“Just think, sweetheart,” he whispered. “For the next few months, I can boink your brains out, as much as I can get it up, and we don’t have to worry about anything else.”
“Silver lining.” She sat up, bracing her hands on his bare pecs. Then she scowled as she stared down at him.
“What?” he asked, her sudden confusion confusing him.
She was literally feeling his arms, his pecs. “I just realized you’re…different.” He wasn’t sure what to make of the legit bafflement washing through her right then.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re different.” Poke, poke, squeeze. “I swear to the Goddess, you’re beefier than you used to be. You been working out with Beck, or something?”
“No. Just running. And biking through the woods.”
“Not lifting weights, or doing machine reps, or something?”
“No.”
“Not doing anything different than you used to do?”
He opted for humor. “I get more cardio when we’re in bed together.”
“I’m serious.” She studied him. “Have you gained weight?”
“Gee, thanks, Dewi.” He tried to keep his tone playfully snarky but her sudden and unusual intensity about this was honestly starting to wig him out a little.
“Muscle weighs more than fat,” she said. “Have you gained any weight?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a little. I haven’t weighed myself in a few weeks, at least. My pants are still fitting fine.”
She climbed off him and headed to their walk-in closet. His cock, which had started showing more than a little interest in the potential festivities, was highly disappointed by that development.
He propped himself up on his elbows. “Hey, what’s going on?”
* * * *
Dewi had a specific shirt in mind and rooted through Ken’s clothes until she found it.
The shirt he’d been wearing the night they met.
She pulled it off the hanger and returned with it to the bedroom, where she handed it to him. “Put this on for me.”
He took it from her, one eyebrow sliding up in a deliciously sexy way that had her—
No! Focus!
“Is this some sort of pregnant-woman foreplay I don’t know about?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. Hell, even that was weird to do now, because of her growing belly and boobs.
With a sigh, Ken climbed out of bed, pulled the blue short-sleeved collared shirt over his torso, and tugged the hem down. “There. Happy?” He shrugged a little, trying to stretch it out.
It wasn’t just a little snug—he wore it practically like a second skin.
Her eyes widened, because when she’d first met him, that shirt had fit him loosely. “Holy shit,” she muttered, circling him.
“Dewi, this is moving from funny to freaking me out, and not in a fun way.”
“It’s kinda freaking me out a little, too.”
“What?”
She grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand, took Ken’s hand, and led him over to the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door.
“What’s going on, Dew?” he asked, his tone and mind both roiling with uneasy confusion.
She didn’t reply. Instead, she called up a picture on her phone, one taken of the two of them the day after they’d met.
He was wearing the same shirt.
She held the phone out so he could see it. “Look at that. Then look in the mirror.”
He did, a scowl furrowing his brow. “Okay? I don’t understand. What am I looking at?”
“That shirt.”
He looked from the phone to the mirror and back again. “What about it?”
“That’s the same shirt.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s the same shirt you were wearing the night we met. Believe me, that’s not something I’ll ever forget. It’s why it’s still in the closet.”
He shrugged his shoulders a little, making her clit throb. “It must’ve shrunk in the wash.”
She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t a new shirt when we met. It’s not going to suddenly shrink. You’ve gotten beefier.” She slipped a finger under the cuffs, which hugged his biceps now.
In the picture, the cuffs clearly gaped around his arms.
Then she called up another picture, taken a couple of days after they’d met, and retrieved another shirt from the closet.
She handed it to him. “Put that one on.”
Ken looked incredibly confused now, but he stripped off the blue shirt, handed it to her, and put on the next one. It was an oxford button-up, one of the shirts he used to wear to work when he still taught.
As he started buttoning it, she knew he realized the problem immediately. “Holy shit,” he muttered.
Dewi read it all in his mind.
He could button the neck, but it fit way more snugly than it had before.
Uncomfortably so.
As in, he wouldn’t have worn it before, it was so snug.
She showed him the picture, where even with it buttoned and wearing a tie, there was still a little bit of a gap. “Now do you believe me?”
“Yeah. We just bought me a few new button-up shirts. What size are they?”
She retrieved one while he took that one off.
Sure enough, they were a larger size.
“So…what does that even mean?” he asked.
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know. But you no longer needed your glasses the morning after we first mated. You healed incredibly fast from your injuries when Endquist attacked us. And now…this.” She indicated his body.
It wasn’t like he’d suddenly sprouted a ton of muscles or something, big and beefy like Beck. It was subtle, like he’d firmed and toned what he already had, maybe a little extra muscle mass, built more like Joaquin or her brothers.
“Well…” He pulled her to him. He was now bare-chested again, and Dewi couldn’t deny he was distracting to her. Not just because of their mate bond, either. “Maybe all the push-ups I’ve been doing in bed since meeting you?” His lips quirked in a playful smile. “You sure that doesn’t count? Upper-body workout?”
She couldn’t help but giggle. He was fucking adorkable, in a sexy geek kind of way. Beck was a fine hunk of a man and wolf, but there was something deliciously vulnerable about Ken, like a hidden strength within him, which wound her soul tightly around his.
He’d proven himself. Multiple times now. Maybe he wasn’t the strongest or fastest guy to ever be a member of the Targhee pack, but those assets made him even sexier to her.
Because he wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met before.
She draped her arms around his neck. “Maybe that’s it.” I need to tell him.
He was leaning in to kiss her when he froze. “Need to tell me what?”
Dewi’s turn to freeze. Ooohhh, fuuuuck.
He leaned back and gently caught her wrists, pulling her arms from around his neck and holding her in front of him. “You need to tell me what?” he asked again.
“Let’s sit.”
“Why do I have a feeling I won’t like this?”
“Let’s…sit down. Please?” He finally let her coax him back to the edge of the bed. “Badger’s been running your lineage.”
“And?”
“He’s still working on your father’s bloodlines. But there’s been a…development.”
“Dewi, please quit screwing around and just tell me.”
“He’s pretty sure your mother was adopted.”
His brown eyes widened. “What!”
“Yeah.”
“That can’t be right. Mom said she was a third-generation Floridian.”
“We don’t think your mom knew. Actually, everything points to her parents might not have ever told her she was adopted.” She leaned over and snagged her tablet from the nightstand. Then she pulled up the info Badger had copied her on and showed it to Ken, telling him about all the e
vidence Badger discovered that pointed to Ken’s mom being the foundling.
Once she finished, he stared, stunned. She felt the murky confusion roiling in his mind. “What…what does this mean? What are you saying?”
“I don’t know what it means for sure. I doubt your mother was a full shifter. I can’t imagine a shifter abandoning their baby to humans who’d have no clue what might happen in the future. And had your mother been a shifter, she would’ve known.”
“Would she?”
“Well…” Doubt crept into her mind. “I mean, yeah.”
“How would she have known she could shift, if she was a shifter, if no one told her?”
Dewi stared at him, hating that she hadn’t really considered that. “I…I don’t know.”
“I mean, she could’ve been a shifter and never shifted, because she never knew it was something she could do. Or maybe she knew she could, but kept it a secret because she was scared for anyone to know.”
Dewi stared into his eyes. “It’s…possible.”
“But…can’t you tell if I’m a shifter? Or related to one? Wouldn’t you have sensed that the night we met?”
“Normally, yes. But when I met you, I was a little, eh, distracted. I was more worried about finding and killing Peckingham than I was if you were from shifter lines or not. And I pinged on you as my mate. The fact that we had a mate bond took me by surprise and shocked the hell out of me. Honestly? You could’ve been a peacock shifter, and I wouldn’t have realized it, under those circumstances.”
His gaze widened again. “There’s peacock shifters?”
“I—” She took a breath. “The point is, yes, I was sloppy. I wasn’t paying close attention. I own that. But now that you’re mated to me, all I can sense is…well, me.” Her hand came to rest on her tummy. “And her, obviously. It feels like you’ve always been in my soul.”
“What about Badger? Or Duncan? Is there any way they can tell?”
She shook her head. “Same thing. They sense me. If I wasn’t a Prime Alpha, maybe it’d be different. The same thing happened with Peyton and Gillian. Even though she’s a shifter, all people can sense is Peyton, because he’s a Prime Alpha.”
“I-I gotta say, Dew, I’m trying not to freak out right now—”
“I know,” she gently said as she took the tablet from him and set it on the nightstand. “It is freaky.” She looked into his eyes. “The day you finally stood up to and beat up your stepbrother,” she said. “When he jumped you at the apartment. The way you stood up to Endquist, when he was a Prime. The way you marked me. The way you were able to keep yourself and Nami alive, and look how coolly you executed Manuel Segura. Da said you acted the same way when you executed Segura’s men in the woods.”
A shiver rippled through him. “Not two of my finer moments,” he muttered. “Can we drop those from the highlight reel?”
“My point is that…” She studied him. “Yes, you possibly have wolf shifter in you. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. We don’t know yet.”
“Or something else?”
“What?”
His gaze dropped, to her tummy, where he laid his hand over the swell of her belly. Their daughter.
“Or something else,” he quietly said. “Tamsin’s a corgi shifter. What other kinds of shifters are there?”
She laid her hand over his and gently laced fingers with him. “I don’t know how many are out there. I know the most common ones. I also know there are plenty of stories about some shifters that deliberately stay hidden because they’re afraid of other shifters. Like prey species. We might never know all of them.”
“That means if you’re right, I could even have some sort of shifter genes in me that aren’t canine.”
Her turn to shiver. “It…it’s possible. Maybe. Yeah. Wolves are the most common, with other canines after that, and then other kinds.” She shrugged. “Bears, large cats, corvids—”
“Corvids?”
“Birds. Not the only kinds of birds, either. I’ve heard there are kangaroo shifters. Jackals and hyenas. Otters and seals. Elephants and rhinos. All sorts of things.”
She gave him a moment to digest that when it looked like he was growing overwhelmed. “When she’s born, will the doctor be able to tell what kind of shifter she is?”
Dewi shook her head. “Probably not—”
“Because you’re a Prime Alpha.”
“Yeah.”
In this moment, she couldn’t interpret his thoughts, couldn’t read him at all.
She let the quiet lay between them as he stared at their hands on her tummy.
Finally, “I love you, Dewi,” he said.
She gently squeezed his hand. “Love you, too.”
“I don’t care what our baby is or isn’t, as long as she’s healthy. She’s ours. That’s all I care about.” His gaze rose to meet hers. “She’s ours. And I love her.”
Dewi wasn’t sure if the prickle of tears hitting her was baby hormones or emotion over the heartbreaking certainty in his tone. “You’re going to be a fantastic dad.”
He reached up with his other hand to cup the back of her head and pull her in for a kiss. “And you’re going to be a fantastic mom.”
* * * *
Ken really couldn’t…process right now.
Dang sure didn’t want to contemplate the possibilities.
It was far preferable to lie there with Dewi and keep kissing her. To disengage his brain and let his love for his wife take over.
It hadn’t even been a year yet since Dewi literally marched into his life and took over.
While it’d been crazy—and at times terrifying—he wouldn’t trade his life for anything.
He wouldn’t trade her, or his new family, and especially their baby.
Making love to Dewi tended to distract him from every other thought except wanting to make her feel good and finding his own pleasure. But after, as she laid there in his arms and had long since fallen asleep, he stared up at the ceiling and tried to process this new information.
Everything he thought he knew about who he and his mother were lay in question. The overwhelming evidence Badger had dug up was the most likely answer.
They didn’t know his true family history.
Maybe everything he thought he knew about himself was…wrong. From a lack of good information.
That maybe there was another reason for the unusual changes in him since meeting and mating with Dewi. Maybe whatever shifter genes lay hidden inside him were activated by his mating with Dewi?
And what would it mean for their daughter?
Despite his best efforts, dread wanted to coalesce deep inside his soul.
How am I supposed to protect my daughter when I don’t even know what or who I’m protecting her from?
Or how to protect her?
The End
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There are more stories set in the Bleacke Shifters world! Visit the series page on my website for more information:
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Free Preview: Poly
The following is a preview from Poly (MMF, contemporary polyamorous romance) by Tymber Dalton writing as Lesli Richardson.
Description:
I love my husband…and his boyfriend.
And he loves us. Love isn’t always neat and tidy.
Unfortunately, there are those who don’t understand. When we finally decide to be a family together, it means we have to fight to keep what we love before others rip us apart.
* * * *
Chapter One
Zoey
Friday Afternoon
I pinch the bridge of my nose as I struggle against what’s sure to quickly escalate into a screaming migraine. The middle of the check-out line at Publix, with my overflowing cart only half unloaded, on a Friday afternoon, and with three people backed up behind me, is not the best of times or places to have a “conversation” with my ex-husband.
Wh
y did I even answer the damn phone? You’d think I’d know better.
“Bill, will you please calm down. What’s going on?”
Hell, the butchers cutting meat in the back of the fricking store can probably hear him screaming over the phone and understand him a damn sight better than I can.
“I’ve had it, Zoey. I’m done. You can fucking have him. He’s not my son. I want him out of my fucking house!”
Oookay, so Lucas the pod-teenager and his father have had yet another fight. “Bill, please, would you—”
He hangs up on me.
Must. Not. Throw. Phone.
Nolan will give me a ration of shit if I break another phone. He’s getting tired of setting them up for me. This is my fourth one in as many months. Although, to be fair, the last two destructions weren’t my fault.
One ended up in a toilet when it fell out of the back pocket of my jeans—fucking designers and their shallow pockets in women’s pants, anyway—and the other ended up in the laundry when Arlo helpfully decided to wash my jacket for me after my best friend’s cat yakked on it, and Ar didn’t check my pockets first.
I thumb the power button to shut my phone off, bury the offending device in the bottom of my black-hole purse, and start throwing the rest of my groceries onto the conveyor belt without giving a crap what I put where.
Usually, I group everything carefully based on what it is, to make the bagger’s job easier. Frozen items together, cold items, produce, et cetera.
Not today. Nope. You get frozen peas and tampons and canned tuna alll mixed together.
Bad enough it looks like my weekend might be ruined by a migraine. I damn sure don’t want to hear about the latest teenage-angst-fueled war between my sixteen-year-old son and his father.
Lucas wanted to live there. He got his wish.
That still stings, even two years later. Arlo and Nolan have tried to get me to talk about it, but I prefer burying it under a pile of other shit I don’t want to think about until I can process it without crying.
Geek-Speak (Bleacke Shifters Book 6) Page 11
