by Zoe Chant
“You going to get your lady a shiny new phone?” Marta asked Damien slyly. “Top of the line, makes coffee and washes the linen?”
“Marta!” Tawny said in exasperation.
But Damien grinned at Marta. “Heard about the car, did you?”
“Everyone heard about the car,” Marta told him matter-of-factly.
The room chuckled.
“If Tawny’s too proud for a car, I’m not,” Marta offered.
“I’d take a car,” one of the other women agreed.
“Oh my,” May giggled.
Tawny put her head in her hands, but her shoulders were shaking in laughter.
The stern librarian appeared at the door. “We’re closing,” she said briskly, then vanished.
Everyone stood, gathering up their things.
Damien easily carried the chairs back out into the library, earning a nod of approval from the librarian as she pointed out where they had come from.
When he returned to the room, Tawny was saying goodbyes to the others. The teenager had her cellphone out again and was tapping into it animatedly while her mother (Damien guessed) helped fold the remaining chairs.
“I think we talked about the book for a whole five minutes this week,” he told her approvingly.
“If you count the conversation about the movie,” Tawny agreed. “You really don’t have to come to my book club, even if you are really good for increasing attendance.”
“I liked it,” Damien said as he tucked her arm into his elbow, and he was surprised to find that it was true.
“You’re full of surprises,” Tawny said, shaking her head.
“Some of them good, I hope,” Damien said. “Not like the car.”
“Not all of your surprises are as poorly conceived as the car,” Tawny agreed, laughing.
Damien stopped at the empty street corner and turned to take both of Tawny’s hands in his. “I promise not to buy you a car again,” he said sincerely. “Will you forgive me?”
Tawny stood up on her tiptoes to lay a kiss on his cheek. “I already did,” she promised.
Chapter 24
Damien helping in Tawny’s garden was like having all of her very favorite things together.
He was terribly distracting, with his rolled up shirt-sleeves showing off his muscled arms, and the morning sun dancing in his silver-gold hair.
“Ah,” said Damien. “This is a weed I can identify. Dandelion!”
Tawny gave him a golf clap. “Very good. You’ll develop that green thumb yet.”
He started to kneel to pull it up, but Tawny stopped him. “Leave that one. This early in spring, it’s one of the first flowers to tempt the bees in. I try to keep just a few in the beds that haven’t flowered yet.”
“The ways of gardening are mysterious indeed,” Damien said dryly.
“With no bees, nothing gets pollinated, and there won’t be any vegetables or berries later. Starve the bees now, and they won’t come back later!”
“I know plenty about the birds and bees,” Damien told her with a wink.
Tawny blushed. “You can pull those dandelions there, the ones that aren’t blooming. And the chickweed all along there.”
“Yes, Captain,” Damien teased.
He knelt by the bed in question.
Tawny made herself stop gazing after him like a fool and took another flat of starts to transplant.
She was still picturing Damien’s gorgeous form, in his too-nice pants and his out-of-place shirt, when he suddenly snarled in pain and alarm.
Tawny whirled around as the snarl turned animal, and to her utter astonishment, watched the clothing she had just been fantasizing about stretch and rip over golden-furred muscles.
In the blink of an eye, there was a lion, enormous and real, leaping back from the flower bed, giant jaws snapping in the air.
Without meaning to, Tawny gave a squeak of alarm, and dropped the tray of starts she was holding from fingers numb with shock.
The sound caught the lion’s —Damien’s—attention. The huge, thick-maned head swung her way and silver eyes met hers.
He opened his mouth as if he meant to say something, showing fierce teeth, and seemed to sneeze.
Tawny had to laugh, leaning weakly against the wheelbarrow.
It was only slightly hysterical laughter.
She put a hand to her forehead, shaking her head. “Oh, Damien. This makes so much sense.” She thought back over his incredible presence, his unexpected strength, all the little clues and hints.
Damien sat, and cocked his big maned head at her, then shifted seamlessly back into a man.
A gorgeous, very naked man.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said. “This wasn’t how I meant to tell you about shifters.”
“I won’t say it didn’t frighten me to suddenly be in a very small garden with a very big lion,” Tawny said, still chuckling. “But I do know about shifters. Or at least, I’d guessed.”
“You knew?” Damien frowned as he stood.
“I’ve delivered mail in Green Valley for forty years. Once you’ve seen a few dozen unexpectedly naked people and exotic animals with no zoo within a hundred miles, you do put the pieces together. Either I was living in a town where people could shift, or there were a lot of secret nudists with illegal pets in the area. From there it wasn’t that hard to figure out that Gran was her own cat.”
Damien slowly smiled—that tiny, secret little smile that Tawny had to search for in his beard.
She brushed the dirt off of her hands and picked up the tray of starts. The flat had landed face-up, so although a few of the plants looked a little off kilter, very little damage had been done. She put it down on the wheelbarrow. “What happened? What made you change shape... er, shift?”
Damien put out a hand sheepishly. “I don’t know. It hurt.” He cleared his throat and added defensively, “It surprised me.” There was a welt rising on his palm, red and angry.
Tawny stepped forward and took his hand, ignoring his glorious nudity with effort. “Oh, it looks like you got stung by a bee. Poor thing!”
“Are you pitying me, or the bee?” Damien asked crossly.
“Damien,” Tawny said with sudden concern. “Are you allergic to bees?”
“I’ve never been stung before,” Damien said dismissively. “But I’m a shifter, so I have a much better immune system than a human.”
Tawny turned his arm over and, as she had expected, found a line of hives marching up his arm.
“You’re having a shifter-strength reaction,” Tawny said firmly. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”
Damien grabbed her hand with his good one as she reached for her phone. “You can’t do that,” he said. “Hospitals can’t help shifters.”
“You’re going into anaphylactic shock!” Tawny protested.
“I don’t even know if they could help me,” Damien said, starting to pant alarmingly. “But I know they’d learn a lot more about me than I care to share. Shifters in hospitals mean shifters in cages in laboratories. You have to know that.”
Tawny frowned fiercely at him, not convinced. “Are you telling me you never took your kids to the doctor?” she demanded.
“A doctor we knew,” Damien countered. “Promise you won’t call 9-1-1!”
Tawny could not have documented the emotions that spilled through her if she had tried. She was angry, and frightened, and felt like her world was tilting away from her. Everything was out of control, not going at all to her careful plan. She wanted to shake Damien, and at the same time throw her arms around him and beg him to tell her that it was all going to be okay, and at the same time she wanted to push him away.
“Then promise me you won’t die!” she finally retorted.
“I promise,” Damien said firmly.
Tawny scowled at him. “Put your hand up above your heart. It doesn’t look like the stinger is still in there. We should ice it, and get some antihistamine into you immediately. Inside. Now!”
/> She put herself under his good arm, and was alarmed that he let her help her into the house. His bare skin under her arm was hot to the touch.
“The couch,” she said, but Damien settled to the floor and she didn’t have the strength to lift him.
“I don’t know if antihistamines will work,” he panted. “Tawny, I’m going to shift again. My lion is stronger than I am. Promise you won’t be afraid...”
“I promise,” Tawny squeaked, kneeling beside him.
It was a lie; she was very afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of Damien’s lion, not even when the giant creature was suddenly taking up almost her entire living room floor.
He was a rich, golden color, and the paw that lay against her thigh was the size of one of her cats. She tentatively took it in her own hands, marveling at the velvety texture and the huge pads. The bee sting was invisible in the thick fur, and there was no sign of the hives that had raised along Damien’s pale human skin.
The lion panted, and let his massive head thump down onto the floor, his thick mane spreading like water around him.
She wasn’t afraid of the lion for a moment.
But she was still afraid.
She leaned forward, until she was curled up on his strong shoulder, face buried in the long fur, and wrapped her arms around the big cat fiercely.
It was like cuddling with a hundred willing cats, or a pile of fur coats. Warm, living fur coats.
She could hear his heartbeat, hammering irregularly but strong, and below that a rasp of a sound that wasn’t quite a purr; she had heard that big cats couldn’t purr, but she would have guessed this was a happy sound. One of his big paws curled gently around her.
She could never be afraid of him, not like this, but terror and adrenaline still coursed through her.
If he died...
She didn’t understand what was happening between them. She told herself it was only a summer fling, a matter of convenience while Damien was visiting with his grandson. She had tried to be careful of her heart, to keep herself from reading more into his interest in her than was actually there, to keep things light and friendly and casual.
But she’d failed, so completely.
It wasn’t just the way he had awakened her body, like a lily blooming after a long winter, and it wasn’t just the way his kissing made her hungry for more.
It was lying in her small bed with him afterwards, twining her fingers in his and drinking up his solid warmth.
It was sharing morning coffee while they read the paper.
It was his kiss on the top of her head as they passed in the narrow hallway.
It was the way she automatically turned to tell him her observations about little things, already used to the idea that he would be close by, and that he would care what it was that she had to share.
It was the way he took her hand at book club.
Instead of keeping him at arms length, she was shaking in his... paws. She was so afraid of losing him that she wanted to cry... and she never cried.
She was supposed to be sensible and independent.
But none of this was sensible, and she would be lost without him.
“Oh, Damien,” she said into his mane, as she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to say to him as a man. “Damien, I love you. Please be okay. If I lose you...”
Beneath her, the heartbeat seemed steadier, and the lion lifted his head and nuzzled her. Tawny wondered if a lion’s tongue was as sandpaper in texture as a housecat’s, and then he was shifting, and gathering her into his strong arms.
Chapter 25
Tawny’s whispered words were like honey to his ears, and Damien was shifting before he even consciously realized it, because he wanted so badly to kiss her, to hold her trembling body and tell her he was going to be fine.
“Tawny, my Tawny,” he said, wrapping her in his arms. “I could never leave you. I am yours.”
She cried into his shoulder for a moment, in shock and relief, and he assured her, “Look, I’m fine. The hives are almost gone. They don’t even itch anymore.”
Tawny inspected him critically, trailing her finger over the vanishing red spots. “Why did being a lion make the reaction stop?”
“Shifting from human to lion and back can speed up healing wounds and broken bones, sort of like the body gets itself back together the right way while it’s changing. It made sense that shifting could fix a chemical imbalance as well.”
“I can’t believe I almost lost you to a bee,” Tawny said, wiping her face. “Oh, I’m a disaster.”
“You are beautiful,” Damien told her.
Tawny snorted. “You are clearly still riddled with mind-addling histamine.”
Knowing that his words would be unconvincing, Damien took her face in his hands. “Tawny, may I kiss you?”
“Yes,” she said helplessly.
He kissed her soft mouth, and the dear lines around her eyes and the tears on her cheeks.
He kissed her neck, and she whimpered and clung to him.
With gentle hands, he lay her down on the floor and stripped her clothing off so he could kiss the rest of her, loving every mark of character and everything she considered a flaw.
“I love you, Tawny,” he told her, and unexpected tears gathered again in her eyes. “I will never leave you.”
He turned her tears to cries of pleasure, and drew her to new planes of release. After he had joined her there, they lay a long while together on the floor.
“Well,” Tawny finally said, “that was certainly not the day I had planned.” She looked at him wryly. “You are certainly nothing I had ever planned.”
Damien sat up. “Tawny, there’s something more.”
Tawny sat up with him. “What is it?”
“Shifters have something called a mate.”
“Sounds dirty,” Tawny said with a wicked grin that was always surprising in her sweet face.
“You are mine. I knew from the moment I saw you that I would be yours forever. My lion knew.”
Tawny looked at him curiously, her humor fading to confusion. “Like... love at first sight?” She shook her head. “I’m not sure I believe...”
“Believe it,” Damian said forcefully. “Tawny,” he added more gently. “I love you. I loved you from the moment I dumped a plate of food down your shirt. I will love you forever.”
Tawny looked at him with pursed lips, then leaned forward and kissed him tenderly.
“Do you believe me?” Damien had to ask.
“It certainly explains a lot,” Tawny said practically. “And if I can believe that you turn into a gigantic lion, it’s really not such a stretch to believe in destiny. I... know I was fascinated with you from the first moment I saw you, and I know I love you now.” She laid a gentle kiss on his forehead and got to her feet with a groan. “Next time, let’s take this to the bed. I’m too old for floor sex!” She gathered her strewn clothing. “I’m taking a shower.”
Damien had already attempted to take a shower with her in the cheerful yellow bathroom, and they had quickly discovered that it was too small for the activity to be sexy... or anything but crowded and painfully inconvenient. “I’ll take the next one,” he said, watching her go. “Save me some water.”
He wondered if she would ever believe how gorgeous she really was to him. She had all the right curves, graceful and soft, with fascinating freckles wherever the sun hit her skin.
He stood, his own knees complaining as Tawny’s had, and moved to the couch, where he leaned back and closed his eyes, feeling satisfied and triumphant.
She loved him.
He hadn’t really doubted that she would, but it felt good to hear her say it, to look in her eyes and know it.
Something made him crack an eyelid and he was startled to find Prints staring at him from the opposite end of the couch.
“Your treats are in the pocket of my torn up pants outside in the garden,” he told her in amusement. “This is your chance to go eat them all without having to toler
ate me to get them.”
But although he had not offered her anything, she approached, step by cautious step, across the couch.
Damien held still, barely daring to breath as she navigated her careful way next to him.
She sniffed his bare thigh, and Damien wondered if her sudden boldness was because she had witnessed him as a lion and now accepted him as one of her kind.
“Nice kitty,” he said gruffly.
Then she crept onto his knees, crouched down possessively, and began to knead her paws.
Tawny found them this way. Damien’s eyes were watering from the piercing pain of Prints’ claws, but he was unwilling to disturb her tentative trust. He was stroking her gently, very slowly, and he could feel a faint purr in his kneecaps.
“How on earth?!”
Prints vanished at the exclamation, leaving a last row of deep scratches as she leaped away.
Damien frowned at them, then looked up to find Tawny gazing at him jealously.
“She never willingly sits on anyone!”
“I’ve been bribing her with cat treats,” he explained.
“I’ve tried that,” Tawny said, shaking her head in amazement. She had changed out of her gardening clothes, and was wearing a simple summer dress; already the day was quite hot, and Damien was not uncomfortable lounging naked on her couch.
Her hair was wild and damp around her head, like a dandelion gone to seed.
“They were very good cat treats,” Damien told her with a smile. “I have some left, will they convince you to come sit in my lap, too?”
Tawny laughed at him, but came willingly to snuggle into his lap and accept his kiss.
“I was thinking, while I was in the shower,” she said, playing thoughtfully with his beard. “About Minneapolis.”
Damien resisted his urge to hold her tighter, hope rising in his throat. “Good things, I hope.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said. “I... know that you have a lot at stake there. I can have a neighbor feed the cats—they’re basically outdoor cats in the summer anyway, and I’ll pay Stanley to come water the garden. Patricia can take the piano lessons until her baby comes.”