by Lynn Red
“You got here quick,” she said, obviously deflecting whatever was actually bothering her. It was easy to see from Lilah’s shifting eyes and distractedness that she didn’t even believe her own acting.
“What’s going on?” Rex asked, sliding his hands down her arms, and pressing her palms into his. “I’ve never heard you sound panicked before.”
Lilah opened her mouth like she was about to answer him, and then stopped herself. “Where’s Leena?” she asked.
Rex watched her a moment longer. “Leena,” he said. “She’s with her grandpa. They were playing dominoes or something and she just stayed over. He’s better at cooking breakfast than I am anyway.”
Lilah was still shaking, still trembling, but he didn’t know what to do to calm her. Gentle jokes didn’t seem to do much good, so instead, Rex pushed that white curl he loved so much back behind her ear and then just clutched her against him.
For a long, wonderful second, the two of them breathed slowly, their hearts beating in time with one another. Rex had no idea what she was so upset about, but somehow he’d known exactly what to do to calm her nerves. She took a second just to be comforted, to be held, before she bothered trying to collect herself enough to talk again.
A few seconds later, she began to stir. Rex tilted her chin backwards, kissed her softly, deeply, and then pulled away. “What’s wrong?” he finally asked.
She shook her head again, but this time she was ready to talk. “One of my sister’s friends disappeared earlier in the week.”
“Oh no,” Rex said. “Do you need help looking? I can’t even imagine—”
“No,” Lilah interrupted him, putting her hand on his chest. “No, she came back. It was weird, though. A black SUV dropped her at my doorstep and then sped away.”
“You didn’t see who was driving it?” Something flared in Rex’s eyes. He had intensity to his voice, to his gaze that Lilah had never seen. All at once it turned her on and frightened her just enough to be exciting. “Did you call the police?”
Lilah laughed. “I might have a few friends on the force. My dad’s one of two lieutenants. Anyway, yeah I let him know, and then let a couple deputies from the jail know. The sheriff’s deputies are a little, uh, looser with the rules.”
Rex cocked an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“My dad said there was nothing the hyenas could do since nothing actually happened, as far as anyone knows. Winter just disappeared for a few days and then showed up all weird and wonky at my apartment. This isn’t exactly new behavior for her, so the police were going to go check up on the guy she said she was with, but that’s it.”
“And the Deputies?” Rex asked. That’s when Lilah noticed he was clenching his fist, kind of squeezing his fingers together and then relaxing them.
“That’s what I mean. The city police are going to check on him, see if he’s got any kind of skeletons in his closet. That’s a bad choice of words, I mean in this place he might actually have literal skeletons.”
Rex laughed, and nodded.
“Anyway,” Lilah continued, still clinging to Rex’s arm. “The Deputies aren’t so interested in playing it straight. Officer Cooper didn’t tell me exactly what they’d do, but usually that means someone’s going to get followed.”
“Anyone I’ve heard of? The guy she was with, I mean.”
Lilah shook her head. “I doubt it. He’s a new guy in town. Well, I say ‘in town’ but I don’t know where he lives. He’s a new professor. Art History teacher, he knows a lot of bullshit about Mesopotamian stuff.”
“Mesopo...” Rex trailed off.
“You know, like Ur, ancient Baghdad, that kind of thing.”
“Oh no, I know what you’re talking about,” Rex said. Absently he touched the scars on his throat. “I’ve been there. Not Ur, I guess. But I’ve gone through all the stuff in Baghdad.”
“Cooper said you were over there for a while,” Lilah said, trailing circles on his biceps with her fingertips. “I knew you were a soldier of course, but I never wanted to ask. I know it’s not exactly the nicest thing to talk about sometimes.”
Rex looked out the window, though it was hard to tell if he was distracting himself or distracting Lilah. “Nice view,” he said, looking to the moon that hung over the forest outside the sliding glass door that led to her porch. “Mind if we go out there? The, uh, the air is cool. It relaxes me some.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lilah asked. “You got all serious all of a sudden.”
Rex looked at her with fire burning in his eyes. He grabbed one of her hands and held it up, pressing her palm to his face. With warm, sweet lips, he kissed her palm, then her wrist. Instinctively, Lilah reached up and cupped his face with her other hand, feeling the rasp of his whiskers against her fingertips.
“I don’t know why... or, or how you do this to me,” Lilah said. “But I want to take away whatever is hurting you. I want you to feel as safe and as strong with me as I do with you. I don’t know if I can, but I want to try.”
He kissed the palm of her hand again, then her wrist and the inside of her forearm. “I’ve never talked about this with anyone,” he said. “I mean that. No one. When I came back, I could hardly keep myself awake for entire days. I had no idea why.”
Rex’s full, bowed lips were an inch from Lilah’s. Every few words he spoke he had to pause to kiss her, to caress her skin with his tongue, his lips. “Then sometimes, instead of not being able to stay awake, I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. Two days, three, sometimes more, I’d be awake. Doing nothing, really, staring at walls. Watching baseball games I’d seen two or three times before.”
Lilah looked at him, stroked his face and wished there was something else she could do, but it seemed like all he needed was for her to be there with him, to listen. So, that’s exactly what she did.
Every kiss he gave her, every single time his hot breath slid over her skin and then his lips touched her, she felt herself tingle, felt herself wish for his kisses and his sweet caresses in other places.
“I never came up for air,” Rex said. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about being awake. Then sometimes I’d hear the alarm clock go off in the morning and realize I never closed my eyes – I’d just been hallucinating a dream.”
He looked at her, penetrating her soul with those deep, brown eyes. Rex watched her face like he was memorizing every single detail. Finally, he kissed her again, inside her elbow, and a chill crept up Lilah’s arm. Her sex pulsed in time with her heart, yearning for him to touch her the way he had that night that seemed like an eternity ago, even though it’d barely been a month. Lilah curled the fingers on the hand that wasn’t under Rex’s control, rasping against the short, dark whiskers that covered the tattoos running down his cheeks.
“How did you manage to come to me?” she asked. “What in the world happened that made the planets turn in the right way, or the stars align or whatever? What did I do to deserve a man like you?”
“I think you saved me, Lilah,” Rex said, from absolutely out of nowhere.
That time it was Lilah doing the kissing. She turned Rex’s face to her, and jumped up, latching her arms around his neck. First she nuzzled his neck and then she sucked a kiss behind his ear. “You saved me too,” she whispered. “I was going nowhere, doing nothing. Just a dead-end painter in a dead-end life. And then here comes a bear in a cage to take me away from all of it.”
Rex let out a soft laugh and took a deep breath, inhaling the lingering scent of Lilah’s lavender shampoo and the vague hint of her patchouli perfume. When he let out the breath, he shuddered slightly, his muscles trembling against Lilah’s back.
“How did I ever live without you?” she whispered as his fingers slid under the back of her shirt, and then up to play with her bra strap. “All those years alone, scared, fighting to stay alive. And then... Oh!”
Lilah’s bra clicked softly and then hung down limply under her shirt. Rex enveloped her mouth in another penetrat
ing, toe-tingling kiss that made her clench her fists in his hair.
“I think we both,” he flattened his hand against Lilah’s now-bare back, “we both suffered. We both went through hell, and now we came out the other side. And here we are. Call it fate, call it—”
“Who cares what it is or what it isn’t. How about we just call it love?” Lilah stared straight into his eyes, the words hanging in the air.
Her breath caught in her chest as she waited for him to respond. It was like she was waiting for someone to tell her whether she was going to live or going to die. Every second felt like a miniature eternity.
Over and over, Lilah closed her fists, crunching his hair against her palms. She could hardly stand it anymore. The anticipation was making a knot just about the size of Rhode Island form in her stomach.
When Rex finally opened his mouth, Lilah could have died.
“Love,” he said, “I like the way that sounds.”
Her world and his collided all at once. As their lips met and their teeth clashed and they swirled their tongues together, the two of them began to breathe as one, desperate and hungry for each other.
Their devouring kisses enveloped one another over and over, momentarily taking away the fear both of them had, but neither would admit. Rex’s powerful hands clasped Lilah against his chest. She squirmed just long enough to get one arm out of the bra inside her shirt and let it fall to the floor.
One of his hands lingered where her bra used to be while the other slid down her back, gliding as far as he could reach. “I love your body, Lilah,” he whispered reverentially. “Your curves, your eyes, your hair, everything about you is just... perfect.”
She cocked her head a little bit to one side, smiling at him almost quizzically like she didn’t believe what he was saying to her. “Me?” she asked. “Perfect?”
Instead of answering, he clasped his hands in the small of her back and lifted Lilah off her feet, and swirled his tongue into her. He explored the inside of her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, and then sucked her lip between his teeth, pushing himself deeper, penetrating her, and taking her breath with a kiss that lasted for what seemed like a blissed eternity.
When he let her down, Lilah was almost afraid her knees weren’t going to be stable enough to hold her up. “That was,” she whispered, “wow... just... wow.”
She moved herself up, standing on tip toes to kiss him again. With every movement, every breath he took and every kiss he sucked on her lips, her erect nipples brushed against the soft, old cotton on her t-shirt sending thrill snaking up her back.
“When you touch me like that,” Lilah breathed, “it makes me want to do things I’ve never done before. I don’t know how but... Oh! Oh God, Rex, when you kiss me like that, I can’t control myself.”
“Good,” he said, between hungry, sucking kissing on her neck. “Sometimes we have to let the beasts out to play, or they get all pent up and angry.”
The hair on Rex’s forearms grew longer, thicker and harder as something pressing against Lilah’s stomach, through his jeans, did the same thing. “Looks like I’m not the only excited one,” she said, running her hot little hands from his face down Rex’s solidly muscled chest.
First she kissed his chin, then his neck and then tugged the collar of his stretched-out tee down low enough that she could kiss where his collarbones met.
She sucked a deep breath, inhaling the scent of leather and the road that drifted off his skin. Tugging the shirt lower, Lilah kissed his chest, groaning as her shirt slid up and down against her nipples.
Every move she made and every time he moved against her brought Lilah one step closer to ecstasy, one step closer to what she’d wanted since the second she laid eyes on Rex in that jail cell. Every time Lilah’s lips pressed against Rex’s increasingly hair-covered chest, he felt himself giving up his fear, giving up his determination to stay alone to keep himself – and his cub – from getting hurt.
“Scratch me,” Rex said, in a husky voice. He grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked, splitting the elastic. The cotton ripped cleanly in a line straight down the middle. “Hard,” he said. “I want to feel those nails on my chest.”
Pushing his shirt open, Lilah gasped.
Scars crisscrossed his muscled chest. She ran a finger down one of them until it disappeared into the crease between his abs. Crouching down, she felt the fabric run up her chest again, as she let one of her hands fall to the swelling thickness in Rex’s jeans. Smoothly, slowly, she moved her palm along him, letting her hand warm him all the way along his length.
With the other hand, she did what he asked, dragging her fingernails down the center of his torso, making him groan out loud. Before she really thought about it, she did it again and then again, warming his stomach with swirling kisses and circles of her tongue at the same time as her fingernails painted hot tracks down his chest.
All the time she massaged his cock, he was smiling down at her, running his fingers through her hair. Every stroke tugged gently at her scalp, sending little fingers of pleasure running down Lilah’s back. She took a deep breath, and tested the button on his jeans. Looking up into his comforting eyes, she felt like Rex would never hurt her, never do anything she didn’t want him to do.
The safety, the security she felt was almost overwhelming. Without looking at him, Lilah could feel Rex’s protective, warm gaze on the back of her neck. At the same time it felt like Rex was opening his heart to her with every careful, slow stroke of his fingers across the nape of her neck.
“I could do this forever,” Lilah whispered, in between kisses that kept going lower and lower on Rex’s beautiful body.
“All right,” Rex said. “Deal.”
Lilah smiled as she tugged on the button of his jeans until it popped open. “Too bad it has to end eventually, huh?” She looked up at him.
“Not right now it doesn’t. And when we’re together, nothing that might happen in the future matters. Understand?”
It all made sense. Every bit of it did, to Rex and to Lilah.
In that one moment when they were alone in the world, they were just two people, moving against each other. Two people in love, holding each other, kissing each other, and one of them was pulling the other one’s jeans open.
Reaching into his open fly as soon as the zipper was down, Lilah took a long, slow breath as she felt his hottest skin warming her palm. She slid her hand down, then up, and then tugged the top of his jeans down to free him.
As soon as he popped out and she grabbed him with both hands, Rex moaned a low, rumbling moan.
Lilah kissed his legs as the hair on them grew longer and harder, and before she knew it, the nails on her fingers started to curl.
“I’ve never changed,” she said. “Like in the middle of... this. I’ve never started changing without thinking about it.”
Rex tilted her head back and stroked her cheek. His eyes were starting to flare gold inside the brown irises. “Sometimes we can’t control ourselves. We have to let it out,” he said. “That’s how you know...”
“Know what?” Lilah stroked him, kissed his tip and shuddered with anticipation. “How you know what?”
“That you’ve found the one.”
His words filled her with warmth that reverberated from inside out. She shuddered, she groaned, and she took another deep breath, filling her lungs with his scent. The more she changed, the more she sensed – her raccoon senses came to life inside her. Every smell, every sound was clearer and more apparent. Every sweep of his fingers more sensual, more exciting.
“I want to feel your skin against me,” Rex growled. “I want to slide between those beautiful legs, I want to smell you, taste you, kiss every inch of you. I want to make love to you so slow you’re screaming for me.”
Lilah was about ready to scream anyway, even without the lovemaking bit.
Before she knew it, he lifted her off the ground and slung her over his shoulder.
“Ah!” Lilah gas
ped, giggling and play kicking as he carried her back to her bedroom and tossed her gently to the mattress.
“We’ll have plenty of time for everything else,” he said. “But first there’s something I’ve wanted to do since you put your hand through those bars and I touched your fingers, pretending it was an accident.”
Carefully, he removed her glasses and put them on the nightstand. “Your eyes,” he said, staring at her. “They’re even more gorgeous with no glasses. You’re just...”
Rex held her hand as he crawled onto the bed, pushing her knees apart.
“No,” she said. “You’re just.”
Grinning, he shook his huge head. “Take off your shirt,” Rex said.
It wasn’t a question, which made Lilah burn even hotter.
“I want to see every bit of your perfect body.”
She hesitated. “But why? I’m not... I mean, I’m not as perfect as you think I am. I’ve got... I dunno, bumps in funny places. Lumps in places that should be smooth.”
“No you don’t,” Rex said. “You are exactly the way you’re supposed to be. You’re exactly what you were when I saw you. You’re exactly what you were when,” he trailed off.
“When what?”
Throwing open the curtain, the yellow glow from the crescent moon splashed across the bed and across Lilah’s stomach where her shirt had been pushed up a little. Rex growled in appreciation, running a fingertip from her neck to her bellybutton. “When I fell in love with you.”
There went the shirt. Without even thinking about it, she swept it off over her head and threw it into a heap in the corner. The next second, Rex was on her, tugging her jeans down, kissing as he went.
Slowly he smothered her chest in hot, sweet kisses that made her curl her half-claw half-toe toes, and draw a gasping breath. Lingering just a little over each nipple, he blew hot air across them, then circled with his tongue and sucked just a bit.
No one had ever, ever, ever made her feel like he was just then. What he was doing wasn’t sex, it wasn’t just some physical lust that overcame him like so many other of her boyfriends had done. No, this was something different.
