Baz drew back with a slight gasp. His pupils were blown out with desire, and he didn’t take his eyes off her as he reached for one of the motel towels. Arden leaned into his touch. The towel was rougher than she would normally have liked, but right now, with her entire body heightened with desire, even the rasp of terrycloth was like being licked with an enormous creature’s tongue.
Baz leaned over to mouth gently at her neck as he worked his way down with the towel. She gasped, and he pulled back sharply.
“That was good,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”
But he had paused with one hand on the towel and the other holding her shoulder. “Arden, is it all right if I bite you when we make love?”
“Bite me?” she repeated, struggling to drag her mind back from where it had already gone. “I’ve never been into that sort of thing, but if you want to try, I’m up for it.”
“It’s a shifter thing. It confirms our bond, and any other shifters will be able to sense it. It means that you are mine, and I am yours. Do you—want that?”
Arden gazed at him through water droplets on her lashes. He was as serious as she’d ever seen him. She had known dating a shifter would be different, and if he’d hit her with this just a few days ago, she wasn’t sure how she would have reacted.
But now there was no doubt in her mind. “Yes. Go for it. Just—stop if it hurts?”
“If you say stop,” he murmured, caressing her face, “I’ll always stop.”
“Right now, I just want you to finish up with that towel.”
Half dried, leaving wet footprints, they stumbled out of the shower and collapsed on the bed. Baz was all over her now, hands and tongue and teeth, heated kisses and charged love bites. She had daydreamed about all of this, and somehow the reality was better. He pushed into her, filling her to capacity and then some.
When his teeth nipped at her neck, she cried out loud, and the actual bite, when it came, was somewhere beyond pain or pleasure, taking her into a world of pure sensation. She could have stopped him if she wanted, but she had never wanted to stop anything less in her life. Her actual climax must have happened at the same time, but it all rolled together into one great ongoing cascade of feeling and pleasure that went on and on.
They nappedand woke and made love, then showered again—individually this time—and went out for an early dinner at Sammie Jo’s. After that, they came back to the motel and made love again, long and lingering.
Relaxed and content, Arden idly channel-surfed on the motel TV, while Baz lounged on the bed. The love-bite on her neck ached a little, but in a pleasant way. She kept touching it. There was no blood, just a slight ridge she could feel with the pads of her fingers and a faint tingling sensation.
“Is it okay?” Baz asked, brushing his fingertips over it. This sent another pleasant chill coursing through her.
“Yes, it’s fine. I’m just distracted by the TV.” She frowned at the screen. “It’s hard to believe it’s been so long since I watched it. Everything seems too loud and too dumb.”
“I think that’s just TV in general.”
Arden laughed. She clicked away from an action movie and a lawyer drama. She would have channel-hopped across the news, too, but suddenly she recognized Grant’s face.
The idea of anything to do with Grant was unappealing right now; she hated to ruin the mood. But she wanted to know what they were saying, so she turned up the volume.
“.... shifter-human marriage ban has been withdrawn from consideration for this legislative session, since it lacks the votes to pass. Co-sponsored by Senator Grant Hamilton, the bill has suffered a loss of popularity in recent months, as polls show support for human and shifter marriage is over 70%. For an analysis, we’ll go now to our political correspondent ...”
Arden shut it off.
“I bet Grant is seething right now,” she said. “Luckily, that’s not my problem anymore.”
It surprised her, after so much time in which she had put Grant’s feelings ahead of her own, that she no longer felt that almost instinctive urge to soothe and comfort and make better. She couldn’t entirely say that she didn’t care at all; perhaps it was impossible to live with someone for years and shut those feelings off completely. But she meant those words. It wasn’t her problem. And it didn’tfeellike her problem, either.
She stretched out beside Baz on the bed. She was wearing a T-shirt and nothing else. Baz ran an appreciative hand over her hip.
“Do you feel like talking?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over the smooth skin of her thigh. “Sleeping? Something else?”
Arden laughed into her arm. “I think I’m ‘something else’d’ out right now.” She turned her head to the side. Baz’s hair was glazed with the light of the motel’s bedside lamp. She would always remember this with such nostalgia, she thought—a cheap roadside motel, turned into a lovely memory by the simple fact of being here together.
“Okay if I ask a question? You don’t have to answer.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“What is the deal with that stuff Declan and Lexie found about you—you know, the anti-shifter groups, that kind of thing? Like I said, you don’t have to tell me, but I’d like to know.”
Arden sighed.
