by Diana Seere
“Where is Asher?” Derry asked suddenly, looking about.
Sam’s gaze lifted over Zach’s shoulder, her eyes narrowing. He and Derry turned to find Asher leaning against the doorway, looking at Sam, who walked around Zach.
“Derry?” Jess snuggled up to her fiancé, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. “Carry me back to our place. I need to sleep.” By the time the big guy pulled her up into his arms, her ear nestled against his heart, she was yawning. Derry winked at Zach and left out a side door by the kitchen, his enormous body disappearing into the inky darkness, Jess’s blonde hair spilling over his biceps.
Awkwardness descended over Zach as he realized he had no reason to remain, his heart beginning to sound like raindrops falling on an upturned metal bucket, the beat strong yet tinny, a little too sharp to handle. The past two days had been nothing but crisis for him, from waking up in a strange place, wearing a stranger’s clothing, being treated with suspicion, giving in to passion with Sophia, being punched by his boss—and then saving his babies.
Zach was ready for a break.
Moving toward the door, he began to leave but stopped short at the sight of Sam and Asher in a tense conversation, Asher’s demeanor so formal, spine straight, wrinkles in his face caused by frowning like they were etched in stone.
“The birthing serum? You’re certain it worked?”
“Lilah and the babies are alive. They are fine. They will remain fine. They are past the point of danger,” Sam said in an aggrieved tone.
Asher’s eyes widened, and Zach moved deftly to the side, out of sight, though he could hear every word.
“You’re absolutely certain?”
“I am.”
The sound of Asher’s breath was all Zach could hear, as if all vibration had been replaced by the man’s intake of air. As he exhaled, Zach could feel the cyclone of emotions within, a horrifying mixture of grief, melancholy, repressed pain, and a seemingly endless abyss. Zach couldn’t breathe for a moment, grabbing the desk next to him with one hand, as if Asher’s emotions threatened to pull Zach into that dark enormity too.
Asher looked into the living room where the doctor was listening to one baby’s heart rate, Lilah smiling at the other, the newborns both alert and wiggling, Gavin still grinning, his hand alternating between touching the three most important people in his world.
“Dear God, Samantha,” Asher said, his voice breaking like a tectonic plate snapping in half. Unable to help himself, Zach tilted his head to find the shocking sight of Asher Stanton, dickhead extraordinaire, weeping softly into Sam’s hair, her arms around him in an embrace, her own surprise on her face fading to a tenderness and compassion that made Zach choke up.
And want Sophia so badly he couldn’t stand it.
“Asher, they’re safe. Lilah and the babies are okay,” Sam said, her words filled with a mystified tone.
“Thank you for sparing Gavin my own heartbreak,” Asher murmured, his embrace of her slackening, Sam tightening her hold.
“Your heartbreak?” she asked, stunned, holding him closer as she whispered in his ear, her fiery red locks blending with his long, thick hair. His arms suddenly went rigid, and he pulled away from her.
Zach watched, transfixed. What on earth was so bad that it would make Asher cry?
As if someone had touched a flame to the center of his back, Asher stood abruptly, dropping away from Sam’s embrace, the moment lost.
“Forgive me,” he said in a cold voice, as if it were Sam who had done something wrong. “I am overcome with gratitude and did not intend to—”
“Answer me,” she said in a steely voice that made the corner of Zach’s mouth turn up in a half smile. He knew that side of her all too well. The woman was all iron and granite when it came to solving a puzzle in the lab.
And, apparently, in real life.
“Answer what, exactly?”
“What do you mean, I’ve spared Gavin your ‘heartbreak’?” Her eyes narrowed, radiating torment and confusion.
Asher gave a tight, sad smile and waved toward Gavin, Lilah, and the babies. “Is it not obvious? The torment of losing people I love.”
“But—”
“Are you quite done, Dr. Baird? Wouldn’t your time be better spent on undoing the damage caused by the shifter serum you created that brought us Mason Webb and Zachary?” Asher’s use of her formal title was like a bucket of ice water being thrown on Sam, Zach saw, as she flinched. But he knew she’d seen and heard worse before.
And knew she would rise up.
Sam’s nose twitched, her hand reaching to her neckline to push her long, loose hair over her shoulders as she took a few breaths. Zach had seen her do this in the lab when challenged.
Her eyes met Asher’s, and as she opened her mouth, Zach suddenly knew exactly what she was about to say, pity filling him.
Pity for Asher Stanton.
“In fact, Mr. Stanton,” she retorted, “the very same serum that saved Lilah and her babies is a derivative of the shifter serum. Without Gavin’s research into one, we would not have the other. Your gratitude is duly noted.”
With that, she turned on one heel with the grace of a ballerina and left Asher Stanton gape-mouthed and speechless.
Chapter 11
In her bed, Sophia lingered in that hazy space between waking and sleep, aware of her breath, her skin, her bones, her pulse. She was human, she was bear, she was female. Like every other creature, she was always at war with her instincts, which didn’t always tell her to do as she wanted. She didn’t like hibernating, for instance, and so chose, through force of will, to live quietly but awake during the long winter months. In addition, her instincts told her to eat unlimited quantities of blackberry pie with caramel swirl ice cream, but she had the sense and strength to hold back (usually).
And until now, from adolescence through the decades of adulthood, her instincts had told her to mate. As her reputation attested, she’d been happy to succumb to that one. Unfortunately for Mother Nature, she’d skipped the part about making a child.
But perhaps Mother Nature had been merely biding her time, because right now…
Her desire for a man was making her tremble violently enough to rattle her massive four-poster bed.
Not just a man though. So much more.
Half-asleep, she slid her hand down her belly but waited above the thatch of curls. She was tempted to satisfy herself and be done with this maddening craving. She knew it wouldn’t be enough though. It wasn’t nearly enough.
What was the matter with her? It wasn’t like her to be needy. She granted her favors, dishing them out like candy. Like blackberry pie. Her partners were grateful and satisfied, hungry for more, always hopeful she would be generous again in the future. That was never how she felt about them. Never.
She let the tip of her index finger slip a little closer to the needy spot between her legs, letting her dreamy thoughts drift to her latest partner, the human who wasn’t a human, the man whose heartbeat matched her own.
Her need intensified, and she made a half-hearted effort to rub the craving away. As she’d expected, her own fingers were cold, clumsy, and useless. Her body was numb and unimpressed. Her soul was elsewhere, searching for—
Zach.
She sank deeper into a half dream, conjuring him in her mind.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice as rough as icy gravel.
She awoke with a start, with stabbing pains in her chest, her heart jumping into her throat and cutting off her breath. Acute myocardial infarction. She was going to die from the shock.
His fingers wrapped around her bare ankle. “Do you always sleep in the nude?”
She wondered if he were real or if she were dreaming and decided she didn’t care. “I’d shifted,” she said softly. “I guess? I don’t know,” she murmured.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Clothing becomes a bit of a hassle when you’re changing back and forth, doesn’t it?” He bent over and placed his mouth where his finger
s had been. His lips, hot and firm, branded her ankle.
“Mm,” she said. The urge to throw him on the bed and mount him, taking what she wanted without the delay of boring conversation about shifter fashion, was overpowering. But he licked her instep, sending shockwaves up her legs into her groin, and she forgot about taking control.
“I’m going to make love to you now, Sophia,” he said. “But don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything if you’re too tired. Just lie back and enjoy it.”
Sophia was tempted to remind him of his place—as her student, not her master—but her snarky retort died on her lips as she thought about his offer. Her exhaustion had disappeared, but she did find herself unusually indecisive. As appealing as the thought of riding him was, she also liked the idea of him taking charge.
Liked it a lot.
Exaggerating a yawn, she stretched her arms over her head, well aware this would draw his attention to her large, naked breasts.
She felt his teeth scrape the skin of her ankle as he jerked up his head and rushed to climb up over her body. One hand grabbed her wrists, the other claimed a breast. His mouth came down on hers, tongue thrusting between her teeth, and she arched to meet him.
“I want you—I want you—” she gasped. “Inside.” Words were hopelessly inadequate.
Releasing her, he sat up and removed his shirt while she unfastened his pants. They both tore at the loose fabric until his shoulders and chest and thighs and arms and long, hard, demanding cock were as exposed as she was.
She clasped it and stroked, watching the ecstasy on his face, and then guided it between her legs.
But instead of thrusting into her, he reclaimed her hands and flattened her to the bed. He settled his hips against hers, his cock pushing against her folds, and paused as if he had all the time in the world and every right to enjoy it.
Pushing his hips down in small, firm, circular motions, he ducked his head and sucked her left nipple into his mouth. Again she felt the scrape of his teeth, and delicious, wild pain shot through her. Only a few hours since their last lovemaking, but she felt a difference in him, as if his transformation from man to shifter was ongoing, his powers only now unfolding.
He continued to grind his hips against hers, teasing her with the penetration she craved, as he pulled her nipple harder into his mouth. She gasped, straining against him, delighted but alarmed, aroused and needy.
Yes, needy. Sophia Stanton. Mindless with desperation.
When he lifted his head, she thought that finally he would put them both out of their misery and pound into her, but instead he moved to the other breast, distributing the torture equally. His hips rotated, rubbing his cock against her pelvis, so close, so far, and then he moved his hand down from her wrists to her face. She turned her head and sucked his thumb into her mouth, tasted his skin, smelled him, pulled in deep.
Lifting his head to meet her gaze, he swept his thumb over her wet tongue and lips and then back inside, penetrating her mouth, giving her this part of him that wasn’t enough but was somehow delicious, strong, sexy. She bit down to remind him he wasn’t the only dangerous one.
“My Sophia,” he said in a low voice, eyes dark with desire. He stroked the hair out of her face. “So fierce.”
“Now, Zach,” she said, kicking the bed with her ankles, lifting her hips. Was she begging?
“Is there a problem?” He moved up and looked into her face, then shifted his weight until he was fully pinning her beneath him, dominating her with his body. His cock was hard and throbbing between them but still not where she wanted it.
She clenched her teeth to prevent the full-blown begging. He had her. She couldn’t move. Pounds of muscle weighed down on her.
And then his hand reached between her legs and slid between her wet folds to her hot, tight center. A long, strong finger curved and went deep. His thumb stroked up to her clit and then stopped.
She could hear him smile.
“No, no more jokes. We’re done playing around.” She pounded on his back with a fist. “Now, please, now, please. Zach, please. Now. I’m going to come. Now. For God’s sake, do it. I’ll give you whatever you want, just do it. Now!” She thrashed her head from side to side.
If she was going to beg, she was going to beg. She’d never done anything halfway.
He moved his mouth to her ear, his breath warm and seductive against her temple. “You’re going to come?” His deep voice sent shivers down her spine.
She tried to suck in a breath. “Yes,” she whispered.
His thumb pressed at the base of her clit, made a circling motion, slid over the tip. “Now?”
“No, not… not yet.” She gritted her teeth. She came when she wanted to, damn it. When she was ready—
As he kissed her tenderly on the lips, he pushed another finger roughly inside her, one touch so unlike the other, and she shuddered, unable to stop the waves of pleasure that rose up from his fingers and washed over her. Crying out, she let it come, let herself ride the waves up and up to the splintering sky.
As she shook, he kept his mouth over hers, tasting her pleasure secondhand. And when she stilled, he lifted his body, reached down, and then, just as she opened her eyes from her blissful daze, he thrust his cock into her open, ready, ravenous body.
As he entered her, he took a deep breath, the air endless, long and rolling like her body, a big and lush taking in of all the oxygen in the world. Sophia was hot beneath him, powerful thighs riding up his waist as he settled to the base, quenching the pure agony of not being in her.
Now he was here. Calling her home seemed clichéd, but it was true. Sophia smelled like musk and bear, like new life and protective intensity, with a hint of something feminine, nurturing, a scent he tasted as her nipple pearled between his teeth, his tongue flicking the sweet spot until she moaned.
The Beat that surrounded them when they were connected returned with a haunting singularity, low and slow, growing as he thrust into her, Sophia’s long hair threading itself in his fingers, spilling onto her shoulders as she looked up at him, her hands on his back, pulling him hard to her.
“It feels like we’ve been apart forever,” she said, arching her hips up to meet him. She was so wet, so passionate, so ready that Zach couldn’t believe they’d just made love just a few hours ago. Insatiable they were, carnal pleasure taking hold as the nerves that pulsed with restless desire settled down, replaced by a central, focused pleasure rooted in his cock, his hands, her mouth, those breasts.
“Give me all of it, Zach,” she begged. “Harder!”
He realized he’d been holding back, not to be unkind or to deprive but because he didn’t realize his true abilities, his mind still more in control right now than his body. But not for long. The command to give more came with a response he didn’t know he possessed, one that drove him into her until she gasped and tightened her legs impossibly about his midsection, her heels digging into his ass as he pounded her, one hand easily knotting her wrists between his fingers, the other grabbing the bed’s headboard for leverage.
“More,” she begged, making his body curl up, his thighs thickening, calves flexed with a kinetic, sexual athleticism that spread heat through him like nothing else before. She was all mouth, all musk, all slick and pure light in one bundle beneath him, every part of her merging with him. The sound of his cock moving inside her pussy made a sort of music he swore only they could hear, her lips closing over his ear as her teeth bit him. No sense went unchallenged, no muscle unused as he rode her until she writhed beneath him, half-mad with a kind of pleasure he had thought was the stuff of fantasy.
It was all too real.
“Come with me,” she insisted, her lips on his neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark as she went down his neckline to his shoulder, her intensity growing as she tongued his scars. How could she continue? She was like a magician’s trick, her orgasm a piece of red silk that revealed itself in one long, endless ribbon that would go on to infinity, his thrusts becoming
the hand that pulled it from her, performing an ecstatic sorcery that became the familiar Beat only they shared.
“Let go,” she whispered, her voice almost harsh. “Show me everything.”
What did she mean? he wondered, his body on fire, until suddenly he knew.
His mind was purely human yet again, body engaged like the human he was.
Had been.
And now he let his mind dissolve into that powerful space where he just was, where he became the new version of himself, the unfamiliar territory exhilarating, letting fear dissolve like sweat evaporating off her breasts, like the flow of her curve turning from swell to hollow, like—
Like this.
His roar welled up inside him until it rushed through his body like he was pushing every molecule of power out of himself and directly into her so that they could become pure energy, the taste of her collarbone a world unto itself, the brush of his hair against her breast its own universe.
She was crying out, his name turning to a feral sound that he knew and acknowledged just as the intensity turned him into pure impulse, instinct taking over as he pushed so hard into her one last time, then came in a burst that left him kissing her senseless, their tongues hard and brutal against each other, as if each were deprived by not being able to be closer, needing more than their best.
And then he became her. They became each other, sound and touch hopelessly combined until Zach couldn’t feel his own edges, finally clinging to her before rolling over the side of the world, coming to in a spinning haze as Sophia’s sweet breath tickled his ear, her panting sounds matched only by the feel of his own breath inside his mouth.
“Sophia,” he said, his lips nearly numb as he licked them, tasting her.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice crackling beneath him. He rested his full weight on top of her and heard the slow sigh that came from her, then felt the stretch under him, her toes curling out, spreading as her arms unwound from his grasp. She stretched like a cat in a beam of sunshine, completely unhampered by his big body on top of her.