by Selena Scott
It wasn’t a riddle he was supposed to answer, he knew this. This was a feeling to revel in, not to tease apart.
So he kept at her with his mouth and fingers, her hands tugging at his hair, her body arched and shaking.
He felt her heels at his shoulder blades, her hips came up off the bed and then her body was squeezing his fingers in a rhythmic hold that made precome slide wetly down his shaft.
Suddenly, she fell delightfully limp against the bed. He instinctually gentled his touch against her, but even that seemed to be too much. Her hand was against his cheek again and she drew him up, away from what had quickly become his favorite place on earth.
She was soft and breathing hard and his face somehow landed smack in the middle of her chest. There was too much fabric there. He scrabbled and pulled at her bra until she laughed and swatted him away.
“It works like this.” She slipped her bunched up dress off her head and turned around, showing him how to work the clasp on her bra. Even after watching her do it, he had no clue how to work it himself. He scowled at it as he tossed it aside. Maybe he could convince her to go braless.
He was hot and tight and irritable and satisfied all at once. His dick felt like it was in danger of strangling to death inside his clothes. He nuzzled at Ida’s breasts and felt both soothed and more worked up. He needed to end this torture.
Normally, he might have just flipped her over and put himself out of his misery, but he was learning now how many ways there were to find pleasure with someone and some internal reservoir of curiosity was keeping him from suggesting that they fuck this tightness out of his groin.
Ida, meanwhile, was still luxuriating in her own release. She stretched her arms over her head, her body gloriously naked. “Mmmm,” she said, her eyes half closed behind her glasses. “That was wonderful. The most wonderful. I can’t believe you’ve never done that before. You’re an expert already.”
He preened at the compliment, fiddling with her nipples, sipping at them, needing something badly and not knowing how to get it.
Ida reached up and took off her glasses. “Your turn,” she said, tugging at the waistband of his pants.
His turn? He wasn’t sure what she was talking about but he liked where she was going with this. Her hands were everywhere, under his shirt, slicking under the waistband of his pants, plucking at the elastic of his underwear. She slid off the bed, taking his legs with her so that he sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his hands and looking down at her.
Images and feelings snapped through his head but he didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know what came next. She tugged at his pants and he lifted his hips, allowing her to pull his pants and underwear down to his ankles.
He was exposed then, completely vulnerable to her. Even though he was still mostly dressed, he’d never been this naked and this close to a person. In his past life, he’d always just fucked with his clothes almost completely in place, the woman facing away from him, her hands safely supporting her own weight.
But Ida’s hands were everywhere. Touching his hips, his lower belly, his thighs. She was careful, he noticed, not to touch his scarring. But any thoughts of his injury melted away as she knelt between his legs, her hands on his thighs and her eyes on his. His cock was bare and hard and bobbing between them. He was so ungodly hot for her, off-kilter because he didn’t know what was coming next, exposed to the intimacy of the moment. His heart was fight or flighting in his chest, his breath coming in sharp panting breaths that hurt on the way in and the way out.
That’s when both her hands moved, sliding up and circling his cock, one after the other. She was eye level with it, licking her lips and watching him for reaction. He was a solid, sustained bolt of lightning in her grip. A live wire, freeze-frame. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to get him through this moment.
Her hands on him were heaven. Nothing could be better—
And then she put her mouth on him.
Holy god-d-d-d-d. “Humans do this?”
She chuckled and pulled off of him. “Yes,” she answered the question he’d barely been aware of asking.
Putting his mouth on a woman’s pussy seemed obvious to him, once he’d seen it in the porn video. Soft and sweet perfection, who wouldn’t want to do that? But his brain hadn’t automatically skipped to the converse action. It hadn’t occurred to him that people might want to do the same thing for a man. That a mouth would go there…
“Fuck. Shit. Goddammit.” He wouldn’t normally swear this much in front of Ida, but her mouth was hot and firm and she was sucking on him. Her fist was working him as well, taking everything her mouth couldn’t. She worked her mouth down his shaft, and then there was some inner part of her that closed around him. She was swallowing him down, he realized.
“Do that again,” he demanded, begged, prayed.
She did and this time, when she came up for air, her tongue swirled around the head of him.
She came off of him. “You like this?” she asked breathlessly.
He blinked down into her face, trying like hell to understand english. “More.”
She bent back over him, a little smile on her face, when he realized that there was something off about the way she looked. Ah. She’d taken off her glasses.
He didn’t like that one bit. Her glasses were what she used to see and what there was for her to see was him. He wanted her to see him, especially while his cock was in her mouth. He wanted her to remember exactly who it was that she was with at that moment.
He slicked a hand in her hair and pulled her off his cock. Her eyes flashed and he knew she’d liked that move. With his other hand he scrabbled for her glasses on the nightstand and tried to put them on her face. She took over the risky maneuver and put her glasses on, this time swallowing him down so far she choked just a little.
His hand was still tangled in her hair so he reflexively pulled her off of himself, not wanting her to choke. When her bright, intelligent gaze hit his, he realized that that was exactly what she’d wanted him to do. She was asking him to guide her up and down with his hand.
So, that’s exactly what he did. Without really asking himself to, suddenly he was standing and Ida’s hands were around the backs of his thighs, gripping him tightly, her eyes open and clear, peering up at him from behind her glasses.
Again, he didn’t ask them to, but his hips starting moving, jutting forward into her mouth, soft, tentative strokes at first, and then, at her encouragement, deeper, slower strokes. Strokes that left him gasping in tension as she gave a swirling suck to the head of his cock each time he pulled her back far enough.
And then, one last time, his body did something without his permission. His orgasm was sudden and sharp, so hard it was almost painful. But that didn’t mean it was quick. She swallowed and sucked and tugged at him, and every time he thought it might be over, she took more from him, greedily tugging every last bit of his pleasure from him. His legs were shaking by the time he finally stopped coming, both hands in her hair and his cock jumping in her mouth. She came off him and then gave him a quick, sweet little kiss on the tip before she looked up at him and grinned.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She was going to assume that him collapsing back onto the bed like a rag doll was a good sign. His breath sawed in and out of his chest and even with his clothes sweaty and pulled every which way, he was beautiful. Simply gorgeous.
He was the most stunning man she’d ever seen in her life. And she wasn’t thinking that just because she’d had his man-parts in her mouth. Well, maybe that was part of it. Love drunk was a thing, after all, but still, Ida thought his beauty to be remarkable.
He stirred a little bit and tugged listlessly at the collar of his shirt. One of his eyes cracked.
“Ida, if you wouldn’t mind,” he started.
“You wanna get naked?” she asked, reading his mind a little bit. She knew how important it was to him to follow human rules and not violate her. But seeing as they’d just
had a particularly energetic round of oral sex -his first ever- she wanted him to be as comfortable as possible.
“Yes.” He sat up and tugged at his shirt and she tugged at his socks and pants and underwear. And then he was naked and she was naked and there was nowhere to go but his open arms. He tugged her close and rolled them both under the covers of her bed where he arranged her onto his right side, tucking the sheets carefully over his left side.
“Phoenix,” she asked gently, resisting the urge to untuck the sheets that were hiding his scarring from her. “Everything all right?”
“Yes,” he murmured and lapsed into silence, his arms tight around her, his breath in her hair.
After ten minutes of laying just like that, she pushed up a little bit. “I’m kinda thinking that maybe you’re not all right.”
She didn’t want to push him. He was bound to feel a little funny after having done something so intimate for the first time. But she wanted to give him the opportunity to talk about it if he wanted to.
“I’m… confused,” he said after a second, his eyes on the ceiling.
“Do you want to talk about it? Questions I could answer?”
He shook his head, his eyes on the ceiling still.
They fell back into silence.
“Phoenix,” she said after ten more minutes of silence. “You know that your scars don’t offend me, right? I hate that you experienced so much pain, but I think you’re the most attractive man in the world, and the scars are a part of you. You don’t have to hide them from me.”
That got his attention. His dark eyes were on her again, blinking, taking her in. A moment passed before he untucked the sheet and turned onto his side, facing her, his injured side facing up.
His eyes still on hers, he slowly lifted one arm, inviting her to look at his scars. She did just that. She thought she’d have to school her expression to keep from showing any of her dismay on her face, but she didn’t have to. His burn scars were a complicated, knotted organism on his side. Some parts shiny and smooth and too tight, other parts pitted and angry. He still had a long way to go with healing and from what Ida had read, she knew that the healing would involve musculoskeletal pain as well as nerve pain. But there was nothing ugly about them. No part of her wanted to shy away from him. If anything, his scars made her want to pull even closer to him.
God, he bore it all so quietly. Stoically. She wished she could carry it for him. Give him some relief. Without thinking, she laid a soft palm over his scarred hip and pressed her forehead to his chest, needing to soothe in any way that she could.
“Ida,” he groaned, rolling to his back and hugging her to his chest. “You’re confusing me even more.”
Her head popped up. “Really? What do you mean? I’m not meaning to confuse you. Let me help!”
He laughed and leaned up to press a kiss to her lips. She marveled at what a fast turnaround he’d made on his stance on kissing. A week ago he’d been strongly against the act in all forms. Today he’d made out with her woman-parts for damn near fifteen minutes.
“I just mean that I didn’t think being human would… feel this good,” he admitted after a moment. “I just thought it would be something to endure until I—”
He cut off but Ida knew what he was going to say. Until he went back into his permanent wolf form. Back to the wilderness. Back to his real life. Of course. How could she have let herself forget? Even for a little while. He had no intention to live in her world. He only intended to heal and leave.
“But,” he continued. “But now that I know what it’s like to be naked in a bed with you. Your warm skin. Your hair across my chest. Now that I know what it’s like to be inside your mouth. To have you inside mine…” He groaned again and pressed his head back into the pillow. “How am I supposed to leave all that to the human world?”
Ida’s stomach knotted. She had the distinct impression that his questions were not rhetorical. That he was actually asking her for advice. Advice on how to leave her when all this was done. For the first time since she’d met him, Ida felt herself resistant to helping him. She knew the answer. In fact, she’d been intending to tell him the answer next week when he asked to be her boyfriend. But the words felt like burning chalk dust in her throat when she tried to push them out now.
She already knew that she couldn’t truly get involved with a man who was going to leave her. Fooling around was one thing, but real commitment? This, today, was the furthest she’d ever gone with someone she wasn’t committed to.
She and Phoenix lived in different worlds. Not today they didn’t. But some day soon he’d heal and be on his way and she’d have to be okay with that. He’d never been anything but honest with her. Even now. Even right now, he was taking the hard route and reminding her that he was temporary. This was temporary. Even though he could have just rolled her over and taken things even further between them, he didn’t do that. Because even if he was a wolf, he was still a good, honest man.
He deserved that kind of honesty from her.
“Did you know that I had a brother?” she asked quietly, her fingers tracing his dark chest hair.
He stiffened a little. “No. I didn’t know.”
“He was a shifter. A black bear.”
Phoenix tipped her back and peered down at her. “But you’re not.”
“Right. That can happen sometimes. My parents aren’t either. Sometimes the mutation skips a few generations. My mom’s mom was a shifter and my dad’s uncle was one. So, I guess they both had the gene and my brother got it, but I didn’t.”
Phoenix thought for a long moment. “Lonely,” he mused in a low voice. “For both of you. Not to be like the other one. I couldn’t imagine being a shifter if my siblings weren’t like me.”
Ida squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. It was painful how clearly and swiftly he saw to the heart of the matter. “Yes. It was lonely at times, for both of us. But we were also very close to one another. We used to play together when he’d shift. He was always so careful with me. Gentle. Sweet. Not harmful or out of control at all.”
“He lived illegally?”
“Yeah. My parents kept it a secret. Made sure we knew how serious it all was. That if anyone ever found out he’d be taken away.”
“He’s dead?”
Ida winced at the blunt question but knew that that was just Phoenix’s unschooled way. It wasn’t him being impolite.
“Yes. He died in his last year of high school. He was at a dance. Prom. Do you know what prom is?”
Phoenix nodded his head. “Like on that TV show we watched the other week.”
She smiled and nodded. He was learning so much in his time in the human world. “Right. He went with this girl he’d really liked, but her twin brother hated him. Didn’t want her to date. He thought Ian was sketchy, started following him around.”
Phoenix’s eyes darkened. “He discovered your brother was a shifter.”
“Yeah. I think—” Ida’s voice quavered because this was the hard part, this was the part that had taken her a few years in therapy to really understand. To forgive. “I’m pretty sure that he didn’t know what would happen when he publicly accused Ian of being a shifter. It was on stage at the dance. Everyone gasped, jumped away, started running from Ian. Including his date. There were community officers there, just as a way to keep kids from drinking or having sex in the parking lot, that kind of thing. But one of them called and reported Ian right away. I tried to get him to leave, but he didn’t want to go without talking to his date. She was long gone, though. It wasn’t twenty minutes later that they came and picked him up. All they had to do was some sort of blood test and they knew exactly what he was. They put him in an SUV and took him away. To the nearest shifter camp.”
“You were there? For all of it?”
Ida’s eyes stung with tears and Phoenix held her even closer. “Yeah. It was the last time I saw him alive.”
“What happened to him?”
“He tried to escape.
Shifted in the car. Made it halfway out of the vehicle before they shot him dead. Apparently the officer who shot thought he was shooting tranquilizers. Either way, my brother never even made it to the camp. The news outlets all spun the story to make it seem either like he’d been a dangerous threat to the officers in the car or that he knew what was going to happen, that it was his way of committing suicide. It wasn’t either. I knew my brother. He was just a kid, really. He just wanted to get out of there any way that he could.”
Phoenix’s arms tightened around Ida. “I’m so sorry, Ida,” he whispered into her hair. “To lose a sibling… that’s unimaginable.”
“I’m telling you this for a reason," she said, rolling off of him and up onto her elbows, staring him full in the face for the first time since they’d gotten naked together. “I learned, in a brutal way, that life is short. My brother’s was just eighteen years long.” She took a deep breath and pitched him the idea that had been rolling around in her head since she’d discovered that he’d quit the center for her. “This thing between us, it’s intense. But it doesn’t have to be painful, you know?”
He eyed her, obviously wary of the direction she was taking this. He neither agreed or disagreed with her statement.
She took a deep breath. “Look, Phoenix. I want to be a source of happiness for you. Not one of dread or strife. When we hook up, wouldn’t you rather think, dang that was so great, than how am I going to live without that? I think there’s something really great between us. An attraction. It would be dumb to pretend there wasn’t. But I also think there’s no reason to make it all more complicated with commitment. The way I see it, there’s two ways we could go. We could step back and pretend we don’t want to keep getting naked together, or we could continue exploring this thing in a casual way. And, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t talk ourselves out of a good thing just because it’s got an expiration date on it.”
