A Mate For Phoenix (Forbidden Shifters Series Book 4) Read online

  “Right,” she said with a self-deprecating smile. “You have no idea what the Thong Song is.”

  “What’s a thong?”

  “It’s underwear that goes up your ass on purpose,” she said, clicking through some sites on her computer, her attention half on him and half on her screen. “I'm actually wearing some right now.”

  Underwear that went up her ass on purpose? Utterly perplexed as to why someone would wear anything that went up their ass, Phoenix rolled onto his side, grabbed a handful of her skirt and yanked it up, leaning over her body to get a good look at her ass.

  She yelped before he saw anything and he realized his mistake immediately. “Oh. Jeez,” he whispered, leaning over her, his face inches from hers, the computer hinged almost to a close between their chests. “I should have asked. Sorry. Ida, can I see the underwear that goes up your ass?”

  She shook her head at him, laughter in her eyes. “Yes.”

  He leaned over her again and lifted the skirt of her dress. He felt his eyes grow round with wonder and lust as he took in the sight before him. He hadn’t seen her bare body before. And the sight of her round, plush ass looking so perfect and soft gave him wood faster than he’d ever gotten wood before. But it was more than that. Because he could see the line of that underwear up along her hips. The underwear were blue, the color of the deepest, calmest river pool. He used his finger to track their progress from one hip to the other. And then, yup, sure enough, they disappeared between the cheeks of her ass.

  A strange feeling rose up in him. One he didn’t quite understand. Because as much as he’d sworn that he didn’t understand a single thing about underwear, these ones, well, these ones were different. They made him want things that he couldn’t even really picture. He imagined the stretch and snap of the thong if he were to test it with his teeth.

  Experience didn’t matter, he’d just told her that. And he believed that. He believed that whatever happened between him and Ida would be right. Perfect. He didn’t care what other people did. He only cared what happened between the two of them. But still, his desire to lean down and … eat… her thong couldn’t be right. Could it? Men didn’t eat women’s underwear. Did they?

  He flattened his hand and abandoned the underwear, slicking over her thigh until he got to her knee. He nudged her legs apart until she hinged one upward, swinging her leg open so that he could see between her legs. He could feel her breath breaking over his face, fast breaths. Nervous, excited ones.

  If he’d laid a hand between her breasts, he would have felt the rabbit in her chest, the same as the one in his. But he was incapable of anything but looking. And breathing. And trying not to expire on the spot. Because her underwear reappeared, covering her mound in that deep, gorgeous blue. She was wet. He could see that. She was so wet that he could see the outline of her perfect little pussy against the fabric.

  Again, his mouth watered in that unexpected way.

  “Oh, my god,” she gasped, pushing her legs closed. “Let’s… let’s… stick to the plan. Before I have a heart attack and die of horniness, yeah?”

  She shoved him back just hard enough for him to know that she meant business, so reluctantly, he stopped leaning over her. He fell back to his side and she opened her computer again.

  He was obliged to see that she didn’t fix her skirt. Her curvy, smooth legs and the front triangle of her thong were on full, glorious display. Phoenix didn’t think he’d ever be able to tear his eyes away from the sight—

  What the fuck?

  He suddenly focused on the movement of her computer screen. She’d selected some porn for them to look at, apparently.

  Phoenix blinked. Ida leaned forward and put the volume up a little bit. He blinked some more.

  It was a grainy, dark video of a man and a woman on a bed, kissing. They were both naked, pressed up against one another.

  “It’s amateur,” Ida said, her voice scratchy. “The quality is way worse, and you kind of never know what you’re gonna get with amateur. But, um, I didn’t want to show you the professional stuff because you pretty much need to be an olympic gymnast to do some of the stuff they do and the amateur stuff tends to be a little more, you know. Realistic.”

  “Realistic,” he murmured, watching through round eyes as the man roughly grabbed a handful of the woman’s breast, saying something to her that made her nod her head yes.

  The man reared back onto his knees and Phoenix leaned forward, his brow furrowed. He’d never seen another man’s erect cock before. This one had a surprising look to it. Vulnerable. Incomplete.

  He leaned forward and pressed the button he’d seen her press and the video stopped. “What’s wrong with his cock?”

  Ida blinked bleary eyes and looked between the computer screen and Phoenix. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s so… It’s missing something.”

  Ida squinted at the screen and then understanding lit her eyes. “Oh! You mean his foreskin. Some men get a procedure done, usually when they’re babies, to have the skin around the penis removed.” Suddenly her eyes darkened, with both understanding and arousal. “I, um, take it that means that you’re not circumcised?”

  He pursed his lips and looked down at her. “Nothing has ever been cut off my dick, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  “Right.” She cleared her throat and nodded, but her cheeks were bright red. “Right.”

  He took the tip of her chin between two fingers and dragged her around to face him. “Is that a problem?”

  She immediately shook her head. “No. It’s really not a problem. It’s, um, super not a problem.”

  He took the temperature of her eyes and found she was telling the truth. She must be attracted to men who haven’t had the horrific procedure she’d just described. Good. Because as much as he already cared for Ida, the idea of getting part of his dick chopped off for her was not an appealing one.

  He let go of her chin. “Continue,” he requested, but the words came out sounding much more like an order than a request.

  She cleared her throat and pressed play on the video. Phoenix supposed that the woman in the video was attractive. She had long, light hair and a long, thin body but she looked so unlike Ida that he found himself only cursorily aroused by the sight of her. The things that were turning him on the most were not her breasts on display or her benignly pretty face, but the way the woman gripped the sheets she writhed around on, the breathy noises bursting from her lips, the way her legs fell open when her partner reared back. The woman was turned on and helpless in the face of it. And the man had made her that way.

  Yeah. Phoenix liked that. Perhaps this man, despite his strange, shorn dick could teach Phoenix a thing or two.

  “Start it over,” he said gruffly.

  She blinked at him in surprise as her fingers hovered over the mousepad. “But we haven’t gotten to the good parts yet.”

  “I want to see something.”

  She did as he asked and this time, less shocked by the preliminary sight of the man’s body as he’d been before, Phoenix paid careful attention to the way the man manipulated the woman’s breasts, the way he kissed and bit her. It made the woman moan.

  They eclipsed the part of the video they’d already seen and now Phoenix was watching the man kiss his way down the woman’s abdomen. That looked nice. That looked like something Phoenix would really, really want to do with Ida. Only, with Ida it would be so much better because Ida’s abdomen was soft and plush, whereas this woman’s stomach had no give to it.

  All thoughts of abdomens fled Phoenix’s mind when the man, kissing his way downward, apparently reached his destination. Phoenix had expected the man to kiss the woman’s thighs. It made sense to him that if a woman liked her shoulders kissed -the way this woman obviously had- she might like to have her thighs and knees and ankles kissed as well. But the man didn’t kiss her thighs. Instead, he planted her thighs over his shoulders, laid his chest on the bed and began to kiss, rather p
assionately, directly between the woman’s legs.

  Phoenix leaned forward to get a better look.

  He didn’t have to look at Ida to know that she was brilliantly red in the cheek. He could feel the heat in the air from her blush. What was that sound? Oh. It was his own breath sawing in and out of his lungs. Holy god.

  “People do this,” he muttered. It wasn’t a question. It was a realization. It was a recognition of some vague, hidden urge he’d never fully recognized before. Hadn’t he, moments earlier, wanted to swallow Ida’s panties? Wasn’t this, right here, what his body actually wanted him to do?

  “Yes,” Ida whispered. “People do this. But, um, no pressure of course. I didn’t choose this clip in order to insinuate that—”

  He snapped the computer closed and laid it on the bedside table.

  She looked up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “Don’t you want to keep watching the video?”

  “No,” he answered tersely.

  Her eyes shuttered. “It, um, grossed you out to see that?”

  “No,” he said again, leaning over her. “I stopped the video because I understand what it is showing me. There’s no reason for it to be on anymore.”

  “Oh. I— WOW.”

  Her words abruptly cut off when Phoenix reached down and shoved her dress clear up to her collarbones. He almost got sidetracked by the sight of her breasts so lovingly cupped in a deep blue bra, but no. That was not what he’d come to do.

  “I want to do that,” he told her gruffly as he slid his body down and spread her legs before him. He pinned his eyes to Ida’s. “I want to do what that man was doing in the video.”

  “Um, sure,” Ida said breathlessly. “Yes, I mean. Yes, please.”

  Seeing what he needed to see in her expression, he dropped his eyes from hers and took in what laid directly before him. Her soft skin in a seductive rise where her body was plushest, around her belly button, above her hips. And then the slow, almost aerodynamic dip of her belly between her hips. She was a landscape of gorgeous shadows, like looking across a rolling terrain from a great height. Phoenix got the great urge to watch the shadow from a cloud move across her skin. He made a note to self to get her naked outdoors as soon as the weather warmed up again. He wanted to see her in a bed of green, against a sky of blue, the ethereal black of a wet tree trunk framed against the copper of her hair.

  The triangle of her underwear, and the strings that cut across her hips were sexy, but almost unnatural in his eyes. They allured him and kept him away from his final destination all at once. He loved and abhorred these panties. They had a time and a place, and that time had passed. Phoenix wanted nothing to obstruct him from the view of Ida’s natural body.

  He pulled her panties down her legs and tossed them away, no longer tempted to eat them now that he knew he had better things to do with his mouth. In the quest to pull her underwear away, he no longer sat between her legs and she pressed her thighs together now, a blush seeping down from her cheeks to her chest. She blinked at him and gripped the sheets on either side of her.

  Trepidation, he realized. Not arousal yet. She was nervous about him looking at her like this. She wanted him to like what he saw. He wanted nothing more than to reassure her, but he wouldn’t do it emptily. He planted two fists on either side of her knees and stared down at the part of her body he’d just revealed. There were two little lines on her hips where her underwear had cut in and a small, neat triangle of curls right where her thighs met.

  Phoenix had felt this place on a woman before, but he’d never seen it. And now, he was grateful for that, because he didn’t want to think poorly of any of the other women who’d been kind enough to let him into their bodies, but he knew -he just knew- that none of them could have possibly compared to Ida. The curve of her waist, the tight press of her legs together, her pale skin and red hair and the rush of her blush. She was so gorgeous and exotic and special.

  “You’re like a trout,” he told her.

  Her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, what?”

  He sensed it was the wrong thing to say, especially when her legs were pressed so tightly together still and all he wanted to do was to ease them open and see what she kept there for him. He rushed on in order to explain.

  “Have you ever seen one in a clear stream, in the sunlight? They’re a hundred different colors. Beautiful. And it makes you wonder that nature could ever make something so special. So pretty. And it makes sense and doesn’t make sense at the same time. You look at the fish in the stream and think that it fits in perfectly with the rest of the forest, the squirrels, the pines, the snow in winter. But also, it almost seems like it might be a mistake, because there’s so many colors in the scales, it seems like it’s better than the rest of the world. That it doesn’t fit in. It’s too special and too beautiful to truly fit.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “That’s…” she lifted a hand and touched the side of his face. “That’s a wonderful thing to say.”

  He let out a breath of relief, glad that he hadn’t offended her. He felt her move against him and when he looked down, there was a slim space between her thighs. She was no longer pressing herself away from him. He lowered his face into the space between her legs, just above her knees and felt her soft skin on either side of his face. He heard her gasp, felt goosebumps rise. His heartbeat seemed to increase correspondingly. Every goosebump on her skin represented another frantic beat in his chest.

  He could scent her and at such close range, it made him almost woozy, giddy. He planted his palms at her knees and pushed her legs apart.

  And there she was.

  He made a sound, very much like a wolf, and laid his cheek on her thigh, just looking at that pretty pink place between her legs. He had words, but he’d already said them. He’d never looked at a woman between her legs before, but he was certain that Ida’s place was much more beautiful than any other. It was the same feeling as before. She was, at once, so perfectly of the earth and otherworldly all at once.

  On some deeply driven instinct, her scent drew him forward, his eyes pinned to her soft pink folds. His eyes stayed open as he landed his first kiss against her pussy. He wasn’t a man who dabbled in half-measures, so his mouth was open, his tongue already softly searching, exploring, tasting.

  Ida gasped and immediately arched, one of her hands grabbing a hank of his hair. He ignored the bite of pain simply because he was too caught up in the experience of tasting her for the first time.

  He’d never experienced anything like this before, but he knew, innately, that it was what he was supposed to be doing. She was soft and sweet and wet and warm and welcoming and alluring and forbidden and giving and trembling and taking all at once. He’d never had his head between a woman’s legs, but some deeply primal part of him recognized its rightness. This was it. This was part of who he was. This was deep in his design, part of what made him an animal on this earth. Part of what made him human.

  He took long, swiping licks through her folds, stopping only when he found a little mounded place that made her tremble, say his name, clamp her thighs around his ears. His hands were everywhere at first, but settled at her hips, holding her steady as he worried at that place with the tip of his tongue, watching her for reaction. His eyes took in her grip on the sheets, her grip on her own hair. He took in the sight of her open mouth, gasping for air and saying his name over and over. On a whim, he sucked at her. Her hips retreated slightly and he gentled the suction, her hips pushed into him again and it was all he could do to keep from smiling. He was good at most things he tried, but he really, really wanted to be good at this.

  “You can,” she gasped, “use your fingers too.”

  He looked down at her delicate petals, she looked so soft up close, he tried to picture his blunt, rough fingers touching her there and couldn’t. Sure, he’d plunged his cock into a warm, wet woman before, but that was before he’d really known what she had between her legs, the miracle of it, the gift of it. The instinctual lu
st that he’d felt for those other women was totally different than this aching need to give Ida pleasure.

  “Show me,” he said gruffly, lifting his hand into the air, hers to puppet and direct however she’d like.

  But she didn’t use his hand to show him. Instead she took her own hand, slid it down her body, and sank two of her fingers deeply inside herself. Phoenix blinked at the place where her fingers had just disappeared. Something began to wake up and stir inside of him. That instinctual, primal lust that he’d felt in his past really, really liked the sight of something disappearing into Ida.

  But it should be him.

  He gripped her wrist, pulled her out, and replaced her fingers with his. Phoenix sank two fingers into her hot channel and made an almost wounded sound.

  Yes.

  This.

  Once again, rightness stole over him. This was the person he was supposed to be touching, this was the way he was meant to touch her. He'd never been more sure of anything in his entire life.

  It was strange, for just a flickering moment, that this kind of bone-deep certainty would occur for him when he was in his human form, and not when he was in his wolf form. His human form was so far from comfort for him. He shoved the thought aside, wanting nothing to distract him from losing himself in Ida.

  He explored her from the inside, watching again for reactions from her. She squirmed when he walked his fingers, gasped when he stroked her. She reached down, took his wrist, and turned his hand face up. He stroked her again and her back came up off the bed. On a whim he decided to kiss her and stroke her at the same time.

  He could feel her pulse against him, scent and taste her arousal. She was everything soft and trembling and aroused and flushed and begging him for something. He knew he could give it to her. He was going to give it to her.

  Phoenix was dimly aware of his hips moving against the bed. His cock was painful in its want for her. Any thoughts he’d had of his lust for Ida being softer than his lust for other women were completely dead and gone. This was the sharpest arousal he’d ever experienced. Conflicted and complicated. He wanted to softly lick her until she melted into a puddle, but he also wanted to flip her over and spear himself into her, pin her beneath him. He wanted both to worship the soft petals between her legs and pound into them.