by DJ Jennings
“Ewww. Someone was masturbating in the woods and watching us?”
Jack looked shocked at Mara’s description, then pissed.
“Grease and gasoline. Smells like a biker to me.”
“Bikers?”
“Harley and his wolf pack.” Jack turned uncomfortable, seeming to struggle with eye contact. “They were ogling you back at dinner.”
“I noticed.”
“You did?”
“My senses are sharper too, Jack. Especially my eyes. Night vision.” She took delight in looking around the nature scene as the sun went down, able to see nearly every tiny woodland creature as it made its way through underbrush and leaves. Mara realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses, and hadn’t been since earlier today, when she shifted.
“Why the frown?”
She pointed to her eyes. “Glasses.”
“You need them? We can find Danielle and ask her where they are.”
She grinned at him, standing on tiptoes for a kiss. Then she shivered. “No need. My vision seems to have changed permanently. I’m blind as a bat without them.”
“Maybe you’re a bat shifter.”
“Hah! But no. My vision’s better.”
“A shifter benefit.” He pulled her in for a warm hug, a wall of man and comfort.
“You are the best benefit to being a shifter,” she said dreamily. Mara pulled back and looked up at him. As the moon made its appearance, the soft glow of early night making Jack ethereal, she let herself study him. Strong and handsome, dark and broad, he was intelligent and kind.
A true man.
She was so lucky.
She would be proud to be his wife. His mate.
The mother of his children.
Suddenly, her worry about birth control seemed trivial. Fate had decided this part of her life for her. Maybe she should trust fate when it came to other matters, too.
As if reading her mind, Jack said, “Still worried about the birth control?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I know I should be, but I’m not.” She hesitated. “I can’t explain it, but...”
“I understand. I do,” he said, looking over her shoulder, clearly struggling to put his thoughts into words. “Having a baby right now, this early in my residency, would be hard, but...” Jack’s hand went to her belly, making her pulse dance. “But if it happens, I’ll be happy.”
“We have a lot to talk about,” Mara said. “We’re doing everything backward.”
“We’re getting the most important parts right. The rest is just details.”
“A baby is a big detail!” she said with a laugh. This should bother her more, but it didn’t. That fact shocked her.
Yet it felt so right.
“So is finding your soulmate, and we got that right on the first try.”
Hundreds of people stood around the bonfire, most drinking beer from bottles and wine from red plastic cups, a few with marshmallows on sticks, fishing through bowls of chocolate and graham crackers set out on custom-designed wooden log furniture that staff had placed in the courtyard. The air smelled like cooked cedar and sexual tension, Mara’s nose picking up on so many forms of sensual hope she nearly cried.
“S’more?” Sally asked, appearing to Mara’s left with a tray covered in already-made chocolate-marshmallow goodness.
Mara grabbed one, popped it in her mouth, and mumbled “Yes, thanks!” around the sweet delight. As she chewed, she realized she was starving again, and excited, too.
DarkNight.
Eager to fly and use her night vision, Mara’s muscles twitched with tension. Electricity shot through her, this time not from pure raw need for Jack, but for something more feral. Animal.
Primal.
She needed to shift, and in the presence of hundreds of other shifters, she felt a communal surge, a pack mentality that fed into an energy bigger than any other she’d felt in her lifetime. Perhaps this was what Missy and Harry had meant about mated couples doing DarkNight.
The sex became secondary.
The sense of belonging was what endured.
Mara finished her S’more as Jack took two more off Sally’s tray and munched happily. Her eyes took in all the people in so many shapes and sizes, everyone within a seven-year span of age but that was the only commonality. While she couldn’t yet guess a human’s animal form, she assumed she would in time.
A yawn overtook her.
Jack gave her a sympathetic look.
“I forget you started your day so long ago. The flight, the bus, the shift—”
“The sex,” Mara added.
His mouth pulled into a smug smile, eyes dark. “Oh, I didn’t forget that.” His quick kiss tasted like chocolate, Jack’s huge hand on the small of her back, pressing her hips into him. She felt his hardness and heat pooled between her legs. “I definitely didn’t forget that.”
“Do we have time for a quickie?” she asked, breathless and consumed with pure craving for his body.
“DarkNight starts in less than an hour. Can you wait that long?”
No, her clit answered.
“Sure,” she said, half-heartedly, trying to avoid the screams of protest coming from between her legs. “You know, I still haven’t even been to my cabin! I have no idea where my luggage is, and I haven’t unpacked.”
“You’re in number 47,” Sally offered.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m in 48! Next best thing to being roommates.”
Mara smiled at her and tugged on Jack’s mammoth hand. “Let’s go back to my cabin. You can see where I’m staying and I can freshen up.”
Jack nuzzled her neck and sniffed. “You smell perfect to me.”
She gave him a joking punch as Sally rolled her eyes and stormed off.
Cabin Number 47 turned out to be very close to the bonfire, and Mara entered with a curious sense of the familiar. Her luggage was stashed neatly on a rack, and she unzipped her large suitcase, carefully organizing her clothes as Jack lounged on her bed, just watching her. A clock on the wall read 8:31pm.
“What’s your favorite color?” Jack asked, out of the blue.
“What?”
“I figured we should get to know each other. You know. Fated mates and all.”
“Purple. What about you?”
“Brown.”
“Brown? Your favorite color is brown?” she asked. “No one’s favorite color is brown.”
“Mine is.” He shrugged. “Ice cream flavor?”
“Coffee toffee. Yours?”
“Bubble gum.”
“Okay, buddy. Bubble gum? I’m afraid this isn’t going to work out,” she joked, putting her spare sets of shoes in the closet.
In a flash, he seized her, Mara’s back against the soft double bed, one of two in the room, Jack kissing her. Oh, God. She could get used to this.
She had to get used to this, right?
Because he was it.
She pushed her hips up against him, widening her legs so her begging clit lined up against his thick erection, the friction that came from moving against him like someone scratching an itch. His tongue parted her lips and he sucked and laved, one hand on her breast, tweaking her nipple as a hot flood poured into her pussy, her clit doing a tap dance now.
“Jack,” she gasped as her hips quickened into a rhythm that made her explode, coming hard against him, clinging to his shoulder, his body tense for a second and then he matched her rhythm, realizing she was climaxing, his sounds of encouragement making wave after wave pour through her.
“You came from that?” he marveled, his breath lifting her hair around her ear as he spoke in a hushed, reverent tone. “You’re unbelievable.”
“So are you.”
“I was just a male wall you rubbed up against, Mara. Your body did all the work.” He lifted her skirt with his hand, riding up the long line of her leg from ankle to inner thigh. “Ready for more?” His head dipped down under her skirt.
> She clamped her legs together.
“I need a shower,” she said, reeling from her orgasm, from all the sex earlier, from her sense of all the rules and order in her life being thrown away.
“Why?” He was genuinely befuddled.
Mara couldn’t say the truth, so she just replied with, “We need a shower.”
“Naked together in the water? Hell, yes,” Jack said, standing, undressed and gloriously nude before she could climb off the bed.
Laughter poured from her as she undressed. Within seconds, she was in his arms again.
“But if I’m reading you right, you’re truly worried about scent,” he added.
Busted again.
“And you shouldn’t be. For animals, stronger scents are sensual.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“I—so I—what about you?”
“You drive me fucking wild, Mara. The scent of your musk makes me want to swim in your juices.” His eyes burned for her, his cock standing at attention, his body vibrating with sexual tension and an unremitting need for her.
She gaped. Men didn’t say things like this.
But Jack was hardly an ordinary man.
“Maybe we don’t need that shower after all,” she said, needing him in her.
Now.
He pulled her close, then moved them toward the bathroom. “I want to take you against the shower wall from behind, the jets pulsing on your back, water dripping down your ass, all the sensations on you at once until you press yourself so hard between the tile and my body that you have no choice but to become part of me.”
Oh.
Well then.
Shower it was.
Jack turned the shower dial on, the cold water splashing against the wall as he kissed her, back against the cold wall, just out of reach of the water. Mara’s senses sharpened, her hearing piercing her brain, her eyes telescoping, the brush of his fingers against her bones like sandpaper.
Every second shattered into a thousand pieces.
And then she was up in the air, perched on a crossbeam in the cabin, staring down into familiar brown eyes.
Except they were on a bear.
Mara tried to speak but could not, letting out a hoot.
Her eyes darted to the clock.
9pm.
DarkNight had begun.
Chapter 25