by Selena Scott
“You all right?” he’d asked her.
“I’m hot,” she’d mumbled. “You’re like a heating blanket.”
She’d rustled around some more, he’d heard the sound of something hitting the ground, and then she’d come back to him, nestling in.
He peered to the side, in the direction where he’d heard the thing hit the ground and his eyes widened. She’d thrown her swishy pants onto the ground in the night. Which meant— yup. He moved his legs a centimeter to either side and felt the smooth lengths of her legs pressed naked against his.
And that’s when he knew he wasn’t imagining the searing heat of her pussy against his morning wood.
When he’d first awoken, he’d told himself that it was ridiculous. There was no way that he could actually feel her wet heat through her underwear, her pajama pants, and his underwear. But could he feel it through just her underwear and his? Yeah. Maybe.
He shifted his hips just the tiniest bit, needing to adjust himself but not wanting to jostle her at all. But even that tiny bit of movement was enough to have his waistband sliding down his dick as it filled itself with even more heat and pressure.
Because now his very bare dick was pressed hard against the seam of her very wet panties. Shit, that was not what he’d meant to make happen. She wasn’t awake. This wasn’t right. He moved his hands down to her hips, about to move her away from him when her fingers tightened against his ribs, where she’d been holding him.
His own fingers tightened in response, gripping her smooth skin, taut across her hips. And then her fingers tightened again. Twice this time. Sending him a signal? Telling him she was awake?
He tightened his fingers twice in response.
Her breath faltered and she made a little noise in her throat.
He suddenly understood the game. They were playing a little game that went something along the lines of I’m awake but don’t want to be responsible for my actions quite yet. It was tempting. So tempting to play. So hot. But it wasn’t Orion’s style. He didn’t want to misunderstand her. He didn’t want to take anything she wasn’t expressly giving.
He started to duck his hips away from her, tip her to one side, when she moved her head, her eyes wide and open, alert, and she used her weight to push him back down.
He let out a long breath, their eyes trapped on one another as she wiggled, just a little bit. Her movement was a morning stretch more than anything. But it slid her heat an inch or two down his shaft. She was so wet that he almost forgot there was a strip of cloth between them. He gasped and forced himself to keep his hips completely still. He didn’t want to do absolutely anything that could break this spell. He barely let breath escape his lips.
She stretched again and rubbed against him in the other direction. His hands on her back mimicked the motion of her pussy against his dick. Up and down. Real slow.
She was so wet she might as well have been bare against him. He could feel thick beads of precome starting to slide down his shaft.
He huffed air and kept his hips still, the only part of himself he allowed to move was his hands along her back.
He wondered, for a moment, what the end-game was here. She seemed to be lazily playing against him, teasing him in the morning light. But any more of this and he was going to come all over her leg. Maybe he should mention that?
Just then, they both jolted when her alarm went off on the opposite side of the bed. They both froze, feeling as if some cosmic adult had come along and flipped the lights on while they’d been fooling around. Diana laughed and shook her head, going up on all fours over top of him to reach the alarm. Her shirt, which Orion had liked so much last night because of the skin it showed on her belly, fell immediately into place and blocked his view of her chest.
Now he had very mixed feelings about the shirt.
She groaned and stretched and rolled away from him. “Mmm. Gotta get going or I’ll be late for work.”
She stretched one more time and then was up, off the bed and sauntering down the hall toward her bathroom. He could merely watch her go. He did not mind the view of her backside in her black, cotton underwear one bit. Her endless legs and tiny shirt that he was back to loving.
But honestly, he was so muddled and stunned by what had just happened that he couldn’t even properly ogle her as she made her way down the hall.
He looked down at his dick. It was shiny with her arousal.
“I’m not crazy, right?” he asked his dumbly hopeful bodypart. It had apparently not gotten the memo that Diana was getting ready for work and happy time was over. “That really happened?”
His dick provided no adequate answer to him. So Orion merely got up, got dressed, and met her in the kitchen for coffee before work.
CHAPTER TEN
The next night they didn’t even have plans but he found himself standing on her front porch, knocking anyways. He’d eaten dinner at work, shooting the shit with some of the guys once they’d finally finished a move that had taken forever. The boxes hadn’t been heavy. But they’d been endless. How could one couple possibly have that much crap? He’d wanted to come find Diana right away, but for the first time ever, Rick had asked if Orion wanted some pizza. Orion didn’t want to pass up on the offer. He had them order a cheeseless pizza -and this was Portland, so that was hardly weird- and ate with his coworkers in the back of the moving van, the doors and windows open wide to the night air.
But now, work was done, he’d gone home and showered, and here he was on Diana’s porch.
She looked surprised to see him. Already in a big pajama shirt that went to her knees, her hair spilling around her shoulders, she wordlessly let him in.
He poured himself a glass of water in her kitchen, drank it down, and turned to her.
“Want a popsicle?” she asked, digging through her freezer. Turned out, he did. The two of them sat on her kitchen counter, ate popsicles, and talked about their day.
“Wanna read?” Diana asked him, her nerves in her eyes.
He nodded.
She went to the living room and got the book.
Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. His inner voice chanted as he watched her make her way down the hall toward her room.
He gave her a minute and then went and washed up in the bathroom, joining her in her bedroom. Just like the other night, she sat on her side of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chin, watching him like an owl might watch a wolf walking past in the dead of the night.
He shucked off his shirt and pants, lined everything up neatly and then joined her on the bed. He had a choice here. He could keep relying on the book to give them the excuse to lay together, or he could cut the shit and turn off the light.
Not a huge fan of middlemen, Orion turned off the light and tugged her toward him. When they woke up the next morning, it was much the same way as it had been the morning before. Him on his back, their bodies tangled, his dick pressed firmly against her underwear.
Only this time, he was certain she was awake. He could feel her eyelashes brushing open and closed against his bicep. This time she didn’t rub against him. She just held, held, held there, her breaths harsh and jagged against his skin.
She was getting wetter and wetter, slowly soaking through her underwear and his. This time, when the alarm went off, it was Orion who was slapping the damn clock off the nightstand. Again, she laughed, stretched and went to get ready for work. She fed him vegan waffles, orange juice, and coffee, sending him on his way without even the briefest of mentions at whatever the hell was happening between them.
The next night was a warm spring night, muggy with recent rain and the air thick with mosquitoes that had hatched a few weeks earlier than normal.
Orion swatted them away as he stood on Diana’s porch.
He was sweaty from the move from hell. The woman they’d moved had had a -literal- collection of anvils. Some of them the size of his hand and some of them as tall as his knees. It had taken four of them and a handtruck to move some of them.
He wasn’t normally easily irritable, but it had been such a hot, trying day, and he was so completely confused by what was going on with Diana that he hadn’t even bothered to go home before he went to Diana’s.
He showed up on her doorstep having sweated through his shirt and jeans, mosquitoes squashed on his arms, a scowl on his face.
He was going to ask her. No. Better yet, he was going to demand that she tell him what the hell was going on.
But then she answered her door in a pair of underwear and that halvsie shirt, a popsicle in her mouth and one foot resting on top of the other, her hair falling in sheets over her shoulders.
And all of his irritation just melted away. He suddenly found himself willing to be confused for the rest of his life if it meant he got to be this close to her.
She frowned at the sweaty mess he was and beckoned him inside. Shutting the door behind him, she pushed the other half of her popsicle into his mouth and walked, hips swaying, into her bathroom. She turned on the shower, pointed to the guest towels and left the room.
So. He was showering. And then he was staying. That much was clear. He wasn’t getting into her bed a sweaty, bug bitten mess, but he was getting into her bed. He took extra care washing himself, partially because her soap smelled so good and partially because he felt like his dick would go off like a gun if he so much as breathed on it and jizzing in her shower felt like a low-class move.
Eventually, he toweled off and frowned at his gross, damp clothes in a pile on the floor. Damn. He’d really not thought this through enough. With the towel around his waist doing very little to hide his monumental erection, he walked back to Diana’s bedroom. He’d expected her to be in that same, knees-to-her-chin position, but instead, she was stretched out on her stomach, her eyes closed and her gorgeous ass barely covered by her underwear. She’d kicked the sheets down to her knees.
“Diana,” he murmured.
“Mmm?” her eyes fluttered open and then closed.
“I don’t have anything to change into.”
Her eyes came open then, saw his towel, and she nodded sleepily. “Thas okay,” she slurred, obviously partly in dreamland. “It’s too hot for clothes anyways.”
She had a ceiling fan stirring the air above them, but it was, in fact, really hot. He took a deep breath, dropped the towel and turned the lamp off, crawling into bed. Deeply conscious of being naked, he didn’t pull her to him this time, allowing her her space instead. Was this insane? Yes. Should he just go? Probably. Was he going to? Not on his fucking life.
It was too hot for a sheet, but he pulled it up anyways. Her deep, even breathing from the other side of the bed assuring him that she was asleep already. Resolving to keep the sheet on all night no matter how hot he got, Orion drifted off to an uneasy sleep.
He woke up laying on his side, his hand flat on her stomach, her ass pressed hard against his crotch, and his dick literally inside her underwear.
The sun was just coming up and Diana was stretching lazily, that must have been what woke him. He didn’t know how the hell his dick had gotten in between her legs, pinned between her pussy and the crotch of her underwear, but here they were. He’d been an utter idiot to think before that she’d soaked her panties so much that her pussy couldn’t possibly feel any wetter. Because lord god this was wetter. This was torturous molten silk and he was starting to see spots, either from the adrenaline in his veins or the fact that he was holding his breath. She was definitely awake. She stretched again, her arms over her head this time and her shirt whispered over the back of his hand. The way she moved her body had his hand accidentally moving an inch or two up her ribs toward her breasts. He wished like hell he could see her face.
But then all thoughts of seeing anything promptly disappeared from his brain because she was tipping her hips forward, just a little bit, and for the briefest of seconds, almost immeasurably, the head of his dick parted her pussy and dipped inside a quarter of an inch.
And then she was rolling away, standing up beside the bed and stretching again, a lazy-sweet sleepy smile on her face as she turned to face him. The sheet had fallen back over his dick and she didn’t even glance down.
“Sleep all right?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair.
He nodded wordlessly.
“Mmm, me too.” She turned on her heel. “I’m gonna get ready for work. I think I have enough stuff for more vegan waffles if you wanna stay.”
And then she was gone.
For the second time in three days, Orion stared down at his own dick in shock. He had never, in his entire life, been more confused.
***
Diana had had an absolute living hell of a day. She’d had two separate clients completely freak out and shift in the middle of the center. The center didn’t have a ton of rules, and they catered to shifters with all levels of control. But shifting, without permission or warning, in the middle of a common space? Big no no.
Her staff was well-trained but she’d been deeply relieved that Quill had been there. Not only was he one of her longest-running and most trusted employees, he was also a bear shifter. Unfortunately it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d had to shift in order to restrain a client. Luckily today, she’d been able to talk both clients into shifting back to their human forms without further incident.
Still. Any incidents like that came with a boatload of paper work and the vibe of the center usually buzzed along uncomfortably for a few days afterward. It was almost like everyone remembered the unfortunate reputation shifters had for being naturally erratic and dangerous. This was not something that Diana believed to be true. She believed that all people who’d been shunned from society, locked up, feared, tortured, ostracized, and bullied would have some erratic tendencies. That was not limited to shifters.
The second part of her day was a mess because twice a week the center held a free dinner for any client who needed a hot meal. Only this time the food delivery service had come on the wrong day. Which meant either storing the food over night and finding a way to reheat it all for tomorrow night, or trying to get the word out to a ton of off-the-grid shifters that if they wanted dinner, tonight was the night.
She’d called Phoenix, as his full time job was to be an ambassador of sorts for the center, and put him on the task of notifying as many of the dinner-regulars as he could. She also tweeted, made some phone calls, sent some texts, and then went out on foot herself to a few of the regular hang outs to notify people.
By the time the dinner hour rolled around and her employees were serving hot meals to a slightly smaller than usual crowd of shifters, Diana’s feet felt like they were going to fall off. She was exhausted, starving, irritable, and completely on edge.
She took her shoes off in the car on the way home and had an extremely potent daydream about the love affair she was about to have with her bathtub. She’d even picked out the specific cocktail of bath salts and essential oils she was planning on adding.
She pulled into the driveway and immediately groaned, dropping her forehead to her steering wheel. Because there was a very large man sitting on her front steps.
She groaned because her stomach absolutely flipped at the sight of him. So large and handsome and everything she wanted to curl up with. And she also groaned because something extremely weird was going on between them and she, in no way, had the energy to address it tonight.
Frankly, it was a miracle he’d given her three nights of this sexy weird not-quite sex thing they were doing. She didn’t expect him to give her a fourth without finding out what the hell was really happening here.
And what the hell was really happening here?
She was burying her head in the sand was what was happening. The lovely, sexy, warm, good-smelling sand. Where she got to pretend that nothing was going on with Orion and she still got to wake up in a beautiful man’s arms every morning. Meanwhile, she could feel his confusion growing.
She was taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t wa
nt to mess up what they had going on. She was taking advantage of the fact that he hadn’t been born into human culture. She could practically feel him trying to figure out if this whole, fall asleep together, wake up with his dick in her panties thing was something that even happened in human culture. How was he supposed to know? Maybe it was common. Or maybe it was just a result of their very odd dynamic. And he was trying to figure it out without asking her. Because even asking her might have her sending him away again.
This thing they were doing was supremely unfair. And also supremely hot.
He rose up from where he was sitting as she banged out of her car, her shoes in one hand and her briefcase in the other.
She almost groaned as he met her halfway down her walkway, divesting her of both the things in her hands.
Did he have to be so sweet?
She wanted to fold into him just the way she had the other night. His sternum was apparently the absolute perfect place for her forehead. But she didn’t.
“Late night,” he said in that perfectly deep voice of his.
“Yeah.” She heard herself, the tonelessness. “Hell of a day at the center.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
Yes. No.
“How long were you sitting on my porch?” she asked him instead.
“An hour or so.”
She glanced sideways at her neighbors’ houses. Wondering if they’d seen the huge man lingering on her property. She winced at her own petty thinking.
She let them into her dark house and jolted when he turned on the lights. She wanted darkness. She wanted to slither into a pile on the floor. She wanted to lay face down on her living room floor until all this just went away.
“I brought noodles,” he said from behind her, holding up the takeout container she hadn’t noticed. “We’ll have to heat them up again, but I think they’ll be pretty good just the same.”
She burst into tears.
“Diana—” He cut himself off by tossing the noodles on the kitchen counter, grabbing her by the hips and setting her up there next to them. She covered her face with her hands and just cried.
