There’s a flicker of tension in his hands against me, like he wants to dig his fingers in to grip me hard, but he’s doing his best to hold himself perfectly still.
My heart thuds in my chest. If he didn’t tell me all those years ago, if he never told me, he wouldn’t want me to know now. I haven’t had time to think what knowing this means to me, or what it might mean to him.
I don’t know if I can tell him what I saw.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him, swallowing hard against my uncertainty. “Stress dreams.”
His grip tightens protectively against me. “Is my family getting to you?”
I give a half-hearted shrug. I was just starting to deal with all that, but this is all getting to be too much.
He nods a little, letting his gaze drop from my eyes as he starts drawing slow, comforting lines up and down the whole length of my legs, and it should not be making my blood heat the way it is.
A noise escapes me, a breath of relief that rides a little too close to sensuality. He always knew the places to touch me, even just to comfort.
The world is condensed to just our breath clouding in the space between us, that seems to grow smaller the more aware I become of it.
Shawn is the creature that’s been chasing me in my dreams. My body reacts with sudden, prickling awareness, as the meaning of that dawns on me. He’s the one that eviscerated that deer behind the bar, the one scratching up my doors, following me. Maybe that should inspire an all-consuming fear, and maybe it does, but it doesn’t feel entirely like fear.
It feels like my body coming alive with that same need and willingness to surrender, to let the creature he is ravage my body any way it wants, not as some roll over and let me survive instinct, but because I want it.
A fraction of moan escapes me as I realize that, arching into his touch. I can feel my clit pulsing to attention as he stands between my parted legs. This is not the time.
“You can’t keep teasing me like this,” he pants, and presses a kiss to the side of my neck, just below my ear. He stays there, heat radiating off him, his body hanging inches from mine.
“I’ve been the tease? You left me hanging.” I gasp, thinking about the other night in my cottage.
“I had to. I’ve been trying to stay away, but it’s almost impossible.”
I stare over his shoulder, wondering what he means by that. Is that connected to what I just saw? Is he able to control himself when he becomes a beast?
But there isn’t time to linger over every question I have, to try to figure out the answers. Shawn is here, now, touching me. A beast, the beast I’ve been dreaming about running into in the woods, maybe.
I’m wet when his fingers move lower, skimming up my thighs and then finding my folds. Pulling my underwear aside, he drags his fingers through, parting me with embarrassing ease with how slick I am.
He pauses only to taste the wetness off his fingers.
A jolt of arousal makes my hips jerk. I hate that he remembers just how to turn me on, but at the same time, there’s something about being known and remembered so well that it lays me bare and doesn’t even give me the chance to hide my feelings, that makes me want to melt in his grip and give into it all.
“God, Elise. You don’t know what you do to me,” he sighs, something gravelly in his voice. “I think I’ve had dreams about the way you smell.”
My heart is thudding in my chest. It’s equal parts terrifying and arousing to imagine the depth of that statement. Maybe because I’ve also been having that dream about him.
He’s nevereaten-eaten me before, right? Yet, I’m still starting to worry that he will, that the power he moves with is the same as the wolf’s. He could tear through me easily, and perhaps chooses simply to touch, but I want to know what the extent of that power feels like.
“I want your fingers in me,” I gasp, feeling my body respond.
“I can’t,” he groans, the gentle graze of something sharp but well-handled against my skin. I’m too distracted by his mouth on my neck to see if it’s nails or claws.
“Then your tongue,” I say, and he stills. “Don’t you miss the way I taste?”
The words are too bold to have come from me, and for a second, I regret saying it out loud. But the beast from the woods has done nothing but try to lick my cunt, and if that was him, I guess it makes enough sense for me.
He doesn’t answer, but his eyes remain on me.
For several agonizing seconds, I think he’s going to reject my offer just like the other night, but then I watch the last of the resolve in his eyes snap.
He hooks his hands under my knees, pulls my hips to the edge of the counter. I squeak in surprise, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt him throw me around quite like that before.
