by Chant, Zoe
Sensible friendship was really not enough. Not for Sarah, not with this man. Not if she had any choice about it. Even if it was only going to last a few weeks, she would rather be broken-hearted and mourn when it ended than miss the chance to have it all, even for a little while.
Because she was going to be broken-hearted. She'd known Matthew Rojas four days and had somehow already fallen in love with him.
She wondered what her expression was, because his went a little funny, all crinkly with confused interest. "What are you thinking?"
"That I'd really like you to come in with me," Sarah replied, very softly.
His gaze became very intense suddenly, full of heat that far outstripped the warmth of the cooling truck engine. "I think I should tell you that if I come in, it will not be with pure intentions."
All at once Sarah was breathless, partly with desire and partly with laughter. "That's okay. My intentions aren't pure either."
"Oh, good." Matthew pulled her close and covered her mouth with his with such confidence that Sarah went weak in the knees. He tasted good. He smelled good. He was so strong and warm and her brain was, she thought, melting. In the best possible way. Their kiss deepened in urgency and he turned her against the truck's grill, leaning into her with unmistakable presence. After a couple of breathless minutes, he mumbled, "In. We were gonna go...in..."
Sarah's knees actually buckled with a wave of raw desire. "Or here is good."
The look in Matthew's eyes went absolutely carnal. "Here is great." He started to push the straps of her overalls off her shoulders, then suddenly stopped and said, "I have no idea how to get this thing off you."
Sarah laughed. "I bet you can figure it out."
"Yeah, no, you're right, it's just that once I do you're going to be a lot more naked than me all at once and maybe that's too much..." His explanation went along with unbuckling the straps and pushing the overalls down, though he stopped with his hands on her hips, still holding them up just a little.
"It's really not," Sarah promised. "It's really not too much at all. But here, let me help..." She tugged his shirt upward, which made him have to let go of her hips. The overalls slid down as his shirt slid off, and she smiled through a wave of heat. "See, there, that's fair. God, look at you. Jeez. Wow." He was every bit as strongly built as he looked in clothes, with amazing definition that belied his librarian profession. All planes and angles, like the glorious features of his face. She almost didn't dare touch him, he was so perfect.
Except she wanted so much to touch him, and he was so warm and strong. She put her hands against his chest and he shuddered, a soft response. "Your hands are cold."
"They're really not," Sarah protested. "You're just really, really hot."
"S'okay. I like cold hands."
"Oh really." Impishness ran through Sarah and she slid her hand down his stomach under the waistband of his jeans, and curled her fingers around the impressive length of him.
They said, "Oh my God," simultaneously for different reasons, and Matthew stood there in a glaze for a few seconds, pressing into her touch before he shuddered again. "Maybe you better...not...yet..."
Wicked delight sluiced through her. "No?"
"No, but..." He swallowed roughly and kissed her again, and somehow when the kiss broke she wasn't wearing anything but her sandals anymore. Matthew lifted her all the way up onto the truck's hood, where his shirt lay, protecting her bottom from the engine heat, and buried his face in her breasts with kisses and soft touches. Those kisses dropped lower and lower, until his tongue was between her thighs.
Sarah collapsed backward, gasping, then yelped at the truck's heat and arched her back away from it. She was rewarded with Matthew's hands sliding beneath her and drawing her closer, until she was on the very edge of a crescendo of pleasure.
Then Matthew lifted his head, eyes dark and sparkling, to murmur, "What's your favorite position?"
"What?" Nobody had ever asked her that before and a flush of excited embarrassment rushed through her.
"What's your favorite position?" he asked again, his voice a rumble right above her pelvic bone. "I want to give you exactly what you want. What you like best. I want to be perfect for you."
Sarah's whole body, even her voice, trembled. "I like...honestly, I really like...I like it from behind..."
All at once she was off the hood and facing it, Matthew behind her, his body and his breath warm against her. He was still wearing his jeans, which, from Sarah's perspective, seemed like a terrible idea, but his hands were busy with her nipples and breasts, which made it hard to think. "Yes?"
"Yes. Except you—" Sarah tried reaching backward, looking for the waistband of his jeans, but he chuckled and distracted her again with his hands on her breasts.
"Let me," he breathed. A moment later he was naked too, pressed against her and promising, "I've got protection," before whispering, "From behind, up against a vintage truck," in a voice that sounded almost agonized with anticipation. "You are the sexiest, most incredible woman I have ever met."
Truthfully, she had never felt sexier, or hornier, and a shivering gasp escaped her at his words. "You too. Matthew, please, please...?"
He slid inside her as if he'd always belonged there. Sarah cried out, and his fingers slipped between her thighs, re-awakening the barely-muted build of pleasure there. Within seconds, it crested with intense waves that left her sobbing helplessly for breath, but it didn't end with her first orgasm.
Matthew's fingers were gentle, patient, teasing a new build that increased with his gentle strokes inside of her. Sarah, braced and pleading, cried out again as what had been gentle became more urgent, until release swept them both together. They stood together, trembling and gasping, as one, for a long time after, until Matthew dropped a kiss on her shoulder, and promised, "I'm only just getting started."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It took a long time to get out of the garage, and longer to get out of the shower, and the only reason the next stop wasn't the bedroom was that Sarah's stomach rumbled loudly enough for Matthew to hear. He ordered a truly epic amount of Chinese food to be delivered, and when it arrived, they curled up on the couch together and ate it while debating the relative merits of the BBC versus the 2005 Pride & Prejudice.
The former, according to Sarah, was the superior, if for no other reason than its lasting contribution to film and TV: the necessity of seeing Mr. Darcy in a wet white shirt in any further adaptation of the book. Jane Austen, she maintained, would have been shocked to her very toes. Matthew, with a self-confessed weakness for Keira Knightly, liked the 2005 version better, but was willing to concede the wet shirt's scene's importance, while Sarah agreed that the swingset time passage scene in the Knightly version was genuinely exceptional.
"Although I don't see how you could possibly have a weakness for Kiera Knightly and also think I'm the sexiest woman you've ever seen," she added as she broke open a fortune cookie.
"Oh, I mean, she's very pretty and all, but I don't think she's sexy, necessarily. I just like her movies," Matthew explained, and Sarah laughed. She had the most wonderful laugh. He wished he could spend the rest of his life making her laugh.
The hard part was knowing he probably could. All it would take was giving up everything else he'd planned.
Romantic movies made that choice look so easy.
Of course, romantic movies also almost always expected the woman to give up on all of her big city plans for the small-town love of her life. Matt already knew he wouldn't—couldn't—ask that of Sarah. She belonged in Virtue. He was the one who needed to figure out what he could stand to give up, and what he couldn't. Sarah, still smiling, reached across him and got a fortune cookie from the stack of boxes their dinner had come from. "Fair enough, I like her movies too. Oh, my fortune says there are great things ahead of me. 'In bed.'"
"It says that?" Matthew sat up, trying to see it, and Sarah laughed again.
"No, don't you know that thing? Where you'
re supposed to add 'in bed' to any fortune you get? I'm personally looking forward to the great things ahead of me in bed." She leered, and a flush of heat rose in Matthew. They'd hardly been out of bed (metaphorically, at least) for the past five hours, and he, too, was looking forward to more great things ahead of them.
He cracked open his cookie. A shock of sudden, unexpected pain—almost guilt—stabbed him as he read it. What you choose to do now will affect the rest of your life.
See?!? his bear yelled. Even food knows!
"Matt?" Sarah sounded worried. "Are you okay? You went pale."
"Yeah. Just, uh." He couldn't brush it off without lying, and he suddenly realized he really didn't want to lie to Sarah about anything. "I got a little melodramatic over my fortune." He handed it to her and she read it, then smiled.
"Well, what we choose to do at any time affects the rest of our lives, doesn't it? In big ways or small, but it affects us."
If bears stamped their feet in a tantrum, Matthew's would be doing so now. That's not what it means! It means you need to stay with her!
Hush, Matthew said quietly. I hear you, but let me figure this out. Let me figure out who I— His breath caught as he realized the importance of what he was asking. Let me figure out who I want to be, Oso.
You are who you are, the bear said, bewildered.
What I want to be, then. I wanted to be an archivist in the greatest city in the world. I wanted to live in a place that everybody in the world lived in, too. Now...now I don't know. But right now, we have a few weeks before I'm supposed to leave. Let us just enjoy it. I don't want this to be spoiled.
Meat spoils! Mates don't!
I don't want to spend my time being sad or arguing with you, Matt clarified. Sarah knows as well as I do that my contract is only a month long. Right now this is just...a moment in time for us.
It should be forever, his bear said sullenly.
Oso, I'm trying to figure out how it can be. Please let me.
The bear, still feeling sullen, went silent.
The conversation had only taken an instant, but when Matthew looked up, it was to find Sarah watching him with concern again. "I'm all right," he promised, but even he could hear that his tone was uncertain.
Sarah frowned, leaning forward to stretch her hands toward him. "Here's what I think. I think you're all right in the sense that you're not going to die horribly of something dreadful, but that you're not all right in the sense that something is definitely bothering you. Do you want to talk about it? Oh." Dismay crashed across her face. "Is it us? Is this too much?"
Matthew blurted, "No!"
Relief replaced the dismay on Sarah's face, but even the relief was wiped away when Matt, helplessly, said, "It is us, sort of. But not the way you think."
Sarah managed a cautious, uncertain smile. "Okay. Now I'm confused. Can you explain it?"
"I can. I'm just a little afraid you'll...maybe not like it."
"Is it worse than 'I turn into a bear?'"
Matt wrinkled his face. "Similar to it?"
"Woo." Sarah sat back, expression serious, then spread her hands, palms up. "Okay. Tell me, because I think imagining it must be worse than whatever it really is."
"Right. Okay." Matthew exhaled, then had to hold his breath again for a moment to nerve himself up. "Do you remember that I said shifters have mates?"
"Fated mates," Sarah said promptly. "Magic love stories. Sure. Strange, scary, kind of wonderful. I remember. Why?"
"I think you're my fated mate."
The words seemed so blunt, so forceful, but Matthew didn't know how to soften them. Sarah's gaze went almost blank with astonishment, and her silence was broken by nothing more than a couple of blinks. It felt like an awfully long time before she said, "Do...like, I'm not a shifter. Would I feel it too?"
Whatever Matt had expected as a response, that wasn't it. "I'm not entirely sure. Not in exactly the same way, maybe. I have—the bear part of me, it has a voice of its own. All shifters have that. And the animal...knows. Humans don't have the inner voice, so I...I don't know? My mother called it love at first sight, though, when she met mi papá."
"No, yeah, that...that makes sense." Sarah sounded stunned. "When I first saw you, wow. I'm not usually just blown away by somebody. I don't know that I would have called it love at first sight, but it was...it was sure something."
Matthew's heart knocked hard in his chest. "You believe me? You're okay with that?"
"I believe we've got some kind of connection, for sure. If it's fate, if that's an actual thing for shifters, then...yeah, I guess I do believe it. And I'm okay with it, but..." She trailed off, her eyebrows making worried creases.
Matt's heart sank. "But what?"
"But it's not an easy happily-ever-after, is it?" Sarah asked quietly. "I guess I thought love at first sight would be, but...not that I'm trying to push you away, please understand that, but I know you have plans. You have a job in the city waiting for you. And I'm not going to leave Virtue, Matt. This is my home."
"I know." Matthew twisted a smile downward, then met Sarah's eyes again. "At first when my bear said you were my mate, I just didn't believe it, because of exactly that. We have such different lives. Such different plans. I've lived in big cities since I was eight, and I've never wanted to go back to a small town, or to stop doing what I do for a living. So when I started to realize that my bear was right...I don't know what to do, Sarah."
"Neither do I." Sarah folded her hands in front of her mouth, studying him quietly for long moments. "I have some questions."
Despite himself, Matthew laughed. "So do I. Many, many questions."
Sarah grinned. "Yeah, but maybe you can answer these ones. First off—wait!" Her voice shot up. "Wait, Matt! Is this why you thought you wouldn't get in trouble for telling me about shifters? Why you thought I wouldn't be in trouble for knowing about them? Because mates are expected to know?"
Surprise flushed through Matt. "It is. I was trying to figure out how to tell you then, after I'd shown you I was a shifter, but you'd fallen off the couch and your neck hurt and I got distracted."
"And maybe you thought it was too much," Sarah suggested wryly. "Which, to be fair, it probably would have been. Okay. That was totally not what I was going to ask first. It just struck me all of a sudden."
Matt smiled. "I thought maybe it wasn't, what with the 'wait!' and everything."
"Right. Right, so okay, look, don't take this wrong, because it's not that I want to back out of this, but is it a one and done deal for shifters? What if we don't stay together? Are you doomed to never find love again? Am I?"
Matt made a face. "I hope not, but I don't know. I think maybe...it might not be quite the same?"
"No love affair is, though. Okay. Is there an expiration date? Like, if we decide this just can't work out right now, does that make it go away?"
"I don't think so? But if it does go away, then...then I guess we'd both be likely, or at least able, to find something special again."
"And if it doesn't go away, if we meet up again sometime when we think it might work better, then this connection is going to be just as strong as it is now?" At Matthew's nod, Sarah's gaze softened. "Okay, in that case, look, Matt, listen. I don't want to suggest that this isn't amazing, because it is, but I guess it sounds to me like we don't have to make any life-altering decisions right now. We can figure it out in our own sweet time."
A wall of worry that had grown in Matthew's chest broke suddenly, fading away. He gave a quiet, rough laugh. "Honestly, that's a relief."
"I can't imagine," Sarah said, her tone gentle. "For me, wow, Matt, I mean...I love this ride. I do. I don't want to get off. But I don't have another voice inside me saying 'this is it' , either. That must be really scary and strange to think maybe this is your one real chance at love when it conflicts with everything you've planned for yourself."
"It's not that I don't want you," Matt said desperately.
A slow, leering smile crawle
d across Sarah's face. "Yeah, I got that."
Matthew laughed again, even though he felt it was all very serious. "Thank you. Thank you for understanding. And I'm sorry for getting weird over fortune cookies."
"Well." Sarah, still with that smiling leer, stretched her legs toward him until she was touching him with her toes. "You had some reason to get weird about it, but I have another very important question, Señor Rojas. Tell me: how exactly will what you choose to do now affect the rest of your life...in bed?"
This time Matthew's laugh felt lighter. They didn't have to make all the important decisions right now. Sarah understood, and that was what mattered the most.
Told you, his bear murmured.
Matt ignored the bear and caught Sarah's ankle, pulling her toward him, all the way into his lap. "We're not in bed right now."
Sarah ducked her head until her lips were against his neck, and murmured, "Let's pretend we are."
It turned out she was very good at pretending, and eventually, it was no longer pretend.
* * *
Matthew woke up to a pair of enormous green eyes glowering at him from a dark, furry face directly over his head. He shifted nervously, and Doc McStuffins put one paw in the exact center of his forehead, then extended her claws with delicate perfection, as if to say don't you dare move, shifter.
Being a shapeshifter, Matthew healed quickly. Despite that, he had no interest in seeing how fast he might heal from a cat scratch gouge to an eyeball, and so he lay very, very still, cross-eyed at the paw and cat above him.
After what felt like an extremely long time, Doc retracted her claws, but kept the paw in place. She was sitting on the top of his pillow, and Matt thought perhaps she had been for quite a while, just waiting for him to wake up so she could have this conversation with him.
And it was a conversation. It was clearly a conversation. It said, "I know what you are, shifter. I know you outweigh me by at least twenty times. Do not imagine that will stop me from murdering you in your sleep if you harm my food ape."
