by Selena Scott
And now this. No Orion.
She’d been really looking forward to whatever the heck was going to happen tonight. It was the night after she’d fully surrendered to this thing between them. She’d sort of expected some fireworks.
She parked her car, went into her dark, lonely house and started reheating some leftovers, because she was starving. She pulled out her phone. No messages. She shoved it back into her pocket.
A half second went past before she yanked it out again and pulled up his number. It rang and rang. She didn’t leave a voicemail.
Her food was still in the microwave when she went back out to her car and drove toward Orion’s house. Something told her that this wasn’t right. If he was standing her up, then it was for a good reason.
A few minutes later, she was pulling into his driveway, jumping out of her car and marching up to the porch to ring the doorbell. She was causing a spectacle and didn’t remotely care.
Fuck the neighbors. Let them watch.
***
Orion sat in the brightly lit kitchen with Phoenix on one side of him and Dawn on the other. He’d just told them about his run-in with Watt and everything that Watt had said.
Phoenix was the human personification of a clenched fist. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to grind his teeth down to splinters. Watt’s betrayal was obviously still fresh.
“He’s lucky it was you who tracked him down, and not me,” Phoenix said in a low voice, his face pulled into that deadly-mean look he was known for. He could curdle milk with that glare.
“It sounds like Watt might be the least of our worries,” Dawn said. “If he can be trusted. If we can believe what he told you.”
His sister turned her dark eyes toward him and, as he always did, Orion deeply considered her words. Orion sighed. “I know he’s a snake. I know he betrayed us. I know he kidnapped Ida—“
Phoenix shifted abruptly in his chair, a low growl in his throat. Orion knew his brother was physically forcing himself not to spring up from the chair and track Watt down. Watt was lucky indeed that it had been Orion who’d found him today. There might not be anything left of him if Phoenix had found him.
“But,” Orion continued on. “I got the distinct impression that he was telling the truth. I don’t know exactly why, but he seemed like somebody with pretty much nothing left to lose. He came back to Portland knowing full well that he might get his ass torn apart by us. But he came anyway. I think he felt guilty about the way the whole thing had played out. And I told you what he said. That he wasn’t as brainwashed as some of the others. That he’d been working with this Director guy for a specific reason. Something to do with his sister, I guess. And then he gave me that warning.”
“Don’t trust anybody,” Dawn repeated the warning quietly, almost to herself. Her eyes went distant as if she were thinking of someone in particular.
Orion nodded. “Don’t trust anybody,” he confirmed.
“Well, that’s easy enough,” Phoenix said with an arrogant shrug. “I already don’t trust anybody in the first place. Problem solved.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Dawn rolled her eyes. “Of course you trust people. Orion? Me?”
Phoenix rolled his eyes back at Dawn. “Of course I trust you two. That’s not what Watt meant.”
“Oh?” She pursed her lips. “Now you know exactly what Watt meant? Are Orion and me not ‘anybody’s?”
“You two are not secretly brainwashed.” Phoenix folded his arms. “You’re family. I would know if you were brainwashed.”
“Okay, fine. But think of the other people who’ve made their way into our lives.” Dawn held up fingers. “Ida, for starters. Wren. Quill.”
“Diana,” Orion put in. And there it was. The thing that had been tightening in his gut since his run-in with Quill. Orion didn’t know how Diana fit into all this. He didn’t know how the hell she fit into his life.
“Don’t imply that Ida can’t be trusted,” Phoenix said in a low, frustrated voice, pointing one vehement finger at his sister. “I don’t like it.”
Dawn’s shoulders sagged a little. “I don’t like it either, Phoenix. But what are we supposed to do with this warning? How do we decide who we can trust and who we can’t?”
A dense silence filled in the spaces between them all.
“We need more information,” Orion said eventually. “We can’t just trust Watt. Not after everything he did. And it doesn’t make sense to go randomly cutting people out of our lives. So, yeah. I guess we need to just go with our guts on who to trust.”
Orion could practically see the word “Ida” floating over Phoenix’s head. He glanced at his sister and saw her biting her lip. He was almost positive that she was thinking of Quill. Orion wasn’t sure what to think about that.
“So, how do we get more information?” Phoenix asked.
“I can start at the library,” Dawn said slowly. “I can use the computers there to see if I can find anything about the Program or the Director.” She shrugged. “I’ve already been researching a bit into the history of shifters in America. I’ve read a lot about Jackson Durant and the Shifter Liberation movement. The internment camps as well. I’ll just start there, I guess. See if I can find anything.”
“I guess I’ll see if Ida knows anything. If she’s ever heard anything about this. It’s been a huge question mark for us why Watt did what he did last year. Maybe this will answer some questions for us.” Phoenix looked stormy and angry and… worried. Orion hated that his siblings were worried. He hated that he couldn’t protect them from this. That he didn’t know enough about human culture to be able to know exactly what to do next. He was the big brother. The protector. The one with all the answers…
“Diana will help us,” Orion said suddenly.
Phoenix and Dawn exchanged a look.
“Orion,” Dawn said slowly. “I know you’re really into her. But are you sure that she’d—“
“I’m positive,” he said, knowing the answer in his soul. “Completely. You don’t understand. There’s a reason I’ve been so drawn to her. She’s exactly like me.”
Phoenix barked out a surprised laugh. “Orion, no offense, but that woman is pretty much your complete opposite.”
“Yeah. She’s a hardass,” Dawn said. “You’re a teddy bear.”
“Rude,” Orion said, blowing a raspberry at his sister. “And you’re both wrong. She’s the softest person I’ve ever met. A big heart. Just like me. But she’s also a protector. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for the people she cares about. Everything she does, it’s just to keep everyone safe.”
He stood up. He suddenly felt anxious to see her. To hear what she had to say about all this. This weird, confusing thing had just happened and Diana’s was the only opinion Orion wanted to hear.
He’d told her last night that things could stay messy between them. And they could. But he also kind of needed her in his bed tonight.
“Actually,” he said as took two steps toward the kitchen doorway. “I’m gonna go get her.”
“Right now?” Dawn said with a laugh. “Isn’t that a little bit impulsive?”
“Yes. No. I don’t care. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met and I want to hear what she has to say about all this. I want her here. I’m going.”
He was striding out toward the front door.
“Wait! Orion!” Dawn called. “I’ll drive you.”
But he didn’t care. He didn’t wait. He’d jog over to Diana’s house and make her drive them both back here.
He flung open his front door and blinked. Because there she stood, one fist raised up, poised to knock on his door. She jumped and stepped back.
“Whoa.”
He stepped out onto the porch and wrapped his arms around her, his nose dropping to the curve of her neck. “That was like magic.”
“Magic?” she asked, obviously bemused.
“I was racing out to get you and then suddenly, there you were.”
“You were
coming to get me?”
“Yeah. I was going to bring you back here.”
“You weren’t coming over to my house?”
He stepped backward, leading her into the house and slamming the door closed behind them. “No. I love your house. But it’s sort of the land where everything gets messy and confusing between us. Your house is where we don’t quite have sex. I want you here. In my house tonight.”
He was kissing and nuzzling her neck in between every word, dimly aware of the fact that her high heels were dragging lightly on the ground as he practically carried her back into the house.
“Hi, Diana,” Dawn called as Orion dragged her through the kitchen and toward the staircase.
“Well,” Diana said drily. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag about our relationship.”
“Diana,” he deadpanned. “When was the cat ever in the bag?”
He stopped stock still on the stairs leading up to his bedroom.
“What a weird phrase,” he mused. “Humans are dark. Who put the cat in the bag in the first place? Isn’t it the cat’s god-given right to try to get out of the bag?”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t overthink it.”
And then they were tumbling through the door of his bedroom and he was kicking it closed, launching her toward his bed where she bounced and rolled and looked lovely and put-together and disheveled all at once.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
He toed off one shoe and then the other. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on? Why you were on the porch, looking like you were about to pound the door off its hinges?”
“You weren’t at my house after work.” Her eyes flared when he stepped forward and stripped one high heel off her feet and the other. “At first I was mad, because I felt like you were standing me up. But then I realized that something must have happened for you to break your word to me. So, I stormed over here intending to find out what the hell is going on. So, you tell me. What the hell is going on?”
Orion reached under her skin-tight skirt and started working her tights down her legs. “I never understood why women wear these.”
“Lots of reasons. But in this case it’s to make the outfit more work appropriate. So I’m not bare-legged at work.”
“You understand that wearing these makes you more attractive, right? They’re hotter than bare legs?” He yanked them off the rest of the way, blinked at her long, smooth legs and shook his head. “Never mind. I take that back. Nothing is hotter than your bare legs.”
“Orion, are you going to answer my question or not?”
“I will, I’ll answer everything, I swear. But if I tell you the whole story right now, we’re going to get sidetracked. And I really, really don’t want to get sidetracked. So, for now, let me just tell you that something happened today that made me ask myself who in this world I really, truly trust.”
“Hmm.”
“And the list was not very long.” He started unbuttoning her shirt, yanking it free from her pencil skirt, and then flipping her over to start unzipping her skirt from the back. “And you were at the very top of it.”
She gasped, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of his words or because of the way he’d shoved her shirt out of the way and began kissing down her spine, along the line of her underwear.
He yanked her skirt down a few inches and groaned. She was wearing a thong. Her skirt was gone, then. Practically evaporated into thin air for how fast he tossed it away. Her shirt was next and he rolled her back so that she was face-up on the bed, in nothing but a red bra and matching underwear. Her hair was pulled back still, in one of those tight ponytails she wore for work. Seeming to read his mind, she reached up with both hands, tugged at her hair and then it was tumbling down around her shoulders, shiny and dark and swimming against her skin.
He stood up tall next to the bed and yanked a hand through his hair. “I realized that you might be the only person on this earth who I trust to take care of me. I trust Phoenix and Dawn in every way, and I’m sure they could take care of me. But you? You’ve been taking care of me since the day I met you. It’s a no-brainer, Diana. I’d jump off a cliff if I knew you were there to catch me.”
She laughed, but her eyes were tender. “You might be overestimating me.”
“Never. You’re Superwoman.”
She laughed again and this time it ended in a bitten bottom lip. She looked up at him, all her good parts framed in red. “And this realization made you want to strip me down and throw me on a bed?”
“No.” He raked his shirt over his head and tossed it away. “It made me want to have sex with you.”
She laughed as he stripped out of his pants and crawled over her, underwear to underwear.
“How romantic,” she said with one eyebrow raised.
He buried his face in her neck and then surfaced again with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “You want romance, you might have chosen the wrong boyfriend.”
She gasped and melted backward as he started a slow, open-mouthed kiss against her neck. “I wasn’t aware I had a boyfriend.”
He lifted his head and rolled his eyes ostentatiously. “I’ve been your boyfriend since the first night we fell asleep together.”
She opened her mouth to protest, to argue, to go down some Diana-shaped rabbit hole but he didn’t let her. He lunged forward, fastened his mouth to hers and gave long, sweet pets of his tongue against hers.
She gasped again and speared her fingers through his hair so hard it made his hands clench against the pain. “All right, fine.” She pulled away from the kiss and glared at him. “You’re my boyfriend.”
He gave a loud, silly whoop of joy that made her laugh and then he promptly got right back to work. He stopped thinking, stopped analyzing. He let the moment take him wherever it wanted to go, no rhyme or reason.
Orion made out with her collar bone, bit lightly at the inside of her arm. He traced a hand down her endless legs before digging a thumb into the arch of her foot and making her moan. He kissed chastely at her calf, rubbing his forehead and beard against her pretty little ankle bones. And then he was flipping her over, brushing her hair away from her neck so he could plant a line of reverent, soft kisses against her fragrant skin.
Those kisses walked themselves all the way down her spine. By the time he yanked gently on her thong with his teeth, there was no mistaking the scent of her arousal on the air, no mistaking the tremor working its way through her body. She was gripping his sheets in two fists, quietly chanting his name, like a prayer. He took this to be an unequivocally good sign.
When he couldn’t take the torture of her softness a second longer, he crawled up her body and tucked his lips against her ear.
“I don’t want to hold back tonight, Diana. I don’t want to stop short of having you.”
“Me either,” she gasped. “I want all of you.”
His hips bucked forward at that, pressing his erection into her ass.
“No more almost,” he said, not even caring if that didn’t quite make sense. “I can’t almost have you one more time. I want you too much. I need you. I need this.”
“God, yes.” She pushed her ass back into his hardness and made him tip his head back, sucking air through his teeth. “Show me what it’s like to have all of you. Every inch.”
He grunted then and rose up, falling back to his knees. He was straddling her hips and that wasn’t quite right. Scooting back, he traced his hands up the insides of her legs, opening her up. He grinned when she stacked her fists under her forehead, bracing herself, and seemed to tip her hips up to him. She knew what she wanted and he liked that. He liked that a lot.
Because she wasn’t hesitant, neither was he. He wasted no time at all in leaning down to her, nipping the insides of her legs before he landed his mouth on the wet center of her thong.
“Fuck!” He head tipped back and her hips bucked. Orion planted a forearm over her lower back to keep her still as he kissed and tongued her
through the fabric. It was messy and hot. The angle wasn’t right. He wanted more. Unfettered access. But even so, he couldn’t pull his mouth away. She opened her legs even wider and he pushed further.
When he couldn’t stand it anymore he took her by the hips and flipped her over, yanking off her underwear and tossing the damp cloth over his shoulder. This time, when he spread her legs, he didn’t dive right in. This time, his eyes on hers, he lowered himself to that gorgeously soft little pussy with his eyes dead-set on hers. She looked lost and lustful and vengeful and vulnerable all at once. When he got that first silky-wet contact with her, her eyes slammed shut and her head fell back. She was up on her elbows and he could see the pulse banging in her neck. Her bra held her breasts high and round and he had to close his own eyes lest he get too distracted.
His past was littered with some random hookups, women who had been more than willing to help him scratch a momentary itch. He’d never hooked up with someone who he’d been so into. Hell, he’d never been this into someone before. He’d always been turned on by going down on a woman, but he’d never felt this visceral rightness that was currently gripping him, tightening his skin, making a low groan sound off in his throat.
There was something so human about loving her like this. Something that appealed to the man inside of him. Usually, sex was primal and animalistic, his wolfish instincts taking over, silencing the human side of his brain. But this, with Diana, was distinctly different. Because as urgently as he sought her pleasure, he was also content to stay like this the whole night, hours, days, he didn’t care. He wasn’t doing this to get to the end. He was doing this because he wanted nothing more than to make her feel good. To make himself feel good. To show her how badly he wanted her. He wanted to drown in the pleasure of wanting her. That was the best part of being human, as far as he was concerned. This right here was the absolute best the human world had to offer.
