His words cut off as he filled her entirely, one smooth thrust that she could feel straight down to her toes. It drew a long moan from her lips, and involuntarily, she shut her eyes, clenching her fingers hard on his shoulders. It was perfect, so perfect, filled, but it wasn’t enough, and she shifted her hips up against him.
“Please,” she murmured, pressing her heated face up against his chest, and he made a raw sound that might have been agreement or perhaps it was only that he needed her too, because he started to move.
She lost herself in the rocking motion of their bodies together. It was slow and deep, and her mind could only grab on to fragments of other things to make it make sense. It was thepull of the tide, it was the swing of a pendulum, it was something as old as the earth and something that they had discovered between them right now, brand new and just for them.
“Oh I love you,” she whispered hoarsely. “I love you, I love you.”
It was so soft she had no idea if he could hear, but as he pushed into her, his body grinding down against hers in just the right way, she knew he didn’t need to hear her. Her love for him was tattooed on every bit of her skin, in the way she looked at him, in the way she breathed, and she could feel it in him as well, with every sound, every touch.
She could feel her own climax coming as if from a long way, a slow build to a high rise. If she was with someone else, she might have tried to hurry it along, worried that her partner was getting bored or impatient, that she was taking too long. Instead she was with Luca, and when she smiled up at him, he smiled in return, leaning down to kiss the corner of her mouth before kissing her more firmly.
When Macy climaxed, he drank her pleasure, taking it into himself before finding his own, and their cries together echoed off the walls, perfect in the morning light.
*
Macy almost tried to shower before remembering that the cerastes was there. Luca removed it to the living room before joining her under the hot spray, and even if her shower felt a little cramped even for one person sometimes, they made do, him washing her hair, her scrubbing his back.
“Dr. Ericks from Chicago ought to be down around nine,” he said, “and AJ will be back sometime this morning. They said they’d call.”
As a matter of fact, Ellie forgot to call entirely, showing up in a rush with her twins and AJ in tow as well as a dozen donuts to share. She thankfully rang the doorbell when Macy and Luca were already decent, though from the look Ellie gave them, she could obviously guess what they had been doing.
“It looks as if you guys had a busy night,” she said meaningfully, setting the kids up with donuts and juice at Macy’s kitchen table. “We brought donuts because we forgot to call.”
“You brought donuts, you don’t want to know what I might forgive for Boston creams,” Macy said happily.
“And we were hoping to get a look at the you-know-what,” Ellie said with a wink. “These things don’t come around every day.”
“Oh, I don’t know if—”
Before Macy could express how little she wanted the cerastes out of its bag in her apartment, the doorbell rang again, and the question was rendered moot because there was a petite woman with short black hair and a pair of large round glasses at the door. She peered around owlishly when Macy opened the door, blinking at her and frowning.
“Er, yes?”
“I’m looking for Luca Reyes.”
She gazed at Macy as if she expected her to pull Luca out of her pocket, but fortunately Luca came to the rescue, greeting the woman with a professional nod. There was something prickly about the way she went right to business, bringing in alarge plastic case and a hook of her own from the car, and Ellie elbowed Macy gently.
“Dr. Ericks is a porcupine shifter,” she whispered. “She’s great, but she takes a while to warm up to you.”
“And then she’s friendly?”
“No, and then she learns your name. Maybe. She’s been working with Luca and Cass and the rest for ages, and it takes about four years or so.”
“I wonder if she’d like to judge a science fair,” Macy asked thoughtfully. “I bet the kids would get a kick out of her.”
It was turning into something of a full house, with her, Luca, Ellie, Ellie’s twins, AJ, a rather prickly biologist and an endangered cryptid on the premises, but in impressively short order, Luca and Dr. Ericks had the cerastes out of the bag and dropped into the box with a thump. There was a loud hissing as the cerastes circled angrily, but just a minute later, it curled up, burying its head under its coils, distinctly uninterested in being disturbed.
“Gorgeous,” Dr. Ericks said with the first hint of emotion Macy had heard from her. “She’s full-grown, just coming into maturity. I have no idea how or why she’s in Illinois of all places, but we’ll get her where she needs to be.”
“Where’s that?” asked Macy, and Dr. Ericks gave her a startled look, as if surprised she could speak.
“Likely to Florida. There’s a man down there with two males, both a bit older, but still viable. This one was looking for a mate, and hopefully one of those will do.”
“A mate,” Macy said without thinking, and then she blushed at the suddenly sharper glance Dr. Ericks leveled firstat her and then at Luca, who only looked pleased. It looked like she was going to have to get used to the entire shifter population being privy to her business, but she had grown up in Clearwater, which had less than five thousand people in it. She could deal.
She started to thank Dr. Ericks for her help, but then AJ, who had somehow gotten from the kitchen to her side without anyone noticing, took her by the hand. She glanced down into entreating green eyes, and she had a moment to think,yes, baby, you can have whatever you want,before she remembered herself.
“What do you need, honey?”
