The Shifter's Embrace

by Selena Scott

  There was a fierce and contending look in Celia’s eye that pulled him back. “Celia—”

  “Condom. Now.” She reared back and up. Was crawling across the floor. He rolled to his back, tried to reach out for her.

  “Baby.”

  But she dodged his hand, knelt at his waist and yanked his briefs down his legs the same as he’d done for hers.

  He reached for her hair. “Baby, Celia, wait—oh fuck.”

  She was already opening that little mouth of hers and swallowing him down. She pulled off to take a deep breath, staring down at his cock with a look he wasn’t sure he liked. He knew he was big. He was big all over and always had been. She was breathing hard, like she’d just partially suffocated herself.

  “Baby,” he sat up. “I don’t want you choking on it.” He paused. Thought for a second. “I mean, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind you choking on it, because that’s kind of hot. But maybe after a good amount of practice with you not choking on it first.”

  She looked up at him and for a second he thought she might laugh, prayed for it. But she didn’t.

  “Condom. Now,” she repeated.

  He eyed her for a second and hedged his bets. He rolled to one side and grabbed the edge of his suitcase, dragging it toward him. Unzipping one pocket, he pulled out a box of condoms which he tore open and pulled one out, handing it to her.

  She tore it open and slid it down his length so fast he barely had time to blink. Next thing he knew she was tossing a leg over top of him, about to take him inside.

  Yeah. It was time to get off the floor.

  In a smooth motion, he rolled up and took her with him.

  She gasped and gripped his shoulders as he walked to the bed and threw back the covers. He set her down and she reared up for him, attempting to climb him like a tree.

  Instead, he slid his hands around her back and unclipped her bra, let her be completely naked for him.

  She stilled, her eyes getting even bigger than usual. He couldn’t read her thoughts and it bothered him.

  He climbed onto the bed beside her and rolled her, careful with his weight, until they were side by side facing each other. Then he grabbed the covers in one hand and tossed them over their heads, cocooning them inside.

  “Hi,” he whispered to her, just a murky blue light filtering in through the sheets.

  She paused, her hands on his chest, her eyes searching his. “Hi.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her mouth. A soft kiss, almost like a first kiss. Searching, questioning, testing.

  As the kiss spanned out and out, Celia felt herself go from nuclear, toxically hot, back down to a burning, healthy boil. She’d lost herself for a minute, wanted to jump off a cliff without a parachute. She’d wanted to smash herself on the rocks below and cry about the inevitability of it. She’d wanted to fuck things up.

  But he hadn’t let her. They were naked against naked, his hands were everywhere. Her hands were not. Instead, she just gripped him hard on the smooth skin of his back. Clung to him, rode the slow, undulating wave of his body.

  When the tip of his hard cock slipped through her wetness she gasped and threw one leg over his hip, opening herself to him. It felt so good he did it again. And again, torturing himself with her heat.

  On the next pass, this time he nudged forward and pressed the tip of himself inside her. It was a tight fit and he clenched his teeth. She threw her head back and he couldn’t help but kiss a line up her throat. She pushed down and took another inch, her hands grabbing at him, his arms tightening.

  She took another inch and he gripped her hips and rolled them so that he was on his back and she was over top of him. The blankets fell away and pooled all around them as a burst of fresh, cool air washed over them. She took his eyes with hers and dropped down, burying him inside her.

  He wanted to speak, to say a hundred things. Yes and I’ve been waiting so long and thank you and fuck and just like that and yes. But words wouldn’t come out. All he could do was lift his head and drop it back, his hands at her hips, pressing into the soft flesh of her ass, guiding her as she lifted up and pressed back down.

  She was getting used to him. Her eyes fluttering closed. She’d never taken a man this well-endowed. For a second, a flash of porn fluttered through her mind. She’d seen porn stars ride dicks this size like they were jumping on a trampoline. Celia was not there for that. She was not trying to commit suicide by gigantic cock. No. She needed to ride slow. Figure this out.

  And so that’s exactly what she did. Jean Luc clenched his teeth and breathed in giant huffing puffs of oxygen as her body started a fluid, gorgeous wave. She was like an hour glass, with all that breasts and all that ass, that little waist he was currently tracing. And the way she was moving was so hypnotizing his eyes blurred. When they did, she wasn’t an hourglass, she was almost a figure eight. An infinity symbol. On and on over top of him, dragging him into a forever he’d thought wasn’t possible for him.

  “Fuh—shit. Yes. Goddammit. Holy. Holy.” His hands slicked up to her breasts and her rhythm stuttered as she let him play. And God that was good.

  Jean Luc knifed upwards, swallowing her in his arms and smashing her front against him. He felt her ankles lock behind his back and knew that she was holding her elbows behind his neck, exactly the way she’d been when he’d carried her across the yard, except now he was ten inches deep and that perfect little pussy was threatening to strangle the life out of him.

  He sought her mouth and found it, pushing his hips up and making the bed creak beneath them. She pivoted her hips to meet him and hissed. She pulled back from the kiss, surprise showing on her face. He knew what that look meant. She could come like this.

  “Yeah?” he asked, a smile coming over his lips as he moved his hips exactly as he had before.

  She nodded her head yes, her eyes wide and surprised and lost. She started to move faster on him, her wetness spreading between them. He could feel her on his lower stomach, slicking them, and it only made him move faster against her. They were racing against each other, grinding for friction against the slickest surface imaginable. He held her tighter, huffed his breath into the crook of her neck, the bed shaking and creaking. Her head fell back for a second and then she, too, buried her face in the crook of his neck. They breathed one another’s air and raced, raced, raced.

  He felt her pull tight and clamp down with a sob of breath. She was squeezing him so tight he could barely catch breath as her body trembled and tightened and climaxed. She was whispering his name over and over when he finally let himself go. He pressed her down on him, jogged his hips up, and spun away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They fell backwards and Celia relished the heavy, strong beat of his heart against hers. It was so solid, so strong, so everything.

  They laid like that until the cool air conditioning raised goosebumps on her back and she knew that they had to move.

  As soon as she started to adjust, Jean Luc reached down and held the condom while she pulled off of him.

  Celia rolled off the bed and stood up. She immediately wished she hadn’t. But when she turned back, Jean Luc was sitting up on the other side of the bed, doing something with the condom. So she did the only thing she could think to do and headed toward the bathroom.

  She was just closing the door when he slipped in alongside her, tossing the condom in the trash and turning on the faucet, washing his hands first and then leaning down to drink straight from the tap the way she’d seen him do a hundred times. She stood awkwardly behind him.

  What was she supposed to do now? Head back to her room, right? She wished she hadn’t gotten up. If she hadn’t gotten up, she could just have pretended to be asleep and then maybe she could have spent the entire night in that perfect little blanket cocoon that he’d made and she wouldn’t have had anything to worry about until the morning.

  Jean Luc turned around, naked as the day he was born and his back to the bathroom mirror. Celia saw, to her horror, tha
t there were scratches and bruises from her hands on his back.

  “That…” Jean Luc said, scraping a hand over his face, “was hands-down the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  Celia reared back like he’d slapped her. “What?”

  He scratched at the back of his neck and shook his head, his eyes lost in memory. “Yeah. Seriously. Jesus.”

  The best sex he’d ever had? Could that possibly be true? Was there any way she could believe that? She wanted so badly to believe it. She looked at him in the bright lights of the bathroom. Why oh why were these four feet between them feeling so impossible to cross? He’d been inside of her this side of five minutes ago.

  She leaned her back against the bathroom door and balanced one foot on top of the other. “Me too. Though, I probably don’t even need to explain that, considering.”

  He waved his hand to one side, as if waving away her words. “Yeah?” His smile was so young, so hopeful and pleased that Celia couldn’t help but chuckle a little.

  “Yeah.”

  His eyes darkened as they traveled the length of her naked body. “God, you’re so pretty to look at.”

  She started again. Hot? Yes. Sexy? Occasionally. Pretty? Practically never. Who was this guy?

  “You were right, though,” he said, turning his head to one side and squinting at her. “Your fade needs a touch-up. Come here.”

  He held out one hand to her and she found, to her relief, that it actually was possible to reach across that four-foot gap between them and let herself get pulled into his big body. He turned her, stood her straight up and immediately got to work on trimming up her hair. Celia quietly watched as he turned her head this way and that, fading her hair with infinite care and the gentle touch she was just now starting to expect from him.

  “Jean?” she asked, unconsciously shortening his name and making some corresponding something roll over again in his gut. It was the second time she’d given him that swooping, inexplicable feeling.

  “Yeah?” He caught her eyes in the mirror.

  “How’d you know how to do that? Talk me out of coming and then making me come?”

  He smiled for a second, his eyes on the back of her head as he re-shaved a section. “I was a quarterback in the NFL for six years. Went to the Superbowl twice, won it once. Celia, I know all about performance anxiety, trust me.”

  “Performance anxiety,” she repeated, trying out the words for a second.

  “Sure. There’s a lot of pressure during sex. For everybody involved. You telling me that it wasn’t possible was a way of taking the pressure off, which I really appreciated. And me telling you that you weren’t supposed to come really took the pressure off. Then… ta-da.”

  “Ta-da,” she repeated, with a raised eyebrow. “Just like that.”

  “Just like that,” he shrugged, hiding his smile behind her head as he bent down to make sure everything was symmetrical.

  She smiled for a second, resisting the urge to shake her head. “You’re… good at sex.”

  He shrugged. “Thanks. It wasn’t just me in there, for the record. You’re good at sex, too.”

  Her cheeks went pink and she avoided his eyes in the mirror. He went around to one side then the other, fixing her lines.

  When he deemed her haircut perfect, he flipped on the shower and followed her in. He watched the spray ricochet off her body, the rivers of water magnify her skin on the way down. She washed herself and then he washed himself. He watched her carefully as she went to step out of the shower. She paused, turned back around and hugged him, her arms going around his waist and her cheek landing over his heart. She hugged him tight, for a good long minute. And then she turned and ducked out of the shower.

  He finished rinsing and got out, wrapping a towel around his waist. When he opened the door to the bathroom, he saw that his bed was made and his room was empty.

  ***

  Something woke Celia that night and she wasn’t sure what it was. It was pitch black. The kind of dark that only comes three hours after sundown or three hours before sunrise. Velvet black. And humid.

  The air conditioning must not be working, she realized. She rolled in her sheets and felt her shirt stick to her.

  Either that or she was still overheating from the way Jean Luc had just given her the business. She both thrilled and winced when she thought about it.

  Overall, she thought leaving his room and coming to sleep in her own room was the most mature and least crazy thing she could do. It showed that she wasn’t going to become a clingy stalker, of which she was sure he’d had many, having a magic cock and all. And it also gave her a little bit of alone time after her world had been promptly tipped on its axis.

  She’d had no idea sex could be like that. None at all. And now she was going to have to figure out how to coexist with him. Would they do it again? She hoped so. Would they tell anyone about it? She hoped not.

  Which meant no sleepovers, no lovey-dovey eyes across the breakfast table, and definitely no showing of this weird and terrifying liquid-honey-slow-motion-tidal-wave that had inexplicably started tumbling in her stomach since the moment they’d first kissed.

  She rolled in the bed, flipping her pillow to the cool side, when she heard the noise that she now realized had woken her up. It was a splashing sound.

  That was weird. Someone was in the pool at, she squinted at the clock, 3 am? She strained for any other sound. Were they still playing poker poolside?

  But no. There was nothing. Utter, middle-of-the-night silence. Until she heard it again. Splashing. A wet thump.

  She sat up.

  A choking sound.

  A deep and horrible choking sound.

  She was out of the bed in a flash, grabbing her glasses and sprinting down the hall toward the pool. She skidded through the kitchen and out through the screened-in porch. She came to a grinding halt as she saw something large and dark under the water of the pool. It thrashed and broke the surface for just a second before submerging again. Celia thought briefly of the alligator in the back canal that she’d seen. Jean Luc had told her that they sometimes showed up in pools.

  She rushed back into the kitchen and turned the pool lights on before she rushed back out to the patio. And then her heart simply stopped beating.

  “Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Jack! Martine! Tre!”

  She didn’t have time to scream more of their names before she was sprinting out to the pool and diving in headfirst. The water broke around her in white and blue bubbles. She swam to the dark mass at the bottom of the pool, pulling herself bodily through the water. Toward Jean Luc, who struggled as if weighted down, as if something was dragging him to the bottom.

  His eyes met hers through the water and something flashed through them. He tore at his own chest, like he was attempting to rip something off of him.

  And then Celia saw it. A thin line of blue, lit up like a string of Christmas lights. It was around his chest, pinning him to the bottom of the pool. Drowning him.

  He shook his head at her, obviously not wanting her to get any closer. Obviously wanting her to get back where she’d be safe, but she didn’t listen. She swam down and down toward him.

  She pushed herself toward him and grabbed his out-flung hand, the hand he was using to tell her to save herself. She didn’t listen. Celia grabbed his hand, planted her feet at the bottom of the pool and catapulted them up to the surface.

  Expecting resistance, she was pretty shocked when she easily tugged him up. She gasped for air and waited for him to do the same. He didn’t. His weight, so buoyant under water, instantly dragged her back under the second she got his head up. She kicked, but the sheer mass of him was taking her under.

  She saw the plunging, bubbling spear of someone else diving in and then Jack was there, taking Jean Luc by the armpit, kicking hard, dragging them to the pool’s edge where the rest of them waited, reaching forward.

  It took all of them to get Jean Luc’s heavy weight out of the pool and
still he didn’t breathe.

  “That thing!” Celia gasped as she pulled herself out of the pool, water streaming from her body. “That thing is still on him!”

  “What thing?” Martine asked, crouching over Jean Luc’s head, her fierce eyes taking in everything at once, the dim of Jean Luc’s lifeforce, the dark of the woods at their backs, the frantic skitter of Celia’s heart in her throat.

  “A shiny blue light at his chest. It’s like a rope. Made of that same blue energy stuff that Arturo always uses.” Celia crawled to Jean Luc, scraping her knees on the pool deck and not caring at all. She knew that the light had extinguished, but that that thing was still there. She’d seen it dissolve into his body.

  Without stopping to think about the logic of what she was doing, she clawed at Jean Luc’s chest, her fingers leaving red marks in their wake, but they also closed around a red hot wire, invisible but very real. The second her fingers touched it, it flamed blue again. It was wrapped around Jean Luc, constricting his chest.

  “Hell no.” Celia shouted, standing up and planting her feet. Her grip on the wire was strong. And she was very, very angry. “Absolutely, one hundred percent NEVER.” She was talking to this burning, wiry weapon in her hands that was killing Jean Luc, but she was also talking to Arturo, who she could guess was skulking somewhere nearby. She reared back, both hands burning to all hell as she gave one good, almighty yank and ripped the blue wire from its hold around Jean Luc’s chest.

  It coiled up, burning and hissing like a snake. It sliced through the air, attempting to curl around Celia and get her next, but instinct had her turning and launching it through the air like a shotput. It flung, high and arcing and in the next second, Martine’s zinging dagger flashed through the air, caught it through its heart, and ended its life.

  Celia fell to all fours, her heart pounding out of her chest, her palms stinging to all hell. But her eyes sought one thing and one thing only. The rise and fall of Jean Luc’s chest. Which she saw. It was shallow. But he was breathing. Oh, thank Jesus, he was breathing.