“Fine!Give it to me, daddy-o.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I mean it!I mean it!”God, what the hell was hedoing?I didn’t know, but I was losing.My goddamned.Mind.
“Say it!”
But I’d already forgotten what it was, along with my name, where I lived, and what year it was.I couldn’t have passed a cognitive test if my life had depended on it, much less remember whatever the hell he wanted to hear.So I screamed the only thing that came to mind.
“You’re the man!”
And I guessed that was good enough.
“You know it, baby,” he told me, in his best Frank Sinatra voice.And what had I been thinking?Doing a fifties era challenge with a guy whose crappy apartment downtown—when he’d still had it—had been plastered with Rat Pack posters and lit by a lamp made out of a lady’s leg in a fishnet stocking.It was like I’dwantedto lose.
Which… okay, maybe, I decided, as he proved that he was indeed the man.Several times over.Until my eyes reappeared from exploring my cranium just so they could cross, and I was threatening to rip the couch apart, thrashing and screaming and crying and coming—
“Oh, sorry!”somebody squeaked, and the door quickly slammed shut.And damn it, I thought, trying to look over my shoulder but just seeing a sweaty and disheveled Cyrus.And being too lost in the afterglow to care all that much anyway.
“Who….the hell… was that?”I asked when I could talk.
“Not sure.But I gave the clan a key card earlier.”
“Why?”
“The guys were supposed to drop off some supplies.”
Great.
“They mostly saw my bare backside,” he assured me.“My body was blocking you.”
“Oh, good.”
It took me a minute because my brain was busy riding a cloud of bliss.“Wait.Bare?”
“No underwear, either.”
I laughed.And then I thought about it and laughed some more at the idea of the scion of great Clan Arnou, the man who was helping to decide the fate of the Were world, going commando because neither of us had managed to source any underwear.And the more I laughed, the funnier it got, after the stress of a very weird day, which only made me laugh harder.Until I was crying and coming and giggling and gasping, which was an interesting combination of sensations.
“We’re both… doing great… at this whole adult thing,” I finally breathed, my exhausted head drooping.
“We do okay,” he said, pulling me back against him.And holding me tight as I shuddered through the last of the fireworks, which took a while.Then he turned me around so he could kiss me properly, now that the main event was over, although this was nice, too.
This was very nice.
He smelled like musk and sex, the faint chemicals from when the tux was last drycleaned, and the hotel’s bath products.He tasted like mint chewing gum and whiskey, and he felt like my every dream rolled into one.My last orgasm was still shuddering through me, but I decided I could go again as soon as I had my breath back—
Except that we probably had a knot of Weres outside the door, waiting for us to finish up for some reason.And yeah, I could just hear them if I concentrated, making awkward small talk down the hall and trying to act like they didn’t know what was going on.Wonderful.
“They want to know what’s happening downstairs,” Cyrus said softly, because he could hear them, too.“If those people are really part of the clan and where our older members fit, if so.”
I sighed.“Damn it.”
“You know, this is how it’s going to be all the time if we have children,” he breathed, his forehead dropping to mine.
“Wehavechildren.And you haven’t even met them yet.”
He pulled back slightly to look at me quizzically.
