by Erin Havoc
“Fucking motherfucker,” she blows, trembling around my face. Her breasts bounce with her motions, and I’m dying to strip her and kiss her skin, but she’s just given me a challenge.
Make her come with clothes on.
Pressing my thumbs to the sides of her legs, I part her even wider, closing my mouth around her mound and sucking deeply on it. Her panties come into my mouth and I taste her wetness. It almost makes me come on the spot. My hips move on their own, seeking release against the mattress, and I focus on teasing her clit over her clothes.
She circles her hips harder against my face, her swollen knot pressed against my tongue. I suckle on it, rubbing my face until she’s crying out my name, teetering on the edge.
Gripping my hair for leverage, Natalie screams out and bursts. I keep moving around her, intensifying her pleasure, and drawing it out for as long as I can. She thrashes on the mattress, her sounds unintelligible and I feel like howling in pride for having brought her pleasure this easily.
My cock drips precome into my boxers as I sit up and fist it. It’s painful now with how much I need to be inside of her. Natalie trembles with her afterglow as I ease her shoes out of her pretty feet and kiss my way up her leg to cover her with my body. My hands slide beneath the hem of her dress and I knead her plump backside, her round hips, bringing the dress up.
“Fuck, I didn’t even think that kind of orgasm was possible,” she murmurs against my lips.
I kiss her again, already missing how she tastes. “I’m giving you some minutes to recover, then I’m tasting you without the panties.”
She shivers. “You make the best kind of promises.”
Her fingers latch onto the hem of my shirt and she pulls it up. I hesitate for a second, noticing she’s going to be the first person to ever see the scars I bear. But she’s my mate. She’s bound to see them.
Letting her pull it off, I watch her face as her gaze runs down my torso. Her expression doesn’t change as she brings a hand up to one of the scars on my shoulder. She traces it down its path across my chest to my lower ribcage. I’m crisscrossed with those, both front and back. It’s something I had been unwilling to show these past years.
The sight of it still brings me painful memories of being betrayed and exiled. It is a constant reminder of not trusting. Not staying.
But the woman in front of me meets my eyes again with so much affection I know she accepts me the way I am. Her hands come to my face and she gives me the sweetest kiss up to this point.
She pulls me closer with her legs, my cock pressing into her. “This doesn’t matter,” she says, her eyes careful and bright. “Nothing matters but the two of us, right?”
My heart swells and I feel myself falling in love even more. I didn’t even think that was possible. But she’s here to prove me wrong. To obliterate my prejudices and teach me how life can truly be lived.
I nod, burying my face in her hair for a moment and breathing her in. She’s the one I’ve always looked for. The one I’ve waited for my entire life. My rules don’t apply to her, neither do my fears and prejudices.
She’s perfect. And she’s mine.
Natalie rubs herself against me, and lust takes the front seat of my brain again. My body heats, the taste of her, the feel of her almost too much to endure.
Then I feel my wolf pace. Unsettled. On edge.
Instinct flares inside me. I push back, staring at her with a cocked brow.
Natalie tilts her head. “What’s wrong?”
I try to point it out but I can’t. There’s just this nagging sense of danger.
“I don’t know, but...”
As the words leave my mouth, something hits the living room window. I sit up, prying my ears. The next second, another projectile hits the window, and it shatters. I’m on my feet in a second, my eyes darting around for any danger, my body shielding her.
“What the fuck was that?” She cries out, standing too.
“NATALIE KING!” Several voices call from the outside. “LET OUR WOMEN BE! SHIFTERS ARE NOT HUMANS!”
Her brows drop over the bridge her nose. “Protesters?”
“Nat,” I call, every instinct in my body telling me to protect her.
She walks around me and into the living room. I follow suit, my heart thundering inside my ribcage, my hands curled in fists.
No one’s touching her. No matter what I have to do.
7
NATALIE
My back yard is taken by a small number of people. They hold signs, and I can’t quite read what they say before I turn the lights on. When white light inundates the grass, the group’s voice grows louder, as if being acknowledged emboldens them.
Pumping signs like “Shifters must be caged” and “Shifter x Human marriage is not natural”, the group bellows at the top of their lungs, faces enraged, teeth bared.
My blood thrums inside my veins, beating like drums inside my ears. How in the world did these people get my address? My brain tells me I should call the cops and hide in the bathroom with Dean until all is safe outside. If they learn I was about to fuck a shifter, they’d kill the two of us.
I can see it in their eyes. The unbridled rage. The unexplainable hate for the unknown and the new and the different.
And I abhor it.
The app was built, through tears and sweat and blood, to find the middle path and help humans and shifters get together. The shifters want mates. Curvy girls like myself want men that won’t bother with beauty standards and sizes. The app is supposed to help. To unite.
Not to drive a wedge between the two species.
Shifters have been around forever. They aren’t dangerous, or any more dangerous than regular humans, and the data shows that. But these people screaming in my backyard don’t care about that. They just see what they want to see.
It makes my blood fizzle. My fingers curl into fists and I press my hands to my sides, keeping them from shaking.
“I’ll call the cops,” Dean says, in a distant voice that barely filters through the haze of red in my mind.
I nod, absentmindedly, as I dance around the glass shards and approach the window. My upper lip curls, my jaw grinds, and I want to scream at these fuckers to get the hell out of my yard and shove those fucking signs all the way up their tight asses.
But Dean’s voice echoes on my memory, telling me it’s safer to kill them with kindness. I also think of Karen. Sweet Karen and how she convinces people with words instead of a string of curses.
Maybe... Maybe the problem with these people is that no one tried to talk to them. No one showed them how it’s supposed to happen. Maybe they’re afraid of the unknown and no one told them shifters are common, that they probably know a handful of them.
“Baby, get away from the window,” Dean calls but I ignore him.
I step closer, carefully avoiding the broken glass of my very expensive UV-proof window and taking two deep breaths.
Kill them with kindness.
“Everybody,” I voice, raising my hands in a pacifying gesture. “Please, calm down. Let’s discuss this like civilized people. No need for violence.”
“Give back our women!” A man barks, his spit reaching two feet ahead of him. He’s in his late forties, half-bald, and has a beer gut but screams with all his might.
“I haven’t stolen anyone’s women. Also, women don’t belong to no one but ourselves,” I try to joke, shooting him a smile but he just grimaces at me. “My app helps people find their match. That’s all.”
“Yeah? So you’re saying my woman wasn’t my match?” He spits again, and I’m starting to worry about that saliva production. At least he’s watering my grass.
“We expect people who join the app to be single. I’m sorry if your partner has left you for someone she met on the app,” I tell him, honestly. There’s nothing I can do about that issue, though. We trust the subscribers are being honest.
“She—” He stutters, his gaze drawing away. “She wasn’t mine yet, but s
he was going to be!”
The others surrounding him seem to falter upon his words, the signs drooping a little.
But as I start to smile, he bares his teeth again. “Shifters are animals! They have to be caged, not left to wander and steal our women!”
“Shifters are not animals, sir,” I call, louder this time so everyone can hear me. “They are a subspecies of our own. We can mate with them and have children with them, so biologically...”
“Science!” Another man hisses. “As if science has the answer to everything! We know very well what that is! What you’re trying to do! Sodomy! The Bible has already warned us of so.”
My heart skitters ahead as I struggle with anger. “It’s not sodomy, sir, shifters are regular participants of our society, they work and they pay their taxes and...”
“You just defend shifters because they have the hots for fat women like you!” A woman, this time. She looks... strangely familiar. She’s younger, her blond hair pulled back in a tight bun, and I wonder if she’s one of the girls from the bookstore. “Which is a given on how this is bizarre. Everybody knows being fat is unhealthy. I’m pretty sure they prefer fat women so they can have them for dinner later on.”
Several people cry out their agreements, and my cheeks flare hot.
This is hard. This is so freaking hard. I thought they were ignorant, but they’re just... bad. These people are just defending their interests. They aren’t afraid, they’re just angry things aren’t going the way they want.
Instead of killing them with kindness, I want to jump into the backyard and punch a bunch of noses in.
Dean’s hand hovers on the small of my back, inches from touching my skin. I feel his warmth increase, almost as if his heartbeat is beating into my skin.
Looking up into his beautiful face, I wait for him to tell me to back off, but he doesn’t say a thing. He stares into these people with the fiercest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. Challenging them. Daring them to say another thing about either of us.
The blond girl sneers, her gaze riveted on Dean’s naked chest. “A hot guy with a fat girl like her? We all know that’s a shifter, all right.”
“You’re right,” Dean says, his voice pulsing through me, hoarse with threat. My toes curl, and I may have grown wetter just about now. “I am a shifter. And unlike common humans, we don’t confine ourselves to stupid, demeaning, unhealthy beauty standards. We all know you’re just mad because no shifters giving you any attention.” The girl gasps and Dean turns to face the beer gut man. “And you’re a fucker who thinks a girl owes you something. If she’s never been your date, there’s no reason for you to be pissed at her for dating a shifter.” Finally, he turns his gaze to the sodomy man. “You’re just using your faith to justify your violence. Besides, sodomy doesn’t mean what you think it means, you should check the dictionary.”
I gawk at Dean, my eyes bulging out of their sockets. He has climbed even higher in my hotness scale, and he was already top.
A man who had been standing apart steps closer, holding not a sign, but a baseball bat. This one gives me the creeps. The way he looks at Dean with a contemptuous tilt to his lip tells me he doesn’t give a shit about the shifter situation. He just wants to see blood being spilled.
“So you think you’re so much better than the rest of us,” he calls out, tapping the bat into a hand. “Why don’t you come out here and prove that, eh?”
“I’m not into fights,” Dean says, curling an arm around my waist. “Besides, the cops are about to get here. What difference will it make?”
“Even better, they can take you straight to the hospital after I’m done with you.” The man grins, opening his arms in challenge. “So? Aren’t you going to ask your woman for permission?”
Dean shifts in place, and I feel his energy pumping. “You have no right to make demands. You’ve all broken into private property.”
“She’s a shifter fucker!” The sodomy man yells, a vein throbbing on his temple. “Whatever comes upon her is divine punishment! God will smite his fury upon you!” He points a finger straight at me. “Be ready to receive it, shifter whore!”
“That’s it,” Dean says, and I feel something in him snapping.
I turn my head to follow him as he strides over the shards of my window, into the living room and out of view. “Dean?” I call out, my heart acquiring a new, desperate rhythm. “Dean!”
“I’ll be back,” he calls over his shoulder as I approach, and he pushes his pants down.
I have all but a second to admire his strong calves and that damn backside, then he’s sprouting inky fur all over his body. My jaw slackens as I stare, and the man I had been humping moments earlier bends, breaks, and changes into a huge black wolf right before my eyes.
He darts back to the broken window and jumps in the middle of the people.
It’s chaos.
The group hightails it out of my yard in a second, each running to a side, bumping into each other and shoving one another into the way of the wolf. The guy with the bat is the only one who stands his ground, but not for long. I run back to the window to watch Dean snapping his jaw closed around the baseball bat and shattering it as if it were a toothpick.
The man lands a kick to the side of Dean’s body, and Dean turns with his teeth bared in a smug look. Almost laughter.
My lips stretch into a wide, perverse grin as I watch my man sit on his haunches and howl into the sky, the sound running down my spine and making me tingle deep inside. Then he takes on running after each of the trespassers, snapping his jaw close to their ankles as they scream and cry out.
The wails of a police siren reach me moments later and I deflate. At first, I want to watch him dogging around those fuckers. Then it dawns on me — the cops won’t find it as amusing as I do.
But Dean hears the wails too and turns around to face me. His blue eyes shine bright in the gloom, and I can feel his words deep within me. Wait for me. I’ll be back.
I nod and he takes off to the woods.
My heart’s still skittering as I open the door and bid the cops good night. I let them know what happened, but I don’t want to press charges. They’re surprised when I tell them I convinced the protesters with my natural persuasion. When they leave me, I’m much more relieved, though I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last I see of this kind of person.
Before long, I’m lying in bed, waiting for him to come back.
My mate. My mate. Like a compass, I feel his presence when he approaches the house again, and I catch myself wondering... Wondering if I should let him do the mating today.
Because I’m pretty sure I won’t ever find someone as amazing as he is.
8
DEAN
When I walk into Nat’s house, the place’s dark. The glass shards are gone, and a breeze blows through the absent window, blowing the curtains. The moon has come up, and it bathes the grass and the living room with its argent light. My clothes lie folded over the couch, but I don’t bother picking them up.
Something tells me she’s waiting for me. My wolf is dead quiet, not a move, not a sound as I stalk down the corridor back where we were a couple of hours ago.
Natalie lies propped up by a pillow, wearing only a matching set of white lace underwear. My breath catches as I glimpse into her curves, her beautiful, plump form beneath the moonlight. The silver light spills from the window over her, illuminating enough for our gazes to meet.
“You’ve taken your time,” she says in a hushed voice. She takes a tour of my body, from my chest down my stomach to my hanging manhood. It twitches to attention, hardening as I find her here. Waiting for me.
“Sorry. Had to be sure there would be no one around.” The words come out on their own, and I don’t even notice I’m the one who speaks them. My focus is utterly latched onto her thick thighs, and the vale between them.
“You got me by surprise there.” She tilts a side of her lip. “And here I thought you were into the ‘kill them with kindne
ss’ thing.”
“I am. And you did your best. But enough is enough.”
She shifts in place, pressing her arms to the sides of her marvelous breasts. The sight of them jiggling beneath that piece of fabric makes my mouth water. Fuck, I am one lucky man.
“I agree,” she murmurs, lust coating her tongue. “Enough is enough.”
Crawling into bed with her, I watch Natalie parting her creamy thighs for my viewing pleasure. Her panties are still coated in arousal from when I made her come, and I lower my head in that direction, following the delicious scent of her arousal. But she stops me before I hit my target, pulling me up to cover her with my body.
Her lips press against mine, and my tongue dips inside her mouth before we say anything else. My fingers find her hips, her waist, and I touch every exposed part of her skin. Every sacred place, every smooth curve, and dip of her body. I want to kiss her from head to toes and adore her like the goddess she is, but she keeps me captured between her lips, bringing me closer with every swipe of her tongue.
“No more games,” she mutters between kisses. She runs a hand down my chest to curl her fingers around my shaft, making me jump in place. “I want this.”
Fucking hell, this woman will drive me insane.
I said my wolf was quiet? Scratch that. He’s come back with a vengeance, howling inside me, growling, and I know what he wants.
Mate her. Mark her. Now, do it.
I can’t. Not yet, she’s not ready.
Clenching my jaw, I nuzzle into her neck, breathing in her sweet scent. Gripping her hips, I buck against her, feeling the wetness of her core against my cock. Precome bursts from the tip, heat coursing through me in pulsing waves.
Natalie’s motions grow erratic, and she presses her fingertips to my pecs, down my six-pack, then up to my arms. Her parted lips are a telltale of how much she wants this. Of how her body begs for this connection.
