“Would you let me touch you?” I ask. “Would you let me kiss you? Taste you?”
Maya’s breath hitches as I move closer to her again. A slight purr escapes from somewhere deep inside her, and my wolf pushes forward as realization dawns. As soon as I hear it, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to work out. I’m not sure what breed, but I’m certain now she’s a feline.
My mate is a cat shifter.
Goddess, I can’t wait to see her other form. I’m sure she will be every bit as majestic as her human is.
Chapter Sixteen
Maya
This is insane.
Completely and irrevocably insane.
I don’t even know this man’s name or what he looks like behind the hard mask that covers most of his face. But there’s a sense of safety with him I’ve never experienced before in my life. A familiarity I can’t begin to understand and a sense ofbelongingI have spent my entire life chasing.
Being the Asian girl adopted by a white family with a blonde mom and a red-haired dad always made me stand out. It always made it so clear that I didn’t belong. Not that my parents didn’t do everything in their power to show me how wanted and loved I was, but it was always there. When my elderly aunt brought presents for Pippa and not me. When people gave me that look when they saw me with my parents. That one time someone asked my mom who my dad was right in front of me, assuming I was the product of an affair and not the much-wanted baby they adopted following years of secondary infertility after having Pippa naturally.
I was perceived as an outsider. In my extended family. In my community. Never by my parents or Pippa, but the constant undercurrent was always there, and it was one I could never escape.
I thought once I was older, once I created a family of my own—or at least was able to learn about my ethnicity—I could learn to connect with my heritage and my origins. That I might one day meet my birth mother and learn why she didn’t—or couldn’t—keep me. Why she left me at a fire station instead of ensuring I was placed with a loving family. I always planned to do one of those ancestry kits that show you where you come from.
But all of that longing was from a time before I knew what I really was.
Now though, something has shifted as I stand before this man, staring into where his eyes are hidden beneath darkness and masquerade. That voice inside me—the one I work so damn hard to ignore—is roaring from within. Begging and pleading for me to let go. To allow this man to get close to me. To claim him andkeephim. It’s insane.
“Would you let me watch?” he continues, and his voice wraps around me, caressing and exciting me more than physical touch ever has. “I already crave you, so unfortunately that’s outside of your control. But with everything else, you can call the shots.”
“I’m not a Domme,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “I want to let go, I just…”
“So do,” he replies, placing a hand on the wall behind me and leaning in without ever touching me, no matter how much I can see he wants to. Even under his shirt, I can see how tightly coiled his muscles are. “Let go within your limits.”
“You can kiss me,” I whisper, as my body trembles with need. “You can touch me.”
Gold glows from behind the mesh covering his eyes in the dimly lit hallway, reminding me so much of that wolf I saw outside Steven’s house—predatory and intense. He places his hand on the wall behind me and then he begins to inch closer. His movements are slow and deliberate, giving me every opportunity to stop him. My heart pounds a frantic drumbeat against my ribs. The noises of the club—the sultry beats of ambient music, the chatter and moans—fade out of existence until there is only us.
His tongue darts out and wets his lips while he observes me for what must only be seconds but feels like hours. His presence surrounds me, pulling me magnetically closer. He smells divine. Where have I caught that scent before?
God, it’ssogood. How does he smell so good? Sharp citrus with notes of lavender, nutmeg, and something that can only be likened to clean masculinity. He smells like the scent that has been following me for days. He smells like… like Ryan.
Shit, why did my head go there? I’m standing in a sex club with a man who I’m pretty sure wants to do filthy things to me, and my mind still goes to the patient I can’t have. Like it has been doing for days. I push the thought down. It’s not helpful. It’s not true. And anyway, Ryan has brown eyes that are warm and kind yet with an unmistakable edge of darkness, where this man’s eyes, from what I can tell, are golden and unnaturally beautiful. Like that wolf I saw days ago, beautiful and potentially devastating.
I need to get Ryan out of my head; I’m imagining him everywhere.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” the man says, pulling me from my thoughts. His hands cup my jaw as his mouth hovers a breath away from mine. And then he crushes his lips against mine. All at once, my body erupts in tingles as electricity rockets through me. His tongue pushes into my mouth, and his taste floods through me—tangy and delicious and somehow like he belongs to me. His hard body presses against mine, and a moan escapes from me before I can stop it.
My thoughts fade to white noise when he kisses along my neck and finds a spot on my shoulder that makes me feel like I could dissolve into a pool of pleasure.
“I have a room booked tonight,” I say through gasps and shivers.
He whimpers and pushes his hips against me, letting me feel how hard he is. His kisses pause only long enough for him to ask me when my reservation is, as if he cannot bear to remove his lips from my body. And God am I grateful for that because I have never wanted anything or anyone more that I want this man.
“I… At twelve,” I whisper, ready to forget every limitation I’ve ever set if he keeps kissing me like this. My nipples strain against the hard material of the dress I’m wearing. Wetness spreads down my thighs, and I curse myself for not wearing underwear tonight.
“Good,” he practically snarls, “that gives us time.”
He grabs my hand and starts pulling me back to the main hall, leaving my head spinning at the change in him, from passion to almost anger. He pulls out a chair at a table set off to the side of the main room before gesturing for me to sit and then taking a seat across from me.
