The Shifter's Embrace

by Selena Scott

  Tre tossed his towel aside and did a running cannon ball into the deep end. Celia laughed and scraped water off of her face.

  “I give it a 6.8,” she told him as he surfaced, tossing the water out of his hair.

  “6.8?!” he demanded. “That was perfect form! Hell of a splash, too.”

  “Son,” Jack called from the pool deck, “that was child’s play.” He took his jump at a full sprint, pulled into a long, golden jackknife and made a splash at least four feet higher than Tre’s.

  Celia laughed and treaded water while she held up eight fingers. “Solid 8, cowboy.”

  At this point, Caroline and Thea had wandered out to watch, both of them in bathing suits as well.

  “8?!” Jack argued, in the exact same tone as Tre had. “That was at least a nine. Look! The deck chairs are wet.”

  Celia, gathering her courage, pulled herself out of the water and sat on the edge of the pool. She slicked water out of her silver hair and leaned back on the palms of her hands, letting the sun touch all over her skin. She could feel his eyes on her. “What is it about men that they immediately have to argue their scores?” she asked Jack, purposefully avoiding Jean Luc’s eyes. “An 8 is a perfectly respectable score. You should be proud of it, not pouting you didn’t score higher.”

  Caroline, in a demure little white bikini with a little gold clasp between her breasts, sat down next to Celia, dipping her feet in. “I think it’s a caveman thing,” Caroline mused.

  “Caveman thing?” Thea asked, slipping her feet out of her flip flops. She looked around and frowned when she didn’t see Martine out there with them. Ah well. “It’s not a caveman thing, it’s a dick-swinging thing.”

  “What?” Caroline asked in laughing, blushing delight. The thought had never even occurred to her that in a man’s mysterious mind splash size might correlate with dick size.

  “Yeah,” Thea said, adjusting her basic, black one-piece and making Jack swallow about a gallon of pool water. “It’s like ‘look at how much of a he-man I am. Me splash, you swoon.’”

  “So,” Jack called from the water, “you’re saying that as a woman, you have no urge to show us up and make a bigger splash? Or did you just make all that up because you know your splash can’t compare to mine?”

  Thea’s smile flattened into a line. “For the record, I know that you’re baiting me. And also for the record, my splash is bigger than yours.” Thea took a running leap and splashed into the water like a torpedo. It wasn’t a wider splash than Jack’s but it certainly was taller.

  “Wow!” Caroline called. “That was incredible.”

  “Yes,” Celia agreed. “Definitely a nine.”

  “A nine?!” Tre and Jack shouted at the same time.

  “No way,” Tre shook his head. “That’s just some girl power agenda you’re pushing. There’s no way that was a nine.”

  “I stand by my scoring abilities,” Celia shrugged. She even had the audacity to check out her nails as she spoke, like she was bored by the entire affair.

  “It’s up to you, Goliath,” Tre called to Jean Luc, still standing on the pool deck. “Use your size for good. Redeem us!”

  Jean Luc shook his head, like they were all being so childish he couldn’t even believe it. He turned away. For a moment, Celia’s stomach dropped, foolishness beginning to creep over her. They were acting like kids, she supposed. And she’d intended to come out here and be flirty and sexy, not act like a kid. But that line of thought evaporated in a cloud of delight as Jean Luc turned back to the group, a crazy grin on his face, and launched himself toward the pool.

  Athlete that he was, he got way more height in his jump than any of the others had. He seemed almost to hang, suspended, in the air for a moment. When he hit the water, there was the illusion that there wasn’t even going to be a splash—the water just trembled. And then it came. The splash to end all splashes.

  Even the kitchen window was dripping with pool water as he came up sputtering and laughing.

  “Ho-ly shit!” Jack crowed.

  “You soaked me!” Caroline called, squeezing water out of her previously dry hair.

  “Alright,” Thea called, floating on her back. “I can admit that Jean Luc’s dick is bigger than mine.”

  Jean Luc went bright pink and laughed. He looked around the pool, treading water. “Damn. We’re gonna have to add water with the hose. We took a good foot out of it.”

  “You took a good foot out of it,” Celia said, swishing her feet in the water. She held her breath as he swam over to her. He rested his folded forearms on the side of the pool, his muscles flexing and shadowed in the sun.

  Jean Luc shirtless was quite a thing to behold. Gorgeous and tempting. Jean Luc shirtless and wet? Well, damn. Celia commanded herself not to press her legs together. His face was a foot from her hips. She was positive he would notice. She just needed to play it cool. Play. It. Cool.

  “Well, as long as I’m already wet,” Caroline said, shrugging, and she launched herself off the side and into the pool where she and Tre immediately started tossing a blow-up ball back and forth. Jack and Thea lounged over by the pool stairs, flirting and touching.

  Jean Luc looked up at Celia out of the corner of his eye. There was something about the contrast of the red against that peachy skin of hers. It was… damn. Made her look like candy. And she was so small, he’d never quite counted her as having curves before. But he supposed it was all in proportion, because the rounded lines out from her collarbones, the press of her breasts against one another, that soft stomach and the flare of her hips, those were curves. Even if she could probably fit in his pocket. Something about that combination, tiny and curvy, just made his heart bang in his ribs.

  She still wasn’t looking at him. Usually that wouldn’t have bothered him. People were allowed to think their own thoughts and ignore him as much as they wanted. In fact, he usually preferred it. But right now, he really wanted her eyes, her attention. So, he said the first thing that came to mind. Without thinking at all how it was going to sound.

  “So, did I get you wet too?”

  Her mouth dropped open as she swung around to look at him. “Excuse me?”

  “I—Jesus. Not what I—damn it.” He plunked his bright red face into his elbow and let out a long, slow breath.

  “Wow,” Celia said, delighting in Jean Luc’s clumsy flirtation with her. She was ninety percent sure she and her skimpy bikini had just lured him across the pool to her. It was a good feeling. It was a really good feeling. Even the tips of his ears were red. And that was a good feeling, too. Something clicked into place. “Woooooowwwww. I totally believe you now.”

  “Believe me about what?” he asked, lifting his head just enough to peer at her out of the side of his eye again. Like looking at her dead-on was too embarrassing.

  “That you were totally a dork in high school.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, I just didn’t think I was such a dork in my adult life as well.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t either. I thought for sure that Jean Luc LaTour would have smoother moves.” She said his name in the way he had yesterday, when he’d said that people thought of him as a brand.

  If it was possible, he went a deeper red. “I have moves.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye again and played with some loose pebbles on the pool deck.

  He was off his game, flirting like a high-schooler and it made Celia feel like she was ten feet tall. And a perfect ten. A knock-out. She had never felt more in control of a situation with a man or more hot in her entire life. Jean Luc LaTour was blushing like a schoolboy and barely able to look at her. Bow down, bitches.

  “Really? Not convinced.” She resisted the urge to look at her nails again. She figured that might be pushing this persona a little too far.

  “Are you saying that I should convince you?”

  This time, it was Celia who was looking at him out of the corner of her eye, not quite able to look him dead on. Her mouth went dry.
Was he just flirting? Talking? Or was he asking permission to take things a step further? It was really hard to tell. The only thing Celia knew for sure was that she was about ten seconds away from having a squee-based panic attack and blowing this sexy-red-bikini-don’t-care persona to all hell.

  She called on a deep reserve of confidence that she hadn’t previously known she had. “Not sure I can be convinced at this point. I’ve already seen your beret.”

  With that, Jean Luc did three things. He laughed, blushed, and lunged forward, his strong arms banding around her waist. He easily plucked her up off the edge of the pool and plunged backwards with her pressed tight against him. They submerged, all bubbles and blue water. He released her and Celia swam toward the sunlight.

  Celia automatically checked her bathing suit to make sure everything was in place as she broke the surface and gasped for air. She came up laughing and so did he. It was like the sudden cold water had shocked her out of her momentum. Watching him laugh and slough water off his face, she suddenly remembered who she was and who he was. But before the weight of her status versus his could weigh her down, she remembered that she’d just totally befuddled him. She didn’t think she had the skills or the energy to do it twice in a row, but for a moment, she’d made him blush. And that was enough for now. She ducked back under the water and came up on the shallow side, her hands in the air.

  “Open!” she called, and held her arms up for the inflatable beach ball. Tre launched it across the pool and she caught it, a huge smile on her face. Thea called out behind her and the game evolved from there. Riding the impossible high of flirting with Jean Luc, Celia spent hours playing with her friends.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was movie night again, Caroline’s decree. They’d had another family dinner, and it had gone well enough, but she’d decided that they weren’t quite ready for a full-on game night. Which is how the group found itself holed up in the TV room again, this time watching The Shining.

  Celia, who was not good at scary movies—seriously, she just didn’t have the genes for it or something—had lobbied for anything else. She’d lost. She’d also been the last person to the TV room again, this time on purpose, and had wound up in the same spot as last time, between Jean Luc and the arm of the couch.

  Only, this time, seeing as how they were watching the scariest movie of all time, she opted for a blanket.

  “I thought you were supposed to be a badass,” Jean Luc whispered to her as she shrank back into the couch cushions, already nervous during the opening credits.

  She turned to him and realized that he was kind of crowding her, his humongous arm thrown over the back of the couch behind her and his face leaning down to whisper to her.

  “Whatever gave you that impression?”

  “Uh,” he looked at her like the answer was obvious. “How about the fact that you got the middle of your nose pierced? That has to require at least a certain amount of badassery.”

  “Touché. But at no point did I think I might get murdered during that experience. This one?” She nodded her head toward the TV screen. “Not so much.”

  He blinked at her. “It’s a movie. You’re not getting murdered from watching a movie.”

  “Excuse me,” she hissed. “Have you ever seen The Ring? You just, literally, described the plot.”

  He laughed, shaking his head back and forth and dragging his eyes back to the screen. “I can promise you that you will not get murdered in the next hour and a half. Or, statistically, probably for the rest of your life.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Lot of consolation that is. When Jack Nicholson is coming for me with an ax, I’ll remind him about statistics.”

  She felt Jean Luc’s deep laugh rumble through the couch cushions and press up against her, as if he’d touched her. He hadn’t, for the record, touched her yet.

  He shifted his ass against his blue jeans and the couch creaked. What he wouldn’t have given for a minute, just like this, alone with Celia. He wanted five less people in the room immediately. He was confused about what was happening with her, it was disorienting to have this pumping excitement in his chest after so many years of grief and loneliness. He was not, however, confused anymore about how hot she was. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it at first. But she was cute as hell. It was kind of like he couldn’t un-see the bikini. Even now, in her leggings and oversized flannel button up, he could still see all the things that that bikini had barely covered. Now that he knew what was under her clothes, it was kind of like the clothes were rendered useless.

  He shifted again. If they were alone, maybe he’d scoot a little closer. See if that thin line of electric tension that he was almost positive was brewing between them was gonna spool up any tighter.

  But they weren’t alone. They were never alone. They were constantly in a group of their friends. And besides, Jean Luc was barely alone in his own mind these days. Jack and Tre could probably read the lusty tension emanating off of him as clear as a bell. That thought had him leaning back just a touch.

  The music crescendoed and Celia ‘eeped!’ and buried her eyes in her hands. All he could see of her was that shock of silver hair. He really, really wanted to touch her hair. It looked impossibly soft and really interesting. He liked that she’d dyed it such an unusual color. It looked trendy and cool with her dark roots and it was just really… different from all the girls who used to come onto him when he was still playing. There had been plenty of pretties, no doubt. But they’d all been ultra-feminine and practically perfect. Perfect makeup and perfect style. He’d always felt, somewhere in the back of his mind, as if they’d been auditioning for a role he hadn’t known was up for auction.

  Celia and her silver hair didn’t look like that at all. And it made him curious. And, if he was being honest, a little itchy. In a good way. She was so little he was sure that one good, real hug from him would swallow her right up. He knew he could lift her with absolutely zero effort. He wondered what it would be like to move her in other ways. To roll her over. Put her hands around his back. To nudge one of those knees out of the way… Yikes!

  He shifted again and let out a long, quiet breath. He needed to chill the hell out. He did not need to be popping wood in the middle of this movie night surrounded by a bunch of friends. Maybe he should take a blanket and go stretch out on the floor. That way he wouldn’t be tempted by Celia and he—

  “Ohmygod.” This time, she went entirely under the blanket, completely submerged just like she’d been in the pool. Even under the blanket, Jean Luc blinked and got an eyeful of that bikini. He had a feeling now that he might, one day, be escorted to his maker by that bikini.

  “You alright?” Jean Luc whispered, lightly elbowing the shapeless lump of blanket that was Celia.

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m just gonna go ahead and live under here for the rest of my life,” she whispered back.

  He chuckled. “You don’t have to watch the movie, you know. You’re pretty much torturing yourself right now.”

  She peeked one dark, furious eye out from under the blanket. Jean Luc blinked at her. With the hair and the piercing she always looked more fierce than pretty, but right now, just looking down at that gorgeous, humongous eye, he realized how pretty she actually was. He gulped. Actually gulped.

  “Are you nuts?” she whispered forcefully. “You want me to go be by myself in the house somewhere? Now I know you’re trying to make sure I’m the first one murdered.”

  He laughed, but it got stuck a little in his throat. Was this where he was supposed to offer to go with her? Find someplace where they could be alone? Was she asking him to take her away from this movie and find someplace to lay her down and kiss the daylights out of her? No. No. She most likely was not asking him that. And he could only imagine what everyone else in the room would think if they left the room together. No. Not a good plan.

  He could just sit here like a dope and not do or say anything. And maybe if he did that for long enough, whatever this thread of
tension between them was, it would just break. It was trying to reel them into one another, he was sure. But if it broke then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore, he’d go back to the way things had been for him. Simple. Sad. Lonely.

  He didn’t want to do that. What he wanted was more Celia smiles. And more Celia laughs and more Celia blushes. He looked down at the top of her silver head and realized just how badly he wanted to press his cheek there. Yeah. He didn’t care if he was making a fool of himself in front of his friends. He wasn’t gonna pull away from this. He was going to lean into it.

  The music crescendoed, Jack Nicholson tweaked, and this time the whole room jumped. Celia was back under the blanket.

  He took a deep breath and slid his hand a little further on the back of the couch. He estimated where her shoulder was and pressed his palm there. She tensed for a second, under the weight of his arm, and then completely relaxed. The blanket shifted and fell away from her face, and she looked up at him.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Jean Luc said, “you could definitely outrun Jack Nicholson. Dude’s like eighty.”

  Celia laughed and turned back to the movie, but when she did, she shifted over a few inches, so that Jean Luc’s humongous arm was all the way around her and she was tucked into his side. He wondered if she could feel the bang of his heart where her shoulder pressed his ribs. He fought the urge to shift his butt against the couch again. He figured even the smallest adjustment was liable to send her skittering away. No. He was not going to break this spell no matter what.

  She was stiff, but he couldn’t tell if that was because of him or because of the movie. She jumped again and this time she grabbed at that hand he had over her shoulder. With both hands, she gripped his palm, tugging his arm over her so that he almost had her in a headlock. Like she was using his forearm as a seatbelt. He could feel the soft crush of her against his skin, his muscle, and his arm flexed.

  Celia praised whatever fucked up, twisted soul had decided to make this into a movie. She was certain of two things. She was never going to stop being freaked out about the little kid ghosts and she was never going to forget about the heavy weight of Jean Luc’s arm over top of her. Seriously, his arm was roughly the size of her leg. She clutched his one, gigantic hand in both of her hands and hoped she wasn’t breathing on him too much. Because her breath was not playing it cool. She could always blame it on the movie, she supposed. But she knew that she was breathing like she was hiking up a mountain because she was basically getting snuggled by someone she’d had a crush on since she was thirteen years old. And he was huge and warm and smelled so freaking good she was forcing herself to look at the movie instead of burying her face in his armpit.