Forbidden Shifters Complete Series (Books 1-6): A Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Selena Scott

  “How do you know he’s gonna say yes?”

  “Because you’re hot,” Kaya replied, switching back the tacos she’d traded a second before, obviously having decided she liked her original order better. “And you have a great rack.”

  “Thanks,” Nat responded drily.

  “She’s not wrong,” Sarah chipped in. “He’d probably say yes for those reasons and then he’d get to know you and see what a kickass person you are, too. If you get that guy on a date, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Sarah glanced over at Seth and was surprised to see that all of the food on his plate was completely gone. But unlike Raphael, who was currently licking hot sauce off his fingers, Seth looked immaculate. Even his napkin was folded back up, barely touched, and his knife and fork were crossed demurely over his plate.

  “You must have been hungry,” Sarah said, blinking at the place where his burrito had just been.

  “Sort of,” he shrugged. Then he leaned down, a mischievous look in his eyes. “But mostly I’m just anxious to go home.”

  Sarah’s stomach flipped. So… he was still very much in the same place that he’d been this morning. Horny for her.

  That was… some seriously good news. She finished up her tacos with haste, though not nearly as neatly as Seth had, gulping down her iced tea.

  Sarah’s leg began to jounce under the table as she watched Kaya and Nat—apparently the world’s slowest eaters—pick at their food.

  She almost jumped out of her skin when she felt Seth’s warm palm land on her knee, stilling her leg.

  “Did you run today?” he whispered in her ear.

  His breath was warm against her neck and his fingers reached under the hem of her dress to play with the soft skin at the back of her knee.

  Had he spoken English? She really couldn’t say. His words were nothing but a jumble in her suddenly fuzzy brain.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you ran today or not.”

  “Oh. Yeah. About eight miles.”

  “But you seem so jumpy. So… energetic.” He chuckled as she raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m a very energetic person, Seth. It takes quite a bit to wear me out.”

  His eyes went half lidded as his fingers inched up her leg a tiny bit more. “Is that so?”

  She nodded.

  After a second, his eyes brightened and he cocked his head to one side. “I was going to try to say something sexy and competitive, but considering you’re an Olympic athlete, you’re totally right. When it’s all said and done, I’m probably going to be a puddle on the floor and you’re going to have to put Gatorade in a sippy cup to aid in my recovery.”

  Sarah tossed her head back and laughed. She noted that though his words were joking, his warm hand was still pressed against the inside of her leg, the other hand playing in her hair, the long length of his body pressed against her side.

  Her breath caught in her chest. “Um… check, please?” she whispered to him.

  Seth grinned. “Yeah. Definitely, yes.”

  He lifted his ass and pulled out his wallet, tossing some cash on the table. “I got your dinner, Sarah. Kaya, scootch out of the bench so we can get out. Everybody, it’s been real, but we’re leaving now.”

  Kaya jumped out of the way just as Seth planted an arm around Sarah’s waist and slid them both down the booth.

  “In a hurry?” Raph asked with a big old grin in his face.

  “Yeah,” Seth replied distractedly, then his expression cleared as he looked down at his brother. “And don’t come over to my house for a few days. That goes for all of you.”

  “Rude!” Nat shouted, but there was a huge grin on her face. “Have fun, kids.” She waggled her fingers at them, but Sarah barely saw it. Seth had her by the hand and was basically sprinting through the restaurant.

  “Damn.” He skidded to a stop in the parking lot, Sarah bumping into his back. “You drove, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So did I.”

  “And that’s a problem because…”

  “Because I really don’t want to put you in your car and risk you changing your mind on the drive home.”

  Sarah blinked up at Seth. He thought she was gonna change her mind? She almost laughed at the ridiculousness of that thought. Her logical, ambitious brain thought hard for a way to reassure him.

  Cocking her head to one side, she put her hands on her hips. “You wanna just do it in one of our cars, then?”

  Seth blinked at her.

  He opened his mouth.

  Closed it.

  Opened it.

  Closed it.

  Blinked.

  And then he burst out laughing. “Wow. Sarah, I really like you.”

  “I like you, too. I’m happy to do it in the backseat, but just so you know, I’m not gonna change my mind on the way home.”

  “Fair enough. If it’s all the same to you, I prefer having sex without the gear shift up my ass and the scent of air fresheners in my nose.”

  “Great!” She shrugged, guilelessly, in agreement. “Meet you at home?”

  He nodded, walking her to her car and standing outside the open window while she buckled up. “Meet you at home.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Seth felt like a madman on the drive home. He drove carefully, as always. But his fingers drummed on the steering wheel, he fiddled with the windows, with the radio. He let the car inch forward at every red light.

  He could almost feel the universe conspiring against him. Even though Sarah had reassured him that she wanted this, it made him nervous to be separated from her. As if now that he had decided to sleep with her, a blizzard was going to come and dump fifteen feet of snow between them and he wouldn’t be able to get to her.

  Because Seth never got what he wanted, not in a real way. And driving through the night, barreling toward the thing he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything? Well, it would be very on-brand for the world to find some way to snatch it away from him.

  He drove behind Sarah on the way to their neighborhood, because even though he was hoping to do some very ungentlemanly things to her in a matter of an hour or so, he was a gentleman at heart and driving in front of her felt rude. After they pulled onto her street, he was very surprised to see her pull into his driveway, not hers. She wanted to do this at his house.

  He realized that when he’d said, ‘see you at home’, he’d definitely been thinking of her home, not his.

  But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Her house was the place where he’d rejected her all those times. His house was where he’d pounced on her in the kitchen. Sarah didn’t strike him as a superstitious person, but if she was, she probably would want to go back to the scene of this morning’s crime.

  Seth parked his truck and bounded up the stairs of his front porch, unlocking the front door with a hand that was surprisingly steady, even though his veins were brightly electric with adrenaline.

  He swung open the door and stepped back to let Sarah step through, smiling when she practically sprinted into the house.

  If she’d been anyone else, Seth might have invited her into the living room, gotten the two of them something to drink. He might have put on some music, come up with some things to chat about. He might have started kissing her demurely on the couch.

  But this was Sarah, and he wanted her so badly he had two handfuls of her ass and his tongue in her mouth before they’d even gotten their shoes kicked off.

  They were in a mad, tangled scramble down the hallway when he reached for the hem of her dress and she was already undoing the belt of his pants.

  “One of these days I’m actually going to take a look around at your house,” she told him through a panting laugh as she lifted her arms to let him strip off her sweater dress in one fell swoop.

  “Yes. A tour. Later.” He dropped the dress and got a load of her body. “Much later.”

  He should have known she’d be wearing a sports bra. Some
thing about that discovery thrilled him. It was sexy, with lots of straps and mesh and a keyhole between her breasts. It matched her perfect black underwear. Her hair static-clinged to the wall where he’d dragged the sweater over her head.

  “Why the fuck don’t I own a polaroid camera?” he growled, letting her rip off his shirt and then dropping his mouth to her neck as he crowded her against the wall.

  “You want a photo of me half naked?” she asked, a smile in her voice when he picked one of her legs up and wrapped it around his waist.

  “Duh.”

  “There’s, like, a thousand of them on my Instagram.”

  “Sure, but this time you’re naked for me. All of this is for me.” The realization of that hit him at the same moment the words came out of his mouth.

  Seth’s heart suddenly started beating woodenly in his chest. This was Sarah he was about to get naked with. No matter what, it was going to mean something.

  No, he told himself. This can be casual. The only way you can have her is if you keep it casual.

  Shushing all the voices in his head, he started to walk her backwards toward his bedroom. To his delight, she shifted them so that she was walking him backwards. After five steps on the carpet, the backs of his legs hit his bed and they both went tumbling down.

  The weight and heat of her was a shock there’d have been no way to prepare himself for. She simply felt perfect against him. Like she was supposed to fit there.

  Luckily, before he could freak himself out about it too much, she was levering herself off of him and ripping his pants and socks off. As she crawled back up his body, he reached down and gripped her bra, and she lifted her arms and that was gone as well.

  Then it was just skin and underwear and rolling on his bed, messing up the blankets. She’d chewed gum in the car and her mouth tasted of mint and vanilla. Seth couldn’t get enough of it. His tongue swept in long, mindless arcs through her mouth.

  She wiggled against him and Seth rolled to his back, let her stretch out on top of him. He’d never been with a woman like Sarah before. She was strong and secure and comfortable in her skin. She was feminine but not in the least bit fragile—Seth wasn’t worried at all about hurting her.

  Except…

  What the hell are you doing? a voice asked in his head.

  You’re going to ruin this girl.

  Either you’ll destroy your relationship with secrets or you’ll burden her with a secret she’ll have to protect forever.

  If you care about her, you won’t do this.

  But I can’t turn her away. I can’t turn back now. I can’t. I can’t.

  Seth’s thoughts swirled so hard in his head that he had to break the kiss, grip her almost naked body to his and turn his face toward the wall.

  She panted in his arms, the damp of her exertion mixing with his. He’d had plenty of sex and he still didn’t think that his body had ever been closer to another person’s than he was right now.

  He felt torn in two. His body was still racing, racing, racing toward Sarah. Toward everything, as much as he could get, as fast as he could get it. But his brain was stuck twenty yards back, in the muck, in the terrible bog of responsibility and restriction.

  “Seth?” She lifted her head from where she’d rested it on his shoulder and braced herself up on her arms. Her hair fell all around them. “Is everything all right?”

  How to explain to her that everything was simultaneously perfect and terrible all at once?

  Because he couldn’t not touch her, he brought his hands to her back, stroking her smooth nakedness in a way that soothed and aroused both of them. He sifted through combinations of words in his head, trying to think of the correct way to ask what he so badly needed to ask.

  “Sarah… you don’t think you’re going to fall in love with me, do you?”

  He was immediately, viciously aware that he’d asked that question in, arguably, the worst way possible.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just mean… well, I guess I’m wondering what direction you think this—us—is going in?”

  “Well,” she glanced down at her naked breasts. “I was thinking this was headed in the direction of sex.”

  He was swamped with both relief and disappointment at her flippant answer. “So, that’s what this is to you? Just sex?”

  Her brow furrowed and she pushed up, all the way off of him. She crossed her legs and leaned her elbow on one of her knees, cradling her head. He so admired her comfort with her own nakedness. She didn’t attempt to cover herself at all. She just stared at him with those amber eyes of hers. He suddenly found that he wanted to cover himself up. He felt certain that she was seeing way more than he wanted her to.

  “I’m feeling,” she finally started, “like there’s a right answer and a wrong answer to that question, but I sure as hell can’t figure out which answer you want to hear. Actually, I don’t even think you know what answer you want to hear.”

  He grimaced. She’d gotten it in one. She was reading him like a book. He’d never been so transparent in his life.

  “Sarah…”

  “So, I guess I’ll just tell you the truth.” She let out a long breath and he scented vanilla and mint on the air. It made him want to drown in her. He forced himself to lay still on the bed and hear her out. “I want to move forward with you, Seth. And I want to do it naturally. In a way that feels good. I don’t want to sign any verbal contracts about how I’ll feel in the future before I kiss you or sleep with you. I can’t predict the future, and I refuse to be beholden to something I’ve agreed to before I had all the information. And let me remind you that you are the one who is withholding information. So, I really don’t think you have the right to be asking me to agree to anything.”

  Her eyes searched his and under her scrutiny, he found he had to move, to do something. So he sat up and ran two hands roughly over his hair, frustration with himself rising quickly within him.

  “You’re that scared of hurting me, Seth?” she asked after a minute. “You’re so terrified of what, of being the bad guy, that you’re over there trying to write invisible ink clauses into a contract you’re desperately trying to get me to sign?” He could feel her eyes searching him as she continued. “You want me. Obviously. But you also want it in writing that you won’t end up hurting me. That we’ll both be okay in the end. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that’s not how relationships work? That’s not how life works?”

  The questions she asked him could have sounded caustic or snarky, but her tone was genuine. She was truly perplexed by his behavior. To her, it was childish and defensively protective.

  “I’m not trying to keep myself from getting hurt,” he told her, rolling up from the bed and adjusting his erection in his underwear. He strode over to the bedroom window and looked out at his dark backyard for a second. “Truly. I could give a shit about myself. It’s you I’m worried about. I just want to make sure that whatever this thing is between us doesn’t steamroll your life.”

  “Why is that?” Again, she sounded genuinely serious.

  He turned back to her and was momentarily floored by the sight of her sitting topless on his bed in a nest of snarled blankets. She was still flushed, her lips still plumped from his kisses. She was Athena. Hera. Helen of Troy. Toned and golden and looking at him like he was worth figuring out.

  “Why don’t you ‘give a shit’ about yourself?” she pushed. “Most people care to protect their own feelings at least a little bit. Why not you, Seth? Why is this all about me and my feelings?”

  His chest squeezed down a little bit and he paced back, turning his back to her and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. It’s just the way I am.”

  It’s what happens when you’re born dangerous. You take care of others before you take care of yourself. Caring about the welfare of others is the only thing that keeps me from being a monster.

  He couldn’t say that out loud and expect her to get it. Not without telling her everything.
He gripped his hair in frustration and bent forward. He was so freaking sick of this endless circle of logic. Everything came back to the push and pull of both wanting her and wanting her to be safe at the same time.

  “Can I ask you something?” Suddenly, she was pressed up against him, her breasts smashed against his back and her arms around his shoulders. She nestled her chin into the crook of his neck.

  Even in his distress, he couldn’t help but relax a little in her arms. She was just so warm. So strong. It felt good to be held by her. Like she was a safety belt for all the terrible shit that life threw his way. “Shoot.”

  “Do you ever just take what you want?”

  He was quiet for a long time. “What I want is usually tied up in what other people want.”

  “I’m not asking about other people. I’m asking about you. Do you ever take what you want?”

  He frowned. “I guess… I’m more of a giver than a taker.”

  “So, that would be a no, then?”

  “Yeah. That’s a no.”

  Her heat slipped away from his back and he suddenly felt cold without her there. She stepped off the bed and came around in front of him. Her hair was a dark, almost amber-ish gold in the lamplight and he’d never seen her eyes look darker. Her mouth was tilted up at the corners in a mischievous way, but her eyes were intensely genuine. “Tonight we’re gonna fix that.”

  “What?”

  “Tonight, Seth, you’re gonna take what you want.”

  His brow furrowed as his stomach tightened down. “Sarah—”

  “Don’t argue with me.”

  He had to admit it was very hard to argue with her while she stood there in just a pair of black panties, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her hands on her hips. Her breasts were tipped with raspberry and he so wanted to lean forward and test her with his teeth. But, as usual, he held himself back. Back from her, and he realized, back from his own desires.