The Shifter's Desire Read online

  He knocked knuckles against his forehead. “Pain might be a little melodramatic. But yeah. Being this close to you is… uncomfortable. Because it’s close enough for me to catch your scent. Feel the heat of you. When your feet brush against me in the night—” He cut himself off with an unholy groan.

  Understanding finally bloomed, and it brought with it a healthy heat just underneath the surface of her skin. Her pulse picked up and she could feel her glow begin. “Ohhhhh. You mean that you can’t stay here because you want to be even closer?”

  In her mind, that was the easiest problem of them all to solve.

  He nodded curtly and pushed off the windows to stride across the room. “Which is why, risk or not, demon or not, I need to just go back downstairs and sle—”

  “You can touch me.”

  He froze as if someone had pushed a button and stopped time. He swore that even the blood in his veins just sort of paused. She was an innocent, he reminded himself. She’d just admitted to barely even being able to recognize attraction for what it was. She had no idea what she was actually offering him.

  It had been a long thirty seconds since she’d spoken—or since he’d taken a breath—so he inhaled hard and turned to her. “Martine.”

  “You don’t want to touch me?” She cocked her head to one side and watched him with those big, green eyes. The shadows dipped into her cleavage lovingly and he could see the golden glow beginning to form a sheen over her skin, like sweat. She couldn’t have possibly known how wildly exciting he found her. How devastatingly sexy she looked.

  She was killing him.

  “I want to touch you but it’s not right, Martine.” He couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He deserved an Olympic medal. He deserved a Nobel prize. He deserved a yacht in heaven for this.

  Why oh why did he have to go and grow a conscience now? He’d been the right-hand man to the devil for the last four hundred years. Would it kill him to act like it? Four hundred years of evil-doing and still his conscience couldn’t even let him defile a virgin when she was asking for it?

  “Why isn’t it right?”

  “You’re an innocent.”

  She considered that for a minute and then, to his equal horror and elation, she rose from the bed and took a step toward him. “You could kiss me.”

  She did that head-cocking thing again. He was holding his breath again.

  “I’d still be an innocent if you just kissed me, right?”

  “I—” Where had all the English gone? It had fled his head like water from a holey bucket. Meanwhile she was getting closer and closer. He could scent her. Her eyes filled up her face.

  “I’d like to kiss,” she told him sweetly. “Kissing feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he told her gruffly. She was standing close enough to touch, her exhales gently swirling over his face.

  She looked up at him, her head tilted back and his tilted down.

  “Don’t you want to make me feel good?” The question was seductive by nature but asked so innocently. The combination of those two things had something deep within Arturo cracking in two.

  She leaned up on her toes and took a sip from his bottom lip.

  He held dangerously still for the longest three seconds of either of their lives. Then his hands clamped around her back and his teeth came out, biting at her lower lip, pinning it in place so that he could taste and taste her.

  He released her lip and kissed her with an open mouth.

  “Flowers,” he muttered to himself, twisting his face away from hers to breathe. And then his mouth was back again. He licked the seam of her lips, swallowing her gasp. “No. Fresh cream.”

  Impatiently, one of his hands gripped her chin and held her in place ruthlessly. He grunted against her mouth and dipped inside for taste after taste. “No. What is that? Coconut? Jesus, what the hell is that flavor?”

  He asked that last part with his eyes half an inch from hers, their noses jammed together and his chest sawing up and down. Martine, fascinated, aroused, terrified of breaking his mystifying mood, just held perfectly still and stared right back at him.

  Apparently deciding that standing was too much of an impediment to getting to the bottom of whatever the hell that flavor was, Arturo walked them backward toward the bed. He didn’t stop their inertia even when the backs of her knees caught on the mattress and there was nowhere for her to go but flat on her back. He prowled over top of her, slipped one palm around the back of her neck, and tipped her head back.

  His tongue was in her mouth again, dipping and tasting and he growled once more. “Almond? Vanilla? Ambrosia? Jesus fuck, what is it that you taste like?”

  His weight was deliciously hard over top of her, pressing her into the mattress. He seemed obsessed with getting to the bottom of her taste as he licked and licked into her. He was restless and agitated and obviously aroused.

  Her eyes fluttered closed as she tentatively, finally, met his tongue with hers, pressing softly for just the shyest second.

  As if she’d set some sort of spell over him, all at once, he softened at the touch of her tongue. His manic energy dissipated and his tongue no longer swept through her mouth in hot arcs. Both of his arms slid under her back, clasping her tightly, but his tongue had become impossibly chaste.

  They kissed each other with the softness with which one strokes the petal of an orchid. She felt as if she were a wild animal he was coaxing out of a forest. Every shuddered breath of his that broke across her cheek reminded her that he was a great beast of a man and he was being so soft with her. The thought had her glowing and heating and liquefying. She’d tasted his desire for her in their first clash of mouths. But this was something else.

  It was such an intoxicating mixture of power and restraint, heat and withholding. She strained against him, needing something, everything, but not knowing exactly how to get it. She glowed intensely gold, and found that if she didn’t rub against him immediately, she might just dissolve into thin air.

  She struggled to get her legs out from under him, but he held her pinned tight.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he growled, giving her even more of his weight.

  “What?” she gasped, nearly whimpering when he lowered his mouth and kissed the pulse at her throat.

  “We’re just kissing, Martine. I’m not letting you wrap those fucking legs around me and sweep me away into infinity, all right? You’re going to lay very still, and kiss the hell out of me, and then we’re going to bed.”

  She kept wiggling her legs. “Why?”

  “Because I said so,” he snapped, lowering his head to hers again.

  But that was an assholish thing to say and he wasn’t the only one in charge here. She pressed two fingers into the soft place above his collar bone and zapped him brightly with a tiny, golden lightning bolt.

  Arturo gasped and tightened and she easily rolled him over to his back. She found herself spread across him in the same way she had been that first night in the dirt. The needy place between her legs was pressed flush against him and she shivered with the sheer rightness of the feeling.

  “You zapped me,” he growled, his eyes dark and his chest heaving up and down.

  Martine nodded, an eyebrow raised, her eyes lasered to his. She brought her golden energy out on her lips like a sheen of fine lip gloss. She pointedly lowered her head slowly. And when their lips touched again, she let her energy zap him again.

  “Guh.” His hands on her back clenched immediately into fists.

  She couldn’t tell whether he’d liked it or not so she planted her hands on either side of his head and started to tug away. Her question was immediately answered when he chased her upwards, his mouth clamping on to hers as they sat up on the mattress. He guided her legs around his back as his hand found its way into her hair, holding her fast.

  Their kisses were just as soft as before, a featherlight slide punctuated by slick glances of the tongue. Martine let her energy touch his mouth
again and, just like before, he stiffened hard against her.

  He said something against her lips but it was muffled and she wasn’t listening anyways. She was too busy being wildly distracted by her own hips. Which seemed to have taught themselves some ancient dance that was completely new to Martine. They both shuddered when she dragged herself up and forward, only to lift her hips and do it again.

  “Fuck.”

  That expletive wasn’t muffled at all. In fact, it was panted, clear as a bell, directly into her ear. Arturo’s hands were hard at her hips and their temples were jammed together as she increased the pace of her hips over his.

  Her nightgown was pooled at her hips and the seams of his jeans were pulling at her skin, but she didn’t care. She just wanted more. She wanted faster. She wanted—

  “Oh!” she jumped when something blue and fast snapped against her skin in at least four different places.

  “Shit!” Arturo snarled. He lifted her up off his hips, dumped her over to the side on the bed and jumped away from her. He landed on his feet, leaning his fisted hands onto the bed.

  Martine lay in a tangled heap, halfway on her side, her breaths fast and useless, her arms flung over her head.

  He was breathing equally hard. Unfortunately, he also looked utterly horrified. “My energy,” he said through his panting. “I couldn’t stop it. It got you.”

  “Right,” she agreed. She’d been there, she’d known exactly what had happened. It hadn’t surprised her at all.

  “God.” He stood up and dragged two palms over his face at once. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

  Martine shook her head to clear it. He wasn’t making any sense at all. “Hurt?” She sat up but didn’t bother to drag her nightgown back down over her legs. “Why would I be hurt?”

  “Because I zapped you with my energy!” He flung his arms out to the sides.

  “Arturo, you try and zap me with your energy at least twice a week.” To show him what she meant, she pointed her hand toward him, sending a golden ball of energy shooting toward him. He flicked it away easily, thoughtlessly, with his own blue energy, negating it. “See? Just like that.”

  “That’s different,” he insisted, his hands jamming into the pockets of his jeans. He looked adorably boyish with his hair sticking up in ten directions and that obstinate expression on his face.

  “Why?”

  “Because all those other times I didn’t have two handfuls of your ass and your tongue in my mouth. Wings, I know I’m an asshole, but I don’t want to actually hurt you. Especially during sex. Jesus!”

  “Oh,” she said as she cocked her head to one side. “Was that sex? Somehow I thought there’d be more.”

  He paced away from her, his hands knotted in his hair. “That wasn’t—there is more—just the beginning—fuck!”

  “Arturo, your energy doesn’t actually hurt me, you know that, right?”

  He turned around and eyed her suspiciously.

  “Did mine hurt you? When we were kissing?” she asked pointedly.

  “No,” he answered slowly.

  “Did it feel good?”

  His voice dropped an octave. “Yes.”

  “If you liked it so much then why wouldn’t I like it?”

  He threw his hands out to the side again like this was supposed to be obvious. However she was getting the distinct impression that this wasn’t actually obvious to either of them. “Because your first sex isn’t supposed to be… zappy. And it’s not supposed to be with the right-hand man of a demon, okay? Your first sex is supposed to be with—with—”

  She waited patiently, but when he didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything, she cut in again. “Arturo, I like zappy. I’m made of that zap, remember?” She pointed at her chest. “Light being.”

  That, at least, seemed to slow his roll a little bit. He pursed his lips, stymied.

  “I have to think about this.”

  “Does that mean we aren’t going to be kissing anymore tonight?”

  “How could you ask me that? Wings, I can’t control my energy around you. I almost hurt you!”

  “I think I was provoking you with my energy. What if I promise to keep mine all locked up tight and I’ll only do exactly what you tell me to do? No wrestling. No legs around your waist.”

  He eyed her like she was tricking him. “I should be able to control myself whether or not your energy is provoking mine.”

  She arched an eyebrow and gave him the most condescending expression anyone had ever dared to give him. “Arturo, I happen to be a lot more powerful than you are. Of course you’re finding it hard to control yourself around me, okay?”

  He would have bristled if he weren’t a hundred percent sure that she was dead right. “Fine. We can keep kissing. But don’t push my limits. If one of us has to sleep on the floor, don’t expect me to be a gentleman. It’ll be your ass cuddling with the floorboards.”

  She grinned and slid backwards on the bed, making room for him. He prowled forward and followed her backwards. It was only when he was fitted over top of her, his hands tangled in her hair and his mouth sipping from hers again, that she realized she needn’t have worried. This was always going to happen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Arturo woke up in an absolutely foul mood. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, every muscle in his body ached, his lips were chapped, he was wildly dehydrated, the sun beat on his clenched eyelids, and worst of all, he was alone in the bed.

  He rolled over and glared at the clock through slitted eyes.

  Well, perhaps the fact that it was 10:45 in the morning explained why he was the only one in the bedroom. Martine and the other shifters would have already been at shifter practice for at least three hours.

  He wondered what time she’d left the bed. They hadn’t fallen asleep until 5 am. And by ‘fall asleep’ he meant pass out mid-makeout. He hadn’t wanted to stop their luxurious, languid kissing for anything short of an earthquake, but he’d taken the hint when her lips had stopped moving and her hands had gone lax on his back.

  He’d watched her sleep then, for at least fifteen minutes as the sun started to rise. He hadn’t been able to believe it.

  He still couldn’t.

  He scowled down the sheets at the enormous erection he doubted would subside even if his head were chopped off right that very second. The sun was too bright, he hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and he felt strangely juvenile.

  He’d spent the night making out with a pretty girl and woke up too late with a raging boner.

  Now, he was supposed to go downstairs and face everyone? He figured he should just wait until all of them were in the same room and he could get it all over with at once.

  Fine. You all win. I’m a fool. I care. I want something again. There’s one thing in my life worth living for. What a fucking joke.

  Arturo dragged the blankets off of himself and made the bed as crisply as possible. Twisted sheets were insult to injury at this point.

  He slipped down to his room without running into anyone and soothed his ruffled feathers with a blisteringly hot shower, a wincingly close shave, and one of his new button-up shirts.

  Of course he’d finally want someone again right before he was about to die. And right before she was about to die.

  Because their lives were connected to the same evil sack of shit they were both chomping at the bit to kill.

  He emerged into the kitchen and made eye contact with no one.

  He could sense Caroline and Thea and Celia all watching him with raised eyebrows. He took the last cold inch of coffee in the pot and slugged it back like medicine. He was very aware that they’d been talking before he came in.

  “Carry on,” he growled at them, grabbing an apple from the bowl and slamming himself down in one of the seats at the table.

  “Anyway,” Thea said, rolling her eyes in Arturo’s stormy direction. “Jack was holding on to it for Jean Luc.” She was holding Celia’s hand up to the light, tipping the ring
this way and that to catch the light. “I found it in his backpack when we got to Utah and I almost had a coronary.”

  Celia hesitated. “Oh, jeez. I don’t know what to say. Now I feel like a dick for rubbing it in your face.”

  “No!” Thea insisted. “Seriously, C. That ring is so perfectly you. And I think I was more freaked out than I was excited. Ask Caroline.”

  “It’s true. She was super flustered over the whole thing. This ring is so perfectly you. But it would have been totally left-field if Jack had bought it for Thea, you know? Not her style at all.”

  Celia studied the ring and laughed. “I guess you’re right. It would have been a little out of character for you to walk around with a giant gemstone rainbow on your finger for the rest of time.”

  “Martine said that this would be good magic against the demon,” Caroline said, tilting Celia’s hand in the light just as Thea had done.

  “She said what?” Arturo asked, unable to maintain such an aloof demeanor for any longer.

  Caroline turned to him. “Martine said that light and color were two of the best ways of keeping the demon at bay. Like vampires and garlic.”

  Arturo’s brow furrowed. “So, just complete old wives’ tale then.”

  He’d never heard anything like that, and he’d lived under the demon’s thumb for four hundred years.

  Caroline shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like we could just all go to the jewelry store, get blinged out, and then be perfectly safe from the demon, but yeah. She said that the more light and color we have in our lives, the safer we’ll be.”

  Arturo scowled as he thought of her golden light. He thought of the slash in his chest every time his gaze clashed with her bright green eyes. He thought of her strawberry hair in the sun. She was the embodiment of light and color.

  And there was literally no way for her to protect herself from the demon. When he died, she died.

  Arturo stood and ignored the confused voices calling after him as he stalked out of the kitchen and through the back door.