Tavish licked at her still. He would have kept going if she hadn’t hooked her hands in his hair and pulled him up to her. She kissed him deeply, tasting the tart sweetness of herself on his tongue.

  “Make love to me,” she said, sounding like a bad nineties romance, but for once, she didn’t care.

  She couldn’t care, because Tavish nodded and then he started pulling off what remained of his clothes. All she could do was drink in every bit of him. So much muscle and sinew, so much wildness and wilderness. There was another lifeforce in his body. She knew it existed, even if she didn’t completely understand the why or the how of it.

  When he was naked, he guided her hips gently, until she turned over. She immediately raised them in the air, needing him too badly to care about being ashamed of showing herself to him in this way. She felt like she would actually die if he wasn’t inside her within the next minute. She needed him filling her, satisfying her, giving her pleasure until she climaxed so hard that she didn’t even know her own name.

  She still froze when she felt him line himself up with her entrance. She looked between her legs, but the room was dark enough by now that all she could see was his shadow. It was more than enough. She swallowed hard even though her throat was painfully dry. She’d felt how big he was through his clothes, but it was nothing compared to what he felt like there.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, caressing her hips.

  “Yes. I’m good. And please, hurry.”

  She jerked back against him to drive the point home. He didn’t ask her if she was sure again. It was pretty obvious that she was more than sure, more than okay with this. She wanted him with every part of her being. He guided her hips up until he was satisfied, and then he pushed in slightly. Even his cockhead stretched her.

  Her hands clawed at the soft patchwork quilt as he pushed in deeper. She didn’t think she could take any more, but he proved her wrong. He went slow, until she could. Until she was full and wanted to scream and come just from feeling him pulsing inside her.

  She pushed forward and he pulled back. They met each other on the next thrust. He didn’t slam into her, but he did fill her, and she leaned into it, taking all of him with a sigh, driving her hips back for more. She’d never felt so desperate for anything in her life as she was to have him fill her, faster and harder.

  God, she wanted to be owned by him. She wanted to be perfectly his.

  “Amazing,” he told her, his hands smoothing over her hips and ass even as his rhythm increased. “So damn beautiful.”

  The words made her feel more connected. Maybe it made him feel that way too, because as she drove her hips back into him, he drove forward. The rhythm grew harder and faster, pretty frenzied and out of control until it wasn’t so much of a rhythm at all as them just not being able to get close enough to each other.

  He kept pumping and she kept writhing, driving away and then back, repeating, grinding her hips and opening her legs to take more of him, deeper.

  It only took a few seconds after that, and they both reached their peak.

  January fell into hers, her entire body becoming pieces of shrapnel as she came undone. She’d never felt pleasure like that, so white-hot that it nearly took her out and scrambled her brain. Right now, all she could think about was the way he felt, pumping into her, and then the subtle roar of and rush of breath as he came hard, filling her up, her walls clenching around him over and over again as he did.

  She grasped the quilt tighter as she rode out the pleasure. She didn’t even think about getting her breathing under control until she felt Tavish lean in against her, his chest heaving, his skin slick. She was shaking, the aftershocks far from letting up. He was still trembling as well.

  She wanted that to last forever too, the way he leaned against her as if he needed the support even though he was twice her size. The intimacy and the vulnerability and the perfection of the moment. But of course, it couldn’t. She’d made up her mind that she needed to leave, return to her old life in Phoenix and keep her heart protected. Though part of her wondered if leaving Tavish would cause a far worse heartache than any failed relationship ever could.

  She slowly moved away, only to slide under the quilt. It felt like that was too much, because she knew she couldn’t spend the night. Tavish didn’t climb under the quilt with her. He sat on the edge of the bed, a portion of the blanket draped over his lap, and caressed her hair.

  He wasn’t going to ask her to stay, and not just because he’d promised. Well, maybe it was because he’d promised, but he’d done that entirely just for her.

  “I can’t stay the night,” she whispered. She could barely meet his eyes, afraid of finding pain and recrimination there, but when she did, they were soft and kind and understanding. She couldn’t stay. Not after making such a point of her independence.

  “No one would think anything either way.”

  “I just can’t.” She leaned into his hand as he smoothed his fingers down the strands of her hair and then worked back up, massaging her scalp slightly before letting them trail down again. “But I’m looking forward to getting those letters. Or if you wanted to text me…”

  “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

  January closed her eyes. She wanted to remember this moment, exactly as it was, forever. Not with the lingering reluctance to cause them both pain, but with that growing certainty that she’d come back here, for this man, when the time was right. When she had her life under control in Phoenix, when it was right for him. When they’d known each other for more than just a few days. She inhaled his scent, masculine and powerful, and the more subtle scent of herself as well. She memorized the shape of him next to her, the lines of his chest, the slope of his shoulders, the power and the kindness in his body. Memory was going to be the only thing she had left of him over the coming weeks. It was ironic, how it could both heal and cut at the same time.

  What would his letters be like? His texts? Would he try to recount what they’d done together already, or would they talk of hope for a future? Either way, this night would stay with her forever. She’d never forget what it was like to be with a man and give herself over so completely. She’d never forget how, in that moment, it felt like she’d always been meant to find Tavish. He was something she didn’t know existed. Not the shifter. The kindness.

  “I’m afraid to leave,” she admitted. “I’m afraid that my life is going to feel cold and empty, and that’s a horrifying thought because just a few weeks ago, it seemed perfectly fine. Maybe not everything I ever wanted, but it was fine. There wasn’t room for anything or anyone else.” Definitely not a change of heart. Was that happening already? She couldn’t stay. She just couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time. She still felt his absence like a blow, even though she hadn’t left yet.

  “I know. There are other things pulling you back, though.”

  “Yes, there are.” She wanted to promise that she’d come back. She wanted to give him that certainty, but the words stuck in her throat. They would feel too much like a vow, and she’d made too much of leaving already.

  “Are you sure? I’m sorry. I—”

  “It’s okay. This isn’t you asking me.” He was asking her silently. Just by looking at her. By his closeness. She could feel his desire and she wanted to respond to it. She wanted to never leave this bed. “You’re just asking me if I’m sure, and I am, at least right now. You have a right to ask. What we just did… it was unexpected. It could cause a shift in perception.”

  “I thought about the future before,” he said, and it sounded like he’d thought well and hard about it and then some. Like he’d have a sleepless night tonight and it wouldn’t be the first. Like he’d never ached like this before, and she understood that, because she was aching too. “The thing about the future is that sometimes it feels like it’s never going to come. Sometimes it feels more like the only time we have is the present.”

  “That’s how people say you should live your life. Like the only moment you have is right now because it’s all we really do have, but I don’t really believe in that. It would be hard to just live in the moment. I don’t disagree that it’s not a valuable thing to learn to do, but not planning or basing our future moves from what we’ve already learned, for better or worse, could be dangerous. It would be like walking in ignorance, and that’s no way to live either.”

  “That’s very well said. I wish I could order my thoughts like that.”

  She let out an embarrassed laugh. “I’m not usually so eloquent. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Maybe you have a good source of inspiration.”

  She laughed again at his joke. It really was just a joke. He wasn’t saying that it was because of what they’d just did, or how earth shaking it felt. He didn’t want to scare her away, she could tell. He didn’t want to scare her so badly that she walked out of his life and never came back. She wished she could find the words to tell him that wasn’t a possibility, because she couldn’t imagine a life without him, even if a life with him seemed impossible right now.

  She had to get up. If she stayed then she’d make promises, and promises should always be kept—and it was too soon for that.

  All of her clothing was right there, and she slipped into it.

  After that, there was just the walk out to her car.

  It was painful and awkward to bring up the past, but there was something she needed to say before she left, while they were standing there under a sky that was so dark with clouds covering the curtain of night, there weren’t even any stars. The silence was so complete out in Greenacre it seemed like a vacuum.

  “I’m starting to realize a lot of things about my marriage, or at least be able to put them into words. I was never heard. What I wanted didn’t factor in very often. It was my fault because I’d never speak up. I’d convinced myself that what he wanted was more important than my own happiness and went along with whatever he suggested. Not that I was ever forced into anything or that it was so terrible. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it and it took me a long time to figure out that I wasn’t happy because I didn’t have a voice. He never tried to silence me, but now I’m all too aware of what I want always coming second.”

  “You don’t have to do that anymore. But thank you for explaining that to me. It makes it more understandable, I won’t try to change your mind about Phoenix. It’s your life. It’s important. Your hopes and dreams should come first.”

  It was there all over his face. His hope that maybe one day, he would be her hope and her dream. Maybe one day he’d be her desire. But until then, he would wait. He’d be patient. He’d ache and he’d write and he’d text and he’d consider her feelings above any of his own. It was all there, naked and loud between them, even though it was unsaid. He’d listen to her if she ever asked him to and he’d do it like it was an honor. He’d take in every single word she ever said.

  He was generous and kind and she felt the pull of him already, tugging at her soul, before she even kissed him goodnight and slipped into her car and started the first of many miles that had to come between them.

  Chapter 15

  January

  “You’re a bastard. You knew this would happen and you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me about your crazy shifter super sperm.” She was ranting to herself in the car. It was probably best to get it all out before she got to Greenacre. She only had another hour to go. She’d passed through Seattle five minutes before, leaving the city behind her with some small fraction of guilt that she hadn’t even told June that she was coming.

  Her parents were absolutely mystified when she asked them to watch her apartment again. She couldn’t tell them the truth, so she’d made up an excuse about having to travel for work, which they probably didn’t even believe. She said she had an interview in New York. She couldn’t relent and tell them the truth. Not yet. She had to see Tavish first. Talk to him. She needed him to tell her that all of this was going to be okay.

  She’d tell them that she didn’t get the job. That she’d been thinking about making a change, but it wasn’t for her once she saw it. New York was too expensive. That’s what she’d say. She couldn’t imagine leaving Phoenix.

  “But I can imagine leaving. I don’t have a choice.”

  She’d reached the age where she expected to spend the rest of her life childless. Hadn’t she told Tavish that having a baby wasn’t in the cards for her? She’d said that pretty much exactly. She’d given up on that years ago when it didn’t happen for her and Jotham, they’d had some tests—his sperm count was normal, she had been ovulating, it just wasn’t happening for them. IVF had been discussed, but Jotham had lost interest in having a child and they had started growing apart. She was older now. Past forty. It didn’t matter that everyone said forty was the new twenty. She didn’t believe it. Not that she felt old, and things definitely were still working as they had been when she was twenty, but she’d grown used to the idea of never being a mom or anyone’s wife again.

  And then she met Tavish.

  We might be mates.

  Wherever you are, we’ll always be connected.

  “Yeah. We’re freaking connected now. We’ll always be connected because he tricked me into getting a baby inside me.” She thumped the wheel as she drove. Putting on angry music wouldn’t help her mood and the soothing stuff would just piss her off the same way someone telling her to calm down would only spike her ire when she was already fuming, so she didn’t play anything at all.

  Her thoughts were all over the place. Some of them were peaceful and rational and some of them were screaming loud and not so rational at all. She knew he hadn’t tricked her into anything. She’d made the first move—it was her damn hormones that got her into this mess. Maybe she should have insisted he used a condom, that’s what any sensible woman would have done when jumping on a near-stranger. Because forget unplanned pregnancies, there was all manner of diseases out there.

  The pill was ninety-nine percent effective, that one time with Tavish had hit the one percent jackpot. Maybe it was time to start playing the lottery?

  She knew what she’d just said wasn’t what Tavish had done. He hadn’t tried to trap her. She’d learned from Lily just how much all shifters loved their young, but would Tavish be happy he was going to be a father?

  She’d seen those two pink lines four days ago. She’d been shocked and outraged at first. In denial that it was real. It had taken her a few hours to process the fact that her life was going to change drastically. That it already had. All the things she thought weren’t for her were suddenly for her in the most wildly for her of ways.

  On the second day of knowing, she’d started to work on a plan by running through all the facts. She was pregnant. Her baby was a shifter baby, and she had no idea what was going to happen to her. She couldn’t raise someone who was half bear on her own. She knew from what Lily said, that shifter kids didn’t start shifting until they were around ten and that brought a whole new level of teenage awkwardness—there was no way she could raise a shifter kid in Phoenix. She had an obligation to tell Tavish, even if she didn’t know if she wanted to be with him. But would not being with him mean she’d have to leave her child behind at Greenacre?

  That was an option she refused to consider. Even if she lived in Seattle until the baby was ten and started shifting for the first time, she’d be willing to do that. Because unplanned or not, she loved her baby already.

  Which was why she’d lied to her parents and had booked a plane ticket to Seattle as soon as she could manage. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t sit on that information by herself. She wanted to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. She wanted her little one to be safe his or her entire life, and that started now, as he or she grew inside of her. She might have been pregnant for all of three weeks, but she wanted answers to her questions, and she needed the support.

  Josephine and Lily. Both women knew all about raising shifter kids—and Josephine was a doctor who probably knew everything there was to know about pregnancy both with regular babies and with shifters. January might have met them both only once, but she ached for the company of other women right now. She ached to be reassured.

  She didn’t want to admit it, but it felt good to be back here.

  She’d been home in Phoenix for just under three weeks and it didn’t feel as right as she thought it would. As home as it once had. She’d been so certain about so many things, and then there were doubts, even before those two pink lines on that test changed everything.

  January kept struggling with her thoughts all the way to Greenacre, but when she turned into the community and drove down that gravel road that eventually led to the main street, she felt an immediate sense of calm.

  This might not be her home and it might not be where she belonged, but it was where she was going to find answers, and that was cathartic.

  She didn’t head to Tavish’s house first.

  Instead, she took the turn to the clinic that she remembered so well. This day was like that one. Cold, windy, a slate grey sky threatening rain that would mist down in fine droplets until a person was drenched to the skin without even realizing when they’d first started to get wet—Scotch mist, Tavish had called it.

  She didn’t want to tell anyone about the pregnancy before she told Tavish, but she had some kind of internal pull, the way people trusted their gut feeling, that he was at the clinic. It was like the pull she’d felt previously, and she found her mind drifting back to the concept of fated mates. It was crazy to think that this pull was anything preternatural. Then again, considering what she now knew she shared the earth with, she wasn’t sure she could be certain of anything.

  If Tavish was at the clinic then she could talk to him there, and hopefully she could also see Josephine or book an appointment to see her soon afterwards.

 

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