Largely because, from the very moment that she had so much as begun to propose that he help her work out and consequentially also help her lose the last few pounds of baby fat, he had not only voiced the fact that he disagreed with her wants to alter her own body, but also that he was not, in the slightest, planning to make it easy for her.
And also, that he was going to work her out in about a thousand different ways that she wasn’t fully familiar or comfortable with—which, at the time that El had initially been introduced to the concept, sounded very flirty and semi-kinky.You know, like they were going to explore in the bedroom a little more.
Unfortunately, she was disappointed to discover that what he was actually referring to was that he was going to help her explore her beasts more.A far less exciting prospect.
But, as Marcus was the oldest of all her mates and, therefore, the wisest and most experienced, he took it into his own hands to teach her exactly how shifting was meant to work, knowing that at the end of the day, while Willow was still the main healer and one of her closest friends, Willow was also busy being mated to hell and back by Adam at the moment.
Thus, while they began the day dressed, they soon ended up stripped down to their barest in the least sexy way possible.
It was nothing more than mere slander, the idea that shifters were more attracted to each other in their animal form and often indulged in animalistic sex.That wasn't true, nor was the idea that a shifter would have sex with another shifter while they were in their animal form.While there were a few outliers when it came to the general societal norms as shifters, El wasn’t exactly one of them.
Maybe she just wasn't kinky enough; there was a possibility that that was part of it, but while she relished the sight of Marcus’s golden skin in those few seconds before he shifted, she didn’t overly enjoy looking at him as a lion.
To a shifter that was currently not in heat, a lion was a lion, simple as that.Unless you were the type who found Animal Planet sexy, you generally didn’t find a lion all that attractive.And even when she was in her own lion form, she still retained the mind of a woman.And in retaining the mind of a woman, she retained the fact that she wasn't overly attracted to a big cat.
Not unless he shifted.
But of course, by the time Marcus had shifted, turning from a pile of fur and stunning eyes that pretty much cut her core in two, an unfortunate reality had begun to sink in for El—just as it almost always did.
Shifting was, at its core, extremely tiring.
She didn't know whether it was because she was new to it or the fact that going into her beast form often aroused high emotions in her, and to be honest, she didn't really want to think about the main reasons why she was so tired.All that mattered was that every single day after she was done working out in her beast form with Marcus, she pretty much collapsed into a pile of sweat.And sweat didn't exactly make her feel sexy.
Even on rare occasions such as that one, when Marcus grabbed her arm and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss against her skin with a devilish gleam in his eyes, That made it all too clear that he was mainly doing this to get some sort of reaction out of her.God, she couldn't have been gifted with far less devious mates?
El sighed as she huffed out a complaint, sinking further into Marcus and giving into the tingle of the lion that was still present in the back of her mind.There was nothing that big cats liked more on a sunny day than to snuggle against each other and relish the way that their skin felt against others' skin.El was no different, and as the sun was high in the sky and beating down on the plush California grass?
El sunk into Marcus’s side, the wilder part of her feeling sated as she snuggled with one of her mates, pressing her nose into his neck and allowing herself to get lost in the pleasure that was the way that her scent lingered with his.
To think, if you had told her just a year prior that she would actually be into the smell of a guy after working out, she probably would have laughed at you.
But when it came to her mates?
Just about everything they did was perfect in El’s mind.Only succeeded in perfection through the little bundle of joy that she called her daughter.
She was lucky beyond belief.She told herself as she felt Marcus’s arm loosely wrapped around her middle, his fingers resting on the top of her hipbone as he pulled her closer to him, shamelessly indulging in the feeling of her beside him after a night alone.
El always felt bad about the fact that her mates couldn’t sleep with her all at the same time—largely for their comfort.But there were certain perks to the rotating schedule that they were currently on, largely the fact that as one neared the end of their cycle, they were downright desperate for her attention.Especially when they’d had a long week, and Marcus was no exception.
“El,” Marcus said, saying her name in that low, husky way that it seemed all of her mates were overly capable of using when the time called for it.
His hands drifted further, his fingertips gliding across her skin as he drew a line across her abdomen, pushing down slightly just above where the scars of childbirth lay.The pressure was far more than pleasant.It was toe-curling, reminding her that he was just inches from her sex and that if she so-willed it, they could proceed to have a very lazy lovemaking session in the sun.Especially considering the fact that no one else was around.“Mhm,” El replied to Marcus, largely because that was the only thing that she could think to reply at that moment, her brain hazy with tiredness as she nestled closer into his pec, listening to his heart beat beneath her ear.
“You smell different today,” Marcus muttered, lowering his head down to lick at her collarbone if only to merge her scent with his again.“Sweeter.”
Sweeter.It was never bad to hear something like that, especially out of the lips of a lover.If anything, it made her skin tingle with anticipation, her mind knowing what would come so soon after a statement like that.“Yeah?”She breathed, throwing her head to the side and exposing more of her neck to him, practically inviting him to indulge, which he did.
The feeling of his teeth running against her skin was a tantalizing sensation that she wished she could commit to memory.There was something about knowing that the perfect, straight white teeth of a man like him were so desperate to nip and tease her skin, to mark her and make everyone aware of the fact that at the end of the day, he was hers and she was his.
El was pretty sure that before she’d gotten into the whole shifter lifestyle, she’d never known anyone to be so proud to date her.Especially not in the world that she lived in—not unless they were thinking of her money and the status that would come with acquiring someone like her, who owned more money than God.
But in the world of shifters, El found her soulmates.And in Marcus?
El found the one man who, no matter what the situation, could calm her down.
A few months prior, she likely would have protested the fact that they were going to do something like this out on the lawn, where anyone could see.But that was a few months prior when she was a different person than she was now.Now, she was the Pride’s Luna and, thus, could do no wrong, at least if you talked to people on the compound, which El often did.
It was nice to know that, at the end of the day, she was someone who people actually looked up to, who people actually respected.For much of her life, she had felt like she had faded in the background, but now?Now, she felt like she was really in control of her life.Sometimes.
