The Shifter's Embrace Page 10

  He drew back, took a breath and rested his forehead on hers before he kissed her once more, and then again. And then again.

  She was tilting toward him, dizzy, silently willing him to just drag her back to a cave and get her pregnant already, when they both heard footsteps in the hall.

  Celia’s eyes grew round with alarm and that clued Jean Luc in to the fact that she was not ready to get caught kissing in the kitchen. Therefore he took a step back, jammed her coffee cup in her hands and ran some cold water in the sink. He plunged his hands under the faucet and dragged his cold fingertips to the back of his neck, trying like hell to get ahold of himself.

  “Morning, earlybirds!” Caroline called as she basically skipped into the kitchen. “I thought for sure I’d be the first one up, but here you are!” She poured herself a cup of coffee and then looked up in alarm. “Celia, are you alright?”

  Celia cleared her throat and tried to wipe off whatever expression she was positive was on her face.

  “Um. Yeah. Totally fine. Still waking up, I guess.” What a crock. She’d never been more awake in her life. She could have run a 10k backwards, barefoot and uphill. Her heart was pumping gasoline. Every single cell in her possession was positively vibrating. “I’m… gonna hit the shower.”

  She slid off the counter and steadied herself when her freaking knees knocked again. Her eyes shot to Jean Luc’s. He didn’t look smug, like he knew for sure that he’d just kissed her off her feet. No, he looked a little wonky himself, and he automatically reached out to steady her.

  If she’d turned around before she strode out of the kitchen, she would have seen Jean Luc drag a hand over his face. She would have seen him let out a long, shaky breath. She would have seen him sag against the counter.

  But she didn’t turn around.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It took Celia all of an hour to convince herself that she was a total idiot. That kiss hadn’t been special. It was Jean Luc that was special. And of course he was. He was probably a master of seduction. She’d followed his career. She knew the gossip headlines when it came to him!

  She took a shower that she didn’t really need and hid in her bedroom until she heard the men and Martine leave for shifter practice. Then she took out her phone and embarked on the age-old journey of torturing oneself via Google. It took approximately twelve seconds to find a handful of websites specifically dedicated to Jean Luc’s love life and romantic entanglements. She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know that at least 50% of what she was looking at was probably nothing more than gossip, but 100% of what she was seeing was beautiful models and actresses. So where did that leave her?

  There was no one under 5’8”, there wasn’t a single one with a retro, vintage style, there wasn’t a single one with T and A. And there were definitely, definitely no piercings or tattoos.

  Celia flopped back on her bed. She realized that, for the first time in her life, she’d been kissed like a pretty girl. That was the kind of kiss that gorgeous models received all the time. Jean Luc, having only ever kissed pretty girls, must have just automatically hit her with the A game.

  He hadn’t realized it was totally going to eff her life irrevocably.

  Because it pretty much had.

  She wasn’t trying to be dramatic. But she was legit not sure what life was supposed to look like after a kiss like that. What, she was just supposed to go back to work at the Brooklyn Public Library and go about her business all the while acting as if she didn’t know that at any given moment, one Jean Luc LaTour could incinerate her panties?

  The man hadn’t even touched her. That was pure lips. And tongue.

  At noon, when she knew she couldn’t stay locked in her room and maintain her sanity any longer, Celia took their rental van and drove east. She drove east until she hit the beach. Then she took a very long walk.

  On her way home, she knew three things. One: the game had been fun, but it had gone too far. Two: she was not special to Jean Luc LaTour. Three: she was never going to kiss him again.

  ***

  “Ho-ly shit, son!” Jack whooped and threw his baseball cap in the air.

  Both he and Tre sprinted across the field to throw their arms around Jean Luc. Never mind the fact that he was buck naked, due to the fact that he’d just shredded his clothes to pieces. The kid had shifted. And shifted like a champ. He’d shifted and reared up to two great, grizzly back feet, and then he’d fallen forward onto all fours and shifted back into human form.

  It wasn’t, perhaps, the most dramatic thing of all time, but it was certainly important to Jack, Tre, and Martine, who’d been laboring together for days, trying to figure the damn thing out.

  Jean Luc grinned and accepted the hugs before he gently shoved them all away. “Hold on, let me try again. I think I can do it again.” He pointed to the other two. “This time, pay attention with your feelings. I bet you can figure out how to do it just based on reading my feelings, yeah?”

  They nodded, eyes on him and waiting.

  This time, when Jean Luc shifted, it was almost instantaneous. He knew exactly what to think about. Celia.

  He concentrated on the thought of her, fuzzy and hot and leaning into him. He thought about the electric jolt of that. He thought about how, for the first time since his brother had died, he was glad to be alive. And, well, the shift just sort of happened.

  “Shit!” Tre shouted, and then he was shifting too, tearing his clothes to bits.

  “Well, I’ll be damn—” and then Jack went too.

  This time, all of them stuck around as bears for a bit.

  Martine clapped her hands and ran amongst them, joy and excitement zipping through her body, lighting her muscles up. This was what she had been waiting for. This.

  She wasn’t a failure and thank God. She hadn’t slayed the demon. And she hadn’t convinced the group that, truly, their only play was to capture Arturo. But she had done this, she’d really had a hand in this.

  ***

  In lieu of family dinner and game night, they all just went ahead and had themselves a party. The bears had shifted! They’d cracked the egg! Lit the firecracker! Found the key for the uncrackable lock!

  Celia walked in at 6 o’clock, sand and salt-whipped from her walk on the beach, to a margarita being shoved into her hand.

  Music with plenty of bass blared from speakers in every room and… yup, everybody was dancing.

  “Uhhhh,” was the only thing she could think to say.

  “The boys shifted!” Martine hollered at her, while she danced in a freak train, sandwiched between Caroline and Jack.

  Jack, at the front of the train, leaned forward and caught his woman in a twirl, bent her back and kissed her. “We sure as hell did.” Thea grinned like a girl, in a very un-Thea-like way.

  All Celia could do was laugh as she watched them all boogey-ing their hearts out. Tre grabbed Caroline from the back of the train and twirled her, then he reached forward and grabbed Martine and twirled her, too. Meanwhile, Jean Luc just skirted around the dancers and made straight for Celia. He set her margarita aside and caught her up in the hug to end all hugs. Her feet were three full feet off the ground as he swallowed her up.

  “Really?” she asked him. “You really shifted? All of you?”

  “All of us,” he nodded, setting her back down. The smile blazed through her like an electrical wire dropped into water.

  After a day filled with slow, methodical deflation, it only took one smile of that caliber to fill her right back up. “And so, naturally, a dance party.”

  He grinned even harder. “Naturally. Plus I made nachos. Which Caroline says we have to eat off of one plate while we all sit around on the floor.”

  “Are they ready?” Celia asked. “I’m starving.”

  Jean Luc grabbed her hand and dragged her to the kitchen. Considering the freak train, Celia didn’t think that anyone would think twice about as innocent a move as hand holding.

  She gaped at him as he opened
the oven and pulled out two full cookie sheets of nachos filled with just about everything they’d had in the fridge.

  “Uh, which floor did you think she wanted to eat them on?” Jean Luc asked, looking adorably perplexed and just generally adorable in oven mitts.

  Celia put her elbow on the counter, leaned down and buried her face. “Jean Luc LaTour in oven mitts. Well, I never.”

  He blushed, hard. “Seriously, which floor?”

  “How about poolside?”

  “Perfect.”

  Celia told the group where they were eating and the rest followed them outside, bringing all manner of drinks with them.

  That was how Celia found herself with her sandy feet swirling around in the pool, all of them lit up with the aquamarine pool lights, shoving nachos in their faces and celebrating the accomplishments of the day.

  She’d expected awkwardness and secrecy from Jean Luc when she returned. She was, in no way, prepared for his chuckling, boyish happiness at having shifted. She hadn’t expected to come home to a party. And she hadn’t expected to come home to him shooting looks at her the entire night.

  In her mind, he was either gonna stare her down seductively, or he was going to out and out ignore her. The kiss was either going to be viewed as a chance to get laid, or it was going to have meant nothing at all to him.

  In no world had she expected to catch him looking at her when she wasn’t expecting it. She wasn’t expecting him to try and catch her eye when Tre said something funny, or when Thea lifted her glass to cheers all the guys, or when Caroline was so happy that she flung her arms around everyone, one by one.

  She just really hadn’t seen it coming.

  But there he was, being sweet. And a little shy. The wall of mortification and regret that Celia had carefully and methodically built throughout the day shook on its foundation.

  Celia stretched out on her back, her feet still in the water, she watched the night sky deepen in color, lit up on one side by the bright lights of Miami, not far in the distance.

  Models and actresses, she reminded herself.

  “You alright?” Martine asked, her head peeking into Celia’s view and eclipsing half of the night sky.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess. Just trying to get my feet back on the ground.”

  “What do you mean?” The party behind them was still swinging, music playing from the screened-in porch, the group laughing and drinking and deciding whether or not to play some poker.

  Celia looked into Martine’s green eyes; they were calm and curious. “Just a human problem.”

  “I understand most human problems,” Martine said, cocking her head to one side and leaning forward to flick a bug off of Celia’s leg.

  Celia swirled her feet and, thinking of alligators, lifted them up out of the water to rest on the edge of the pool. She felt the cool drips from the pool seep down into her shorts and the back of her tank top. “I think I have an irrational fear of being seen as foolish.”

  Martine looked surprised. “You are one of the least foolish humans I’ve ever met!”

  “I mean, I have book smarts, I guess. And I’m not running my mouth about stuff I don’t know about. Which counts for something. But there are some things I’m really, really dumb about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Romance,” Celia answered immediately. They were talking low enough that she was sure no one could hear her besides Martine, but it still clanged her heart around her chest to say it out loud.

  “Ah,” understanding came into Martine’s eyes. “You’re worried about seeming foolish in matters of the heart.”

  “Or the body.”

  “Ahhhhh,” now Martine really understood. She adjusted one of the shiny knives at her wrist. Then, out of habit, adjusted the ones at her ankles. “Desire isn’t foolish, you know. It’s a gift. From one person to the other.”

  Celia, not really having thought about it that way before, snapped her eyes up to Martine. She was about to say something back when Caroline’s smiling face popped into view. “Poker! Come play!”

  Celia rolled up to standing and held out a hand to Martine. “Thanks.”

  Martine let herself be pulled up to standing. “Anytime.”

  The women all walked up to the group, now sitting around on a circle of deck chairs, a table in between them and Thea shuffling a deck of cards.

  “Interested in a little late night poker, ladies?” Tre asked, tilting his head backwards on his chair so that he could see them.

  “What are the stakes?” Celia asked, leaning forward to flick Tre on the ear. She could feel Jean Luc’s eyes on her, and couldn’t help but wonder if he was hoping she would play.

  “Strip poker,” Caroline decided immediately. “I wanna see Tre’s tattoos again.”

  Tre’s head came up instantly, eyeing her across the group and everyone couldn’t help but smile at the instant red that crept up his neck.

  “In that case,” Celia said, “I think that’s my cue for bedtime. Goodnight, everyone.” She waved behind her as she made her way back inside.

  She reached for the screen door of the patio but a humongous hand reached over her head and pushed the door open for her. She tipped her head back to look at Jean Luc.

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “You headed to bed, too?”

  He ignored her question. “You still wanting that haircut?”

  They walked forward into the cool of the air conditioned house. “Now?”

  “Good a time as any,” he shrugged, following her into the back hall, lit from the side by the kitchen lights. His eyes were on her face, patient, attentive. “Unless you’re not into it. Then, of course, that’s totally fine.”

  That wall of hers trembled a little more, some bricks falling from the top. “Actually, yeah, I’d like that.”

  “Great, my clippers are in my room.” He turned and instead of waiting for him, Celia found herself following him. She hadn’t been in his room yet; it was the furthest one back on the right and she was surprised when she walked in and saw how big it was.

  “Wow.”

  He turned, seemingly a little surprised that she’d followed him; maybe he’d expected her to wait outside. “Yeah. This was the guest suite that Claude always reserved for the renters.”

  He crossed the room, passing his made bed and his open suitcase with neat piles of folded clothes. She followed him right into the bathroom.

  Desire was a gift, she reminded herself. There was no reason to be embarrassed that she wanted to be alone with Jean Luc. There was no reason to be embarrassed that she wanted him to touch her while he gave her a haircut.

  The set of clippers was already out on the counter and when she turned to inspect him, she saw that his own haircut was looking pretty fresh.

  “Here?” he asked her, clearing his throat. “Or the hallway bathroom?”

  “Here’s better. That way we won’t hog the hallway bathroom if someone else needs it.”

  He nodded and she stepped in front of him toward the mirror. He dug through the clippers for the right guard and turned the razor on and off, just to check. When he turned to her and caught sight of the two of them in the mirror, all the air left his chest at once.

  “Jesus,” he mumbled, setting the razor down and leaning around her to put one palm on either side of her on the counter. He crowded her forward so that she was leaning over the sink. His forehead dropped to her shoulder.

  “What?” she asked, her heart in her throat.

  “You’re so fucking small,” he grumbled, before straightening up and showing her in the mirror exactly how they looked standing next to one another.

  Celia bit her lip. He dwarfed her. He looked like such a man there behind her, like if a hurricane came, he could simply lay himself over top of her and she’d be completely safe. “Actually, I think you’re just freaking gigantic.”

  “Pretty sure both are true,” he murmured, before tearing his eyes away from hers in the mirror, and still standing behind her, r
eached for one of her hands. He laid it, palm up, against his own hand and compared sizes.

  Her eyes were glued to their hands in the mirror. To the sight of herself touching him. Of him touching her.

  “Celia,” he said, his voice a low grumble, his eyes still cast down on their hands.

  “Yeah?”

  “I really want to kiss you again.”

  Desire is a gift.

  Slowly, Celia turned around. There was no mirror anymore. There was no illusion or reflection. There was nothing to see but him. His patient, fuzzy eyes. The wide-set shoulders. The stretch of that plain shirt across his chest. Her eyes on his, Celia’s mouth dropped slightly open. Her tongue came out to wet her bottom lip and then, only then, did Jean Luc’s eyes fall away from hers. She watched the black of his eyes expand, opening himself to her, to the moment.

  She could feel herself opening to him. It was easy really, wanting him. Like stepping into warm water.

  She planted her hands on the counter behind her and boosted herself up, bringing her face a few inches closer to his. “Yes,” she whispered.

  And just like before, he slowly reeled himself in, his hands planted on the counter on either side of her. Just like before, his nose brushed hers first, his eyes open. And then his mouth was on hers and she was lost.

  His tongue was hot and sweeping, and he tilted his head and deepened the kiss. Celia pushed toward him and then teetered backwards, on the edge of the sink. Instinctually, she reached up to him and grabbed around his neck. Her fingers found his hair, the heat at the back of his neck, and this time it was Jean Luc who was making the noise. A low, growling noise like a beast hidden in the tall grass. It thrilled Celia and made her clothes scratch against her sensitive skin.