by Selena Scott
And then she licked those lips again.
Matt closed the distance between them. One arm went around her waist and the very tips of his fingers just kissed under the waistband of her pants. The other hand was already at the back of her neck, tipping her head up just so.
“I’m gonna kiss you,” he murmured so close he could have sworn he could already taste her. “And then all you have to do is tell me how it makes you feel.”
She made a small noise, in the back of her throat, her eyes half lidded, that reeled Matt directly in.
He kissed her bottom lip first, pushed at her nose with his own to change the angle. And then he kissed at that plump lip again. His hands shifted when his lips didn’t. His hands didn’t move, just changed their grip, and suddenly he was clutching her against him. She was pressed to him all the way from her shoulders to her knees.
And that’s when the kiss changed. Neither of them would ever know if it was her or him that had done it, though both would someday take credit. But one mouth opened and the other explored. There wasn’t conquering, but there was giving. Each of them were suddenly viciously generous, wanting the other to have everything they needed. He clutched her where his hands had landed, but that was happy, sexy luck, because Matt Woods could no longer feel his hands. Inka tried to grab at him and maybe she succeeded, but it was only because her fingers closed over the first thing they came in contact with.
Their worlds shrunk down to the head of a pin. There were no childhood hauntings. No unsolved mysteries. There were no shifters. Hell, there was no New York City. The only thing that existed was taste. And touch. And tight, never-ending clutch.
She made a noise that justified his existence on God’s green earth. He thought that if there weren’t such a pesky thing as mortality, he could have done this until the sun just burned right out.
There were a few moments in Inka Keto’s life that changed her forever. The first time she shifted, when she thought she’d lost Ansel and Milla two years ago, and when Matt Woods opened his mouth for her.
When Matt licked at her tongue, Inka knew that she’d just undergone a transformation as powerful as when she’d first shifted to bear form. She wasn’t the same woman that she’d been a few minutes ago. And she never would be again.
It was a kiss that both accelerated and stood perfectly still. Because both of them had barely moved since it had begun, but they’d both been catapulted light years into their emotional futures.
Matt suddenly saw a world where he could give up science, move in with Inka and die a happy man. Inka, with a certain amount of grief, watched as everything and everyone she loved suddenly jogged a place down her list of things she cared about. Matt… Matt… Matt was at the top of every dogpile. The highest rung of the ladder.
They tore away from one another when the only thing more important than the person in their arms was breath itself.
Inka smashed her forehead against his shoulder and breathed as hard as if she’d been running. Matt just tipped his head back to the ceiling. He said a prayer of thanks to Newton, Galileo, Albert Einstein himself.
She’d kissed him back and damn.
Just damn.
He bent his head at the exact second that she lifted hers and there they were again. Although this time, their hands refused to be left behind. Matt’s fingers flirted up to the small of her back underneath her T-shirt and then back down to the waist of her pants. Inka’s hand smoothed over the expanse of his entire back, but the other stayed lodged under his jaw, as if he was the only thing tying her to this earth.
She was only conscious of moving when her ass was pushed into the edge of the counter. He was steering them, thank God.
Inka hopped at the same time as he lifted and she slid smoothly onto the counter. Her legs opened and he stepped in between in a dance that had never been easier for either of them. He wasn’t sure if he was drinking her down or drowning in her. But what he did know, after her tongue slid across his, was that he had no choice but to lay her down. And then she was across the counter, the sandwiches falling to the ground and one hand still on his jaw.
Her legs latched around his waist and he had one knee on the counter. He was over top of her, her hair halfway falling out of her bun and her t-shirt tugging to one side under his fingers.
He nipped at her lip and then broke away to breathe hot and cold against her neck. Somewhere, something inside him knew that he was selling his soul at that very second. That same little, pissant voice said don’t do it, Matt. Don’t lick across her collarbone. You’ll never be the same if you do. But Matt Woods hadn’t listened to the bullies who’d kicked his ass in grade school and he sure as hell wasn’t listening to any bullies now.
His tongue just barely beat his teeth across her collarbone and Inka made a noise, a perfect noise, that he could have sworn changed his DNA. The only thing that could have ever had him lifting his head from her neck was that noise.
Because he had to, simply had to, see her face right now. And he was not disappointed. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips teased and full, her eyes half-lidded, and those green, wide eyes? They weren’t looking at anything but him.
Inka’s numb brain was burning to the ground. She was vacillating between two completely new and immutable truths. 1. Matt Woods looked fine as hell with his shirt off and 2. Matt Woods could kiss the lights out.
Just as soon as she’d thought she’d gotten used to one truth, the other one reared its head and threw her for a loop. She thought she’d known exactly where he fit. Exactly how she felt. But then… this.
This heart-skipping, panty-liquefying, moan-inducing makeout was changing everything. Inka saw, with terrifying clarity, how wrong she’d been. That every second spent getting closer to Matt was just one step getting closer to this. This was inevitable. She saw it now.
“God,” she breathed, tossing her head to one side. “This was—this was always going to happen?” She was asking herself as much as she was asking him.
He raised his head and she saw, even through the fiery churning of desire for her, he had wheels turning, trying to answer her question. Even through this haze, he was listening to her, trying to respond.
“Never mind,” she murmured against his lips. “I don’t care.”
Her tongue swept back into his mouth and almost detonated all remaining thoughts for Matt. But her question reverberated in his mind. Because in some ways, this didn’t feel like chance, or a risk well rewarded. This felt like it was a hundred years in the making. A thousand.
Matt felt that every choice he’d ever made had ended up in him halfway on the counter, pressing Inka down like nothing else on this earth even mattered.
He gave her one last kiss. A press of his tongue and one heavy-lidded slice of blue eyes. And then he was up, off of her and yanking her to her feet.
“Wha-?” She felt as if she’d been roused from a dead sleep. She stumbled against him and he steadied her. He almost took her mouth again but he yanked himself back. He let out a thin breath at the moment he firmly traced his hands down her arms and back up.
“I have to show you my work,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“I—now?” She was looking up at him, confused as hell.
“Yes. Now.” Matt released her and took a step away, his hands tracing through his black hair for just a second before he was spinning back to her. “Definitely now.”
“Matt, you know I’ve always been curious about your work, but I was kind of thinking we could do something else right now.” Her heart was pounding in her chest as she reached for him again. Mmm. He was so tall and she fit right into that place in front of him where his arms couldn’t help but go around her.
“No, that’s exactly my point. I have to show you now because that kiss was…” he trailed off, unable to find an adequate word to describe it. He gave up. “And you’re just so…” He found he had to trail off again.
She scrunched up her face in that perfectly Inka way. “I don’t get it,
Matty.”
Matt groaned and hauled her just a little bit closer. He dipped his head so that their foreheads pressed together. He’d already done the hard part, right? Now he just needed to do the slightly less hard part. Because if he didn’t, well, he’d worry and worry until he did. And if this was gonna happen, really happen, he wanted no barriers. He cleared the hoarseness from his throat.
“Inka, I tend to lose people once they find out what my research is. Hell, even my mother thinks I’m a whacko. I just—The idea of kissing you again and getting closer to you and then you changing your mind because of my research? I couldn’t handle that. So,” he grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the kitchen. “Let’s just get it out of the way and then you can decide how you feel, no hard feelings either way.”
“Matt.”
“Really, Inka, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
“Matt.”
“I just can’t risk losing any more of myself down your rabbit hole. Wait. That didn’t come out the way I meant it. Scratch that from the record. I meant that you’re kind of like a tornado. No! Picture yourself as a whirlpool.”
“MATT!”
He pulled up short with one hand on the door to his lab. His eyebrows pulled together when he turned and saw Inka looking more angry than he’d ever seen her looking before. “Are you alright?”
“No!” She stamped one foot on the ground and more of her golden hair tumbled from the bun. She angrily yanked the hair tie out and Matt’s mouth watered as her hair was a waterfall at her shoulders. “I’m not alright. First you take all my marbles in your hand and you toss ‘em all over the kitchen. Completely discombobulate me because apparently Matt Woods gold medals in kissing a girl’s brains out her ears. And I’d never really thought of you like that before just now. But I’m thinking of you like that now!” She yanked her hair back up and the bun was just as messy as before. “But I also feel so snuggly toward you too, the way I always have, so now I have to combine those two feelings. But that’s not why I’m mad!”
She took a step toward him and he marveled at how her eyes could be so wide and vulnerable and so fierce at the same time.
“I’m mad because here I am, galloping for you,” she laid a hand over her heart. “And you think I’m gonna run for the hills because of what you have in that room? Don’t you know me, Matty?”
“You’re right,” he spoke immediately. “I wasn’t thinking exactly. Because you threw all my marbles on the floor, too.”
She cracked a little Inka smile and he couldn’t help but trace his thumb over her jaw. They stared at one another.
“So,” he started slowly. “Does this mean that you don’t want to see my lab right now?”
“Hell, yeah, I wanna see it!” She came up to her toes in her excitement. “I’ve been waiting for months! I’m so freaking curious.” But then she was jogging back toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going then?”
She came back a second later, already one huge bite into her sandwich and tossing his toward him. “I just wanted to get the sandwiches,” she said through her bite. “Wow, you’re right, this is really good pastrami.”
He had to laugh then. It was either laugh or fall on his knees. He just liked her. He just really, really liked her.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s probably not what you’re expecting,” Matt told her, one hand on the doorknob of the lab. “You know, you say ‘lab’ and people expect metal counters and colored liquids in beakers, but—”
“Just show me, Matty. I’m dying out here.”
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting but she was not disappointed. The room was much homier than she might have thought it would be, with bedside lamps burning brightly in two corners and framed photographs lining one wall. The door of the closet had been removed and there were two computers on a desk shoved inside. Under the two windows on the opposite wall was a long worktable with neatly arranged odds and ends. Nuts and bolts, cuts of different sized piping, batteries of all kinds, what looked like lightbulbs, etc.
On the walls hung tools on tools on tools. More than Inka had ever seen or could even name, and Ansel was a carpenter, so that was saying something. And on the last wall were blueprint after blueprint. Some of them huge and printed on architect’s paper and some of them were scratched on napkins.
“It’s so organized,” Inka noted, turning a slow circle.
“Yes,” Matt nodded his head. “Otherwise I risk forgetting something or losing something.” He paused. “Like my mind.”
She laughed. “This looks more like the workshop of an inventor than the lab of a scientist.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m a scientist moonlighting as an inventor, I guess. This is the part that I discovered in a lab.” He strode over to a safe that she hadn’t noticed before and unlocked it. In his hand was what looked like a small glass pill. He carefully cracked it open and she saw that it was supposed to hinge and unhinge like that.
“This is pretty much my life’s work.”
Inka clasped her hands behind her back and didn’t even breathe as he brought it up to her eye level. “What is it?”
“This is a tiny little echo chamber. It takes sound and throws it out at exact perfect frequency.”
“To separate molecules? Like you said before?”
He nodded again. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”
“Great!” She snuck another bite of her sandwich and Matt chuckled.
He grabbed a swivel chair and sat down in it, unable to resist pulling her into his lap. He took a bite of his own sandwich and wrapped his free arm around her waist. He tried not to dwell on how good it felt. How temporary it might be.
“So, when I was a kid, about 13, I went to visit my abuela for the summer.”
“In Galicia?”
He blinked at her. “How did you know that’s where my family is from?”
“Por que hablas Español con un acento gallego.” Because you speak Spanish with a Galician accent. “And because all those photos are of different places in Galicia.” She nodded her head toward the framed black and whites on the wall. “Although that bottom one I think is actually in Portugal somewhere.”
He kissed her then, out of nowhere, and it had a different kind of passion in it. Just lips on lips. When he pulled back, her cheeks were flushed but her eyes were clear.
“Okay, keep going. I can’t wait to get to the part where I think you’re a lunatic and I never want to be seen with you again.” She crossed her eyes at him. “You were with Abuela…”
“And I was going to see this girl I had a crush on that summer. One night right before sundown, I was running through this backwoods shortcut, through this scrubby little gully. And I saw something.”
Inka’s eyes were wide as she chomped her sandwich. He absently traced a palm over her thigh, held her just a little tighter to him.
“What was it?”
He took a deep breath. “It was kind of a disturbance in the air. It was clear and fuzzy at the same time. It had these edges. And on the other side of it, well, there was, what I think was, another world. Or another dimension.”
“Uh huh,” she nodded, her eyes on his. She took another huge bite and then her gaze fell to his sandwich, as if she were partially contemplating it as well.
He cleared his throat. “Inka, did you hear that part?”
“The other world part? Yeah, of course. I’m listening.”
She furrowed her brow as he looked at her like she might be getting ill. His eyes searched hers, and in fact, one of his hands brushed at her brow, like he was taking her temperature.
“And that doesn’t completely freak you out? That I legitimately think I found a window to another world? Because I’m not joking. This was real.”
She nodded. “Of course it’s real. So what does the echo chamber thingy have to do with it?”
Besides the fact that Matt looked like she’d conked him in the head with a MagLite, Inka thought t
his was going very well.
“Ah. Right. Well.” He shook his head. “I was able to observe it for a month before it was gone.” He clamped a hand at her waist to steady her as he leaned all the way over to a drawer and pulled out a worn notebook. “These are all my notes and all my drawings.”
Inka took the notebook, flipped it open, and felt a piece of her heart gallop away. The handwriting was the impatient, messy scrawl of a thirteen-year-old, and the drawings were terrible, but detailed and careful nonetheless. Every page was filled with observations and thoughts. Including: Tried throwing rock through, rock ricocheted back and hit me in head.
“What interested me most was the edge. It was inconsistent. Firm in some places and soft in others. As if whatever it was made of wasn’t distributed equally.”
She nodded, hanging on his every word.
“Eventually, after intense study, I came to understand what I’d encountered. The edge of the disturbance was comprised of, of, extra molecules, if you will, that had been shoved to the side. And the center was—”
“The space between the molecules.”
“Ah. Right. But what interested me the most was that the molecules hadn’t been cleared equally. Some places were thick and some were thin. It seemed to have occurred almost naturally.”
“You think you can do it with a sound wave? That’s the tool that you’re making? It makes a special frequency that creates one of those windows?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes.”
She put her hands on Matt’s shoulders and leaned forward as if what she was about to ask was extremely important. “Can your tool close the windows back up as well?”
“Well, to be honest, the tool can’t do anything right now. I’m still working on it.”
“So you think that when the molecules of this world are cleared away, it kind of pulls back the curtain and reveals another world?”
“Exactly. Ah. Inka? You’re taking this really well. And I gotta say, it’s kind of freaking me out.”
She ignored him. “So you could see it, but you couldn’t go through it? The window?”
