“The violence?”
He nodded. “It’s pretty raw.”
He understood. She flashed him a weak smile. “It’s primal, and I’m not used to that.”
“No one is. Not even them.”
That was reassuring in a twisted kind of way. So she took a breath and reached for the coffeepot to refill her own mug. Except the carafe was almost empty.
“I’ll make some more,” Alan offered, but she stopped him.
“Please, let me get it. I think I need to be useful.”
He started to argue with her, but something in her face must have changed his mind, because he backed off. He pointed to the cabinet right above her head. “Everything you need is in there.”
“Thanks,” she said. And then she went about the business of making coffee. It was a simple task that gave her hands something to do. Which allowed her fears to ease their grip enough for her to talk a little more rationally. “So when you shift, how exactly does that feel? Do you think? Can you control yourself? I mean, could you be a bear and drive a car?”
He snorted at that image, and she flashed him an awkward smile. “I’m sorry to be so ignorant.”
“It’s not ignorance. They’re reasonable questions, but you’re asking the wrong person.”
She finished pouring the water into the coffeemaker and switched it on. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t shift.”
She looked up, startled. “What?”
“It’s a genetic lottery. Shifters have human and animal DNA. Too much animal, and they shift young and often go full beast by adolescence. It’s the hormones. When they kick in, the beast can be too much to control. Or in my case, I seem to have only the human side. I’ve never shifted.” He shrugged. “I’m not even all that hairy.”
“Oh.” Jeez, what a stupid response. But she didn’t know what to say. Congratulations, you’re not half beast? I’m so sorry you can’t kill people with your claws? Did shifters like running wild in the woods and digging honey out of beehives? Or did they want to hang out with a girl at prom and not worry that they’d start sprouting fur if things got too intense?
“You should ask Carl.”
She nodded. She should, but her emotions were too close to the surface to even consider that yet. She felt too exposed and too wild around him to broach the topic. Then, as if the thought summoned the man, the front door opened and Carl came in.
He was wearing the tearaway pants and nothing else. His hair was dripping wet and slicked down against his body. She looked up at him as he entered, and the lust slammed against her hot and hard. She drank in every sculpted muscle, every lithe movement of his body, but she didn’t leave the kitchen. If she did, nothing would stop her from jumping him in the bedroom. And from there, it was the tiniest step to giving him everything.
Carl didn’t stop as he came into the room. He saw her, of course. And there might have been a slight hitch in his stride but no more as he headed straight for the bedroom.
Ouch. Even though she knew she was the cause, the awkwardness between them hurt. But she couldn’t think of a way through it. Not until she felt more settled. And more capable of controlling herself when she was around him.
Meanwhile, Alan spoke, his voice low. “You need to talk to him, Becca. If you two are going to make a go of this, you have to love the bear as much as the man.”
She jolted at the word “love.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t flirted with the idea. Hell, she’d been fighting tooth and nail to not think the word. “We just met,” she said. “We… He and I…” Hell, she couldn’t get the words out. “It’s a no-strings-attached kind of thing.”
“Is that what he told you?”
She jerked her gaze back to Alan. She’d been staring at the closed bedroom door, but suddenly she was staring at Alan with her chest so tight she could barely breathe. “What do you mean?”
For the first time this morning, Alan looked chagrined and he rapidly started backing out of both the conversation and the room. But she couldn’t let him go. She grabbed his arm and held firm. He could have escaped, of course. She wasn’t that strong. But he didn’t push the point as she held tight.
“Talk to me, Alan. I need to understand.”
He huffed out a breath. “The very first night, he put you in his bedroom, Becca. His den. He hasn’t done that with anyone before.”
She shook her head. The last thing she needed was to realize that Carl was feeling as intensely about her as she was about him. That made it a scorched earth kind of relationship: wild, passionate, and completely destructive of the world around them. She knew. She’d seen her sister go through them often enough. By all accounts that’s how Theo had been conceived. Maybe that’s how all shifter relationships went.
“We just met,” she said, denying everything he’d said in three words.
