by Diana Seere
The room was big enough to fit half a football field.
The gleaming kitchen was spotless. She searched high and low for a coffeemaker, knowing he had one. Opening cupboards with increasing desperation, she gave up, realizing she needed to awaken him.
A smile spread across her face.
If she woke him up, coffee wouldn’t be on the morning menu.
She would.
“Lilah,” Gavin said in a raveling, half-asleep voice. “Where were you?” He looked up and took in her appearance, a wolfish grin making him look closer to his animal self. “Oh my. I like your choice of pajamas.”
She looked down at her body. “You should. You chose them.” Removing the old book and setting it on the messy bed, she climbed into his lap. Lilah gave him a long, slow kiss, tongues taking their sweet time.
She pulled back and sighed. “Coffee. Where do you hide your coffee?”
“At the plantation in Madagascar.”
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “If I don’t get coffee soon, I’m getting dressed and walking down to a donut shop.”
He flinched. “I would sooner drink gasoline.”
“If it had caffeine in it, I’d drink that right now.”
He smoothed the hair off her face and gazed lovingly into her eyes.
His own eyes were so blue. How could his eyes be so impossibly blue? Like he’d stolen a piece of the sky.
“Let me make you a double.” He set her on her feet with a quick grab of one breast. A love pat.
A promise.
As he made the blessed nectar of the morning gods for her, he looked at her face, eyes just above hers. “How did you get that scar?” he asked.
Her fingers flew up, knowing exactly which one he meant. “This? I don’t know. It’s just always been there.” Right on the edge of her eye socket, close to her temple, it cut into her eyebrow like a thin strand of thread.
“It’s old. Looks like something from childhood,” he said as he finished the first cup and started the process for a second.
“My mother says I was born with it, but that’s impossible. I think she must’ve dropped me when I was a baby but is too embarrassed to admit it. One of these days, I’ll ask her again and she can confess.”
“Why don’t I ask your mother? When I meet her.”
The thought gave Lilah a thrill. This was real. All of it. Even the...animal thing.
“It hurt, you know. The scar. The first time we met.”
He jolted, sloshing hot coffee against his hand. Gavin Stanton didn’t startle easily. Her words meant something to him.
“It did?” he replied in a practiced, even tone. “And your mother insists you were born with it. How odd.” He returned to making the second cup of coffee, sucking on the burnt skin of his hand.
How odd, indeed, she thought, filing that reaction away for a later question.
Soon they sat on his patio, Lilah covered in a robe too big, Gavin wearing his suit from last night, both with steaming cups in their hands. The city unfurled before them like a carpet of buildings and roads, tiny cars and tinier people all working together to make a civilization.
“What were you reading?” she asked.
The intensity of his look made her glad she had a double shot of coffee in her cup. “A book about you.”
“Me?”
He drank down his cup and nodded, absentmindedly moving the cup from one hand to the other. “Yes. An old book of legends and tales about shifters.”
“You can read that language?” The gold lettering had a pattern to it, but nothing she’d ever seen before. Something eastern European but not quite.
But then, as she stared at the odd marks and strokes, she recognized a single word, foreign but unmistakable: one. It should have been a meaningless circle, dot, and stroke, but she knew the word. She read it as if it were any other simple word in English.
Chapter 21
A cold chill began at the base of her spine.
“I couldn’t read it at first,” Gavin said, “but it...” His eyebrows turned down in a frown. “It came to me.”
Just as it had with her. She stared harder, stunned to realize she could decipher another word. Fate. And then a third. Mine.
The chill faded, becoming instead a warm glow that surrounded her like an embrace. “And?” she whispered.
He sighed, staring straight ahead, tossing the coffee cup like a baseball between his palms. “There is a legend among shifters. The story is in the book. It goes something like the human prince and princess stories. Like the idea of love’s first kiss or love at first sight.”
She laughed, eager to embrace the romantic image. She tugged on the robe’s sash as the wind picked up. “A wolf princess?”
He shook his head but smiled. “Not quite. More like the idea of soul mates. Of knowing that fate made you mine.”
Lilah reached for his hand, taking the cup from him and holding both his hands in hers. “Go on.”
He squinted, looking back to the horizon, but did not move his hands. “The legend says that when you meet the One, you hear the Beat.”
She cocked a very skeptical eyebrow.
“I know.” He pulled his hands away and held his palms up. “It’s crazy. It’s truly insane, like reading tea leaves or believing in aliens.”
“Or werewolves,” she said wryly.
“Fair enough.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, intrigued. “Please tell the rest.”
“When we talk without words, and when you feel a pain or a connection you can’t control, that’s what this is— It’s part of the legend. It means you’ve found your mate. Or rather, that fate has found you.”
Fate has found you.
“We’re fated for each other? This is our destiny?” She wanted a light tone to her words, but she failed.
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Does my shifting... my wolf thing... the fur and the change and the— Does that happen to all humans who fall in love with...” Words felt like marbles in her mouth.
“No.”
She jolted. He held her hand tighter.
“The only known way for a human to become a shifter is to give birth to a shifter’s child. Sometimes the woman becomes a shifter after giving birth.”
“Sometimes? Not all the time?”
“No.”
“So many mysteries! I have so many questions,” she said, amazed. “What makes some humans shift and others not?”
“No one knows.”
She watched his reaction. “Is that why you went into biotech? To turn mysteries into science?”
His eyes narrowed with appreciation. “Yes.”
“And the genetic research has given you insight?”
“Not enough. We do not understand nearly enough.”
“So we’re different? You and I?”
He just blinked, then nodded slowly, eyes moving to look inside the apartment. “That’s what I read last night. You’re different, Lilah. I am just your average werewolf, but you’re one of a kind.”
She snorted, overcome with hysterical laughter. “Your average werewolf! Oh, Gavin.”
“It’s true.” His face was serious, but his eyes danced.
The chair began to spin, the feeling of vertigo so strong she pitched forward. Gavin caught her with strong arms and lifted her, carrying her back into the safety of the living room, her cheek against his chest, hearing his heart pump.
“But I’m human.”
“Yes.”
“Asher thinks I’m lying. He thinks I’m a shifter who is pretending to be human.”
“Yes.”
Pain and confusion coursed through her as she rested on the couch, her head now in Gavin’s lap as he stroked her hair. “Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Why are you so closed off?” she demanded. These one-word answers were driving her insane.
“I’m not. Oh, Lilah, I’m not. I don’t know much more than you. Other than know
ing you love me and that I adore and love you, I really am quite ignorant when it comes to the ways of the ancients.”
The ancients.
“How can I be human and shift? I don’t have shifter blood in me.”
Gavin just shrugged, but she could feel him tense. “That’s what made Asher think you lied. Because the only way you could be transformed into a shifter is through the legend of the One. The Beat.”
“Which he doesn’t believe in,” she said with a sigh as she melted into his body, practically purring under the soft touch of his fingers against her face and shoulders. Gavin was gentling her, like a frightened animal that needed to be calmed.
That was about right.
His lips pressed against her forehead, and she lifted her head up, seeking his mouth, the warm wetness making her bloom within, opening and blossoming, wet and wanting. She sat up through the kiss as Gavin’s palm cupped her loose breast, then he bent to take her nipple in his mouth, teasing with nips that felt like thrusts.
“Oh, Lilah,” he groaned against her flesh.
Chapter 22
As if he were racing through the woods at breakneck speed on the hunt, Gavin’s body pushed against hers, mouth hungry and hard, taking and claiming. He couldn’t slow down. If nature would let him, he would touch every bit of her at the same time, all in unison, tongues and fingers and toes and sighs meshed together to form one.
The One.
Last night’s reading had been illuminating, hours of poring over the ancient texts revealing one clear truth:
Lilah was not only the One for him, she was a source of untapped power that the shifter world had only whispered about for centuries.
And she was his. His and his alone.
Tonguing her nipple, which pebbled under the warm wetness of his mouth, he encircled her body with his arms and stood, carrying her into the living room and placing her on a rug near the wide patio doors. The city spread out before them in gorgeous relief, but it paled in comparison to the creamy lines of her abundant body, too eager for his touch, so ready for his complete conquest.
“Gavin,” she murmured in a low, throaty voice that made him harden, pulsing for her. He had a moment’s hesitation only because he wanted to start everywhere. His palms spread, fingers as wide as possible, and he reached for her calves, lowering himself to his knees, spreading her legs with a divine touch.
This felt holy.
Her eyes were smoky and half-lidded as she watched him without embarrassment, wide and on display for him, a piece of art in flesh form. Her hair spilled out under her as his hands slid under her ass, pulling her essence up to him, his tongue seeking her hot core. She arched toward him, the moan of pleasure like a call of the wild.
“You taste like home,” he said against her flesh, his mouth giving what she needed most. As her body writhed under his fevered touch, fingernails scratching his scalp, it only urged him on. She was completely under his power, bewitched by his touch, and by God, he would show her exactly how powerful he could be.
The intoxicating scent and taste of her need drove him further, her body blooming in response, her soft wetness swelling with arousal. His thighs slid against her knees as his hands roamed up, rough and coarse, his touch no longer coming from a place of desire but from instinct. He needed her. Had to touch her. Was compelled to drive his tongue and lips to make her press him deeper until her movements formed a rhythm that matched his quickened heartbeat.
As her body tightened with pending release, he sucked, her screams of ecstasy like a howl, the wiggling twist of passion’s release against his face a victory, her breathless call of his name like a prayer.
“Please,” she urged. “Gavin. Take me. Take me now,” Lilah begged. He pounced, standing tall and pulling her up to the enormous glass wall that separated them from nature. Pressing her against the cool glass, his front to her back, he used his knee to nudge her knees apart. Then he shoved them wide, fingers finding her so wet he nearly went mad from the simple touch of something so slick that he elicited. That he created.
That he would now take.
The moment he entered her she tensed, her skin flat against the clear glass, her face turned to the left enough for him to see the madness of seduction in her eyes. She was transported, delivered to a new place with him, a world they created with the joining of flesh and the utter abandonment of the self. He drove into her from behind, taking her as a human yet with an animal thrust, the push hard and heavy, her sounds devolving into groans and cries that filled the air with its own sex song.
Now covered in a sheen of sweat, his abs slid against her ass as he lifted up, the pulse their lovemaking formed like a beacon that he followed. Lilah made little noises between her screams, then tightened, another wave of climax coming from her, gripping his cock and making him fight to move, the need for more effort a challenge he must conquer.
“You,” he said into her ear, biting it until he tasted blood, “are mine.”
“Yes,” she hissed, his quads pumping harder, fingers seeking her core and then oh—oh, dear God, he felt it, a wave so strong he came up gasping for air, the feeling of drowning and pleasure so twinned he could not parse out the panic from the joy. He bit Lilah’s shoulder so hard and sank in, the taste of her flesh more real now, his cock finding an unbreachable point inside that gave way as she screamed a word he knew was so old it had never been spoken among humans.
The scent of her, the wet heat, the view of the endless city horizon, the taste of honey and musk and blood all catapulted Gavin into a swirling void that made him call out her name as well.
Except the name was not Lilah.
It was the same word she used.
His skin burst into flame as he pushed and thrust, pulled and bit, hands desperate to touch her breasts, her belly, her ass, her all. She went tight, then limp, and as his seed filled her and her blood covered his lips he took one long, shaky breath and slumped against her, Lilah’s body impaled from behind by his cock, her only contact with earth Gavin’s arms and manhood.
The little breaths that came from her made his larger, ragged gasps seem barbaric by comparison. He felt like a giant, towering over her fertile goodness, and he gave her tender caresses, his fingers finding the bite.
“I made you bleed,” he whispered, swallowing and tasting the metallic brew in his mouth.
“You made me whole.”
Lilah paused at the front door of her apartment, keys in hand, and wondered what she was going to tell Jess. She’d come home—no, it wasn’t home anymore, not for her—to try to explain what had happened. How she’d quit waitressing (she’d come to that decision on her own and chided Gavin for telling Eva without her), how she’d gotten engaged to a flaxen-haired billionaire, how she’d become a werewolf through an ancient magic that even her brilliant shifter lover didn’t understand.
Well, maybe she’d save that last part of the story for another day.
After talking to Jess, she’d start packing. There wasn’t much worth keeping but the sentimental things and a few favorite jeans that fit her just right. And she wanted Smoky to come live with her and Gavin, but Jess had been the primary caregiver now for weeks, and it might not be fair to dognap him like that if her sister had gotten attached.
She yawned, pushing the key into the lock. Dognap. Nap. She needed one of those. Gavin had pushed her beyond herself. Her body was sore and sated and soft as melted butter.
Talk about getting attached.
She’d have to have a long talk with Molly too. Not about everything but about taking chances and falling in love. Just because she’d left the Platinum didn’t mean she wanted to end their friendship. And she could stand to have a break from Gavin’s bed, at least for a few hours, to catch another movie.
The door swung in front of her without her help.
“Lilah!” Jess cried. “Where have you been? I was so worried!” She bent over and picked up Smoky, who wiggled in her arms and tried to get to Lilah.
Li
lah went inside and shut the door, reaching not for her dog but for her sister. “I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around the both of them. At first Smoky froze, ears back and nostrils quivering, as if sensing the change in her—but then his little pink tongue shot out and licked her face, head dipping down in deference as if she were his alpha. “I thought I left a message.”
“Yeah, some message. ‘I might not be home for a while. Don’t worry.’ And then you screamed and the phone went dead.”
Blushing, Lilah bit her lip. “Gavin grabbed me. We were, uh...”
“Like I said. Not really the kind of message to put me at ease.”
“Oh, Jess, I have so much to tell you. I’m getting married.”
“What?”
“He found me at the club, and we talked and we’re... we’re...” Lilah felt her blush deepen. She’d never been so embarrassed with her own little sister, but memories of all the wild things she’d been doing over the past day paraded through her mind in a rush. “We’re in love and we’re getting married.”
Jess wasn’t nearly as happy as Lilah had hoped. In fact, she was crossing her arms over her chest and scowling. “Just like that.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds.”
“You barely know that guy,” Jess said.
Lilah looked away, stifling a laugh. “It’s amazing how well you can get to know somebody if the conditions are right.” Like under a full moon in the woods. Not that a moon was necessary, she’d learned. Or woods.
But she had so much more to learn...
And untold years to learn them, according to the legend.
How did she begin to convince Jess of any of this? She wasn’t even happy her big sister was marrying a gorgeous billionaire; how would she feel if she believed the werewolf part? “You’ll have time to get used to the idea,” was all she could say. “I know it seems fast, but it’s for real. I’ve never been so happy in my life.”
Jess’s scowl softened just a little. “You do look happy. But that could just be all the sex.”
A laugh bubbled out of Lilah. “Don’t knock it, babe. My God, I wish the whole world could feel as good as I do right now.”
