The Shifter's Seduction

by Selena Scott

  “Yeah,” Jean Luc spit back. “It really fucking is.”

  He turned on his heel and left the room. Jack sat up slowly, put his elbows on his knees and turned to look at Tre. “If you really are into her, then it’s simple. No one said it’s easy. But it sure is simple.”

  Then he was gone, too, and Tre was left alone in the darkening room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If dinner had been a little quiet and strained, Caroline barely noticed. She was too busy attempting to calm down the colony of hummingbirds that had apparently taken up shop in her gut.

  They usually all spent time together as a group after dinner, Arturo excluded, of course, but tonight Caroline excused herself back to her room. She took a long, hot shower to calm herself down and rubbed lotion onto every inch of herself. Instead of her normal pajamas she grabbed the silk pajama bottom and cami set that she’d brought on a whim. She sat in the desk chair and looked out the window, brushing and brushing her damp hair until it shone.

  She was going to sleep with Arturo tonight.

  Oh boy.

  Caroline had only slept with two other people in her life. One of them had been her high school boyfriend. He’d been sweet as pie and cute to boot. They’d split up when he’d gotten accepted to UCLA and she’d stayed on the east coast. It hadn’t been long before she’d met Peter. He’d waited until they were married before taking her to bed and at the time it had seemed as if that were an indicator of how serious he was about her.

  These days, though, she’d begun to wonder if it was indicative of something else altogether. She wondered if they’d ever really been on the same page as one another. Sex was important to Caroline. She’d always been a sexual creature, despite her low number of partners. And Peter was, too. He was the one who’d demanded their relationship become an open marriage a few years ago. He obviously needed sex just as much as Caroline did. He just didn’t need it with her. And maybe he’d never been attracted to her.

  Why, then, would he have married her? Her hand tightened on the handle of the brush. Because of her family’s money? Her father’s law connections? Her mother’s standing in the world of the east coast American royalty?

  Who even knew?

  All she knew was that she wasn’t looking for anything but passion. And tonight she was going to get it. The hairs on her arm raised as she thought for a moment about touching Arturo. It was a simple fantasy, really. She imagined lacing fingers with him. A strange electricity zipped over her skin and she shivered, in not an altogether good way. She felt nervous and jittery.

  She wanted this, she reminded herself. This was what she wanted. She wanted a man who wanted her. And Arturo definitely wanted her. She could feel his eyes follow her around the room, he hung on her every word, watched her mouth when she spoke.

  She pressed a hand to her belly, feeling a little sick.

  A knock at the door had her straightening up. A light little tap tap that usually meant Celia was ducking her head in to say goodnight.

  “C’min!” Caroline called over her shoulder.

  The door opened.

  “Smells like a cookie in here.”

  She turned and saw Tre standing in the doorway of her room, one hand on the doorknob. His brow was furrowed. Just like he had for days, he looked vaguely annoyed.

  “Must be my lotion,” she told him.

  He cleared his throat. “Is that what always smells like vanilla?”

  She nodded and kept brushing her hair.

  His eyes narrowed. “Those are… fancy pajamas.”

  “Fancy?” she looked down at herself. They were royal blue silk with a little bit of lace on the hemlines. She’d hoped they were sexy. Fancy sounded less promising. Another wave of nervous anticipation rolled over her.

  “Yeah.” Tre fixed his face by the time she looked back up at him. He knew it wasn’t going to work to glower at her like any of this was her fault. He was well aware that Caroline was simply living her life and going after what she wanted. He had to respect her for that. Yeah. As far as Tre was concerned, this was firmly Arturo’s fault. “Look, I wanted to, ah, tell you something.”

  She turned completely and set the brush down. He could hear the sound of her damp, heavy hair falling over her shoulder. For some reason, her room was a little cooler than the rest of the house and it made him want to huddle closer to her. Instead, he just closed the door behind him and leaned his back against it.

  “What’s up?” she asked, rising from the chair and going to sit cross-legged on the bed.

  “You asked me a question in the van, on the way to the grocery store. You wanted to know if I ever ignored reality because I was stuck and there was no reason to acknowledge something terrible.”

  Her eyes widened with sweet surprise when she realized that he was actually opening up to her about something instead of slyly redirecting the conversation the way he always did.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well.” He stepped forward, thought about sitting in the chair she’d just vacated, but detoured to her bed instead. He sat cross-legged as well, a good three feet of space between them. “Yeah. The simple answer is that yes, I have a ton of experience with that.”

  She leaned forward to press her warm fingers against the back of his hand for just a second and Tre got the deep, warmed scent of her drying hair. It was almost debilitating. Her room was cold but she was this little bundle of heat. Soft and sweet and smelling all mouthwatering. He cleared his throat, determined to stay on track. He came here to give her something he’d been depriving her of. He came here to give her a piece of himself in hopes that it would keep her from going to Arturo. He figured that was an appropriate trade. He’d open up to her, just enough to appease her, and she wouldn’t run to Arturo for intimacy.

  “My mom died when I was a kid.”

  “Oh, Tre.” Her voice was a hushed whisper, true pain in her tone.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. And honestly, I’ve healed from that wound. It’s what happened after that left more of a mark.”

  He frowned at himself. He hadn’t planned on saying that part. He’d figured he could give her some vague mentions of his childhood. But suddenly words were kind of tumbling out of his mouth.

  “My dad kind of… lost himself after she died. He barely kept himself alive. Actually, I was the one who kept him alive. Made him eat. Made him shower. I did everything for myself, too. Food. School. The whole nine.”

  A small little noise blew out of her. A sound of sympathy, so different than the sound of pity he’d spent half a lifetime dreading. She swiveled around so that they were sitting next to each other, knee to knee. She threw both arms around his shoulders and buried her cheek on his bicep, treating him to a surprisingly tight squeeze.

  “So. Yeah. I think I spent a decade pretending that my life wasn’t my life. Telling myself that it wasn’t that bad. And then when I finally got out from under it, out of the house, on my own, I was able to look back and see how lonely my childhood had been. And tired. I spent so much of my childhood so tired. Busy. Holding the weight of the household on my back. No time to even mourn my mom. If I wasn’t at school or making dinner or cleaning the house, I was on my computer, in a different world entirely. I found myself online. I made myself. Built myself from scratch. No one knew I was this skinny little redheaded twerp from Queens with no mom and a deadbeat dad. No one even knew I was a kid. By the time I was fifteen I was already getting paid to hack foreign accounts. My life was this fantasy world. But meanwhile, my real life, the one I tried to ignore, was so dumb. And sad. And lonely.”

  He couldn’t believe these words were coming out of him. He’d barely even put these thoughts together before, connected these dots. And here he was spitting them out all over Caroline. This was not why he’d come to her room. He’d seen her float away after dinner and just wanted to check on her. He’d figured he’d share a little bit about his past, cultivate a little bit of the connection she’d been seeking, and then l
eave, no one worse for the wear. But then he’d gone and laid his bacon on the griddle. Like, there ya go.

  “Oh, Tre,” she whispered again. “I know all about lonely.”

  She pulled back from him and it was as if her honey eyes were lit from within. They glittered with glossy, unshed tears.

  “Isn’t it crazy,” she asked. “To be right next to somebody and still feel lonely? Isn’t that just the worst kind of lonely there is?”

  Later, he’d rationalize it as survival. When you’ve been dragged to the bottom by the current and you finally break the surface, you breathe. When the world burns around you, you stop, drop and roll. When there’s a knife in your gut, you yank it free. And when Caroline Clifton blinks up at you with tears in her golden eyes, her hair everywhere and her weight balanced against your shoulder, you kiss her. It was just a matter of choosing to live or choosing to die. Tre chose to live.

  He leaned forward and swallowed her gasp of surprise even before his lips made contact with hers. And then his hand was tangled in the warm damp of her hair, and his other hand steadied himself against the bed as he leaned into her. Damn near leaned her all the way back.

  For her part, she seemed to have gone into some sort of rictus. Her body was fully taut, her hands tangled in his shirt, her legs still criss-cross-apple-sauced. When it became clear that this wasn’t a fleeting kiss, her body jolted. She was all tangled up in herself and she wanted to be tangled up in him.

  She fought one of her legs free and tossed it over his lap. His hand wrenched free from her hair and clasped her ankle. Back to her hair. Back to her ankle. When his tongue swept across her bottom lip, Caroline had already hoisted herself forward, pressing half her weight over his lap. They were listing in a half-tangled tilt of lean and weight and it wasn’t a surprise when they tumbled to one side.

  Tre didn’t care. It freed up both of his hands. As far as he was concerned, this wasn’t even a kiss. This was beyond the realm of lips on lips. Kissing Caroline was like dipping a foot into a bathtub only to realize it was filled with hot lava. Her lips were soft heat, parted and working. She was the most active kisser he’d ever had the pleasure of sparring with. Her lips moved almost twice as fast as his, dragging him away down the rapids. When their tongues touched, Tre groaned, sharp and fast, like he was in pain.

  And it kind of was pain. The good kind. The muscle-cracking ache of the first stretch of the day. He felt strangely like she was lifting off a layer of bone he hadn’t been aware he’d been wearing on the outside of his body.

  There was nothing sharp in their kiss. It was just firm and warm and soft and warm and melting, melting, melting.

  Tre was most of the way on top of her, her hair spreading everywhere and that vanilla scent filling every molecule of air between them.

  Her flavor was invading him. Shoving aside anything that had previously had the audacity to think it belonged inside him. It was only Caroline. Only Caroline belonged inside him.

  Caroline’s sails were fully filled with wind. She was skimming over the top of the white water, barely skipping as she skidded over the waves. This was a different speed, a different temperature, a different sport than she’d ever played before. This kiss was a free fall on the back of a peregrine falcon.

  Caroline clung to Tre like letting go meant blackholing. Her fingers ached where they gripped his shirt, somehow her legs had clamped around his waist and his shirt had inched up. She felt the heat of his stomach against the V of her legs and she couldn’t help but gasp her approval into the air. She tossed her head back for a second only to have Tre grip her firmly by the chin and drag her mouth back to his.

  He attempted, for a moment, to get her to slow the kiss down, but he found himself once again swept away in the storm of her. She devoured him like birthday cake and Tre just went ahead and let it happen. Their tongues slipped and pressed and searched for more. They found that more in the most private parts of one another’s mouths. Their teeth clacked as one of his hands slicked under her camisole and drew a steady line up the silk of her spine.

  She wanted so badly to touch his skin as well, but her fingers wouldn’t unclasp from his T-shirt. Instead, she just lifted her arms and started to yank his shirt right off. He lifted his arms and slid away from her, and was back, a half second later, shirtless and panting. Caroline found she didn’t want to cast his shirt away. It was so soft and so warm and so Tre. She gripped it tight in one hand and let her other hand hit him, palm up on the coppery fleece of his chest hair.

  Chest hair was new for her. Her high school boyfriend hadn’t had any and Peter had shaved his. The rasp of it over her hand was surprising and sexy and it jolted her.

  It hit her then that this was Tre over top of her, pressing her into the bed, sucking her tongue into his mouth. Tre. This was his chest hair in between her fingers. Those were his glasses jamming into the bridge of her nose. That was his breath in her chest. His flavor lighting her up. It was Tre’s stomach she was pressing her womanhood against. It was TRE that she was about three seconds away from dry humping.

  Caroline tore her mouth away from his and took a gasping, clarifying breath.

  His hand came to her chin again, to haul her back into the kiss.

  “Wait!” She barely recognized her own voice.

  He instantly froze. His eyes went from hazy and half cracked open to alert and searching. Caroline took another deep breath and planted her elbows, sitting up a few inches. Tre obligingly slid backwards so that he was sitting on his heels between her legs. His hands landed on her knees.

  He was so coppery in the lamplight. The white of her room was blue in the shadows and golden in the light. Caroline’s eyes blurred with emotion and for just a second, she thought he looked like some sort of Norse god, kneeling fiercely in the snow. She yearned for him. Ached for him in the core of her. She wanted so badly to reach up and touch his chest again. His tattoos were a colorful mat across his chest and shoulders and arms. If she could have rewound time to a few days ago, and still somehow had this moment, she would have leaned up and pressed her lips to the green leaves at his neck. The ones that beat with his pulse. That looked alive.

  But she couldn’t erase his rejection of her. And she definitely couldn’t erase her promise to herself. Never again would she settle for a man who only wanted her when he couldn’t have her. Never again. It had almost killed her with Peter. She knew, without a doubt, that she wouldn’t be able to survive playing that kind of game with warm Tre who was just about everything she wanted.

  “You—you rejected me. You said we weren’t a good match. You didn’t want me.” She scooted back from him and mirrored his position, folding her legs underneath her and sitting on her heels. She still gripped his shirt in one hand; for some reason she was drawing power from the soft, comforting material. She was in the process of telling Tre off, but even so, his T-shirt was like a talisman. It was a reminder of what Tre had meant to her before this mess. Of the man who’d helped her sign her divorce papers, who’d talked her through some of the hardest moments of her life.

  “No. Caroline, that’s not exactly—”

  “No. Tre, you turned me away and now you’re all warm and in my bed and, just, hold on!” She arrowed her hands down like if she moved assertively enough she could flick the uncertainty away. “I’m not good at this, Tre. Reading between the lines. So you have to tell me. Just outright tell me. What kind of game are you playing?”

  “It’s not a game, Caroline. I—”

  She could have gotten over him not wanting her—hell, she had already been most of the way there. She’d never hold it against him. But this? Making her think one thing and then seducing the hell out of her? No. That wasn’t something she could handle. It was wildly discombobulating. It was confusing and unfair. His rejection she’d taken on the chin. But his wanting of her? That was the betrayal.

  “No.” Her honey eyes were lit from within. Tre had never seen her so emotional and burning. “You can’t turn me away on
e night and then want me when you sense me slipping away. This was exactly what Peter did. He never wanted me when I wanted him. He only wanted me when he knew he was losing me. And no. Never again, Tre. I’ll never play that game again.” She slid sideways off the bed and held her hand out toward the door. “You need to leave.”

  Tre rose immediately, holding his hands out. He wasn’t sure if he was surrendering to her or reaching for her. All he knew was that his blood was slinging through his veins so fast he was dizzy with it. He had the horrifying feeling that he was rattling at a door that he’d already locked, and Caroline was just on the other side of it. He could handle her being mad at him. But he couldn’t handle her thinking he’d intentionally played her.

  “Caroline, love. I didn’t mean to fuck things up between us. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”

  “The right thing for who?”

  “For you, of course!”

  She shifted and he shifted accordingly, like two fighters in a ring. He was dimly aware that she was backing him up toward the door.

  “Didn’t you think, for one minute, that maybe I’m the one who knows what’s right for me? I’m not dumb, Tre. I’m not stupid, flighty Caroline who barely knows how to get the grocery shopping done. I’ve been through an eight-year marriage and a divorce. I’m not naive. I know what pain is. I know what it looks like to guard my own heart. I know how to take care of myself. Because, newsflash, in case you didn’t understand what a gem Peter was, I’ve been taking care of myself for years! I don’t need your guilt deciding when and where I get to have you, Tre.”