by Leela Ash
“I swear I didn’t do this on purpose,” she blabbed, perilously close to tears.
Unable to help herself, Megan looked up at him as she moved the ice in measured dabs over his chest trying to gauge his level of pain. The raw heat she saw blazing back at her from his golden gaze made her hands falter in their frantic motions even as moisture surged automatically into the juncture of her thighs.
He didn’t look like a man who had been scalded. He looked like a man who wanted… sex! Raw, hot, naked, earth-shaking, fast and furious sex!
“Jack?” she whispered shakily, even as her body melted in reaction.
The sound of his name on her lips seemed to have broken the last vestige of his control. With a growl that sounded almost wild and animal, he hauled her against him. His big hands grabbed the soft curve of her buttocks holding her flush against his very hard arousal. His mouth plundered hers with wild, urgent hunger as though he had been waiting an infernal number of years to kiss her.
Reaction skidded along her nerve-endings and she opened her mouth to grant him even more access with an urgency that matched his in intensity. His hands were kneading and squeezing her butt cheeks through the soft material of her skirt. One hand grabbed her breast and squeezed it gently; it was obvious that the effort to be gentle cost him.
Megan almost tore off her clothes in desperation. She didn’t want calm, she wanted wild, rough fucking. She wanted him to rip off her clothes in a lust-induced haze. Calm meant he was still in control; holding back. She wanted him to be so desperate for her that he lost control and went wild — just like she was going wild.
Her hands drifted down as though they had a mind of their own to his fly. They encountered his hard, thrusting arousal and fled in panic.
Jack continued to kiss her as though he hadn’t noticed her skittishness. He had managed to lift the hem of her blouse and his hands had delved underneath, sliding upwards on her smooth silky skin until they covered her bra through her thick cotton bra.
He didn’t even pause; he began to massage her breast through the bra. Then he stopped kissing her and bent his head to her breast.
Pleasure such as she had never known exploded behind her eyes and Megan gasped, straining to be closer to him. Her hand returned to his fly and this time she stroked his arousal experimentally; then with much more boldness and firmness.
His lips continued to work magic at her breast and she groaned as she stroked him with more insistence and pressure.
Jack shifted his lips to her other breast while he reached down with one hand and unbuckled his fly. He grabbed her hand and guided it through the open fly to touch the naked skin of his penis— his huge penis.
He felt huge; huger than she remembered!
The effect was like a bucket of ice water thrown into her face and she jerked her hand back and jerked her body away from his.
Jack let her go. He was standing watching her in silence, his eyes half-hooded with the remnants of lust and passion.
“I — I can’t” she stammered, stepping backwards for self-preservation.
He continued to watch her steadily without a word.
Then he calmly tucked his penis into place and zipped his fly before turning to search for his shirt. He spied it where she had tossed it and he picked it up and flung it onto his shoulder.
Megan watched him, trying to understand what the rigid line of his back meant. Was he angry?
“Jack, I don’t want you to misunderstand—” she began.
“I misunderstand nothing, Megan. You’re not ready for this. I’m just glad you didn’t scream this time,” he added.
Megan winced.
“That would have brought your entire staff, including Jeanine, running,” he continued. “And I, for one, am not ready to answer the meddling questions she’s sure to have.”
She started to respond when the door to her office burst open and Jeanine rushed in, auburn curls bouncing, with a wide grin blazing across her face as she cried, “Megan you’ll never believe what—”
Then it registered. She froze; they froze.
All three of them stared at each other in shocked silence. Or rather Jeanine looked shocked; Jack looked resigned and Megan just wanted to finally let out that scream.
Jack threw a last glance over his shoulder at Megan, looked back at Jeanine with more of the weariness stamped onto his chiseled features. Then he mumbled, “Of course!”
With long strides, he swept past his sister-in-law and straight out the door, half-naked since his shirt was still slung over one shoulder.
Megan bit her lip holding back a horrified laughter as she observed that he somehow managed to saunter half-naked past gaping employees in the hallway with all the élan and dignity he could muster, for all the world as though there was nothing out of place.
Then she met Jeanine’s furious, narrow-eyed gaze and all her amusement fled.
8.
“Is this something you do?” Jeanine demanded without preamble.
“Excuse me?”
“This,” Jeanine repeated, flinging her hands wide to indicate the entire office. “Is this something you do? Waylay unsuspecting men and strip them half-naked in the hallowed confines of your office?”
Megan straightened to her full height and hissed one word, “Careful.”
One word but in it was a wealth of meaning. She and Jeanine might have tacitly decided to bury the hatchet after Jeanine got her boo but that didn’t mean she had given the other woman license to speak to her as she pleased, especially since Megan was still the boss, last she checked.
Jeanine seemed undaunted by that hissed reprimand. She glared all the harder, “You know what? Screw AniVets and screw you!!! Jack is my brother. I will not have you toy with his feelings and toss him aside as though he were a napkin on your dinner table. He’s special!”
Someone —presumably Megan’s secretary — solicitously slammed the office door shut behind Jeanine to cut down the gawks from other staff.
The two women facing off against each other didn’t care. They barely noticed.
“I still remember how you were all over Beaufort and I let it slide. Now you’re onto his brother too, for kicks. Jack may seem like an over-confident, arrogant type but deep down he’s very sensitive and he bruises easily. I won’t let you hurt him,” Jeanine vowed.
Megan was watching her in strained silence.
Jeanine wasn’t done. “I know exactly what kind of woman you are. You have no care for others and you like to throw your weight around. You’re the proverbial princess in a shiny castle and once you’ve had your fun, you’ll decide Jack isn’t good enough for you and toss him out on his ear, just in time for you to shake off the dust and move on as though nothing happened. But it will be too late for Jack; he’ll have lost his heart to you!” she finished, panting heavily.
“Wow, I’m happy to see your opinion of me hasn’t improved,” Megan said with a dismissive yawn as she retreated behind her desk and sank into her chair, her face as expressionless as Jack’s had been when he strode from the room half-naked.
Jeanine stared at her in stupefaction. Did she have ice in her veins?
“Megan,” she began in a more conciliatory tone. “I realize you are both adults and what you do together is entirely your business—”
“Precisely,” came the response.
Jeanine gritted her teeth and prayed for patience. “Jack has had a veritable army of women in his life all of whom either wanted his money or his good looks or his sexual prowess. It’s taken him years to recover from the last stab to his heart. If you’re not in this for keeps, let him go. That’s all I’m saying,” she volunteered.
Megan’s head lifted as she stared in surprise at the other woman. An army of women? Why did that surprise her? Jeanine was making every effort to paint the picture of a vulnerable, heartbroken man but all Megan saw was a player; a Casanova who had only come after her because he wanted one more notch on his bedpost! He had probably been laughing to himself while she r
esponded to him like an idiot. One touch from him, one glance from his eyes and she had been ready to orgasm right there.
He must think her naïve and stupid. Lord only knew how many other women he had used to slake his lust in the past, only to traipse over their prone bodies onto the next victim of his good looks.
She had very nearly fallen prey to his well-honed charms, she realized, licking her lips as anger speared through her. With great effort, Megan kept her features carefully composed.
“I want to know exactly what you hope to achieve with this diatribe, Jeanine Kent. Either you tell me why you barged into my office as though you own the place, or you get the hell out!”
Jeanine slowly placed a file folder onto the table, “You got the approval for that shelter construction over on Route 58,” she offered with a bright brittle smile.” Of course, now I think about it, it means the artisans who’d set up small shops over there would be out of work. But at least, you get to build your big shelter. Congratulations.”
Then she turned and stalked from the room.
The emphasis she laid on the words would only have been lost on a fool and Megan was no fool. It was her way of saying she thought Megan was selfish; it wasn’t really about the artisans, they were just a case in point at this time. It was about Jack.
Megan laid a hand on the file folder trying very hard to keep the tears from coming. Then she gave in and slowly bent her head to the desk, letting the heart-wrenching sobs wrack her slender body.
She cried for herself because even now, knowing what she knew about Jack, she couldn’t shake that helpless hunger, that inexplicable yearning for him.
She cried for herself because while she was half-afraid she was falling in love with a player, everyone else perceived that she was the ice princess who would hurt him and never feel a thing herself because she was supposed to be some sort of robot who felt nothing.
She cried for herself because despite having met him only twice in living memory, she was almost certain she had gone and fallen for the worst person possible: a Casanova.
It was all pathetic.
She was pathetic.
***
“Megan?” her mother called with a glad cry, laughing as she bustled towards the door.
Megan tried not to roll her eyes. The way her mother carried on, one would be forgiven for thinking she hadn’t seen Megan in years, instead of a mere two weeks. Megan bent to engulf her in a hug.
Her mother always smelled soft and sweet, she thought with a smile as she inhaled the familiar fragrance. She smelled just like jasmine and apples.
“Where’s Dad?” Megan asked chuckling as she kissed her mother’s cheeks.
“Out playing catch-ball with the boys,” her mother responded, blushing with happiness at her kiss.
“Let me guess, in his shifter-form?” Megan asked.
Her mother chuckled, “You can’t blame your dad. He’s just so happy that he’s able to give these boys what no one ever gave him at that age.”
Megan tossed her handbag onto the nearest cushion and headed for the kitchen door that opened outside, eager to see her dad and what new boys he had now.
Merlyn and David Delaney had adopted her as a child and showered her with more love than most kids received from their biological parents. But it wasn’t until she became a teenager that she had discovered that David and Merlyn were shifters. She had come to accept it as a fact of life, and she didn’t love them any less.
But knowing their secret had become its own burden and it followed her for around years and crippled her social development. She had always felt she needed to watch everything she said and did to avoid a slip-up. It took all the inner strength she had to endure school-yard bullies in silence without threatening to sic her super-powered dad on them. All through college she had been conscious of the fact that she couldn’t afford to drink and become drunk so she wouldn’t say the wrong thing and reveal their secret. She had weighed every word and action until she became guarded and private.
Her steps slowed now as she realized deep inside, she had also avoided boyfriends because she wanted to protect her parents’ secret.
When she had gotten her job at Ani-Vets, her mother had been beside herself until Megan had promised to visit every weekend. And she had until last weekend when Jeanine’s wedding had come up.
Thinking about the wedding reminded her again of Jack and she scowled. She had fled Ani-Vets for the weekend just to get away from him and her thoughts of him. And yet, she couldn’t stop thinking about the damn man.
Home was the one place she had her sanity and she needed that sanity right now. Hopefully one weekend with her parents with realign her priorities and help her force that man from her mind.
Her hands shook as she pushed open the kitchen door and stepped into the yard.
A white wolf raced past in hot pursuit of a ball and two small cubs raced past too, yipping as they tried to get to the ball before the wolf. She recognized her dad in the wolf at once. The two cubs were Rick and Tyler, her parents’ latest set of foster children. The pair of them were die-hard do-gooders. They couldn’t bear to leave one room empty in their home while kids languished outside. Of course, apart from Megan, they hadn’t adopted any other human kids. The rest were shifters.
In a corner of the yard, one dark-haired little boy stood alone, sulking as he watched the play between the wolf and the cubs with a bored expression on his small face.
Her heart immediately went out to him because she knew exactly how he felt. She had been there too, on the outside looking in and trying to pretend it didn’t make one jot of difference. He wasn’t bored at all; he desperately wanted in. He just didn’t know how.
“Who’s he?” she asked as her mother came up beside her.
“That’s Shepsirr,” her mother said.
“Shep what?”
“Shepsirr. I’m not sure where he’s from but he’s obviously not from around here. We found him wandering about, hurt, and we took him in. He’s only been here ten days. You would have known about him if you had come last weekend,” her mother added.
Not that again, Megan thought with an inward groan.
“What’s his shifter form?” she asked her mother.
Merlyn hesitated, causing Megan to look at her. It had to be something bad then. “Mum?”
“Hyena,” her mother said.
Megan bit her lip hiding her surprise. While she wasn’t a shifter, she had read enough books and done enough research to know shifters didn’t generally turn into hyenas. Maybe something was wrong with him. How had he become a hyena shifter?
“He’s very touchy and suspicious and private and silent,” Merlyn added.
So, he was the loner type, was he? With an expression that rivaled his in boredom, Megan headed towards him.
He couldn’t be more than nine and instinctively, Megan squatted in front of him to bring herself more to his eye level. “Hi Shepsirr.”
He looked at her and she felt almost chilled. This close, she could see that his eyes were so similar to Jack’s, it was eerie. He had the same amber eyes that tended towards gold color. It was almost like looking into Jack’s eyes.
“Who you?” he demanded morosely.
She smiled, “Megan Delaney.”
His gaze raked her from head to toe, “You must be the golden kid we hear so much ‘bout ‘round here. The old man never shuts up ‘bout you. Well I gotta tell ya, you don’t look like much of a shifter.”
“I’m human,” she offered ignoring the disparaging sentiment behind the words and the obvious intention to upset her.
He grinned but there was no humor in it. It was more like a pressing of his lips against his teeth as he sneered, “Figures. Those loser couples managed to birth some runt of the litter, didn’t they? No wonder they can’t get enough of adoptin’ real shifter kids.”
Okay, that hurt, she conceded as she straightened to her full height trying to decide whether to run off crying or shake some sense
into him.
Growing up, she had known the Delaneys loved her, but as with most adopted kids she had always wondered about her biological parents who hadn’t wanted her. Dad had said she had been wrapped in a blanket and placed in the part of the woods usually hunted by wolves. Luckily it wasn’t a regular wolf that stumbled across the blanket-clad creature; it had been the Delaneys.
Sometimes she couldn’t stop thinking that people who were supposed to be human had left their kid to the elements, while shifters who were supposed to be half-animal, had taken her in and nursed and cared for her all through her life.
She was loved, but she carried that scar of rejection by parents who had thought she wasn’t good enough.
Shepsirr’s words struck too close to home and she fought for self-control. She shut her eyes forcing back her tears and then she said, “You’re wrong Shepsirr. My folks open their homes to little boys and girls who have no else to take them in.”
He faced forward without another word.
With an inward sigh, Megan reminded herself that hurting people often tried to hurt others. It was easy to see that he was hurting. He had a large scar that ran down one cheek and almost halved his entire face and he was thin and hungry-looking. Wherever he had come from, it couldn’t have been easy.
“I was adopted too, Shepsirr. And as a kid, I always struggled with the knowledge that my biological parents who were supposed to be human, hadn’t wanted me.”
Shepsirr threw her another contemptuous glance, “Humanity is overrated. But I guess you haven’t figured that out yet cos you’re a chick— a human chick.”
Alright, she was going indoors, Megan decided. It was either that or give this little… person a good, teeth-rattling shake which would be nothing less than he deserved! But then, she would never be able to live with herself.
Without another word, she strode away and she didn’t look back once, not even when she heard Shepsirr snicker.
9.
“Your men become more useless with each passing day, Zak,” Nabradia cooed, stroking the back of his head absently as he licked her pussy with long sweeping swipes of his tongue, just the way she liked it.
