by Zoe Chant
His hands clenched. "I know you aren't serious," he said, "but I still have to tell you: please do not stop."
Shoshanna kissed him again, sat up, and took hold of his erection. He groaned softly, and she positioned herself over him, and slowly, slowly, let herself sink down.
Max's eyes fell closed, and his head went back. She watched the pleasure overwhelm him, inch by inch, as he filled her up.
He was big, bigger than she'd ever had before. He pressed against all of the places inside her that desperately needed it, and as much as she'd wanted to keep control while she did this, she found herself moaning helplessly at the feeling of him.
She never came twice in a row, but she thought that she might be learning something new about her body today.
When she was seated fully on his hips, she felt...something else. It wasn't just the physical sensation of being full of him, wanting to move, ready to come again just minutes after the first time. It was something more.
This was her mate. They were meant to be one. And now they were the closest they could be, joined together like they were supposed to be. Shoshanna wasn't just feeling him inside her physically. She could feel Max in her whole body, like they really were one being. Max's heart beat alongside hers, Max's body merging with her own, Max's mind brushing right up against hers.
It felt like magic.
She looked down at him, and he'd opened his eyes and was looking back. The gold of his irises was the barest sliver around black, and his hands were clenching on his hips. "Move, Shoshanna," he said.
She moved. And gasped. Pleasure went through her in waves. He stroked her inside, sending bolts of sensation through her as she shifted her hips. She was shaking again.
His face was overwhelmed with pleasure, his breath coming fast and ragged. There was no control left. "Shoshanna," he whispered. "I need to—"
"Do it," she said, and he flipped them over.
His first thrust was powerful enough to bring her almost to the edge already. And then he kept going, hard and fast, one hand still holding her hip, the other braced against the bed. He kissed her as he moved inside her—her mouth, her cheek, her neck, tasting her skin.
Shoshanna held on for dear life as he did what they both needed. She stopped trying to keep quiet, stopped trying to keep still, and shook and moaned in his arms as he made her come again.
Max shuddered over her as she clenched around him. "Come on," Shoshanna said in his ear. "Let go. I want you to let go."
He pressed his face into her neck as he came. Shoshanna threaded her fingers through his hair and held him close while he lost control. She couldn't see his face, but it didn't matter, because she could feel him all through her. He was lost inside her, any pretense gone.
For a long time, they lay together, the pleasure slowly fading into a sense of overwhelming contentment.
Shoshanna couldn't remember when she'd felt this happy. For once, there was no fear, no anxiety, no need to plan for anything that might happen. This moment alone was enough, and more than enough. She could never ask for anything beyond Max in her arms, his naked body pressed all along hers, their breath mingling as their bodies quieted.
Eventually, he pulled away just long enough to get to the bathroom and back, as Shoshanna drifted in a happy daze. She would’ve thought having him gone would be painful, but she could still feel him, all around her.
Still, when he got back, smelling like her hand soap, she wrapped herself around him with a happy groan. Her eyes drifted shut.
“Sleep,” he whispered in her ear, and she did.
***
Max watched Shoshanna sleeping for the second time that day, and thought that he could get used to this. His mate, warm, satisfied, and safe in bed next to him.
Even though he knew he shouldn’t let himself.
He hadn't intended to do this. Or, more accurately, he hadn't thought through whether it would be a good idea beforehand.
Ordinarily, Max planned everything he did far in advance. None of this had been planned. From the moment he'd lost control of his car to this moment, lying here in Shoshanna's bed, with her breathing softly next to him, nothing had been planned.
Max Rowland was not used to operating without a detailed plan.
And he was afraid that he'd put himself on a dangerous path, just now.
Making love to Shoshanna...it had bound them closer together. In the moment, that had seemed like the most desirable outcome by far. Max had wanted nothing more than to be as close to Shoshanna as possible. He had thought that he couldn't be close enough. And then, when he'd been inside her...
It had been the most profound experience of his life. He knew that he would never have another to match it.
It was making it more difficult than he ever would have anticipated to plan to leave.
He still needed to go. Nothing had changed, apart from his own feelings, which shouldn't have any input on practical decisions. He was still caught up in the investigation into Elite. Elite was still likely planning on experimenting on shifters, if they hadn't begun already. And that was still something Shoshanna needed to be shielded from at all costs.
So he had to go. Even if he didn’t want to, and even if Shoshanna didn’t want him to. It was the best thing for her, although he wasn’t sure how he could make her see that.
Perhaps he should simply tell her the truth. Once she knew who he was, it wouldn’t matter anymore.
Because once she knew that he was the CEO of Rowland Global Solutions, who had allowed the lab that held her captive for weeks to operate right under his nose, who had had no idea that such a lab was being funded by his company's money and run by one of his company's officers...
Then she would want him to leave. She had to.
He should tell her.
He pictured the betrayed look in her eyes. He thought about her accusing him of being responsible for her suffering.
It felt like a hole opened in his chest, a deep and empty pain. He rolled away from Shoshanna's sleeping form, staring at the opposite wall, one hand absently massaging his sternum.
Could he do that? Could he even get the words out? Was he too much of a coward to admit his guilt?
No. He knew he could do it, if he had to. The question remained: was it the best solution? Shoshanna was not a fool. More to the point, she was a professional private investigator. If she knew who he was, she might start trying to keep tabs on his investigations, track his movements the way he'd kept track of hers at first.
That would bring her right back into the path of danger. No, keeping the secret was the best option. He simply had to figure out an excuse to leave that she would accept.
Of course, he could simply leave now.
Shoshanna was asleep. Nothing was stopping Max from picking up her phone from the dresser across the room, calling himself a car, and walking out of the house.
Except for his word. He'd promised to stay for a day. It hadn't been twenty-four hours yet.
And although Max was very accustomed to clandestine trickery, under-the-table negotiation, and outright lying in the course of his job, he could not do that to his mate. It felt like a black hole had opened up in his chest at the very thought.
He would have to revisit the problem this evening, then, when the twenty-four hours were up.
Behind him, Shoshanna made a small noise. Was she waking up? Max turned over to look.
She wasn't waking up. Her peaceful expression had transformed into a frown, and as he watched, her breathing sped up, and the frown twisted into an expression of terror. She made a frightened noise, and Max was startled to feel a chill of fear running through his own body.
Quickly, he gathered her up in his arms. She was tense, almost rigid with fear, even in her sleep, and he ached to see her suffering like this. "Shoshanna," he murmured, as softly and gently as he knew how. "Shoshanna, you're safe. It's only a nightmare. You're safe in bed with me."
Slowly, very slowly, it seemed to work. As he kept s
peaking, making quiet repetitive assurances that she was safe, that he’d protect her, her expression smoothed out into peaceful sleep again, her breathing slowed and calmed, and the tension in her body faded away.
A nightmare. A terrifying one, judging by how she'd looked.
About the lab?
Maybe. Probably. After all, what had Shoshanna gone through that was most likely to give her nightmares? The lab was certainly the answer to that.
Shoshanna was afraid. This was how she’d convinced him to stay in the first place, after all—the idea that she was afraid Elite would appear on her doorstep. He hadn’t realized that she was so frightened that she had nightmares about it.
Max couldn't leave yet. Maybe not even after a day was up. What if she was right? What if Elite had followed him here, and knew where she lived? He couldn't leave her alone until he was sure she’d be safe here.
He could call up a security team to guard her home...but that would once again raise the problem of revealing his identity.
Max wasn't used to feeling helpless. But in this case, he truly didn't know what to do. He couldn’t stay here indefinitely, as attractive as the idea was. He wouldn’t give up on his mission to find and eradicate any other companies attempting to control shifters.
And he couldn’t abandon RGS, of course.
It was strange how that seemed like something of an afterthought. The company had been Max’s first and only priority for almost his entire life. Certainly since he’d been old enough to understand the lessons his father was teaching him.
But now...
Max was working to become the sort of person who used his resources not simply to make more money and accumulate more power, but to do the right thing. That was a lesson his father had never learned, he knew.
And Max was in the habit of surpassing his father.
He didn’t know if helping his mate was more important than doing the right thing. But he thought that for now, he could help them both by staying away. The problem was going to be convincing her of that.
One course of action did occur to him.
Max eased himself out of bed, kissing Shoshanna on the temple as he went, and pulled on the borrowed clothes. If he stayed here much longer, he thought, he was going to have to see if he could get himself another suit.
He made his way lightly and silently downstairs, and slipped out the back door. Looking out into the woods, he reassured himself that there was no one in sight. Then he shifted.
***
Shoshanna woke up slowly, feeling more rested than she could remember being in a while.
She rarely slept this well. Normally, even if she was only taking a short nap, she’d have at least one nightmare. And knowing that the nightmares were coming usually kept her awake for long after she’d rather have fallen asleep.
But she felt rested down to her bones, after sleeping better than usual last night, and now taking what felt like a long nap in the middle of the day.
She turned to ask Max what time it was.
He wasn’t there.
Shoshanna sat bolt upright in bed. She felt the other side of the sheets. There wasn’t any lingering warmth. He hadn’t just gotten up; he’d been gone for a while.
“I swear to God, Max,” Shoshanna muttered as she snatched up clothes and grabbed her phone, “if you’ve disappeared on me, I will track you down and I will bring a world of hurt with me.”
She was speaking to an empty house. He wasn’t in the bathroom, he wasn’t in the kitchen, he wasn’t anywhere.
Damn it.
She tried to be optimistic. Maybe he’d just...stepped out for a while, to shift and run? No, damn it, he knew that Elite might be out there watching the house. So maybe he had cut and run. She almost hoped he had, because the other option was that he’d somehow been snatched by Elite, and that possibility made fear rise inside her, a deep, hollow fear in the pit of her stomach.
Shoshanna poked her head out of the front door and sniffed. Max had been there, yes, but it was an older scent, tinted with blood, fear, and exhaustion. That was all from yesterday. He hadn’t left this way.
Hopefully that meant that he hadn’t made good on his threat to call a car, or that if he had been snatched by Elite, they hadn’t driven away with him. She wouldn’t be able to follow his scent in a car.
She tried the back door. Yes. There he was, that masculine, animal scent. And now that she knew he was there, she thought she could feel him. The mate-bond, it had to be, showing her Max’s presence. He seemed all right. Surely she would know if he wasn’t all right?
Shoshanna shifted into her cheetah form, feeling the big cat’s senses, strength, and instincts settle over her like a familiar coat. The lion scent was strong and clear, easier to follow as a cheetah. She started off.
And she went fast. If there was one thing cheetahs had over lions, it was speed.
Max hadn’t gone in a straight line. Instead, his trail wound around through the trees, back and forth, circling around her house. Was he trying to lose someone? Or...trying to find someone?
Shoshanna ran flat-out, feeling her muscles burn with satisfying energy. She hadn’t shifted the entire time she’d been in Florida; she’d spent the whole trip in the city, with nowhere to hide away from all of the people. Being out here felt like stretching after being curled up in a cramped position for a week.
It would have been wonderful if she hadn’t been tracking her missing mate.
The scent grew stronger as she went. Max wasn’t making any effort to cover his trail, and she knew when she was getting close.
Finally, she spotted him. Gathering herself, she put on an enormous burst of speed and sprang into the clearing where he was sniffing at a tree trunk, launching herself at him in a powerful pounce.
He saw her coming just soon enough to turn and meet her. He rose up on his hind legs; she hit him hard and they went down in a blur of fur and growls.
Her claws hadn’t been out, and his weren’t, either. She didn’t want to really hurt him, just send him a message. He let her mock-bite him as they rolled over and over, but he had the weight advantage and ultimately came out on top.
Shoshanna didn’t care. As long as he was here, that was what was important.
When they came to a stop, he immediately shifted back to human. “Shoshanna! What are you doing?”
She shifted too, as much as just hissing at him was appealing. “I woke up and you’d disappeared! You didn’t leave a note, didn’t wake me up to tell me where you were going, just vanished out of bed like you were never coming back! And we don’t know what sort of danger is waiting out here. So tell me, Max: what are you doing?”
Surprise came over his face like the sun rising. He sat back, straddling her hips. Shoshanna tried not to think about what else they might be doing in this position. She’d pounced on him because she was angry at him, not for...other reasons.
Although it was strange how the crackling energy and tension in the air reminded her of physical attraction, of sex. The way his eyes had sparked at her, the way her stomach tightened at the sight of him...
“I didn’t realize,” Max was saying. Shoshanna jerked herself back to the present moment. “It didn’t occur to me that you’d think that.”
Oh, there was the anger again. “That’s not okay,” Shoshanna informed him. “If you’re alone, fine. But you have a mate now, and that means you have to think about how I feel.”
“...yes, of course.” Max sounded a little dazed. Shoshanna frowned up at him, wondering if he’d hit his head while they were rolling around.
Which reminded her of something. “Oh, crap, are you hurt? I shouldn’t have gone after you like that, I completely forgot you were still injured.” Shoshanna let her head fall back onto the forest floor with a thump. “Ugh, I just did exactly what I accused you of, I didn’t think about the consequences to you at all. I’m sorry.”
“No,” Max said with surprising vehemence. “No, I’m fine. Shoshanna, please let me
explain.” He seemed to realize where he was sitting all of a sudden, and climbed off of her. Shoshanna tried not to be disappointed, and accepted the hand he held out to pull her up into a sitting position.
Even when they were sitting facing each other, Max didn’t let go of her hand. He met her eyes seriously.
“I’m not used to having to consider other people before I act.” He looked away, then seemed to force himself to look directly at her again. “That sounds terrible...and that’s because it is. I realized just recently that I’ve been putting my job before the people I care about. I’ve been careless with them, and that’s had consequences.”
Shoshanna wondered what he meant by that. Had someone he loved gotten hurt? She wanted to know more, but he was still talking.
“But I was thinking about you, Shoshanna. You’re the most important person in my life.” He met her eyes, and she knew he was serious. “I was only thinking about your safety. I came out here to check for danger because I wanted you to be safe. You have to understand why.”
Okay. That made sense. But he needed to understand something in turn. Shoshanna took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down before she spoke.
“I do understand. I can absolutely see why you would do that. But Max. I want you to be safe more than I want to be safe. I couldn’t handle it if anything happened to you.” She remembered the white-hot fear she’d felt when she thought Elite might have kidnapped him.
He opened his mouth, and she hurried on, “I know, I know you feel the same way. But that means that putting ourselves in danger for each other is selfish, do you see? We need to protect each other. We need to make these kinds of decisions together.”
That was something she’d learned alongside Kevin. Sometimes a job was dangerous, and then they had to sit down and decide if it was worth it, if they should go together, if one of them alone could handle it, and who would be best. One person couldn’t just decide by themselves, and condemn the other one to sit at home and worry.
“Selfish,” Max said blankly.
“Yes. Because it puts what you want over what I want. Or vice versa, if it were me deciding that I should put myself in danger to keep you safe.”