The Shifter's Embrace

by Selena Scott

  “What the fuck?” Tre asked the general population and the world at the same time. “What in the actual holy fuck was that?” He stood up and paced a few steps toward the woods and back. “Martine, what in the everloving fuck just happened?”

  Celia brushed her hand over Jean Luc’s forehead and his eyes fluttered open. It seems that he’d heard Tre’s question because he turned his head and coughed out some water, his hand coming to his eyes. “He came to me. In my sleep. The way he did with Jack.” His words were slow and labored, punctuated with rattling breaths. “It was a blue light. A trap. I followed it.”

  “He hypnotized you?” Martine asked sharply.

  “Yeah. Told me to follow or else… someone was going to die. Then it turned into that snake thing and got me in the pool. Tried to drown me.”

  “He didn’t try to drown you,” Martine corrected. “He was trying to get you as close to death as possible. That way it would be so much easier to strip you of your soul. You wouldn’t have any fight left in you.”

  “How’d you factor in?” Thea asked Celia as she reached out for her friend’s charred palms, wincing as she inspected them.

  “I heard splashing and choking. Came out to see and saw Jean Luc at the bottom of the pool. I screamed for you guys and jumped in after him.” She paused. “It was dragging him down so hard I didn’t think I was going to be able to get him up. But it was easy.”

  “It couldn’t fight both of you at once,” Martine said, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t think he expected you to reach in with bare hands and yank it from Jean Luc’s chest.”

  “You what?” Jean Luc asked, struggling to sit up. “You reached into my chest?”

  “Not exactly,” Celia said, feeling strangely embarrassed about the whole thing. “I just yanked it out of you. Like a tapeworm or something.”

  “It was extremely badass,” Tre said. “She burned the shit out of her hands.”

  Jean Luc immediately reached for the hand that Thea wasn’t currently inspecting. “Jesus, baby,” he whispered.

  Whether the rest of the group heard the endearment or not, Celia had no idea, and frankly, she didn’t really care. She let him fret over her hand for a second before her eyes met Martine’s. “We need to get him to a doctor.”

  Martine’s face became very grave. She hated to do this, she knew that whatever progress she’d made with the group was about to be shot to hell. In that moment, she hated Arturo. Hated him for catching them unawares twice now. For hurting members of their group one by one. “He can’t see a doctor. Not while he’s still getting his shift under control.” Martine met Celia’s instant fury with calm understanding. “It’s at a cellular level, Celia. If he doesn’t have complete control over it, there’s a hundred things that could show up in blood tests and x-rays and whatever the hell else the doctor is going to do.”

  “He needs the doctor,” Celia said, this time through clenched teeth. “He just almost died. Drowned. You can tell from his breath that there could be water in his lungs still. Which puts him at risk for all matter of things, including dying. He needs the doctor.”

  Jean Luc, sitting up on one elbow, couldn’t help but goggle at Celia. Her face was lit turquoise from the side, due to the pool lights, and her eyes were sparking fiercely. Water still dripped from her hair. She was crouched next to him like a fierce little pixie ready to go down swinging. Her nose piercing glinted in the light and her hair was a dark silver slick, looking somehow natural despite the intentional inch of dark roots.

  He had a memory then. It hit him all at once, almost as if he were transported back to that moment.

  He took a breath, trying to calm the tidal wave of emotions that nearly ran him through.

  “If he goes, there’s a chance he won’t come out,” Martine said, trying to keep a hold on her emotions as well. “He’ll be deemed as a medical freak. And what’s worse, he’ll be a famous medical freak. We can’t condemn him to that. If he’s holed up in some lab getting experimented on, we can’t protect him from Arturo.”

  Celia, her eyes flashing, crouched all the way over him on all fours, and the barrel of his chest was a mere inch under her. “Martine, he could still drown just from the water left in his lungs right now. We don’t have the luxury of thinking about what the doctor could find.”

  “You’re both right,” Jean Luc cut in, resting a large hand on Celia’s back, causing her instantly to remember herself and lean back. He instantly missed the heat of her. “I can’t go to the hospital. If I do, it’ll be all over TMZ within hours.” Celia opened her mouth to argue but he pressed his hand to her back, and she quieted. “But my childhood doctor, he doesn’t live far. He’ll come to the house. He’ll make sure my lungs are alright.”

  Martine nodded immediately. “That’s fine by me. No blood tests. No imaging.”

  Celia, her arms crossed over her chest now, eyed both Jean Luc and Martine, as if they might somehow be conspiring against her. “I guess that’s fine.”

  “But for now we have to do something about your hands,” Thea said, rising to her feet. She could feel the tension pouring off of Jack. Both he and Tre were fluctuating between staring out at the dark woods behind them and staring down at Jean Luc’s prostrate body. “Let’s get inside.”

  “Please, Celia,” Martine said, her expression contrite. “Can I see your hands?”

  Celia looked at Martine in surprise. She held out her hands. “I’m not mad at you, Martine. I’m mad at Arturo.”

  Martine studied Celia’s palms for a second before she looked up, pain and sadness written in every line of her face. “Arturo is doing exactly what he’s been trained to do. It’s me who failed you all tonight.” She sighed as she rose. “Warm water on those wounds. A bath or a shower. You’ll feel much better. Trust me.”

  The group rose as a unit and it took most of them to get Jean Luc to his feet. They sat him in the dining room where he called his childhood pediatrician and explained that he was at his uncle’s house, that he’d had a mishap in the pool and he needed to be taken care of.

  Despite the hour, the doctor was at the house in less than twenty minutes. Celia’s hands were stinging like crazy, but she didn’t leave Jean Luc’s side. Eventually the group stopped pestering her about it.

  “Jean Luc!” The doctor, an extremely tiny formerly redheaded man, scuttled into the dining room like a beetle dancing over ice. He seemed to move every inch of his body at once.

  Jean Luc rose and the two embraced each other.

  “Julian Edelstein,” the doctor told the group. “Now, if I could have some privacy with my patient.”

  All but Celia left, who would not be moved. A little smile on his face, Jean Luc waved off the doctor’s protests and told him to get on with the exam.

  The rest of the group migrated to the living room.

  “Oh, quit blaming yourself,” Thea said as she plopped down in an armchair, her eyes on Martine.”

  “I have every reason to blame myself,” Martine said quietly and resolutely as she paced to one dark window and peered out. “If I’d been more alert, Jean Luc wouldn’t be having his lungs checked for water and Celia’s hands wouldn’t be shredded to hell.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Thea said, all but rolling her eyes. “Jack thinks the same thing and so does Tre.”

  The two men looked at her in surprise, though Jack wasn’t entirely shocked that his woman was pretty much reading his mind right now.

  “What?” Martine turned, squinting at them through the dark.

  Thea put her feet up on the coffee table. “My man here is blaming himself for not being more tuned in to Jean Luc when the kid was in danger. He’s wishing that he’d woken up sooner, that way Celia wouldn’t have had to get involved. I’m assuming Tre’s thoughts are along the same lines.”

  “I wish,” Caroline piped up, “that I’d heard Celia pass my door when she got up. We’re right next to one another. I could have helped.”

  “And I wish I’d been
there with her to jump in and save him,” Thea said. “I’m a stronger swimmer than she is, and Jean Luc’s big ass near drowned her.”

  “You’re saying…” Martine’s eyes clouded.

  “We’re saying that we’re all to blame,” Caroline said gently, realizing that though Thea was right, her demeanor wasn’t exactly helping push her cause.

  “I should have been more alert. I should have realized…”

  “What were you supposed to do?” Thea asked, a little frustration in her tone. “Stay awake all night, every night, knives drawn, just waiting for Arturo to pounce?”

  “If that’s what it takes to keep you all safe, then yes. I have to keep you safe.”

  “No, Martine,” Tre said in frustration. “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine and Jack’s. We weren’t tuned in to Jean Luc. We were trying to give him some privacy.”

  “Why?” Caroline asked.

  Jack and Tre looked at one another. Tre blushed, Jack smiled.

  “Oh, really?” Thea asked. “Tonight was the night?”

  “The night for what?” Caroline asked, looking around the group for answers. No one answered.

  “Apparently Celia and the football star did the dirty,” Thea answered, a smile on her face. She thought that was a good thing. She liked both of them and it was obvious they liked each other.

  “Oh, really?!” Caroline stood up, her hands clasped in front of her like she was in prayer. “Oh my gosh! That’s amazing! I’m so happy for them.”

  “Well, don’t throw a party quite yet, darlin’.” Jack rose up and paced from one side of the room to the other. His eyes found Thea’s first and Martine’s second. “Based on the timing of when Arturo came after me that first time, I’d imagine that things didn’t go so well between Celia and our boy in there.”

  “What do you mean?” Tre asked. If his feelings radar from Jean Luc at the beginning of the night had been any indication, things had gone very well for them. So well, in fact, that he and Jack had pulled each other aside to try and figure out how to turn the damn feelings radar down.

  They’d actually been able to. They figured it was because they were starting to understand the shift a bit better than before that they were able to both concentrate, in tandem, and sort of turn down the volume on their read of Jean Luc’s feelings. It had been a welcome relief when he and Celia had been doing very dirty things to one another, but it was also likely the reason they hadn’t known he was drowning.

  “I mean,” Jack said, his eyes on Thea’s, “Arturo came at me after Thea left. He knew I wanted her. Needed her. And he knew she was gone. It was when I was at my most vulnerable. And when Celia went after Jean Luc, Arturo’s power waned, he couldn’t keep Jean Luc under the water anymore. He can’t fight us when we’re together. He has to separate us out. Which, to my mind, means that they probably…”

  “Weren’t together when Jean Luc was taken,” Caroline finished, biting her lip. “Maybe they had a fight or something.”

  Thea thought about the first time she had had sex with Jack. She considered the life-altering nature of it. How she’d spent her whole life building a nice sturdy brick house around her emotions and goals. Then, after one night of passion, she’d woken up to see the whole thing smashed to dust. He’d, quite simply, destroyed her. Changed who she was. And she’d done the same for him. “Or maybe they’re just freaking out. Not on the same page yet. All of this is a lot to take in at once. Then you add great sex and…”

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed immediately. “All we know is that Jean Luc was vulnerable last night. And we can’t let it happen again.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Edelstein left, having given Jean Luc a clean bill of health. Then and only then did Celia allow herself to really feel how badly her hands hurt.

  “Okay,” he told her, rising up from his chair. “I’m good. Now, it’s your turn.”

  Their friends were still conversing in the living room, but neither had it in them to check in. They just walked, side by side, down the hall to Jean Luc’s room. His strength had recovered some, but he knew he needed a night’s rest right about now. But not more than he needed Celia. Not more than he needed her to be okay.

  He closed the bedroom door behind them and then the bathroom door. He immediately stripped off his sopping wet undershirt and shucked off his briefs. Celia was tangled in her wet camisole, gingerly trying not to upset the wounds on her hands.

  Jean Luc stripped it clean off of her and then her boxers and panties as well. Everything fell to the floor in a heavy, wet sop. Then he picked her up and stepped into the empty tub. He arranged them with her between his legs and her back to his front before he leaned forward and, with those very long arms of his, turned on the water and plugged the drain.

  It didn’t take long for the warm water to fill around them. “I’ve learned,” he told her, “not to fill the tub before I get in.”

  She turned her head and he caught just a scant half of her smile. “I imagine you’ve overflowed a few bathtubs.”

  “Pretty much every time.” He leaned forward again and turned off the water.

  Then he took her hands in his and gently dunked them under the clear water. She hissed, at first in pain, and then in relief as the stinging electricity in her burns slowly subsided. It was like the warm water was leaching the pain from her hands. They both watched as the wounds on her hands slowly but surely started to knit themselves back together.

  “Jesus,” she murmured, watching it happen in stunned amazement. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all…”

  “You turn into a bear shifter and then your girl’s hands heal before your eyes.”

  Jean Luc clunked his head back onto the tiled wall behind him. He didn’t notice that Celia’s eyes were humongous and round with shock. His girl? She was his girl? She let out a long, unsteady breath that, with his eyes still closed, he mistook for something else. His arm clasped around her and he pinned her to his chest.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he murmured tiredly. “We’re all okay.”

  She let her weight sink into him. Her eyes squeezed shut as she attempted to remember every single detail of what it felt like to be pressed up against him like this. His chest hair scratching at her back, his huge legs, bent and surrounding her on either side. His cock pressed at her ass. She couldn’t tell if he was half hard or if that was just the natural state of things. Neither would have surprised her, she supposed. The man was kind of a miracle.

  “I’m so sorry I left tonight,” she whispered. It had already occurred to both of them that if they’d been together, this might not have happened.

  She leaned forward off of him and pressed her eyes to her knees. Jean Luc drew a pattern over her lovely back.

  “You had to do what you had to do,” he told her. “And then you saved my life. So, no hard feelings on my end, baby.”

  She didn’t say anything, just stayed curled in on herself like that as he drew a picture of a sun on her back with his fingertip. He added waves beneath it.

  “Can I ask, though, why you left?”

  Celia tightened up and then let out a small sigh. She turned her head to one side, peered out at the bathroom. “Maybe I should be coming up with a cooler answer than this, but it’s four in the morning, we almost died and I’m exhausted. I guess the truth is that I was freaking out. And I thought that I was supposed to leave.”

  “Supposed to?” His hand went still on her back. He’d somehow given her the impression that she wasn’t welcome in his room?

  “Well,” she shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never slept with a famous athlete before. I just kind of figured that spooning wasn’t on the menu for tonight. I… didn’t want to crowd you.”

  He was speechless. If he was reading between the lines correctly, then Celia had some very big misconceptions about what had just happened.

  “Celia,” he said slowly. “Are you imagining that what happened between us tonight has happened to me befo
re?”

  Still in a stiff little grip with her knees, Celia went even stiller for a moment before she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. You’ve been around the block more than I have and I just thought—”

  “Baby, that has never happened to me.” In a move that surprised them both, he leaned forward and laid his forehead against her back. “Sex like that. I mean. Damn. You don’t kick that out of bed. I’m not gonna kick you out of bed. I like you in my bed. Or your bed, I don’t care.”

  She tried to move but he kept her there, his forehead between her shoulder blades, his arms all the way around her.

  “Tonight, you crouching next to me, telling Martine that I needed a doctor, it reminded me of something. You reminded me of Hugo. He used to fight with my agent and manager over what was best for me. There was one game, in my first season, where I got tackled. Hard. They sent me back for concussion protocol. I didn’t have one, or a bad one at least, and they were about to send me back into the game, until Hugo came storming over. He threw such a fit over me that they kept me out until I could get cleared for sure. He didn’t care about anything other than my health and safety. Just like you, tonight. I haven’t had that for a long time. I… didn’t think I could have that after Hugo died. It was really nice.”

  Celia didn’t say anything. She didn’t think there was anything that she could say at that particular moment, with a golf ball in her throat and this gigantic man pressed around her on every side. So she held still, let him press against her, let the water soothe them both. When her breathing was returning to normal, she turned halfway in his arms, caught his eyes with hers. “Bedtime?”

  He nodded and the two of them, though their pain had subsided, gingerly stepped out of the tub. Celia was so exhausted and overwhelmed that her legs were shaking as Jean Luc wrapped a fresh towel around her.

  “I have to go get pajamas from my room,” she told him as they stepped out into his bedroom.