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Slowly.
Dangerously.
“Well,” he says, voice rougher, “maybe your mate has eyes.”
My heart skips a beat in my chest. Lucas notices and grows braver. He steps closer, gaze sweeping over me again, less shy this time.
“And maybe he missed lookin’ at you. All of you. The antlers, the skull, the markings, the fur here.” He lifts one hand, stopping just short of the line of fur at my chest until I lower enough for him to reach. His fingers sink into the coarse thickness of my hair, and pleasure moves through me so sharply my claws curl into the soil. “Yeah, definitely missed that.”
Lucas.
His name leaves me with both warning and wonder.
He looks up at me from beneath his lashes, and there is still tiredness in him, still grief around the edges from the weeks I left him empty, but this morning has made something reckless in him too.
We could have lost one another. Now he stands close enough to touch my true body and chooses not to waste the wanting.
“You wanna know what else I missed?” he asks.
The bond tightens.
Tell me.
His fingers drag lightly through the ridges crossing my chest. “This. How you feel under my hands. The way you go all still when I touch you. You could tear the woods apart, but you’re tryin’ not to move because I’ve got my mouth on you.”
The forest drops away, and there is only Lucas. Only his hand on my chest, his scent warming, his voice low and rough with boldness I have seen in pieces before but never like this. He knows he can affect me. He knows, and he is choosing to use it.
I love it so much I nearly forget how to stand.
Mate has become dangerous, I send.
His smile flickers, proud and nervous at once. I shift my weight, lowering further until we are closer to level, though even crouched I loom over him. He does not step back. His hand slides higher, over the edge of my skull near my jaw, then down again to my throat.
“I missed that. Missed touchin’ it. Missed you lowerin’ your head when I put my hand there like you trust me with the most terrifyin’ part of you.”
His gaze follows his own touch as his hand trails down my chest, the dark ridges, the scars, the breadth of me in true form. He swallows, and through the bond comes memory: his mouth on my markings, my claws in the furs, the stunned pleasure of being touched where no one had ever dared.
“I missed the way they feel under my mouth.”
Lucas, I send, and his name is warning, plea, and worship.
His eyes lift to mine. The crimson is still there, but so is something steadier, something that survived fear and came back less willing to waste wanting. “I missed the rest of you too.”
He looks down at the lowered shape of me, the furred power of this form, the protected seam his hands once found, hidden now but known between us. Heat flashes through me so suddenly I nearly shift my weight back from the force of being wanted by this human man who had no map for loving a creature like me and chose to learn anyway.
“I missed findin’ you there,” he says, voice low, rough, and so honest the bond pulses hard between us. “I missed your body openin’ for me. I missed how slick you got, how it felt on my hands, how it made you shake when I touched you. I missed takin’ you in this shape, and I missed bein’ taken by you. I missed bein’ full of you so badly I got mad about it.”
I forget how to breathe.
Perhaps I do not need breath in this form the way humans do, but the body still tries and fails.
Lucas stares up at me, red-faced and shaking now, but proud too. Defiant amid his embarrassment. He offers me the truth because I spent two months before giving him restraint and calling it care.
I lower my head until the edge of my skull rests against his forehead, and his one hand stays in my hair. His breathing is fast but not frightened. The bond is hot, yes, full of want and memory and all the ways this could lead us back to a den, but beneath it is trust. There is always trust, even when fear snarls at the edges.
You want my true body again, I send, each word careful around the violence of my want.
His throat works. “I want you again.”
