He growled deep in his throat and came, for the first time ever, inside a man’s ass. It felt no more or less head-explodingly good, no more or less blessed, than any other orgasm. But it was with Rafe and that made it unique.
He had just enough presence of mind to roll away before collapsing, which was good. Rafe flopped bonelessly on Elissa, and she didn’t need Jude’s considerable weight as well. Not that Elissa would mind the weight at the moment, but sooner or later her brain would reactivate and she’d object to being squashed.
Jude stifled a yawn.
Rafe didn’t bother trying to.
“You guys!” Elissa teased, her own voice distant and drowsy. “We just woke up!”
“But we didn’t sleep all that much…” Jude said. He pointed to a feeble ray of light that came through the dirty window to dapple their blanket nest. “And there are sunbeams. Cats sleep in sunbeams. All cats, large or small. Right, Rafe?”
“I’m not a cat,” Elissa protested.
“Feline by injection,” Rafe said, rolling so she was sandwiched between them.
She tried to smack him, but was laughing too hard to do more than give a feeble tap.
They didn’t drowse long, but when they woke up, they discovered the tea water had boiled away.
Which gave them an excuse to put on more snow to melt and go back for another round.
Chapter Thirty-seven
By the next afternoon, they were still snowed in, they’d eaten most of their food and they were restless.
Not that the drug of sex was wearing off. It was a damn good drug. The problem was you had to take a break at some point, even if you were a red witch and a couple of athletic duals.
The problem with taking a break was that they’d start thinking. Worrying. Wondering if the Agency would catch up with them, and whether they’d be able to defend themselves, and how they’d get into Canada if they even made it that far.
Elissa looked like she was taking it the best of any of them, but Jude figured she was still too exhausted to pace or otherwise show how much she was obsessing.
Jude hid in lion form, sprawled in the feeble sunshine, withdrawn into the stronger body where he felt safer, where he could just be for a while.
But even there he didn’t feel quite safe. The body didn’t feel right. He was bigger than he remembered. Stronger, too, even though it would take about three days of sleep and about two cows’ worth of raw meat to feel up to snuff again after all he’d been through.
But bigger and stronger wasn’t necessarily good. Not if there was a chance the Agency had tweaked anything else. He could be a time bomb, a danger to Elissa and Rafe.
He couldn’t do a damn thing about it except worry and hope he could contain it, whatever it might be.
Elissa had tried to see what was still weird and tainted. She’d been able to puzzle out that it was largely magical and thus probably reversible—by someone. Not necessarily by her, though, at least not any time soon. It was sorcerers’ magic, different enough that only her knowledge of genetics would allow her to unravel it at all. Examining it had given her a headache bad enough she’d had to sit and meditate.
He wouldn’t let her sit next to him, not while he was in this not-quite-right body, so he watched her from across the room. He longed to curl up around her and protect his mate with his feline strength—but who’d protect her from him if someone in the Agency flipped a switch?
Rafe dealt with his tension in more human ways. He cleaned his gun. Counted his ammo. Practiced shifting back and forth. Went out and paced around the house in wordy form, coming back in snow-covered and chilled and grumpy. At least he’d dug the car out in the process and cleared the driveway, using a broken shovel he’d found on the porch and occasionally attacking the snow with his hands.
But they couldn’t get anywhere. The main road had been plowed—they could see it in the distance across the glimmering snowfield that used to be a lawn—and the snow was starting to melt, but the road they were actually on was close to impassable.
Jude heard it first and rolled to his feet. He padded to the window, and the others followed.
A plow was clearing their road.
“Freedom!” Rafe crowed, grabbing Elissa’s elbow and leading her in a ridiculous jig.
Jude shifted and cut in to dance with both of them.
They could be on the road again. Get farther away from the Agency.
Quickly, they formulated a plan. Elissa would go into the nearest town to pick up a few supplies. With a hat covering her red hair and a mild glamour cast on her—more like a deglamour, Jude joked, since the point was to make her plainer—she’d be inconspicuous. Even without the magics, she’d be the least likely to be recognized by any obsessive CNN watchers in the grocery store, just a tired-looking woman bundled up against the unseasonable weather.
Once she got back, they’d move.
They’d argued to go with her, to keep her safe, but she made a good point. For this, she’d be safer on her own. Glamours could change only so much. They’d still be big guys with dark skin, and that in itself would draw attention in this white-bread area.
That it was completely logical didn’t make it easier to handle.
The two men watched out the window as she drove away. Then Rafe went back to alternately fiddling with his gun and pacing. Jude picked a magazine at random from a rack by one of the chairs. It turned out to be a year-old copy of Good Housekeeping, but he forced himself to read recipes and parenting advice and articles about people dealing with ordinary problems like bankruptcy and cancer.
The distraction only worked so long.
“How much longer do you think she’ll be?” Jude tossed the magazine aside and focused his energy on not wringing his hands or biting his nails or some other unmanly show of the jitters.
And not staring too hard at Rafe.
He did better with the not-wringing-his-hands part than with not staring.
Rafe was pacing, too, and watching him in motion was anything but calming. Too damn easy to imagine the muscles moving under his clothes, too easy to see the cat inside the human-seeming form. Too damn easy to remember pumping into his gorgeous ass.
Or to wonder, as a way of not obsessing about Elissa’s absence, how weird and yet hot it would be to let Rafe fuck him.
That was almost as scary in its way as everything else going on, even if it was more the fun, roller-coaster flavor of scary.
Jude repeated the question, phrasing it a little differently. “When do you think she’ll be back?” Maybe he’d stop pacing while he talked, and Jude could stop imagining Rafe’s body over his.
No such luck. Now he was running his fingers through his hair as he paced, calling attention to its black silk texture. Cop-short though it was, it still managed to look sexily out of control. Just what Jude didn’t need.
“She hasn’t been gone all that long. She’s fine. Relax.”
Easy for Rafe to say.
“I know. I’d know if something happened to her, like she does with me.” Like either of us would with you now, like it or not. “It’s just… Dammit, she keeps putting herself on the line for me. For us.”
“This time she’s just buying food—unless you want to eat worn-out furniture? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to risk hunting unless we’re really in the boonies.” Rafe raised an eyebrow. “I guess we are in the boonies, but I mean farther in the boonies. Or in Canada.”
“But it’s just that…” He couldn’t speak the words. Out loud, they’d sound too corny, too sentimental. “I hate having her out of our sight.”
It came off better in silentspeech, with all the right overtones of “a pride divided is a pride endangered”. And none of what he was afraid might come out if he spoke English, that now their world had shrunk to the three of them versus, basically, everyone. He needed Elissa in ways he’d never imagined. He needed Rafe, too, and when Elissa wasn’t around, he needed Rafe too much, wanted to cling and act in ways he d
ared to do with Elissa, but not with another man.
Silentspeech was safer.
Rafe nodded. “I hear you.” He could pick up Jude’s silentspeech while in human form, but hadn’t yet perfected the knack of answering that way. “I’d rather stay together, even though what she said made sense.”
“Maybe she’ll get steak,” Jude said, trying to distract himself. “I could use some raw meat. Bet you could, too.”
Rafe flashed a lecherous grin. “I’ve got your raw meat right here.” Jude couldn’t help chuckling, and Rafe said, “Got you to laugh. See, everything will be fine.”
Rafe didn’t stop pacing, though.
“Then why are you wearing a trail in the floor and twitching like Trickster dropped ants down your pants?”
“Hey, just because I understand doesn’t mean I have to like it. She’ll be back soon. Hour or less. With that steak you’re talking about and, if we’re lucky, hot coffee all around. Then we can hit the road.”
“Coffee.” Jude sighed, but though coffee sounded wonderful, it wasn’t really coffee that was making him sigh.
“Soon” couldn’t be too soon for Jude.
Every minute apart from Elissa was torture at this point.
And every minute alone with Rafe was torture of a different kind.
As long as Elissa was with them, he could accept the attraction to Rafe. As long as Elissa was in the bed, too, he could touch Rafe and still feel like himself. It wasn’t even a question of feeling straight. Dual culture didn’t care much about that shit, thinking of it as human silliness that came from not understanding the Powers didn’t give a hairball what you did as long as everyone involved had fun. If anything, he felt dumb for not at least giving it a try when he was single and occasionally got hit on by guys.
The sinking realization that it was becoming more than sex, on the other hand, terrified him almost as much as Shaw did.
Tackling the guy and fucking him into next week? That was just good clean dirty fun, with a bonus of turning Elissa on and helping rebuild her magical reserves. Daydreaming about Rafe staying with them, building a new life with them after they got to Canada? Now that was scary shit. He’d never known a lion family with more than one adult male in it, except for the ones that were all guys and that was another ball of wax. Or bottle of lube.
On the other hand, foxes pulled it off all the time. Fox dual women were collectors of fine men and fox guys liked it that way, especially since most of them weren’t averse to another fine man, either.
Hells, if it worked for foxes…
Jude hadn’t realized how hard and how viscerally he was thinking until Rafe stopped pacing and said, “Does Elissa know you have a thing for fox women?”
Bluff! “I don’t, really, but did you know fox girls can keep their ears and tails when they shift to wordside? It’s cute as hell.”
Rafe grinned. “Sounds sexy to me, like one of those Japanese cartoons. If I’m reborn as a dual, I want to be a Japanese woman. I’m sure it helps you get laid over there, considering the thing they seem to have for chicks with tails.”
“You are a bad, bad man.”
Rafe stopped pacing, shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair again, but slowly and deliberately, obviously aware he had an audience. “You don’t know the half of it yet.” He licked his lips.
The world narrowed to Jude and Rafe. Doomed. Jude leaned forward, hoping Rafe would pick up the way his muscles twitched with excitement like a cat getting ready to pounce, and at the same time hoping he wouldn’t.
Despite the chill in the house, Rafe refused to wear a coat, just a cream long-sleeved T-shirt that, being Jude’s, was too big, but still set off his dark complexion, and black jeans, also a bit too big. Jude had been trying not to remember how the muscles barely concealed by the soft shirt felt under his hands, how the bulge tucked inside those worn jeans felt in his mouth, how it felt to explode inside Rafe’s ass. To wonder if he dared let Rafe try fucking him, even though that might cross a line into unknown territory that looked tempting and treacherous in equal measure.
He’d tried not to think about all that. Now he admitted to himself he was failing.
He bit back the words that wanted to come out. It would be rude, if nothing else, to get something going on while Elissa wasn’t there.
“Elissa won’t be back for an hour,” Rafe said. “You deserve longer than that—but it’ll do for a start.”
Trickster’s furry ass, Rafe was getting as hard to shut out of his head as Elissa was, or he read body language way too well.
“I can’t lie to her,” he said, knowing Rafe would fill in any degree of non-sequitur.
“No lies.” Rafe drew closer, close enough that the heat of his body radiated to Jude’s. “Just getting started without her. She’ll catch up. Who knows when we’ll have a safe place to play again?”
He lifted Jude’s shirt, put surprisingly hot hands against his bare skin. Touching, his silentspeech became strong enough Jude could see what he had in mind, what he was craving. It went straight to his cock at the same time it made his stomach flip with anxiety.
Rafe wanted to fuck him. Wanted it badly.
Wanted it enough that the want seeped into Jude, bridging the gap between his curiosity and lust and his fears.
He took a deep breath.
It was just another kind of sex. Edgy, but hot in the way edgy things sometimes were. Either he’d love it or he wouldn’t, but didn’t he want to get past the fear and find out? He’d known too much real fear lately to let nerves about the unknown get to him.
He trusted Rafe with his life and his wife. Why not his ass?
He’d do it, damn it.
Some of the anxiety turned into nervous excitement. Roller-coaster stuff indeed.
Rafe’s cougar growled in Jude’s head, but not menacingly. It was apparently the best Rafe, still inexperienced with silentspeech, could do for, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Jude rose. “Maybe we should wait…”
But waiting would mean thinking and worrying. Would mean counting every second until Elissa returned.
That might just drive him insane.
It might have been the need for escape as much as lust that made him draw Rafe into a kiss, but lust took over almost instantly.
Hot sueded-velvet lips. Ferocity he could taste.
When he’d played with Rafe before, they’d toned down their aggressiveness because Elissa was with them and they’d let Elissa take charge. But he’d always been aware he was bigger than Rafe, and on some level he’d imagined that would make him the dominant one if they were alone.
Now Jude felt half-drunk on how strong Rafe really was. More compact than he was, sure, but solid, densely muscled. His equal physically, which was just as hot in its own way as the contrast between his size and Elissa’s petiteness.
The kiss turned combative, each one striving for the upper hand in a contest that couldn’t have a loser. Locked together, they stumbled toward the nest of blankets where Elissa had concentrated most of her warming spells. Rafe’s cock jutted hard against him, and Jude was reminded that while he might be the bigger man overall, it wasn’t the case in the personal-equipment department. He was longer, but Rafe was thicker—and thicker, he thought, would make a huge and potentially uncomfortable difference when you were talking about something up your ass.
For a few loud, fast heartbeats, Jude almost balked. Then Rafe whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”
Jude laughed and said, “Don’t you dare!” and tried to tackle him.
It degenerated from there into the kind of wrestling match in which clothing became a casualty, although they both tried not to destroy too much because neither had any clothes to spare. It was all silliness and bluff and guys goofing around. Jude could almost pretend they weren’t both naked and hard.
Until he found himself under Rafe, Rafe’s hard length rubbing against the crack of his ass, and then he couldn’t pretend any more. He let out a feral
moan, pushed back against him, tried to open for him.
“Greedy,” Rafe whispered in his ear, or maybe it was in his head. “Gotta get you ready for me.” He sank his teeth in the muscles of Jude’s shoulder.
If someone has asked Jude all of a second earlier, he’d have said he wasn’t into pain. But while this might have hurt at another time, it felt good now. Intense. Bone-melting.
While he rode that feeling, the way it radiated from his shoulder to his nipples and down through his belly to his cock, Rafe’s hand slipped between their bodies.
Sturdy fingers slick with petroleum jelly teased at Jude’s hole, not entering, just stroking.
The cold gel made him gasp, and feeling a finger—a man’s finger—in that rarely touched place made him tense up.
But only for a second, because the lion had no such compunctions. The inner lion raised his rear end higher, flicked his tail out of the way and gave in to the sensation. Then again, the lion licked himself there regularly. The lion wasn’t big on shame or social taboos. If it felt good, he did it.
Smart cat, he heard/felt, a general feeling of warm—hot, even—approval from Rafe, both wordy and cougar. He should have guessed Rafe would get motivated to finally figure out silentspeech during sex. That way he could snark and tease even when his mouth was busy.
Rafe pushed one finger inside him—slowly and gently, but not too slowly and gently. Hard enough to prove he meant it, and the controlled force, curiously, made Jude relax more than a delicate touch would.
Besides, after the initial shock of “oh my gods, there’s something in my ass”, it felt good.
Really good.
Rafe worked it in and out, reaching spots Elissa, with her smaller fingers, couldn’t.
They were spots that had apparently spent years waiting to be touched. This was beyond good, this was electric and intense, and he swore sparks shot from Rafe’s finger to zap his cock with pleasure. But he needed more. He begged for more.
He got more, first two fingers, then three. He tumbled into someplace dark and hot where there was nothing but him and Rafe. No ramshackle farmhouse, no feeble wood stove, no smell of old smoke and neglect—and no fear for the future. No fear at all, except a slight, pleasurable anticipation about the act to come that sent something bigger than butterflies dancing in his belly. A harrowing of hawks, large and predatory and beautiful. The intrusion hurt a little, but it was good pain, like the one in his shoulder where Rafe still bit him.
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