by Jaya Moon
I took up one of the berries and popped it into my mouth and bit down. A beautiful explosion of sweetness flooded across my tongue. They did taste like cranberries, only better.
Fe must have seen the widening of my eyes. “They’re like candy. Not that I’m allowed to have candy.” She grabbed a handful of the berries and shoved them into her mouth, chewing like a cow on its cud.
Mox stole the egg off my plate and I swatted him away, saying sternly, “Get your own,” before I began to eat. I hadn’t had an appetite recently, but the more food I ate from the table the hungrier I became.
Fe spoke giddily, pointed out people I didn’t know, made references to people I’d never met, and talked about things I didn’t understand in a waterfall of words that had my head spinning. So when a young girl dressed as a fox launched herself at us and stole Fe’s attention, I sighed in relief. The two of them talked excitedly as though Mox and I didn’t exist, and then, without another word, ran off together through the crowded room.
Mox watched her go. “She’s a good kid, even if she can be annoying.”
I wanted to tell him about my sister, how Fe reminded me of her. But my chest swelled with heaviness at how much I missed her, and the words caught in my throat. She would have loved the Eyrie. I looked away, and saw out on the balcony a man. He faced us, watching. Silhouetted by the fingers of bright golden light stretching out across the treetops, I couldn’t see his features.
I didn’t need to.
8
By the time I turned to Mox and went to point out Tallow, he’d disappeared. I scanned the room, trying to see if he’d come inside. He could have quickly become swept up in the sea of kin, but I knew he wasn’t there.
Mox put his hand on my arm and caressed it with his thumb. “Go talk to him.”
For about the fifth time, I wanted to ask why he was so casual about my connection with Tallow, but if I didn’t go right now I might never face him.
Handing Mox my leaf plate meant I couldn’t hug him even though I wanted to.
“Go on,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
With Mox’s silent pledge that he’d pick up the pieces if need be, I started through the crowd of kin and out onto the balcony where I’d last seen Tallow.
I looked to the left, then the right, and caught a glimpse of him rounding the corner of the building. I followed, my heart quickening with nerves. At the front of the lodge shifters were still gathered, talking, and Tallow, maskless, made his way through them.
The kin fell into silence and bowed as he approached and only returned to their conversations after he’d passed.
I wanted to call out, tell him to stop, but I had the distinct impression shouting would make a scene, given how quiet everyone was in his presence. So I followed him silently as he headed off through the trees, moving up into the area where I’d seen the treehouses and where, I guessed, he had a “nest”.
He came to a cluster of gigantic spruce and crossed to the largest one with a treehouse high up in its crown before he stopped and looked over his shoulder. To see if I still followed him? His face held an expression I couldn’t interpret. I kept walking toward him, expecting him to wait. Instead, in an instant the robes he wore dropped as he shifted into owl form and flew up into the branches.
It took every ounce of control for me not to yell at him. I knew he didn’t want me at the Eyrie and now I understood why, however flying up into a tree wasn’t playing fair.
I quickened my pace, my bare feet landing heavily on the ground with each step. We were going to talk, whether he wanted to or not. I wouldn’t take no for an answer.
A second before I reached the base of the tree, readying myself to yell, “I’ll stand here and shout at you all night if that’s what it takes,” a rope ladder with rungs made of branches clattered down the length of the tree trunk.
I stared at it and felt bad for thinking he intended to hide from me. He’d probably always intended to drop down the ladder—why should he climb just because I couldn’t fly?
The ladder rattled. Looking up, I couldn’t see Tallow, but I assumed he shook it, encouraging me to climb.
I put my foot on the first rung and then the next. The ladder moved as I ascended, and I didn’t dare look down because each step took me farther from the ground into the tree that towered above me. When my hand curled around the final rung, Tallow reached through the round opening in the treehouse floor above my head. His grip held firm around my wrist, and I was surprised at his strength as he pulled me effortlessly up and into his nest.
For a moment our bodies pressed together before he stepped away from me.
He stood there naked. I should have been expecting it since he’d discarded his robes when he flew up into the tree, but my breath hitched at the sight of him.
His perfectly defined pectorals, the ribbons of muscles and snake of veins along his arms were probably a product of his flying. Even though his stomach wasn’t all six-pack, its tautness was sexy, and his…
His cock twitched as he saw my eyes fall on it. I looked up fast, my face flooding with heat. I don’t know why I felt embarrassed. There was something about being with him that made the experience different from Mox or all the other men I’d been with during that time I tried to fuck myself back into existence. Something that made me feel like he’d be the type of guy who’d want to come around unexpectedly with a bunch of flowers, take me out to dinner, and romance me before we got to the stage where he wasn’t wearing clothes. For some reason, when we were alone together, I wanted to be that type of woman.
“I don’t want to talk.”
They weren’t the first words I wanted to hear. “Why am I here then?”
Don’t lose it. Give him a chance.
With a comment like that I expected him to look angry or frustrated with me. Instead, his eyes only held warmth.
“Take your gloves off, Meghan.”
“My gloves?” Why did he want me to take them off?
“Please?”
His mother’s words suddenly came to me: thoughts spoken in silence to others are never heard. That may have been true for most people, but it wasn’t for Tallow and me. When we’d flown together, we’d heard each other’s thoughts, and I had felt his emotions. My eyes widened with understanding. I looked down at my gloved hands, and he reached out to me, curled his fingers around the top of my left glove up near my elbow and pulled it away. He did the same with the right glove. I watched them drop to the floor, and before I had a chance to look at him again, he grabbed my bare hands.
In an instant the world became a vortex, spinning, and I became the center of it. Images of Tallow as an owl flashed through my mind, faster and faster, brighter and brighter, until I saw a burst of white light. I waited for the trees to come next, like last time when I’d found myself perched beside him in the canopy of a tree.
This time the bright light was replaced by darkness, and I stood alone within it.
Tallow?
The moment I said his name, a kaleidoscope of emotions coursed through every part of me. They weren’t my feelings. They were his. Lightness, warmth, joy, and desire. A yearning that filled my heart, my stomach, and swelled in my core. It made me ache so intensely I drew in a sharp breath. Did me merely saying his name evoke such emotions in him?
Meghan.
His voice was as clear to me as if he were speaking in my ear, and his emotions surged for a second time. As they did, around me in a circle sprouted woody saplings. Within seconds they were taller than me, their skeletal branches reaching out and above my head as though searching for the sun in this dark place Tallow had brought me to. Then they burst with tiny pink buds, bright against the darkness. The buds swelled and opened, revealing their dark-pink hearts, and the air filled with a bittersweet scent. Cherry trees. The flowers dropped away, fell like rain, carpeting the ground around me, and were replaced on the branches by deep-red cherries. Around the cherry trees a forest began to grow. B
irch, maples, fir and spruce tangled up toward the sky as ferns unfurled fronds below them, and flowers and fungi popped in color from the forest floor.
Tallow? Where are we?
Brilliant yellow sunlight burst above us, and clouds blossomed in a newly formed sky with red sunset hues. Beams of light cast warm golden rays through the cherry trees, gilding everything.
And then it started to snow. As the flakes fell lightly onto me, Tallow’s emotions were so intense I wanted to cry. He ached with the joy of being there, and I knew why he felt that way, because I had never seen anything so beautiful before.
Is this a real place? Would he take me?
It’s real, but it’s not exactly a place.
Then what is it?
He paused. Nervousness—Tallow’s nervousness—flowed like a chill from my stomach into my chest.
It’s you.
His words swept away the cold nerves, and once again I experienced the ache of his yearning, so intense it stole my breath away.
I want to wander the worlds I see in your forest-green eyes. Kiss your cherry lips. Know what it’s like to touch your snow-white skin and run my fingers through your sunset hair. Everything is golden with you.
Cherry trees. A forest. Red sunset. Snow and golden rays of sunlight. I looked around at the place Tallow had brought me to and realized it was—
You, Tallow said in my mind, finishing my sentence. Or at least, it’s the only way I can bear to think of you without going crazy. Every time I imagine you, the real you—
You think of me like this? My eyes were hot with tears. It’s so beautiful.
You’re beautiful.
I turned in a slow circle, trying to find him. I wanted—needed—to see him.
His emotions, ones I realized were all about me, changed. Now they were cold with fear and adrenaline. Above us the red clouds transformed into a spectrum of bruised colors that billowed and roiled above me. Lightning forked across the sky, and after thunder came rain.
I knew what was happening. This had to be the instinct his mother had spoken of, the one that made him push me away because he wanted to protect me. I now saw the storm that raged inside him.
I wish I could explain. His voice held such regret.
I understand. Really, I do. I didn’t before. But now I do. Tallow, it doesn’t matter how hard things are between us. I want to be with you.
As the words tumbled in my mind, I knew they were one of the truest things I had ever said.
I still turned in a slow circle, looking up at the sky, searching for him, and suddenly he appeared, in among the storm clouds; a tawny owl, small against the storm that raged around him. He fought his way toward me, buffeted back by gusts of wind, evading the lightning that zigzagged across the sky trying to strike him until he broke free of it all.
His wings, feathers ragged, pumped hard and fast. His eyes focused on only one thing: me.
9
When he reached me, in the real world I threw my arms around him. Our connection broken, I found myself back in the treehouse, my face pressed against his hot heaving chest surrounded by his spruce and straw scent.
At first he didn’t return my embrace. His arms hung at his sides, but then I felt his biceps flex, and slowly, tentatively, his fingers came to my back, hot even through the robe I wore. Light like a breeze, he ran them slowly across the small of my back, then traced eddies and whorls across my shoulder blades.
“Tallow.”
As I said his name, he grasped me in his arms so tightly I could hardly breathe.
“Since that first moment I saw you,” he whispered into my hair, his yearning growing between us hard against my stomach.
Tears of happiness sparked in my eyes as I lifted my head. When his lips came to mine, he kissed me gently—like the touch of butterfly wings—before he pulled away, catching my gaze.
I took a step back, then two, his arms still extended as though he wanted to keep them forever open to me. He’d found the courage to show me what lay in his heart, now I wanted to show him what lay in mine.
I raised my hands to my owl mask and pulled it off, the corners of his mouth lifting in a gentle smile before I raised my hands to the knot in the sash of my robe. I hesitated. Was this what he wanted? He may have thought me beautiful in ways I would never have dreamed and yearned for me in ways I never knew any man capable, but now I knew and had seen his conflict, did his feelings for me change anything? That battle he waged between his human heart and his animal instinct hadn’t magically gone away, and I didn’t want to cause him any more pain.
I glanced up at him again, but his eyes were fixed on where my hands rested, so I untied the sash. Slowly. Let it drop. As the robe opened slightly, Tallow let a breath out fast. His eyes roamed the slither of my exposed flesh. Bringing my hands to my collarbone, I pulled apart the fabric and let it slip and fall from my shoulders.
Tallow’s cock strained at the sight of me. I reached back and unfastened my bra, letting it fall away too. His eyes flitted across my breasts. When I looped my fingers around the band of my panties, pulled them down slowly, and stepped out of them, he grunted low and loud.
Rising in front of him, now naked, he tilted his head to one side, his brow furrowing as though fighting his storm of desire and instinct before he fell to his knees at my feet. He grasped the cheeks of my ass, pulled me into him, his breath racing hot, warming the places I wanted him to touch, and whispered my name. His hands ran along the curve of my ass, to my thighs, between my legs, spreading them, before he parted my soft folds with his fingers. The tip of his tongue flicked across my nub.
A moan escaped my mouth. He flicked against me again, and when I moaned for the second time, louder, he groaned in reply as though my pleasure was the greatest thing I could give him.
“Lie down,” he whispered into me.
I looked behind me to find a bed I hadn’t noticed until that moment. I stepped back and sat on its edge before lying back.
His hands ran up from my ankles, stopping at my knees, gently pulling my legs apart for the second time. He growled, deep and sensual at what he saw before lowering himself to me. His mouth was hot. He kissed my nub, licked it with a gentle, moist stroke, and kissed it again before he began to suck. I quivered and my breathing quickened. His tongue moved in strong strokes across me, the buzz of the deep sounds he made vibrating against me. I grabbed at his hair, brought my feet up to rest on the bed so I could spread myself wider for him.
When he penetrated me with his tongue, I cried out and soon my core thundered with a pulse of its own. He put two fingers to my nub and rubbed in circles as he buried his tongue inside me, bringing me almost to the point of orgasm. I wanted release, wanted to give him all of me, but…
Not yet.
“Tallow,” I said breathily, and as though he knew what I meant because we no longer needed words between us, he took his mouth and fingers from me. I moved back farther on the bed and he climbed up over me, kneeling between my still spread legs. His eyes bright, he brought his mouth to one of my already pebbled nipples, traced around it with his tongue, licked it lightly, kissed it softly, before taking it in his mouth. I knitted my fingers in his hair as he snaked a wet trail to my other nipple, looking up at me as though every second of my pleasure was the only thing he cared about in the entire world.
As he took my other nipple between his lips and toyed it with his tongue, he brought a hand down between my legs, clasped me before dipping his fingers inside. He groaned at how wet I’d become—from him, from me—as I tasted myself when he brought his lips to mine and his tongue swept into my mouth. Kissing me, he fucked me with his fingers, slowly at first, then faster, making me moan into his mouth until I came close to the point of orgasm again.
“Not yet.”
His mouth tightened in a smile. “Fly with me.”
From the first time we’d flown together until now, I’d yearned for this moment. “Yes.”
He pulled me up fast off the bed
and into his lap, the tip of his cock glistening with his excitement. I raised myself up and with my hand guided him to my opening.
“Let me show you how you make me soar.” He grabbed my hands. The world spun, and in seconds images of him as an owl flashed into my mind, more quickly than they ever had, before white light exploded across my sight.
When the sky unfurled around me, vast with billowing clouds and patches of blue, in the real world Tallow pulled me down onto him, his cock as hard as iron reaching so deep inside me I gasped.
In the place we shared in our minds—in the sky—we flew. Not two owls. One. Flying across a patchwork beneath us. In the real world, Tallow brought his hands, still clasped in mine, to my hips and encouraged me to move on him. My rise and fall on his cock was the rise and fall of us as we flew. My mind was full of his emotions: the ecstasy of his cock surrounded by my tightness and warmth, the quake of absolute bliss he experienced when I came down on him and he reached into me as far as he could. His desire to bury himself even deeper into me. An animalistic urge to fuck me hard. The human emotion of…
Of…
I didn’t know what it was, but it was the most beautiful emotion I had ever experienced and wished I knew why I’d never felt it before.
We soared higher and higher, the power of his rising orgasm as intense as my own.
In the real world, he tilted forward and I fell onto my back on the bed, him coming with me, his cock remaining inside me and our hands still clasped tightly together resting on either side of my head.
