by Selena Scott
He was lost, gone, experiencing something intense and she felt it was all that she could do to just hold tight to him, kiss his ear, hitch her legs around his waist.
He reached into the pocket of the sweatpants she was wearing and he emerged with a condom that he’d apparently stashed there.
He held it up to her, his eyes imploring her.
“Are you serious?” she asked with a half laugh. “You’re a machine.”
“I need you,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t explain it. When you call me back like that. Something happens to me. It’s like I have to mate with you.”
For some reason, him putting it in those terms really did it for Natalie. She felt her nerves from seeing him as a wolf disappear. She felt her befuddlement at his sudden passion disappear. And in their place, she felt a fast-rising burn start to sweep through her system.
“I’m yours, Raph,” she whispered, unable to find any other words to say what she needed to say.
Immediately he pulled her sweatpants down and off, leaving her naked from the waist down. He found her with his fingers and opened her. The condom was on him half a second later and then his head was under her shirt. He was licking at one nipple and then tugging fiercely with his teeth. He kissed a path along her birthmark and then shoved her shirt up, freeing himself and exposing her.
His tongue pushed into her mouth at the same moment he pushed into her pussy. She arched and screamed and was grateful that he gave her a long, pulsing moment to acclimate.
“I need you,” he whispered in her ear.
“You have me,” she whispered back, marveling at this newfound intensity in him. She wondered what it was that made him need her so badly, so intensely.
But he was lost for her, obviously, and she’d never felt so powerful in her entire life. She felt something ancient wake up inside of her. Maybe it was a deep-seated insecurity she’d always felt. Natalie was always the great friend but never the sexy one. Somewhere along the line she’d internalized that truth. Or maybe it was Paul’s embarrassed expression when he’d tried to gently explain that he wasn’t turned on by her. But every rough stroke of Raphael inside her, his mindless breath in her ear, he was pounding away at something she didn’t need to believe anymore.
Natalie felt deeply, primally sexy in his arms. She knew, without any doubt, how badly this man wanted her, burned for her, needed her. She knew that she’d wrecked him earlier, giving him some damn good head. But this was different than that. This had nothing to do with sexual talent and everything to do with her. Who she was on an elemental level. This was the animal inside Raphael needing to mate with her.
The word, as soon as it bloomed inside her head, seemed to rocket to her fingertips, to her toes.
Mate.
She didn’t feel like a sexual partner in that moment. Like a warm body to tide Raphael over while he waited to find his wife. She felt like his mate.
The thought was terrifying, but it also urged her on. She worked herself against him, her nails digging into his back and her heels pressing hard into him.
His mouth was open against her neck as the couch started to inch across the living room floor. It knocked into the side table, sending a lamp crashing to the ground. Neither of them even blinked.
Nat turned her face into his shoulder and bit down. He suddenly stiffened, jolting hard, his body going rigid as he emptied himself into the condom.
Still breathing hard, his dick twitching inside of her, Raphael slipped a hand between them and drew unforgiving circles around Natalie’s clit until she, too, was jerking and swearing and going rigid against his body. When he’d wrung every bit of pleasure out of her, Natalie collapsed backward and he collapsed with her.
When, a few minutes later, Raphael pulled them both off the couch and stumbled them down the hall, there was a small voice in Natalie’s head telling her that she shouldn’t stay the night. That to stay tonight would be like watering a seed that she shouldn’t have planted in the first place. She was terrified to think of what might bloom overnight.
But she was too exhausted to protest much when he pulled her underneath the covers along with him and clicked off his bedside lamp. When Raph’s breaths when deep and even, Natalie should have gotten out of bed and driven herself home. Instead, she let her eyes fall closed and she let herself be swept away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Two weeks later, Jackson gritted his teeth as he sat in his car in the parking lot of his work. He’d heard through the family grapevine that Kaya had been hired at the health and wellness clinic that was in the same complex as his veterinary clinic.
He’d gotten through all of the last week without seeing her, though the idea of unexpectedly running into her around his place of work had loomed over him like the specter of a ghost he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop haunting him.
His work had always, always been a place of peace for him. It was the one place where everything that he was was a good thing. Maybe it was because the animals at the clinic could sense the animal inside Jackson, or perhaps it was because he had such a personal grasp on animal instinct, but he was incredible with animals. He knew, almost always, the best way to approach and care for any animal who came to his clinic. From cats to dogs to iguanas to the barn owl someone had brought in last week, Jackson had a gift.
He was respected by all the people who worked there and though he occasionally got hit on by a client, for the most part, Jackson lived out his professional life in peace. A very significant component to that peace was the fact that Jackson knew, for a fact, that from the moment he parked his car in the lot out front at the beginning of his shift to the moment he got back into his car at the end of it, he was not going to encounter Kaya Chalk.
Every other important place in his life, his mother’s house, Raph’s house, Seth’s house, he always ran the risk of bumping into Kaya. And as much as Jackson had attempted to make his own home into a place he’d enjoy being, it always struck him as sterile and a bit depressing. Pretty much, his vet’s office had been the most peaceful, most calming place in his life. And Kaya Chalk had just blown that out of the water.
Because that was her Corolla parked at the other end of the lot. It was the first clue he’d gotten since she’d started the job that she was either in or out of the building at the far end of the complex. But it was enough to be seared into his brain. Apparently on Fridays at two, she was on duty.
Great.
He knew exactly how this was going to go. Through covert glances across the parking lot, little by little, he was going to be able to piece together Kaya’s work schedule. It wasn’t information he’d want to know, but it would be information his brain would force him to know. At which point, he’d have even more information about the woman he wanted so badly. Information that he was sure he’d find a way to torture himself with.
Jackson groaned and laid his forehead against the steering wheel. Life had been so much easier when she’d been unemployed.
He groaned again because that was a totally assholish thing to say or think and because he didn’t really mean it. He wanted Kaya to be gainfully employed, and honestly, the wellness clinic where she’d gotten hired was extremely reputable. It was a great fit for her.
He wanted her to have the money to buy a pair of boots that fit her with socks on for her cold toes.
Which meant that he was just going to have to suck this whole thing up and stop being such a—
“Jackson?”
He jolted up when someone tapped on the driver’s side window of his black jeep. His forehead came off the steering wheel and his brain promptly shorted out when he realized who it was.
“Kaya.”
She mimed him rolling down the window.
He did her one better and just grabbed his messenger bag and unfolded himself from the car.
She scuttled backward and Jackson found himself frowning down at her as he slammed the door closed.
“Do you have a coat?” he demanded.
&n
bsp; “It’s in my car.”
“It’s cold out here.”
“It’s sixty-five in the sun.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked surprisingly stubborn. “So…” she rocked on her heels and suddenly looked a little less sure of herself. “I started work.”
“I heard.”
“Right.” She was looking at the ground so he took a minute to really look at her. Her hair was in a messy braid down her back and she wore regulation lavender scrubs. They were shapeless and her white tennis shoes were downright nerdy, but of course she looked utterly lovely. Her toe painted a design on the ground and he wished she’d argue with him again. He hated that he made her uncomfortable. He especially hated that it was best that he made her uncomfortable. “I’ll be right over there most days.”
He stifled a groan and kept his tone noncommittal. “Mmm.”
Kaya let out a long breath, her eyes finally snapping upward to his. Her bright eyes held his gaze for a tight second. “Look, Jackson. I know that you and I have never really gotten along. But your family is like my family. No, that’s an insult. They are my family. Your mother… I’ll never be able to explain what she’s done for me. She raised me. And Seth and Raph, they’re the best brothers I could have ever hoped for.”
Her eyes skittered to his again and then away. His heart was hammering inside the tin can of his chest but he didn’t say a word.
“Anyways,” she painted on the ground with her toe again. “I just think it would be nice if we got to know one another a little bit. People like me, you know. And I know your family loves you. So…”
Still he didn’t say anything.
She finally looked up at him again and he was again turned inside out by the bright of her eyes.
“We work in the same complex now,” she continued, obviously unnerved by his lack of participation in the conversation. “Maybe we could get lunch sometime?”
Her voice was almost nonexistent by the time she got done asking the question and he could tell by the look on her face that she already knew she was about to get utterly and completely rejected.
He’d once seen a movie where a man used a hammer to smash the fingers on one of his hands in order to create an alibi for a crime. The man’s face had taken on an incredible look of peace and calm right before he raised the hammer. Jackson had never understood that until this very moment.
Internally, he raised the hammer that was going to smash the both of them to bits. And he felt calm. It was a numb sort of calm, but calm all the same.
He didn’t trust himself to say her name. So he didn’t.
“I don’t think that’s in the cards.” He swallowed. “I’m very busy. I barely have time for my family. And the few friends I have… well, I’m very selective.” He let judgment and boredom shine through on his face. “I just don’t think you and I have anything in common. But I don’t wish you any ill will, and of course, it’ll be fine to see one another around Mom’s house.” He cleared something sour out of the back of his throat. “Good luck at your new job.”
He sidestepped around her and left her standing by his jeep. He wouldn’t be surprised if he came back out at the end of his shift to see she’d keyed the damn thing. Maybe smashed in the windshield with a trashcan. He deserved it. Actually, he hoped she’d do it. It might make him feel a bit better about rejecting the woman he loved.
If only he were a different man and she were a different woman.
He bitterly laughed to himself as he buzzed in through the side door of his clinic. What a dumb thing to wish. He’d never be different. He’d be Jackson Durant until the day he died. And would he really want her to change at all? Even to age a few innocuous years that would mean so much to him? No. Of course not. Because even as little as he really knew her, he truly did love her.
His instinct was to treat her kindly, gently, sweetly. His instinct was to cherish her. But his instincts were also the reason he wasn’t safe to be around her. He’d already charged her once while he was in his wolf form and if it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to make sure he protected her from his wolf.
It was the only kind of sweetness he’d ever allow himself to show her.
***
“Why do you have three televisions in one room?” Bill asked Race, turning a circle in Race’s living room.
It was the first time he’d actually been invited into Race’s house and it was a strange experience so far.
“So that I can watch more than one news channel at once,” Race responded gruffly, as if the question had been idiotic. To prove his point, he flicked on the TVs and three different news networks appeared, the talking heads spouting viciously pointed opinions.
“Such different viewpoints,” Bill mused, looking from one television to another.
“They all agree on one point, though.”
“Shifters.”
Race nodded. “Shifter violence is on the rise. Every expert in the field agrees that the issue is the secrecy. Any animal that has to hide its entire life is going to come out biting at some point. It always ends nastily.”
That was not, in fact, Bill’s understanding of the issue, but what did he know? Race was an old friend and quite a bit more learned on almost every subject. Shifters had never been Bill’s issue, but he’d known the man who’d been killed out by the reservoir last year and since then, he’d been going to the shifter resistance meetings in town.
At first, he’d gone simply wondering what could be done on the issue, and then he’d returned because he’d rekindled his friendship with Race. Bill didn’t have many friends these days and Race was someone who always picked up his phone calls.
Race was a little extreme for Bill on a lot of issues, but he was glad to have somewhere to go on a Wednesday night around dinnertime. He’d come over hoping that maybe, after whatever Race had in mind, they might grab a bite to eat together.
“What are those?” Bill asked as he looked down at the strange, obviously homemade contraptions that Race had just hauled in from the garage.
“These are what I called you about earlier. They’re what I need help with.”
“Yes, but what are they?”
Bill knew immediately that he’d said the exact wrong thing. Pushing Race right now was never bound to be a good idea.
Race’s face only drove the point home even further. He didn’t even bother to answer Bill’s question. “How well can you read a map?”
Eager to redeem himself, Bill nodded his head eagerly. “I’m great at it. I was an eagle scout.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.” Race rolled out a detailed topographic map of the area. “Here, here, and here are where I’m going to need you to plant these.”
“Just me by myself?” A prick of intuition snaked up his spine but he told himself to ignore it.
“Yes. I’ve got other things to do tonight.”
“And you need the… things to be planted tonight?”
“We don’t have a night to waste. First of all, the full moon is coming. Second of all, I’m almost positive that there are shifters in our area who are not beholden to the moon.”
“You mean they can shift at will?”
Race nodded, rolling up the map and handing it to Bill. Bill’s eyes widened, frightened at the very idea that that would be possible. Again, he spoke without thinking. “So, then, they’re traps? For shifters?”
Race looked at him for a long time, and although Race was smaller than Bill, he had a much more intense presence and it wasn’t long before Bill felt that same spidery intuition up his back.
“Close enough,” Race eventually said. “Can I trust you to do this?”
Bill considered what was being asked of him. He was a seasoned hunter and knew the woods well, and it had been a very long time since anyone had asked him for a favor. He chose his next words carefully. “I suppose I’ll be mighty hungry afterward.”
Race’s eyes glinted, obviously knowing he’d just gotten what he wanted. “Co
me on back after you’re done. We’ll have burgers out back.”
Bill hefted the shifter traps into the back of his truck, tossed the map into the passenger seat and set out on his journey.
***
“Pass it over if you’re not going to eat it,” Bauer said to Raphael, who was uncharacteristically pushing food around on his plate. When it turned out that Nat had plans tonight, Raphael had decided to hit up his mom’s house for a free dinner.
He always felt comforted by dinner at his mom’s house. But his plan was in the process of backfiring because sitting there between his mother and Bauer, Raphael suddenly felt like a third wheel.
At this point, he was about eighty percent sure that there was something going on between them. And he was zero percent sure whether or not they knew that there was something going on between them.
They definitely seemed like two people who hadn’t talked about their feelings yet. Raphael, eating his flank steak, had been dodging sidelong glances across the table all evening. He was fairly certain that none of those glances had been meant for him.
Halfway through the meal, Elizabeth cleared her throat. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.” She was looking at Raphael, but he got the distinct impression that these words were meant just as much for Bauer. “You know that Kaya and Nat have been encouraging me to date.”
“I didn’t know that.” He frowned. His frown was not because of the idea of his mother dating, but because it seemed there was yet another thing about Nat that he hadn’t known.
“Oh. Well. They made a dating profile for me.”
“No shit! Can I see it?”
Elizabeth frowned. “Over my dead body.”
He laughed. “Come on, I won’t laugh. I’m sure it’s a great profile.”
“I know for a fact it’s great. Because it got me a date for this weekend.”