Shifter Planet: The Return

by Reynolds, D. B.

  He took her mouth in a desperate, passionate kiss, their tongues tangling, teeth clashing, until his body surrendered. He lifted his head and howled as he climaxed, the heat of his release an overwhelming pleasure as Rachel’s cries joined his, her pussy clamping down on him in another orgasm until all they could do was hold onto each other in desperate desire.

  …

  Rachel clung to Aidan, her arms around his neck, her legs locked around his hips. His cock was still flexing inside her, her pussy shivering every time the hard length of him moved. Hard? How could he still be hard after all that? She tensed her hips experimentally, moving the tiniest bit, and was reward with his groan. She kissed his neck, licking the bite mark she’d left there. She didn’t know how things worked on Harp, but she hadn’t missed the fact that he’d blatantly marked her. She wanted it clear that the claiming went both ways. Aidan was hers.

  Her stomach clenched with something close to fear. Her feelings for him went beyond fantastic sex. Beyond even the closeness that developed when two people survived a life-threatening challenge together. She’d felt that before. She’d even had sex with partners who’d gone through it with her. This was more. And it terrified her, so she pretended it wasn’t happening.

  Arching her back, she slid her pussy along Aidan’s cock, until his big hand closed over her butt and pressed, holding himself deep inside her.

  “Be a good girl,” he muttered.

  “Fuck good.”

  He laughed. “I should have known you’d want to be in charge.” He pulled out and immediately thrust deep inside her. He was so damn big. Thick and long and hard. “Not this time, sweetheart.” He tightened his arms around her, one hand on her butt, the other arm holding her shoulders so she couldn’t move, as he slid slowly in and out of her pussy. His eyes never left hers, flickering gold in the dim light, making her feel as if he saw far more than she wanted him to. She wanted to look away, to close her eyes against an intimacy that made her heart race with fear, but she was no coward. She forced herself to meet the demand in his gaze, to acknowledge that this was more than sex, more than the release of adrenaline.

  A shiver of pleasure tightened her abdomen as her pussy clenched around his erection. Rachel tried to move, to ease the ache of desire, but Aidan wouldn’t let her. His gaze narrowed, his lids lowering over those golden eyes as he continued to fuck her, slowly, luxuriously, gliding on the slick juices of her growing arousal. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, short nails digging into his flesh.

  “Aidan,” she whispered, pleading for release.

  He lowered his head and kissed her, one hand gripping the back of her neck, as he began thrusting harder, faster.

  She kissed him back, biting, her fingers twisted in his long hair. A second orgasm swept over her, bowing her back as he crushed her against his chest, her cries meeting his groan as the sudden rush of his climax filled her with heat.

  Rachel lowered her head to his shoulder. He still hadn’t released her. Their hearts were pounding against each other, chests heaving as they struggled to breathe. His hold loosened, leaving her breasts to rub against his chest, the scrape of her hard nipples over his skin sending a fresh wave of pleasure rippling through her body.

  She and Aidan groaned in unison, then laughed. “Someday, sweetheart,” he murmured against her ear. “When we’re not worn out from surviving the swamp, or racing across the Green to save Harp…someday, I’ll have you in my bed with all the time in the world to make love to you.”

  Rachel shivered as his warm breath floated over her skin. It was too easy to picture that someday. To imagine Aidan, golden skin gleaming over powerful muscles, his eyes dancing with mischief and desire as he spread her legs and… She forced the image away, her body already rubbing against his like a wanton thing.

  “Is that a date?” she asked, trying to break the unbearable weight of the moment.

  “Not a date,” he growled. “A promise.”

  She shivered again. Aidan slipped an arm under her legs and stood. “The water’s cold,” he growled. “You need to warm up.”

  Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d been carried by a man. Had she ever been? And yet Aidan held her with such ease as he stepped out of the water and over to the small, cleared area where they’d left their things. It felt perfectly natural, her arms around his neck, her head on his shoulder. “Do you have clean clothes?” he asked quietly. “If not, I can find a cache—”

  “I have clothes,” she said, kissing his jaw. She felt his grin against her lips.

  “I like you like this, all sweet and soft.”

  She bit him. “Don’t get used to it.”

  He laughed and set her on her feet. “You get dressed. I’ll get the fire started.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you need clothes?”

  “Not really. I thought I’d wear fur tonight. It’ll keep us both warm.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. She was both intrigued and excited. She remembered the big, warm cat she’d treated on the ship. The lush thickness of his fur beneath her fingers, the deep thud of his heart. “Can we do that?”

  He shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s still me.”

  “Do you prefer one form over the other?”

  …

  Aidan didn’t answer right away. Did he prefer one form over the other? Shifters rarely thought about it. They were the same person, no matter what form they wore. It wasn’t as if they lost themselves to their animal, or vice versa. On the other hand, there was no doubt that each form had its benefits and drawbacks.

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “the ability to talk is nice.”

  She laughed in a way that made him think his answer had surprised her. “I guess it would be,” she conceded at last. “But with your cat… You’re so wild. It must be freeing.”

  “It’s spectacular, but it has its limits.”

  He could see the curious tilt of her head as she studied him. “Like what?” she asked.

  “Sex, for one.” If he’d hoped to shock her, he failed miserably. He was the one shocked when she asked her next question.

  “You don’t have sex while you’re shifted?” She spoke without stuttering, without embarrassment. She was a scientist, and he was her subject.

  Shit. Why did he ever start this?

  “Well, for one thing, I like women in my bed. So, unless my lover is into bestiality, sex in my cat form is a no-go. In fact, it’s definitely a no-go, because I’m not into it.”

  “Right, no female shifters,” she said thoughtfully, ignoring his whole dissertation on bestiality, as if he hadn’t even mentioned it. How the hell had he gotten into this discussion? “Fascinating.”

  “Yeah. That’s the word I’d use. ‘Fascinating,’” he said dryly.

  She laughed. “You’re embarrassed.”

  “Am not.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, but he could still hear the laughter in her voice.

  He gave her a narrow look and said, “You start the fire and I’ll catch some fish.”

  …

  Rachel couldn’t contain her amusement. The big bad shifter was embarrassed, and all because she’d asked some straightforward questions. Logical questions. Did he prefer one form over the other? Was one the real him, and the other simply a mask that he put on for convenience? After all, she wasn’t the one who’d raised the subject of bestiality. Her grin was huge as she gave him a little salute then turned to get the fire going. She pulled on her spare set of clean clothes first. Aidan might be accustomed to roaming around naked, but she wasn’t. It had nothing to do with nudity and everything to do with creepy crawly things that liked to sneak into places on the human body where she’d really rather not have them. She’d just gotten the flames going well and was working on stripping down some sticks to use as skewers for the fish, when Aidan reappeared. She stood to meet him, already pulling her knife, intending to fulfill her promise to clean his catch, but the two large, silver-scaled fish which h
e laid by the fire had already been gutted and washed.

  “Hey, that was my job,” she said, looking up at him, trying to ignore the fact that he was gorgeously naked.

  His gold-flecked eyes danced with knowledge of her reaction, his expression one of pure male satisfaction. “Silvers are easy. I’ll let you do the gutting when we’re deep in the Green and I’m hunting with my teeth instead of my hands.”

  If he was trying to disgust her, he failed. Rachel had dressed more than her share of all manner of beasts. Plenty of her clients in the past had enjoyed the hunt, but not what came after. In her book, you ate what you killed, or you gave it to someone else who would.

  “I’ll look forward to both. Seeing you hunt, and me dressing the game,” she clarified at his questioning look.

  Aidan wrapped a big hand around her neck and pulled her in for a long, wet kiss. “You are not what I expected, Earther woman.”

  “You’re not the first person I’ve surprised. And you’re freezing,” she said, her arms circling his waist. “Put on some clothes.” It was an exaggeration. His skin was slightly cooler than his usual furnace-like heat, but it was an excuse to get some clothes on him. He was simply too tempting, and they needed to eat. Regrettably, one could not live on spectacular sex alone.

  His chuckle said he knew what she was doing, but he went along with it, pressing a quick kiss to her lips before strolling over to where he’d dropped another of those cached clothing packs the shifters seemed to leave around the Green.

  “You guys have those everywhere?”

  “No, just the places we travel a lot. This one and the one on the other side of the swamp are kept stocked because we usually take the tree road, which means we always travel shifted.” He pulled on the pants first, then the tunic, but shoved the boots back inside the drawstring bag.

  “How do they get re-supplied?”

  Dropping a small package of trail mix bars next to the fire, he said, “When we check into Clanhome after a patrol, we make note of any caches we used. The next patrol resupplies. Most of the year, the ones out here don’t get used much, but there’s a logging crew that rotates out this way, and they’re fussy about naked shifters hanging around. Don’t want to tempt their women,” he added, grinning.

  That attitude made perfect sense to Rachel, but she didn’t say so. He didn’t need his ego getting any bigger than it was. She finished skewering the fish and set them on the spit she’d set up over the flames, then picked up her empty canteen. “Is this water drinkable?”

  He nodded. “This far from the glacier, it is.”

  “No weird parasites to worry about?”

  He paused. “I don’t think so. As far as I know the fleet personnel manning the science center drink the local water with no enhancements. And it all comes from the same place. Come on, I’ll walk with you, keep you from falling on your ass in the dark.”

  She flicked on her LED, sorely tempted to flash it in his eyes, but she’d regret it if some new threat appeared out of the forest while he was blinded by her light.

  He caught the look on her face and laughed, coming very close and leaning down to whisper in her ear. “It’s not that I doubt your skills, sweetheart, it’s just that I’m very fond of your ass.”

  She pushed him away, trying not to laugh. He was too charming by half. Shoving two of the empty bottles at his chest, she said, “Fine, you can come. But I lead.”

  “That’s all right. I have excellent night vision, and I don’t mind the view.”

  “You always carry salt with you?” Aidan asked, nearly an hour later as he finished the last of the fish and dropped the remnants into the fire.

  “Sure, and pepper, too. That’s the minimum necessary for a tasty dish, according to Evelyn.”

  “Evelyn?”

  “My parents’ cook. They loved us, but they were way more invested in their work than their children. Evelyn saved my brother and me from starvation.”

  “My compliments to Evelyn then, the next time you see her.” He added that last casually, waiting for her response, wondering if she planned to rush back to Earth on the next shuttle, a possibility that had him fighting back a growl. He paused, surprised by his own reaction. He didn’t do long-term with women. Hell, he barely did short-term. So what the hell did he care if Rachel went home? After all, her life was out there, visiting exotic places and finding new ways to risk her life. He knocked the two forked spit sticks into the fire.

  Rachel looked up in surprise. “We could have used those in the morning.” There was a question in her voice.

  He shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of wood.”

  She eyed him a moment longer, then said quietly, “You should go ahead, Aidan.”

  “What?”

  “You need to warn your people about Wolfrum and the second ship, and you’ll travel a lot faster without me.”

  He studied her. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  She snorted. “Like I could. No, I’m serious. You’re too polite to say it, but I slow you down.”

  It was his turn to snort. “I’m not too polite. You are slower than I am, but so is more than half the population of Harp. That doesn’t mean I leave them behind because it’s more convenient.”

  “We’re not talking convenience. This is life or death. Damn it, Aidan, they put you in a cage, knowing you were human. And now that the first hunt failed, Wolfrum will be all the more determined to make sure their second hunt succeeds. He won’t care who gets hurt. You and I are the only ones who know everything, and you’re the only one who can stop him.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone out here.” He knew she was right, but, damn it, he didn’t want her to end up dead because of it.

  “Don’t insult me,” she snapped. “Maybe you could get away with that macho crap before, but you’ve seen what I’m capable of now. I can handle the Green for a few days on my own.”

  “And what about the rizer bite that almost killed you?”

  “Okay, what about the damn giant snake that almost killed you?” she countered angrily.

  “I could have handled it,” he grumbled.

  “And I could have handled the rizer bite!” Her voice gentled. “Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot better with you there, but I would have survived on my own if I’d had to.”

  Aidan stared at the fire, not happy with the way this conversation was going. He kept lumping her in with most of the norms he knew. And not just the women, either. Most of the non-shifter population, male and female both, rarely ventured more than a hundred yards into the Green surrounding the city. They’d been raised with warnings about its dangers and were happy to leave it to shifters, while shifters considered the Green their private realm, and so were happy to keep it that way.

  On the other hand, he had to admit that Rachel didn’t fit the typical “norm” description. To be honest, she reminded him a hell of a lot more of Rhodry’s Earther wife, Amanda, who’d come here with the fleet and broken every stereotype of what a woman and a norm could accomplish, if she was willing to fight for it. Some shifters had worried that Amanda’s success in becoming the first woman and the first norm to ever pass the exceedingly dangerous Shifter Guild trials would start an avalanche of norms wanting to try their hand at the same. That had been two years ago, and not a single norm had signed up.

  Now there was Rachel, and damn if he didn’t think Rachel could pass the trials if she tried. That didn’t mean he wanted her to try. Amanda had nearly died. And he knew what Rachel would say to that.

  “Two more days,” he said finally. “I want you farther away from that fucking cesspool. And,” he continued, when she opened her mouth to comment—whether it was to agree or disagree, he didn’t know—“I’ll find one of my cousins to escort you, to make sure you’re safe.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Look, I know you’re tough, but at a minimum the cousins can show you the fastest way to get where we’re going. And if we need to get a message to y
ou, it’ll be faster if he’s with you.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “Why would he make a message faster?”

  Aidan struggled with what to say. She knew about shifters, but he hadn’t told her about the trees’ song, the life blood of every shifter. Not even Harp-born norms could hear that song. “We travel a lot faster through the trees, and with our enhanced senses, we can find each other more easily.”

  She gave him a searching look, but eventually said, “You’ll do what you want anyway. As long as you take off to warn your people, I’m good with it. I wouldn’t mind meeting some of your cousins.”

  Aidan narrowed his eyes, wondering what she meant by that. Maybe he should send a cousin with the warning, while he doubled back— Oh fuck, no. What was he thinking? Was he actually afraid Rachel would prefer one of his cousins over him? Or, even worse, that she’d take up with one of them, because he was gone a few days? Or, worst of all, why did he care?

  “They’re good lads,” he agreed, trying not to growl. “We should shut this down now,” he said, pointing at the fire. “You okay with banking it for the night?”

  She chuckled. “Are you suggesting I’m afraid of the dark? You’re batting a thousand tonight, kitty cat.”

  He was across the fire in an instant, had her off the ground and in his arms a second later, her back to his chest. “I don’t know what batting is, sweetheart,” he whispered against her ear, satisfied at the shiver of awareness that shook her slender form. “But I’m no kitty cat.” He spun her around and kissed her, biting her lower lip and taking advantage of her gasp to slip his tongue between her teeth, tightening his hold until there wasn’t the smallest distance between them, her breasts crushed against his chest, his already stiffening shaft pressed against her belly.

  “The fire,” she pulled back to say breathlessly.

  “I’ve got the fire.” He kicked dirt over the stone circle, dousing the remaining flames. Darkness swallowed them whole.

  Rachel’s fingers tightened on his shirt. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “I can.” He swung her into his arms, ignoring her soft protest, and carried her over to where they’d laid out their few things, including her bedroll. Aidan didn’t usually need a bedroll, and he wouldn’t need one tonight, either. Rachel’s would do for what he had planned, and after that, he’d shift for the night.