by Zoe Chant
“We will catch up with him—and through him, with whoever is behind him,” the dragon knight promised. Then he turned his austere face toward Doris, and smiled a little. “You seem rather unsurprised to see me shift. I assume many changes have happened between you two.” His gaze dropped to their joined hands. “Many changes.”
“You could say that,” Doris said, tightening her grip on Joey’s hand.
“We’ll be on our way home soon,” Joey said. “We can talk then.”
“I’ll tell Bird.” The dragon knight said, and in a flash of light he was gone.
“Not a talker, is he?” Isidor commented, putting an arm around Xi Yong.
“That was very gabby for Mikhail,” Joey said with a laugh. “I guess we are done now!”
“Race ya to the Jeep,” Vanessa said to her brother. Then halted. “Wait. Are either of you coming with us?”
“We’re going to ride back in my car,” Isidor said from Xi Yong’s side.
Doris turned wide eyes toward Joey.
“What is it?” Joey asked.
Doris gave a laugh, then said in a voice of awe, “I just figured out what nine-tail foxes really are. Actors!”
“That,” Joey said, kissing his mate, “is the best compliment I’ve had all day!”
In the adrenaline-crash aftermath, he became aware that his head ached. It had taken a lot of concentration to keep his distraction going while also listening for Mikhail—and making sure Cang didn’t figure out something was up on the mythic plane.
Except it hadn’t quite worked. He and Mikhail had both felt someone make contact with Cang just before Mikhail would have caught him. Cang had a partner, and they would have to find out who.
But not now.
Doris’s warm body pressed against his side. Already he felt better.
Xi Yong and Isidor walked around the side of the house toward Isidor’s car. Joey suspected they would be fully mated by morning, and it couldn’t happen to two nicer people.
He turned to Doris, careful not to let his own hopes show too much. She would be ready when she was ready. “Shall I ride back with the twins, or would you like company?”
But she faced him squarely, and said only one word, “Stay.”
“Later!” Vic called, and the twins’ footsteps crunched on the snow as they raced around the other side of the house, heading up toward the Jeep.
“We’re alone at last,” Joey said to Doris. It was meant to be a statement, but it came out a little bit of a question as he cupped her face gently with his hands.
She slid her hands up his arms, her touch filling him with a breath-stealing tingle of heat.
He said, “I’ve never known anyone in all my life who could remain as unflappable as you, after everything I’ve thrown at you. At the same time dealing with a number of lively personalities.”
Her gaze slid away, which surprised him. “Well, it comes with the territory. K-18 teachers get used to sudden changes. One moment everything is fine, then someone slips on the soccer field and breaks a leg in three places. You plan an outdoor activity for weeks, and that day it rains for the first time in months. The classroom is quiet, then two best friends suddenly get in a knock-down, drag-out fight. You have to be able to ride the white waters, or drown.”
Joey smiled as he earnestly searched her eyes, and he heard the wistful note steal into his own voice as he said, “Is that what we are doing? Riding the white waters?”
Doris’s honest gaze flicked to him, and he sensed her thought down the mate meridian, We’re two consenting adults who . . . consent. Out loud, she said, “As long as I’m in the canoe with you, I’ll go anywhere.”
Was this it? Before they went any farther, he felt he’d better explain. “There’s another thing I have to tell you,” he admitted.
“Besides your being a shifter?” she asked.
“It’s about being a shifter. If we are lucky enough to find our mates, we mate for life.”
She blinked at him, her eyes wide. “What?”
His fingers slid down to her hands. “The moment I saw you, I fell in love. For us, it’s like that. Profoundly simple, and yet simply profound, a friend once said. But for humans, it’s not just like that. Or rarely is. So . . .I love you. And I will wait however long it takes if there’s a chance you will love me back. ”
Doris looked up at the sky, then away, then back to him as her shoulders squared. “I’m sixty-two. And I’ve never been coy,” she stated, with the tiniest tremor in her voice that endeared her to him all the more. “Love was always a word that seemed to belong to other people. That kind of love, I mean. I love my family, and the kids I teach, and a lot of other things. But love love, I always believed it was either a shared illusion that everybody else had, or a shared delusion. Whatever it was, I wasn’t one of those who had it, or got it, or felt it.”
“All right,” he said, holding his breath.
“Until I met you.”
And the sun rose inside him.
She said quickly, “I think I realized it was love when we were cooking together in the kitchen, and it felt so natural, like something we’d done forever, and I wanted it to be forever. It was not just fun, it was . . . sexy. At least, what I define as sexy. Which brings me to my full disclosure.”
She felt her gaze slide away, but forced it back. She owed it to him to meet his gaze straight on. “But it’s nothing as . . . as amazing as shifters. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite, but there it is. And it comes to, well, I’m afraid you’ve got to steer this canoe. Because I’m probably the only female over the age of consent in California who can say this, but I’ve still got my V-card.”
“V-card?” Joey repeated.
“Virgin,” she said, and blushed. “I’m still one. I had a close call a few years ago, but luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, I found out he was a jerk, and cut that off fast. And so.” She flung out her hands. “Here I am.”
Joey hid the urge to exclaim Is that all? Though it didn’t matter to him, it clearly mattered to her, and that was what was most important. He said, “I see it as, here we are.”
“Yes, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“That,” he said, “makes two of us. Oh, sex itself is something I know. And it’s simple enough. But I’ve never yet been with my mate. Shall we learn this together?”
For answer, she led him straight up to her bedroom, with the old creaky bed and the faded quilt with the ballerina dancers.
Her shy, inviting smile hollowed him to the heart.
And so it was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her, and then again, to taste her, and then to let his lips drift over her face. Eyelids. Cheek. Chin. The spot behind her ear. Her breath hitched, and he explored the sensitive skin where her jaw met her neck, and then moved downward at a leisurely pace until she rewarded him with a whimper of passion.
Her hand rose at last, and traveled slowly along the line of his jaw, and down again. He’d already shed his coat—she slid her fingers inside his shirt, and he paused only long enough to make very short work of those buttons, inviting further explorations.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the barriers of shyness, and then of clothing vanished one by one. He’d thought earlier his self-mastery was put to the test, but that was nothing to his effort now to go slow, to hold his mounting need at bay as she kissed him uncertainly, as if unsure of her welcome while he waited for her to pull back again. Each waiting on the other, ready to withhold their own desire, until at last they understood that they were completely in synch.
And then the joy began, breath heating and tangling, limbs tangling, and he found himself falling into the sweet softness of her being. Her hands speared into his hair and he held himself back enough for her to take the lead. The choice of what to do, and how slow or fast things would go, was up to her. The moment she understood that, he felt her exultation in her power, as the hot shocks of pleasure detonated in that deep place.
It was
she who could utterly undo him, and she did.
The heat zigzagged in lightning shards of intensity as his hands found, and worshipped, her secret places until at last, at last, she tightened her legs around him as he buried himself inside her. And they rode the waves together, skin to skin, lips to lips, until the sun obliterated the world.
Then he tumbled down in a fountain of bright sparks, and they lay together, limbs tangled, holding one another as breath steadied, and the quiet evening closed in around them once again: the chirp of birds, the sough of the pines.
Then she turned her head to him, her brow puckered as she whispered. “I wish I could give you kids. If you wanted them. But that ship sailed twenty years ago.”
“Doris.” He said her name slowly, savoring it, savoring her. “You’ve brought me an entire family.”
EPILOGUE
DORIS
“ … and when he said that he likes my family, and even looks forward to seeing them again, I knew it was the real McCoy,” Doris said.
She was half-joking, and the other three women gave her the grins that made it clear they understood.
It was a week later.
Bird, Jen, and Godiva had just arrived at Doris’s house.
Doris had asked Bird to let them know she was back, of course, but she’d had to go straight to work the morning after her arrival home. After that, she and Joey had traded off going to each other’s houses to spend the night for the rest of the week.
But Godiva called after Doris missed Friday’s writers’ group, just to make certain she was all right—and being Godiva, had insisted on coming over to see for herself.
Naturally she brought Bird and Jen. So here they were, sitting at her kitchen table while the water boiled.
Godiva looked around at the half-packed kitchen. Boxes stood by the far wall, ready for the twins to take on their next visit—they’d insisted they would move her stuff.
“That’s why I missed the group,” Doris said. “We’re trying to get me moved this weekend, as the new semester has begun and I don’t dare miss a day.”
“You’re moving in with him?” Godiva asked. “After what, barely a week? One week you meet the guy and run like you’d spotted lice in his pretty blond hair—”
“Ugh,” Bird interjected softly.
“Thank you, Godiva,” Jen put in dryly. “Now I wish I could unhear that.”
Godiva blithely ignored the interruptions. “—and the next thing we hear is that you’re moving in together?” She flashed a grin. “I gotta say, you don’t let any grass grow under your feet, girl.”
“He offered to move here. Which I call heroic, considering he’s got two kitchens. And an herb garden. As well as growing his own vegetables. Took me about five seconds to decide,” Doris said. “Joey’s place is way better than this place, which I never would have picked if I’d been smarter about real estate. And he’s got a couple acres to—” She stopped on the verge of saying to run in. “Start a garden project.”
Doris’s gaze slid toward Bird, but she yanked it back. She had wanted more time in order to think out how to talk to the women who had been her closest friends for years. She hated keeping secrets.
Bird had said over the phone the night of Doris’s return, “It hurt me, not telling the rest of your four. But the world of shifters is their secret, not ours. And I see why they keep quiet.”
Doris had agreed—but now she understood why Bird had used the word ‘hurt’—she didn’t want to lie. And yet she couldn’t tell the truth. Oh, she knew she could trust Jen and Godiva, but why burden them with a secret they’d have to keep, which didn’t benefit them a bit?
So she’d just change the subject. “I figure, I’m making up for lost time.” At that moment the tea kettle shrilled, and she busied herself making tea as she added, “I hated missing the writers’ group, but it was either put in the time packing up my sewing gear and my bookshelves last night, or pull an all-nighter tonight. And I lost the knack for doing that and bouncing right back not long after I left college. How did it go?”
“Linette’s great. She handles things like a pro,” Godiva stated. “It’s like she took notes from you.”
Bird put in with a smile at Jen. “Jen here has started a new book. Another fantasy. I really like it.”
Doris paused in the act of spooning Yun Wu, or Clouds and Mist, into the pot. “A new one?” she asked over her shoulder. “I was really into that other one, the one about the world with magic.”
Jen looked down at the pretty lotus blossom cup she’d chosen. “I can’t seem to stick to them past the first few chapters. It’s like I get excited about the world, but the story . . .” She shrugged. “Fizzles on me.”
Bird said quickly, “It’s all right. Sometimes it’s that way. You never know when an idea will take off.”
But at least Jen was writing again. A few years ago, Doris had worried that Jen would give up entirely after her husband died. Jen had barely existed, stunned with grief. They’d all been afraid.
“Yeah.” Jen smiled around at them. “Maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve written fiction, those muscles are atrophied. It really is different from journalism, where you are constantly checking your sources. With fiction, the source is entirely on me. I feel kind of adrift.”
Bird said, “But Godiva’s mystery is going like gangbusters.”
“Turns out Oona is a real psychopath,” Godiva said with obvious relish as Doris brought the tea to the table. “You were so awesome as Oona, I think you should be the one to decide how she gets defeated at the end. Do you want her ass in stir, or a really nasty end? Like, say, fire ants? Bubonic plague?”
Doris snorted a laugh. “Surprise me.”
Godiva uttered a sinister chuckle.
“Now you’ve done it,” Jen commented to Doris. “You’ve loosed the whirlwind.”
Doris smiled, glad to see another hint of the old Jen. She was definitely coming out of that well of grief at last.
Godiva uttered another laugh, took a sip of tea, and then slewed around her in her chair. “What I don’t get is, how your Professor Hu ended up near your family’s shack, of all the places in the world?”
Doris’s gaze met Bird’s, then both of them quickly looked away. Doris said, “It’s not so odd when you consider the house is above a really pretty lake. It so happened that the bend in the road their Jeep was on when the snow hit was right by our house. And there was nowhere else for them to go.”
“I see. Welp, I’m glad it worked out,” Godiva said. “Hey, I really like the taste of this tea.”
“It’s something Joey brought back from China,” Doris said.
Godiva chuckled. “Who would’ve thought that two of our Gang of Four would end up with hotties? Too bad they don’t have any brothers or cousins tucked up, looking for vintage babes. But I call a fifty percent increase in getting some action pretty good. Vast improvement over last year, when all the four of us had was memories.”
Doris smiled. “Let’s toast to a hundred percent increase by next year.”
Jen shook her head slowly. “I will never find another Robert. I won’t even look.”
“And I accepted that I’m pretty much put out to pasture once the big Eight-Oh rolled around,” Godiva said. “I get my fun vicariously. Seeing you two turn up with bee-stung lips, like you just woke from a wild night, makes me happy.”
Bird said to Doris, “Did you get any new recipes for the new book?”
“One from my mom. And Xi Yong, Joey’s exchange student, promised to show me a recipe for fresh-water fish from his village that he says is generations old.”
They talked about cooking as they drank their tea, then Jen said, “We should get going. It’s clear you’re busy.”
“I’m glad you stopped by,” Doris said. “See you on Friday! I promise to bring something tasty to try on the group.”
They carried their cups to the sink. Jen and Bird were the first to go.
Godiva lin
gered. When the other two had gone outside, Godiva stopped at the door and grinned wickedly back at Doris. “I called it.”
She spoke in such a gloating tone that Doris had to laugh. Then she sobered. “You were right. Which reminds me, I basically lied to you when I said I didn’t leave the wedding at Bird’s house because of Joey Hu. I did. I was a walking cliché—in love at first sight. So hard I had to run.”
“I know.” Godiva grinned.
“You knew?” Doris asked cautiously. Was it possible that Godiva, in all her years of wandering and crazy adventures, had learned about . . .
Godiva said, “Ever played poker?”
“Poker? No. Well, I kind of know the rules. Sort of. But that’s it.”
“That’s what I thought. My dad, who wasn’t worth much—he admitted himself, having born with wanderlust—took me aside when I was maybe thirteen or so, and made me sit down with him every night until I knew poker inside and out. I practiced with local kids for a year, and when he turned up the next summer, he took me to the sort of dive of a bar that just driving a kid past would get Child Protective Services all over your case. He took me to the back room, where all the local lowlifes played cutthroat poker, and me made me play until I could win. The following summer, when I was fifteen, he took me to an uptown hotel where the high rollers play. Same.”
Doris waited. The point always came when Godiva was ready.
Godiva gazed a thousand miles beyond the stack of boxes in the kitchen corner. “At the end of that summer, he took off again for another ten years, but before he went, he told me I’d reached the age when men were going to start telling me anything I wanted to hear, for purposes of their own. But now I knew all their tells, which meant I’d know when they were bluffing, and when they held good cards—that is, when they were lying like rugs, and when they were talkin’ truth. Well, Doris, goin’ back to my question that night, all of a sudden you were full of about fifty tells, showin’ me you were bluffing hard. But I figured, you had your reasons.”
