My palms collide hard into his chest, his warm skin lingering along my fingertips for what feels like an eternity. Especially when he grips my wrists and pulls me forcefully against his nakedness.
The slamming of my heart kicks in just as I lift my leg, my knee grazing against the spot just between his thighs. His eyes widen with sparking interest. Excitement. Deranged insanity.
But my knee never connects.
And his pain never seems to come.
Because with the next pounding of my heart, heat floods my flesh. It scorches my skin. It fucking drowns me in pain.
Smoke and fire blaze in slashing colors, but I fade away into nothingness before I can fully see the effects of my surroundings.
And then…I’m pacing on four strong, powerful legs.
What. The. Fuck.
First time, huh, beautiful?An annoying little voice says at the back of my mind.Avian would have taken things slow with you, but it feels better when it’s fast and hard, doesn’t it?
The forest is a blur of dense darkness around me. When I try to speak, a pathetic little whine is all that comes out.
No one likes a whiner. Stop. You’re making us look bad.Roman’s voice is all I know.
I can hear him. I can feel him.
“You didn’t have to absorb her,” Avian scolds.
When my—Roman’s—head looks up, Avian is staring down at us. A familiar look of disappointment is in his boyish features.
“Whatever. We need to go,” Zilo says and then, in an explosion of smoke, he too shifts. An enormous beast with shining black fur and jagged white teeth now stands at my side.
Without a second wasted, he leaps paws first through the fiery circle of golden magic.
A long drawn out sigh shoves from Avian’s lips as he shakes his head. Another pulse of fireworks and a lean, chestnut brown wolf stands where the sweet man just was.
You’ll be okay.Avian’s smooth voice whispers through my head, just a bit more distant than Roman’s had. It’s like glass separates him and me.We’ll take care of you. We won’t let anyone harm you.
It’s a calming sentiment.
Too bad Roman doesn’t let it last.He literally cannot promise you that. You’ll be lucky if you make it one day in this hell hole of a kingdom.
I fucking hate you,I whisper like a caress.
I know,he says right back.
With me in tow, he leaps. My heart free-falls as we descend into the warming feel of consuming magic.
And if I could have kicked that fur fucker in the balls just one second earlier, I would have.
* * *
When we shakily land in the depths of new darkness, I feel hands wrapped around my lower back. I can’t explain it as I stand on four furry legs, and yet, I’m held intimately against a strong protecting male.
Sorry,someone says within my mind in a gravelly, quiet tone. So quiet that I don’t immediately recognize it as Roman’s voice at all.
He’s awkward in this moment as the hold slips away with lingering fingertips against the skin I no longer see but still completely feel.
It’s—it’s whatever. Not a big deal,I tell him.
If I could cough out an uncomfortable sigh in this moment, I would.
