The Shifter's Desire Page 15

  Arturo wandered away, his eyes slipping from case to case. He settled for a moment on a case of black diamond rings. Because she liked black so much, always wore it. But even as he had the thought, he understood more fully. She didn’t wear black because it was an expression of who she really was. She wore black because it allowed her to blend in. She never drew attention to herself in her black, simple clothing. It allowed her to stay on the outskirts of everyone’s life, including her own. No. He wouldn’t buy her an engagement ring that would represent her separation from a life well lived. He wanted her ring to be a symbol of her inclusion in life. He wanted her to look at it and know that, even if it had only been a few weeks, she’d led a full life. She’d been a part of something.

  He moved on past the black diamonds and paused for a moment at a tray of yellow diamond rings. He almost asked to see one that had a large gold band underneath the glittery golden diamond. It was almost the exact assortment of golden hues that she was when she was fracturing into light. He loved that. Maybe that was the right one?

  But no, just a bit further down in the case his eyes snagged on something and he knew for certain that he was seeing the ring that she would wear for him. There it was. Simple as that.

  “You having a moment?” Tre asked from behind Arturo. Arturo simply pointed at the ring he was staring at. Tre peered in through the glass.

  “Oh. Wow, man. Yeah. I get it. Makes sense for the two of you.”

  The salesman came over, a slight sweat on his brow from having just been completely swindled by Jack, but he was gathering his wits again. He let Arturo inspect the ring while Tre paid for his. Though Tre was no stranger to haggling over prices himself, part of him didn’t think it was good karma to squabble his way into an engagement ring. Call him old school, but he just wanted to hand over his debit card and then have that little velvet box in his nervous, sweaty hand.

  “You’re sure that’s the one?” Jean Luc asked, peering over Arturo’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Arturo answered immediately, confidently. There was no question to him that this was exactly right. Not only was this the perfect representation of what he wanted Martine to think of and feel, it also hummed with some sort of good vibes that Arturo would have been a fool to ignore.

  “All right, then.” Jean Luc plucked the ring from Arturo’s hand and walked it over to the salesman. “We’ll need a box for this one, too.”

  It was then Arturo realized that, of course, he had no money. He’d been a demon’s right-hand man for the last four centuries. It wasn’t exactly a high-paying gig. “Ah—”

  He came up behind Jean Luc in time to see him hand over his credit card. “It’s fine,” Jean Luc muttered. “If we live through this, you can pay me back.”

  The salesman’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he read the name on the credit card in his hand. “I’m sorry… are you the football player?”

  “You couldn’t tell from the size of his neck?” Tre asked glibly. “At night he snaps leather belts with the strength of his throat muscles like Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.”

  “Shaddap.” Jean Luc cuffed his redheaded friend over the head and pulled him into a boisterous headlock.

  The salesman hurried to ring up the sale as the scuffle got a little more heated.

  The men’s restrained, galloping energy when they’d entered the jewelry store had been let out of the paddock and into the field. They were laughing too loud, shoving each other too hard, relieved and giddy over their purchases. The salesman handed them their rings (and knife) in fancy boxes, filed their receipts, waved goodbye to them, then sagged against the door of the store. He flipped the sign from open to closed, badly needing a lunch break and a glass of wine.

  ***

  “I swear they’re up to something,” Thea muttered as she watched the men return to the field after lunch. They’d skipped morning shifter practice with their impromptu grocery trip so they were trudging out to practice during the hottest part of the day. It didn’t make sense. Not at all.

  And not only that, there was a pointed, relaxed ease running through them that she’d never seen before.

  “They do seem pretty… boyish right now,” Celia eventually agreed.

  “Totally!” Caroline chimed in. “Like a bunch of kids heading off into the woods for a campout or something.”

  Martine smiled, watching them along with the rest of the women. Normally, she’d be out there with the men, but something told her to hang back today, to give them the day just by themselves.

  All four of the women laughed as Tre danced around Jean Luc, obviously teasing, and Jean Luc lunged forward, an angry papa bear, and tackled Tre to the ground. The two of them shifted on the fly, and then Jack went too, bounding after them. Arturo, his hands in his pockets, watched for a minute before heaving a great sigh. He carefully stripped off his new clothes, one by one, and then shifted, following after the men.

  “Gotta admit, Arturo sure is handsome,” Celia said, looking just the slightest bit dazed from watching Arturo strip down to the altogether.

  “There’s no point in denying it,” Thea agreed, though she sounded rather like she wished she could deny it.

  “He’s like one of those fancy flowers down in South America that are so intricately beautiful, you know?” Caroline said.

  “Sometimes when he’s naked my mouth goes so dry I have to chug water,” Martine added in.

  All three of the other women jumped.

  “Martine!” Celia breathed, one hand over her heart. “How do you do that? I swear, your feet must be made of feathers.”

  “I thought you knew I was here!” She threw up her hands helplessly, but couldn’t help but laugh at the startled expressions she saw on all their faces.

  “You know,” Thea said. “On second thought, you and Arturo are perfect for one another. You’re both beautiful and spooky.”

  “Wait a second,” Caroline cut in. “Were you dishing about Arturo when you just startled the crap out of us? You were, weren’t you?! Oh my gosh! Start over!”

  “Dishing?” Martine asked faintly when she found herself shoved into a kitchen chair and a glass of iced tea somehow jammed into her hand.

  “Iced tea, Caroline?” Celia asked. “Don’t we have anything more festive?”

  “You’re right.” Caroline snatched back the glass of iced tea and poked around in the fridge for a minute. She came back a few minutes later with a pitcher of something suspiciously pink.

  “I’d like to live to see the morning,” Thea said, one eyebrow raised at the pitcher.

  “It’s mostly fruit juice,” Caroline insisted.

  Celia coughed her way through her first sip.

  “And a bunch of vodka,” Caroline added ruefully.

  “Wowzers,” Celia gasped as she fought for air. “Martine, if this doesn’t get you gossiping about your boyfriend, nothing will.”

  “My boyfriend?” Martine asked delightedly as she slugged back a giant gulp of her drink. It was strong, but she was made of tougher stuff than these mortals were—she barely blinked at the flavor. “I’ve never thought of Arturo as my boyfriend before.”

  “He isn’t your typical boyfriend type,” Celia agreed. “You say ‘boyfriend’ and you think varsity jacket and swapping spit by the lockers.”

  “You don’t exactly think of the whole tall, dark and evil thing Arturo has going on,” Thea agreed.

  “Well, what would he be if not her boyfriend?” Caroline inquired. “He’s by her side every second he can be. He looks at her like she’s the one who invented sunrises. He dotes on her. He cuddles her, for God’s sake! B-O-Y-F-R-I-E-N-D, if you ask me.”

  “And don’t forget the sex,” Martine added. She’d always wanted to be part of a group of women with whom she could talk about this kind of thing. And the best part was that she had details that she could contribute! She actually sort of knew what she was talking about!

  “Yes,” Celia said, with a gossipy glint in her eye. �
��Do tell about the sex.”

  ***

  “They’re up to something,” Tre said, peering in through the sliding glass door that led to the kitchen. The women were slouched around the kitchen table in a tableau of hilarity. They were either leaning back or leaning forward in hysterical laughter, their eyes closed and mouths wide open. There was a variety of empty glasses and half-eaten snacks on the table, the scattered remnants of a card game long forgotten strewn about.

  Thea leaned hard on Caroline as the two of them gasped for breath through their laughter. Celia covered her face with her hands and Martine’s mouth moved a mile a minute, apparently telling a story that had them all in hysterics.

  Arturo pushed past the other men to get a good look, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. Martine was front and center right now, goofing around, talking loud and, from what he could tell, quite drunkenly. She was playing. With friends.

  A large bubble of joy rose up in Arturo’s chest, pressing hard against his heart and lungs. The other men couldn’t know what it meant to see her acting so normally. Punctuating his joy was this humongous, cosmic clock that was counting down to whatever showdown they were bound to have with the demon. He wanted Martine to have every human experience possible before the moment when she would be blinked out of existence. To see her having a girls’ night filled him with a wild relief.

  “They’re not up to anything other than having themselves a party without us,” Jack said, shouldering the other men aside and stepping into the kitchen. They were sweaty and dirty from their shifter practice and shrank the room by half when they all piled in.

  “Hey, drunky,” Tre said, leaning down to accept a rather sloppy kiss from Caroline.

  “I’m not drunk,” Caroline insisted, her words all sliding one into the next. “I’m simply a little bit looser than normal.” She punctuated that with an unholy hiccup that took her damn near two inches off her chair.

  That sent Thea into more hysterics. Jack watched her in amazement. He’d seen her drunk before but never quite like this. Thea had an overarching coolness, a very outrider-esque reserve that pervaded her every action. Now, though? Now she was attempting to catch a piece of popcorn in her mouth and failing catastrophically.

  Celia, on the other hand, was showing signs of turning into a philosophical drunk. She tugged her sweaty man down and slid into his lap, curling into him despite the rather pungent scent coming off of him. What did she care? That’s how he smelled right after he’d worked them both into ecstasy. She loved it. She sighed as he stroked the hair back from her forehead and watched her friends. She whispered something up to Jean Luc who whispered back indulgently, kissing her nose.

  Arturo leaned over Martine, eyeing her quite closely. “You’re drunk as a skunk, Wings.”

  “Is that why I feel like dancing?” she asked him, leaning back far enough that he quickly braced a hand between her shoulders to keep her safely in her chair.

  “Ooh!” Caroline shouted, loud enough to have Tre wincing and jamming a finger in one ear. “Dancing! That’s exactly what we need right now!”

  She leapt up, with the floppy gracelessness of the recently inebriated, and flicked buttons on the stereo system that lived in the living room. Seconds later, the familiar intro to a Prince song surrounded them.

  As if it were a magical spell that had been cast over all of the women, they simultaneously leapt from their chairs, swaying and laughing and running to the living room to dance it off.

  “Looks like we’ve got some catching up to do, boys,” Jack drawled.

  The men got cleaned up and caught up on drinks. The lighting outside went quietly that night—there was no grand sunset, no sky on fire. The mashed-up house burned like a firework in the heavy weight of darkness outside.

  Arturo hadn’t danced since he was a mortal and then music had been quite different. But he found that the pleasures afforded were quite similar. He felt the familiar buzzy heat of just enough drink in his veins and the pliant warmth of a woman in his arms. The music was loud and infectious and he let it guide his body against Martine’s.

  The rest of the group was whooping and laughing but Arturo didn’t let his woman go. She had her fingers locked together at the nape of his neck and her perfect green eyes laughed up at him. Her happiness was strong enough he could taste it on the air. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be able to gift her this forever. Friends and drinks and cards and dancing and yes, even the hangover in the morning.

  He wanted her to have a dog or a cat. He wanted to buy her a shiny new washer and dryer. “I want you to think about the grocery list while you drive across town,” he told her. Maybe he was a little drunker than he’d thought.

  She twirled in his arms and smiled hugely up at him. Apparently, she didn’t need a translator for his thoughts. Maybe she’d been thinking something along those lines. “I want you to plant a vegetable garden and weed it on the weekends.”

  He laughed because even if he were to become a mortal he could never picture himself crawling in the dirt. Not his style. “I want you to be seriously disappointed when you stain your favorite sweater.” Ah, to have the luxury of such mundane tragedies.

  She laughed at that one. “I want you to buy me a house with big windows and too much sun in the mornings.”

  “I want you to make me wash the parts of the windows you can’t reach.” And there they suddenly were, in this fantasy, living together in their perfectly ordinary life. Perfectly happy to have such pedestrian problems.

  “I want you to drop the kids off at school in the morning,” she said, her smile even brighter.

  Kids. The word dunked through his body like one of the shots he’d taken earlier. It was a hot burn that he wasn’t sure felt good or bad. Kids had never occurred to him before. Either for himself or for Martine. And certainly not for him and Martine. For a moment, he let himself picture it. Him in the driver’s seat of some SUV, two kids buckled in the back, bickering with one another. He pictured their brick elementary school like the one he’d seen in town. He pictured kissing them goodbye and not having to worry about a demon eating their souls. Then his brain rewound to what it would be like to make those children with Martine. To fill her up from the inside out. To watch her belly grow with his child. To suck on her sweetness while she was making their family. God.

  He twirled her again and danced them to a slightly more secluded area of the room. When he spoke, his voice was a betrayal, wildly coarse. “Are you having a good time?”

  The buoyant happiness in her eyes came down to earth just a bit. There was a bit of reality mixed in with her happiness, just a hint of sadness. But in her opinion, that only made it better. It was like salted chocolate. The complication only elevated the experience.

  “The best,” she responded, and meant it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When the evening had devolved into some sort of drunken game that involved cards and shots and lots of hooting and hollering, Martine led Arturo away from the group and across the house to their quiet bedroom.

  They were still buzzy and cocooned from the alcohol, but not drunk anymore. She closed their door and immediately started stripping his clothes off of him. When he was naked and she was naked, he reached for her, but she danced away from him.

  “Stay,” she told him, pointing her finger in a very bossy way.

  Arturo frowned but stayed where he was, across the room as she went back to kneel on the bed.

  “I want to touch you,” he growled, the shadows slicing down the tributary paths of his muscles, his cock growing heavy and tight between his legs, his eyes two dark slashes on his face.

  She trembled just for looking at him. “I want to try something,” she told him.

  He wanted to drown in her. Her talk of children had shaken something loose within Arturo and he badly wanted to burn alive with lust. He wanted her to make him forget this shaky feeling. He wanted to swan dive into sex and then sleep. “No games tonight.”

  But he
didn’t move either, he continued standing where she’d told him to.

  “It’s not a game. I promise. It’s just something I want to try.” As he watched, her golden energy appeared on her skin, and then slowly, curled off of her in a sort of lazy, searching twist. He stiffened as he realized that she was targeting him, coming toward him with her energy.

  She was sending it out to him. He shifted on his feet, waiting to feel it cover over his body, wondering if he could handle that much zing all at once.

  But her energy hesitated three or four feet from him. He waited, and nothing.

  “Meet me,” she whispered.

  He stepped forward but her voice stopped him.

  “No. Not with your body. With your energy.”

  He frowned. “I can’t. I can’t control it like that.”

  “Try. Let mine call to yours. Let mine pull yours out. Just try.”

  Only for her would Arturo have done this. He hated the out-of-control helplessness of allowing his energy out of his body. For him, it was much more comfortable to instantly release his energy. Quick bursts, like an arrow or a bullet. But to stretch out his energy while retaining a hold on the other end, it was all sorts of uncomfortable.

  But he’d already been over and over his compulsion to give her anything and everything that he could. He found himself incapable of denying her.

  Slamming his eyes closed, Arturo slowly called up his energy from within himself. He felt it rise, he felt it attempt to get away from him, to ricochet toward her. He didn’t let it. He held tight and felt the strange, elastic stretch of it as his blue stretched toward her gold.

  Almost there, he held his breath, almost couldn’t hold on to it. He gasped and his eyes flung open when he felt their energies mix from across the room.

  Her eyes were pinned to the mixing point as well. He’d never felt anything like this in his life. This was touching without touching. The energies petted across one another, almost like tongues. When they started to actually mix, Arturo’s body tightened, his cock thwapped against his stomach and his eyes rolled back.