The Angel walks toward him and touches the underside of Raoul’s dick, right beneath the head. It’s barely a second of contact, but Raoul is so sensitive that he lets out a choked sob.
“Please,” he begs. “Please may I come?”
“Don’t ask me,” says the Angel coolly, tracing a fingertip up the side of Raoul’s cock. “Askher.”
Raoul’s gaze finds mine. I know he can see things at close range without his glasses—it’s the farther distance he has trouble with—but I move nearer just to be sure he can see me clearly. I’m wobbly on my legs, so I have to grip the bedpost to stay steady as I approach him.
“Poor Raoul,” I murmur. “You’ve been so brave.” I stroke his cheek.
He gives me a faint, exultant smile and whispers, “Please may I come?”
“You may.”
The Angel looks at each of us in turn. Then he bows his masked head and sinks to his knees in front of Raoul.
There’s something painfully intimate and submissive about the position, and I know by Raoul’s sudden inhale that he recognizes it. This man was once an immortal god—he still possesses more hidden power than Raoul or I could ever imagine—and yet he’s on his knees before the two of us. He gave Raoul’s pleasure into my hands, and now he is yielding himself as the instrument of that pleasure.
With one hand on Raoul’s shoulder, I place my other hand in the black, wavy hair of the Angel, guiding him.
The Angel wraps his lips around Raoul’s cock, takes it deep in his throat. Raoul cries out, straining, sweating. I press myself close, my bare skin against his, holding him as he comes in the mouth of the Angel.
The Angel’s throat moves, swallowing every drop Raoul gives him. Then he pulls his lips off Raoul’s length and licks it clean, almost lovingly.
But Raoul shudders again, more strongly this time, and arumbling sound issues from the center of his chest. Pressed against him, naked as I am, I can feel that rumble spreading through his whole frame, vibrating deep into his very bones. Startled, I pull back.
The Angel backs away, too, alarm in his eyes as Raoul wrenches against his restraints. The ropes snap like paper bands, one at a time, while Raoul’s eyes flash a violent neon green.
A bloodcurdling snarl cracks through the air. Shadows and smoke exploding from Raoul’s skin, and when they dissipate, instead of Raoul’s lean male form, there’s a huge, furry, four-legged shape.
A sleek, green-eyed wolf bigger than a Great Dane, with fur as black and glossy as the glimmering water of the canal.
19Raoul
I almost want to laugh. Perhaps I would if I weren’t in this form.
It’s deeply ironic that my family tortured me for years, believing that pain and fear were the key to unlocking my second form and getting me to shift for the first time, when in actuality, all it took was a threesome with a god and a vampire.
I should have been able to shift forms whenever I wanted to, starting as early as age five or as late as age twelve. But I haven’t changed once, not in my twenty-two years of life, until now. I didn’t even know what my form would be—wolf, raven, stag, cat, or some other creature. An unlucky third cousin transformed into a large black moth for the first time and was immediately burned to powder in a nearby candle.
Centuries ago, a full-blooded púca could take multiple forms and shift between them as needed. Now each púca has two shapes—one human, one creature. My second aspect is a wolf—the most respected form among the shifter hierarchy.
The Phantom and Christine are staring at me, but he approaches first, his hand outstretched. His eyebrow, the one not concealed byhis half mask, is bent in a frown, but it’s contemplative interest, not anger or fear.
“Not so long ago, I would have been able to easily discern what you were the moment I met you, but that power of mine is gone or suppressed,” he says. “I knew you were hiding something, though. This is incredible.”
“What the hell?” Christine’s voice trembles.
“Our tender poet is a wolf shifter, probably descended from Laignech Fáelad, king of Ossory. You’ve heard of the werewolves of Ossory?”
Christine nods slowly, her face white.
The Phantom is partly right about my ancestry, though my family abandoned Ireland for France centuries ago and took up residence near the Mercoire Forest, in the region of Gévaudan. When one of our kind went mad and slaughtered scores of people in the area, my ancestors fled France and made their way to the Americas, arriving first in New Orleans and then spreading throughout the South, with several of the largest shifter families settling in the Nashville area.
I want to explain, to tell him those things, but now that I’m in this form, I’m uncertain how to leave it. And I can’t speak as a wolf.
“Beautiful,” murmurs the Phantom. His eyes gleam with admiration as he gently touches my neck.
I growl, a reflexive response, but he only grins wider and sinks his fingers into my fur.
