The Skin She's In

by Margo Bond Collins

  I focused my narrowed gaze on him. My human senses couldn’t tell me much, so I allowed my eyes to shift, and my tongue. I flicked my tongue toward him to gather his scent and analyze it. I expected him to recoil, but he stood and watched me impassively. And not with the impassivity of a man fighting to avoid responding, but with the calm assuredness of one who had no fear at all.

  This man was used to dealing with snakes. Apparently, one snake woman and her snake child didn’t faze him at all.

  I tasted no deception on the air. There was a slight musk of human sweat, but it was the kind that came from work, not fear. Everything about him radiated honesty.

  I let my senses shift back to human and nodded. “I appreciate that,” I said, stepping back toward the truck. I had gotten several feet away when Shane called out after me.

  “Your father says that the baby’s a foster child, that she isn’t yours?”

  “That’s true.” I sounded almost as wary as I felt.

  “Then there are more of you? A lot?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Chapter 19

  DR. JIMSON WAS DELIGHTED to see us back with Serena so soon. “That took even less time than I expected.”

  “What does that mean about her stay here?” I asked. “Will she be able to come home soon?”

  He pursed his lips judiciously. “Perhaps. We need to watch her in her human state for a little while, make sure she doesn’t have any troubles. She didn’t have any problems eating? The bottle didn’t confuse her?”

  “I don’t think so.” I gestured toward Kade, who stepped in and took over the conversation easily.

  “None at all,” he said. “She didn’t try to bite it or swallow it whole or have any of the typical shifter issues switching from one infant feeding form to the other.”

  “Excellent.” The doctor beamed at Serena. “I can’t say for certain, of course, but I think you should probably be able to take her home sometime next week.”

  Next week.

  The words landed like lead in my stomach but dissolved quickly—apparently I was still anxious about Serena’s homecoming, but less so than I’d been before.

  “BACK TO MY PLACE?” Kade asked as we climbed into his pickup.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “That didn’t sound as certain as I might’ve expected,” Kade teased.

  It hadn’t been certain. Definitely not as certain as he was used to, anyway. I had managed to put off thinking about what was going on with Jeremiah and Shadow this weekend, despite having checked in with them on Saturday.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.” I needed to do it. I’d been avoiding it for far too long, anyway.

  Kade turned those insightful, golden-flecked eyes on me. “I’ve been wondering when you’d get up the courage to spill,” he said.

  I jumped a little in my seat. “You already know?”

  “Only that there’s something strange going on. It started late last week—you’ve been avoiding me.” He paused for a second, slanting his gaze at me as he pushed his seat back and turned to face me more directly.

  “I decided to assume that it wasn’t about me.”

  “Not even a little bit,” I said.

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  I bit the insides of my lips closed, considering where to start. Kade was certainly right—I had been avoiding talking about this particular issue since the hyena and Hunter had shown up on my doorstep, or at least the Shields’ doorstep.

  But there was something else at play here, and I was too honest with myself, too well-trained as a counselor, not to admit it. I had been anxious about what was going on in my still comparatively new relationship with Kade ever since I had decided to take on the responsibility of the infant lamias and he had chosen to remain simply a “supportive whatever.”

  That was something I was going to have to deal with later. At the moment, I needed to tell him what was going on with Shadow and Jeremiah.

  “What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this truck. Not until I have other people’s permission.”

  Kade nodded. “Confidentiality issues,” he stated.

  I blinked at him, a little surprised.

  “You know, I am a doctor. We have the same restrictions.”

  “If anyone asks...”

  “I knew nothing until you had the go-ahead.” Kade finished my sentence for me.

  And then I told him everything. I hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing on me that I hadn’t let Kade know that there were two virtual strangers living in my apartment, even as he was busy meeting with the various Council representatives about their existence.

  Draping his arm over the steering wheel, he tapped it lightly when I had finished my story. “That is substantially different from the story the werewolves are telling Keeya.”

  “So I gathered. But I sensed absolutely no deception on either of them. It would be easy enough for one sociopath to get by my internal lie detector. Two? I’ve never seen it happen before.” I gave an openhanded shrug. “It’s not impossible, of course, but there’s almost always something that gives it away, at least in my experience. Lies taste... dark, somehow.”

  “And they smell rancid,” Kade added. For that matter, it would be difficult to be a liar in any shifters setting, since so many of us had extrasensory—or at least extra-human-sensory—means of sniffing out untruths.

  “Okay, then. If we assume that these two are telling the truth, then our best bet is to facilitate their meeting with the matriarch, and then let her take it to the Council, right?” I fought the urge to bring my hands in my lap, more anxious about this than I had even known. Though I had not spent much time around them, I had already grown to like the reticent hyena and the tightly wound Hunter. They were an odd pair. A strange match. But as half of an unusual pairing myself, I had no trouble with that at all.

  “I think that is our best possible option,” Kade said. “I think you should get their permission to tell me as soon as possible, though.” He frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that werewolf looking around my house. If there’s any exchange to be made, I want to be in on it. I don’t want you going alone.”

  I blinked. “Exchange to be made?”

  “Perhaps not the right wording. When you take them to meet the matriarch, I plan to be with you.”

  “I’ll contact them this afternoon.” I paused. “So are we going to your place, or back out to the ranch?” I asked, the coil of heat starting deep in my belly as I thought about the possibilities of either location.

  Kade’s gaze met mine and the air in the truck’s cab crew heated, even as his eyes began to churn with gold. With one hand, he reached out and cupped the side of my face. I leaned into the touch.

  “My place is closer.” His voice rasped with desire.

  I turned my face and caught his middle finger between my lips. I sucked on the fingertip gently, then ran my tongue around it. Giving it a gentle nip before releasing it, I said, “Closer is definitely better.”

  Without another word, Kade turned to face forward and put the truck in gear.

  WHEN WE GOT TO KADE’S house, we slammed into each other before we were even all the way inside the house, our mouths and hands desperate for one another as we stumbled through the back entrance into the kitchen.

  He reached around me and shut the kitchen door, and then pushed me up against it. His hot lips seared my mouth, even as his tongue flicked into it, seeking out the most sensitive spots so that I shivered against him.

  Slipping his hands down my back, he reached the top of my thighs and lifted me up, sliding my back up the doorframe at the same time that he kissed down my neck and in between my breasts. I wrapped my legs around him, the jeans I had worn for my casual day at the ranch providing a barrier between us, but no obstacle for me to feel the hot thickness of him pressing against me. I whimpered, pulling my legs tighter around him and crossing them behind his waist.

  “Too many clothes,” he mutter
ed.

  “God, yes,” I agreed.

  With a single boost, he stood us up from against the door and began walking me back to the bedroom. I dipped my head to capture his mouth with mine and whispered against his lips, “The bedroom’s too far away,” before pressing against him, allowing the liquid heat of his mouth to melt me.

  Kade stopped at the kitchen table, moving around to set me down. He pulled away from our deepening kiss long enough to say, “This?”

  “Oh yes,” I whispered. “Please.”

  He lifted me up long enough to slide the yoga pants down, capturing my panties as he went. The wood of the table was cold against my ass, but I lost all sense of that as Kade hooked one of the kitchen chairs with his ankle and pulled it over behind him. He sat down in front of me, his hands pressing my inner thighs farther and farther apart as he slid his shoulders under my legs and pulled me toward him, his hands hot on my hips.

  I leaned back on my elbows and watched him over the swell of my breasts as he dipped his dark head downward. I forced myself to remain absolutely still, despite how much I wanted to rise up to meet his mouth. Instead, I waited, listening to my own racing pulse and the sound of my harsh breath.

  He inched closer and closer until I could feel the heat of his breath blowing against my clit. Then, so softly I would barely have felt it had it been against any other part of my body, he flicked his tongue against me.

  I moaned and let my head fall back, my hair streaming down toward the table. “Please,” I whispered again.

  “Please what?” I could hear the tease in his voice, in the deep throatiness of it.

  When I didn’t respond, he repeated, this time more insistently, “Please what?”

  “Please touch me.” The words were barely vocalized, but he responded instantly, moving down even further so that his lips brushed against me every time he spoke. “You mean like this?”

  I shuddered at the sensation, and he ran his thumbs along the creases where my thighs met my hips, down into the inside of my thighs, using the motion to push me open wider.

  “More,” I said, tilting my pelvis up enough to hold my clit against his lips, and the touch of his widening smile sent sparks spiraling through me.

  “You mean like this?” With that, he buried his face between my legs, running his tongue in circles around my clit, stopping only long enough to pull it into his mouth and suck.

  As I trembled in reaction, my elbows gave out, and I dropped backward until I was lying flat on the table, my feet resting against his back. I lay back entirely and grasped the edge of the table, using it to pull myself even closer to him as he slid one hand under my ass to hold me to him.

  He slipped his tongue back and forth, faster and faster, using his other hand to slide first one finger inside me, and then another, matching the tempo of his tongue so perfectly that I could barely tell which was sending more throbbing, heated sensations through me.

  I bucked and moaned, a heated glow starting somewhere in the center of me, a golden ember matching the ones that swirled through Kade’s eyes. It curled around the sparks he was sending through me and circled lower and lower, building on itself as it moved through me—until it met that point where the sensations from Kade’s tongue and hands ignited an intense, growing fire. That flame expanded, and the fire whirled, until they were indistinguishable, that part of me that responded to him physically and that part that responded emotionally. All I knew was that they were building high and higher until I shattered in his arms, grasping his head in my hands as I curled in on myself as if I wanted to keep that fire burning, my knees bending to pull him closer. It took me a moment to realize that the hoarse scream echoing through the kitchen was my own.

  When the firestorm had receded a little, I collapsed back against the table, breathless and shaking.

  “Wow,” I managed to say.

  Kade stood up and pushed the chair away again. I sat up and twined my arms around his neck. “Your turn,” I whispered.

  “I have a better idea,” he said, picking me up and setting me on my feet, sliding me down him as he did so I could feel the hard length of him against me.

  “Oh, God, yes,” I said, as he turned me around to face the table, wrapped his arms around my waist, and pulled me up tight against him long enough to feel, through his pants, his cock nestled against my ass.

  Loosening his hold slightly, he held me there lightly with one arm as, with the other hand, he unbuttoned his pants, shoved them down to the ground, and stepped out of them. I shuddered in anticipation as the entire length of him pressed against me, searing into my bare skin.

  Careful to hold me lightly enough so I knew I could get away had I wanted to, but tightly enough to remind me of his strength, Kade used one still-booted foot to kick my legs apart a little, as he would do if he were a police officer.

  Then he used the other hand—the one not clasping my hips—to push me down, placing his palm in the center of my upper back so it arched a little as I bent over.

  I whimpered again, shivering as he held me both against him and down on the table. I tilted my ass up in the air a little further, arching my back even more, until Kade slid his cock along my slick opening.

  He pushed against me a little harder, and I was so wet that he slid entirely inside me easily, filling me up so completely that I had no choice but to push back against him, aching for more. He paused for a moment, and I could feel his cock throbbing inside me. It made me want to rock back and forth against him, even as it also made me want to make sure he never came so that he would never have to leave.

  When he finally pulled out, he withdrew almost completely, leaving only the tip still in place until I was shaking and begging him not to go. At that, he plunged into me even harder than before, until he was slamming himself into me thrust after thrust and I pushed back every bit as hard to meet him.

  At the last minute, he slid one hand around me, dropping it from my stomach to my clit, pressing the heel of his hand into my abdomen as his fingers danced over me and he ground his hips against my ass.

  He pulsed inside me as he started to come, and I followed him over the edge, pressing my mouth against the table as my own orgasm lifted my toes up off the floor.

  Chapter 20

  I HADN’T REALIZED HOW much holding back from Kade about Jeremiah and Shadow had impacted our relationship. But after our kitchen-sex, we moved to the bedroom for something much more leisurely. Sometime later, as we lay snuggled under the covers, Kade’s muscular arms wrapped around me from behind as he kissed the tops of my shoulders, he said, “Aren’t couples supposed to go on some kind of baby-moon before the baby comes home?”

  I tilted my head without looking at him. “I think that’s for couples who are both involved in the baby. Not one where half the couple is simply a supportive whatever.”

  “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  I could feel him smile against the skin on the nape of my neck. “Can I upgrade?”

  “Depends on what you’re considering upgrading to,” I said. “We might have an opening at sort of supportive something or other. And there might still be room in the kind of helpful random guy—though there’s some discussion recently of downgrading that to one step below supportive something.”

  He banged his forehead lightly against my back.

  “I didn’t mean I didn’t want to be involved. I only meant that it had to be your decision.”

  “Why?” I turned in his arms and put my hands up between us to rest on his chest, pushing back just enough so I could look him in the eye. “If we are together, and this is something I’m doing, you don’t have to be a part of it. I mean, you don’t have to... This is something I feel like I have to do. I want to be more than a caretaker or a counselor. I want to be something closer to a foster parent. If you don’t want to do that with me, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to. But...”

  “But it means things are going to b
e different between us.” As usual, he knew how to finish my sentences. That didn’t change the fact that I was only now beginning to figure out that Kade’s decision to stay out of fostering the lamia children had bothered me more than I had let on, or even realized myself.

  I propped my head on my hand, leaning over on one elbow and continued staring at him. “The thing is, relationships change. They are always in flux. If they’re not, if they’re too stagnant, then that becomes a problem. It also becomes a problem if they change so much that the people involved don’t want to continue it.”

  “Is that your counselor voice?” Kade was smiling, but his usual golden-flecked eyes were turning dark.

  “It’s the closest thing I have to the truth. I don’t know where we are on that continuum. I do know that, yes, me taking on these babies is going to change something between us. I hope it changes for the better. But I’m not willing to stand aside and not do it simply for fear of losing what we have.” I paused, gazing into his eyes and trying to read what I saw there. I couldn’t—but that didn’t change anything, either. “The one thing I cannot give up for the sake of us is me. And a huge part of who I am is a children’s counselor. I don’t have it in me to walk away from these children. I can’t.”

  Kade reached out and brushed my hair away from my face. “And all of that is part of why I love you,” he said.

  I froze in place. For all that we had clearly become a couple, we rarely said out loud that we loved each other. Not for lack of feeling it, I suspected, but because our lives had been so insanely unpredictable that it seemed almost as if saying the words would curse us somehow.

  While I was framing my response, Kade continued, “I don’t want you to give up any part of who you are. And I only want you to change in the ways that you think make you more who you are. I am one hundred percent behind you taking on an expanded role with these children. And I will be right there beside you if you’ll have me. I simply want you to know—no matter how badly I said it before—that I want you to take the lead in how they are cared for. I want you to be the one who develops the relationship with them that you need. In that sense, I want to be supportive of what you and those children need. And I don’t know that either human or shifter language has a word for what I want to be to you.” By this point, tears had welled up in my eyes and it was all I could do to blink them back.