, exactly…but somehow it still didn’t take her by surprise. As though the touch of his lips, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his stubble rasping against her cheek—as though there’d been no question that this was going to happen. No doubt in her mind at all.
Ken’s tongue teased at her lips, and Lynn opened her mouth without thinking. Or at least, not beyond the feeling of his mouth on hers, the way his body was held just barely hovering over hers. If he let his arms relax, he’d be fully stretched out on top of her, their bodies pressed together—
But right now they were just kissing. If just could describe the heat of the kiss, the way their mouths moved together, and how warmth flushed through Lynn’s entire body. He tasted her mouth, then pulled away just for a moment, until she lifted her chin for more, and he came right back to catch her lips with his again.
Lynn didn’t know how long the kiss went on, but it felt like it could’ve been an hour. When he finally pulled back, her lips were tingling and she was breathless. Her whole body felt hot, and just the feeling of her own clothes against her skin was almost too much.
“Wow,” he said, as he sat back on his heels. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, and I knew it was going to be good, but I had no idea it would be that good.”
“Thanks,” Lynn said automatically, and then was struck by how awkward that sounded. What was she thanking him for—the praise, the kiss?
His grin quirked the corners of his mouth up. “No charge.”
Lynn tried to pull her brain together into something resembling normal thought. What came out of her mouth, though, was, “A while? We’ve only known each other for…” How many days was it? For some reason, she couldn’t remember. It seemed like so much longer than it actually was.
“Pretty much since the first moment I saw you in Cal’s office,” Ken admitted ruefully, though the little smile stayed on his mouth. Lynn found herself wondering how long it would be before she could taste that smile again.
Then she shook herself out of it with the realization, “I knew you were asking me on a date!”
“Guilty.” He bit his lip, which was unfairly cute. Men over forty shouldn’t even be able to be cute, she thought disgustedly. “I tried to disguise it as a work thing, but I guess I didn’t do that great of a job.”
“Definitely not. Not stealthy at all.” Then she hesitated, but finally plunged forward, because she wanted to hear what he said to this. “I thought you just asked out any woman in a new town. You know, just for a casual date.”
Now it was his turn to hesitate. Lynn’s heartbeat thundered in her ears as she waited to hear what he said—had this kiss just been the prelude to a fling? Was he about to say that he had a girlfriend or six in different cities all over North America?
“I’m used to casual relationships,” is what he came out with. “But that’s because I never meet women I connect with. I’m never so attracted that I…forget myself. You know? I’ll flirt and have a good time, go out on a few dates, but I always know where it’s going, and I always make sure that she does, too. And a while ago, even that started to seem like more trouble than it was worth.”
“But?” Lynn said, almost airlessly. There had to be a but coming, didn’t there? That sort of speech was practically designed to have a but come after it.
This time, the smile that spread over his face wasn’t that teasing grin. It was something else, something Lynn realized she’d started to get used to. When they’d first met, he’d grinned a lot, while he made his jokes, but over the last day or two, the grin had taken second place to this real smile.
“But,” he said, “the second I met you, that all went out the window.”
It sounded like a line. It had to be a line. In fact, Lynn was pretty sure that when she’d been younger, she’d heard this exact line before. And she hadn’t fallen for it, not for a second.
So why was she so sure that Ken was sincere?
“I’ve always prided myself on my cool,” he said, the smile fading to a serious look. “I keep my head. I’m always thinking. I like to be funny, so I work on making people laugh. Making women laugh.”
“I noticed.” She was still having a hard time getting enough air to talk, for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that she was lying on her back. She pushed herself up to a sitting position—Ken held out his hand as she moved, and she grabbed it to pull herself up.
When their fingers touched, it felt like an electric jolt through her body. She let go quickly, because all she wanted was to hold on.
“I was so drawn to you,” he said, leaning forward but not touching. Was he worried about keeping his head, too? “I’d never been that attracted to a woman, that quickly. But I kept to my usual tactics, because that’s what I’m used to. I wanted to make you laugh.”
Lynn tried to remember if she’d laughed at any of his little comments, right at the beginning. She didn’t think so. She’d been too suspicious of his motives.
“It didn’t work,” he confirmed. “And the opposite started happening. You started making me be serious.”
Lynn opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “That…wasn’t on purpose.”
“That’s why it worked,” he said ruefully. “You were so—genuine. Everything you said was honest and sincere, and I couldn’t help responding in the same way. I don’t talk about my family, not even with people I know well.”
“Why not?” she asked softly.
“I—I suppose it seems like it would bring people down,” he said.
Or, Lynn thought, he was too scared to open up. She usually felt the same, and in retrospect, it was surprising she’d told Ken as much as she had.
He probably wasn’t going to admit to that, though. Men.
“Anyway, I told myself that it was my goal to make you laugh,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could do it—and I wanted to see what you looked like when you were laughing.”
Lynn blushed. It was such a girlish thing to do, blushing at a man’s attention, but she couldn’t help it. The idea that he’d been wondering to himself what she looked like when she laughed…!
“And then we were just…playing together, like kids, and when we shifted back you were laughing, and I—well, I couldn’t help myself.” He smiled again. “I knew you’d be beautiful when you laughed, but I didn’t realize how beautiful. I had to kiss you when I saw.”
Lynn felt dizzy. “I didn’t realize,” she said. “But—” Was it strange to say this to a man? Probably, but when had she ever let being strange stop her? “You’re beautiful when you laugh, too.”
He stared at her for a long minute—and then laughed. It was true, Lynn thought: his eyes lit up, and crinkled, and his smile-lines deepened so that it looked like his whole face was overcome with joy.
“I don’t think any woman’s ever said that to me before,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s true.” Lynn felt an odd sort of satisfaction at being the only one, though.
“I believe you. I don’t think you’ve told a lie in your life.” Then his eyes seemed to warm, looking at her. “Lynn,” he murmured, and leaned in to kiss her again.
And again, Lynn couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do more than surrender to the kiss.
There were several long, pleasurable moments. Now that Lynn was sitting up, she was able to participate a bit more, leaning into him, taking control for a m
inute before he retaliated and tilted her head back.
She was happy to let him guide the kiss, because anything this heated and pleasurable was worth it, but she did think that if they were going to be doing this a lot, they’d be jockeying back and forth for control quite a bit.
And that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, too.
Then Ken’s hand, which had been resting on her waist, slid up underneath her shirt, his rough palm caressing the soft skin of her back. Lynn shivered at the feeling, just enjoying it for a long minute—
—before pulling back abruptly, as the implications hit her. “Where is this going?” she asked. It came out sounding abrupt, but she didn’t want to soften it or take it back.
Was she nervous? Excited? Suspicious? She couldn’t separate the roil of emotions from the pleasure building in the pit of her stomach.
He leaned back, looking bereft. “Do you want to stop?”
The answer was no, of course…but. Did he mean to strip down right now? “I—I’m not sure,” she said. “Did you want to—out here? In the open?”
Lynn had spent a lot of time outdoors over the years, but she’d never had sex in the forest. Though, to be fair, she hadn’t had too much in the way of sex overall.
“There’s no one around,” he said. “And we just shifted without worrying about anyone coming across us.”
That was true. And having some poor hiker discover a full-grown male lion in the Montana wilderness would be worse than someone accidentally catching a glimpse of them with their clothes off. Not that either was likely to happen, because Lynn hadn’t seen, heard, or scented anybody anywhere nearby.
“If you want to stop, we’ll stop,” he said. “But Lynn…” He kissed her hotly, biting softly at her lip. “If you don’t want to stop, I promise you that this will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”
“You’re so sure of your prowess?” she managed, around a breathless gasp.
“Mmm,” he said, “yes.” A grin against her mouth. “But I meant, if this is how it feels just to kiss you, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like to be inside you.”