In her bed, Sophia lingered in that hazy space between waking and sleep, aware of her breath, her skin, her bones, her pulse. She was human, she was bear, she was female. Like every other creature, she was always at war with her instincts, which didn’t always tell her to do as she wanted. She didn’t like hibernating, for instance, and so chose, through force of will, to live quietly but awake during the long winter months. In addition, her instincts told her to eat unlimited quantities of blackberry pie with caramel swirl ice cream, but she had the sense and strength to hold back (usually).

And until now, from adolescence through the decades of adulthood, her instincts had told her to mate. As her reputation attested, she’d been happy to succumb to that one. Unfortunately for Mother Nature, she’d skipped the part about making a child.

But perhaps Mother Nature had been merely biding her time, because right now…

Her desire for a man was making her tremble violently enough to rattle her massive four-poster bed.

Not just a man though. So much more.

Half-asleep, she slid her hand down her belly but waited above the thatch of curls. She was tempted to satisfy herself and be done with this maddening craving. She knew it wouldn’t be enough though. It wasn’t nearly enough.

What was the matter with her? It wasn’t like her to be needy. She granted her favors, dishing them out like candy. Like blackberry pie. Her partners were grateful and satisfied, hungry for more, always hopeful she would be generous again in the future. That was never how she felt about them. Never.

She let the tip of her index finger slip a little closer to the needy spot between her legs, letting her dreamy thoughts drift to her latest partner, the human who wasn’t a human, the man whose heartbeat matched her own.

Her need intensified, and she made a half-hearted effort to rub the craving away. As she’d expected, her own fingers were cold, clumsy, and useless. Her body was numb and unimpressed. Her soul was elsewhere, searching for—

Zach.

She sank deeper into a half dream, conjuring him in her mind.

“I’m here,” he said, his voice as rough as icy gravel.

She awoke with a start, with stabbing pains in her chest, her heart jumping into her throat and cutting off her breath. Acute myocardial infarction. She was going to die from the shock.

His fingers wrapped around her bare ankle. “Do you always sleep in the nude?”

She wondered if he were real or if she were dreaming and decided she didn’t care. “I’d shifted,” she said softly. “I guess? I don’t know,” she murmured.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Clothing becomes a bit of a hassle when you’re changing back and forth, doesn’t it?” He bent over and placed his mouth where his fingers had been. His lips, hot and firm, branded her ankle.

“Mm,” she said. The urge to throw him on the bed and mount him, taking what she wanted without the delay of boring conversation about shifter fashion, was overpowering. But he licked her instep, sending shockwaves up her legs into her groin, and she forgot about taking control.

“I’m going to make love to you now, Sophia,” he said. “But don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything if you’re too tired. Just lie back and enjoy it.”

Sophia was tempted to remind him of his place—as her student, not her master—but her snarky retort died on her lips as she thought about his offer. Her exhaustion had disappeared, but she did find herself unusually indecisive. As appealing as the thought of riding him was, she also liked the idea of him taking charge.

Liked it a lot.

Exaggerating a yawn, she stretched her arms over her head, well aware this would draw his attention to her large, naked breasts.

She felt his teeth scrape the skin of her ankle as he jerked up his head and rushed to climb up over her body. One hand grabbed her wrists, the other claimed a breast. His mouth came down on hers, tongue thrusting between her teeth, and she arched to meet him.

“I want you—I want you—” she gasped. “Inside.” Words were hopelessly inadequate.

Releasing her, he sat up and removed his shirt while she unfastened his pants. They both tore at the loose fabric until his shoulders and chest and thighs and arms and long, hard, demanding cock were as exposed as she was.

She clasped it and stroked, watching the ecstasy on his face, and then guided it between her legs.

But instead of thrusting into her, he reclaimed her hands and flattened her to the bed. He settled his hips against hers, his cock pushing against her folds, and paused as if he had all the time in the world and every right to enjoy it.

Pushing his hips down in small, firm, circular motions, he ducked his head and sucked her left nipple into his mouth. Again she felt the scrape of his teeth, and delicious, wild pain shot through her. Only a few hours since their last lovemaking, but she felt a difference in him, as if his transformation from man to shifter was ongoing, his powers only now unfolding.

He continued to grind his hips against hers, teasing her with the penetration she craved, as he pulled her nipple harder into his mouth. She gasped, straining against him, delighted but alarmed, aroused and needy.

Yes, needy. Sophia Stanton. Mindless with desperation.

When he lifted his head, she thought that finally he would put them both out of their misery and pound into her, but instead he moved to the other breast, distributing the torture equally. His hips rotated, rubbing his cock against her pelvis, so close, so far, and then he moved his hand down from her wrists to her face. She turned her head and sucked his thumb into her mouth, tasted his skin, smelled him, pulled in deep.

Lifting his head to meet her gaze, he swept his thumb over her wet tongue and lips and then back inside, penetrating her mouth, giving her this part of him that wasn’t enough but was somehow delicious, strong, sexy. She bit down to remind him he wasn’t the only dangerous one.

“My Sophia,” he said in a low voice, eyes dark with desire. He stroked the hair out of her face. “So fierce.”

“Now, Zach,” she said, kicking the bed with her ankles, lifting her hips. Was she begging?

“Is there a problem?” He moved up and looked into her face, then shifted his weight until he was fully pinning her beneath him, dominating her with his body. His cock was hard and throbbing between them but still not where she wanted it.

She clenched her teeth to prevent the full-blown begging. He had her. She couldn’t move. Pounds of muscle weighed down on her.

And then his hand reached between her legs and slid between her wet folds to her hot, tight center. A long, strong finger curved and went deep. His thumb stroked up to her clit and then stopped.

She could hear him smile.

“No, no more jokes. We’re done playing around.” She pounded on his back with a fist. “Now, please, now, please. Zach, please. Now. I’m going to come. Now. For God’s sake, do it. I’ll give you whatever you want, just do it. Now!” She thrashed her head from side to side.

If she was going to beg, she was going to beg. She’d never done anything halfway.

He moved his mouth to her ear, his breath warm and seductive against her temple. “You’re going to come?” His deep voice sent shivers down her spine.

She tried to suck in a breath. “Yes,” she whispered.

His thumb pressed at the base of her clit, made a circling motion, slid over the tip. “Now?”

“No, not… not yet.” She gritted her teeth. She came when she wanted to, damn it. When she was ready—

As he kissed her tenderly on the lips, he pushed another finger roughly inside her, one touch so unlike the other, and she shuddered, unable to stop the waves of pleasure that rose up from his fingers and washed over her. Crying out, she let it come, let herself ride the waves up and up to the splintering sky.

As she shook, he kept his mouth over hers, tasting her pleasure secondhand. And when she stilled, he lifted his body, reached down, and then, just as she opened her eyes from her blissful daze, he thrust his cock into her open, ready, ravenous body.

* * *

As he entered her, he took a deep breath, the air endless, long and rolling like her body, a big and lush taking in of all the oxygen in the world. Sophia was hot beneath him, powerful thighs riding up his waist as he settled to the base, quenching the pure agony of not being in her.

Now he was here. Calling her home seemed clichéd, but it was true. Sophia smelled like musk and bear, like new life and protective intensity, with a hint of something feminine, nurturing, a scent he tasted as her nipple pearled between his teeth, his tongue flicking the sweet spot until she moaned.

The Beat that surrounded them when they were connected returned with a haunting singularity, low and slow, growing as he thrust into her, Sophia’s long hair threading itself in his fingers, spilling onto her shoulders as she looked up at him, her hands on his back, pulling him hard to her.

“It feels like we’ve been apart forever,” she said, arching her hips up to meet him. She was so wet, so passionate, so ready that Zach couldn’t believe they’d just made love just a few hours ago. Insatiable they were, carnal pleasure taking hold as the nerves that pulsed with restless desire settled down, replaced by a central, focused pleasure rooted in his cock, his hands, her mouth, those breasts.

“Give me all of it, Zach,” she begged. “Harder!”

He realized he’d been holding back, not to be unkind or to deprive but because he didn’t realize his true abilities, his mind still more in control right now than his body. But not for long. The command to give more came with a response he didn’t know he possessed, one that drove him into her until she gasped and tightened her legs impossibly about his midsection, her heels digging into his ass as he pounded her, one hand easily knotting her wrists between his fingers, the other grabbing the bed’s headboard for leverage.

“More,” she begged, making his body curl up, his thighs thickening, calves flexed with a kinetic, sexual athleticism that spread heat through him like nothing else before. She was all mouth, all musk, all slick and pure light in one bundle beneath him, every part of her merging with him. The sound of his cock moving inside her pussy made a sort of music he swore only they could hear, her lips closing over his ear as her teeth bit him. No sense went unchallenged, no muscle unused as he rode her until she writhed beneath him, half-mad with a kind of pleasure he had thought was the stuff of fantasy.

It was all too real.

“Come with me,” she insisted, her lips on his neck, biting hard enough to leave a mark as she went down his neckline to his shoulder, her intensity growing as she tongued his scars. How could she continue? She was like a magician’s trick, her orgasm a piece of red silk that revealed itself in one long, endless ribbon that would go on to infinity, his thrusts becoming the hand that pulled it from her, performing an ecstatic sorcery that became the familiar Beat only they shared.

“Let go,” she whispered, her voice almost harsh. “Show me everything.”

What did she mean? he wondered, his body on fire, until suddenly he knew.

His mind was purely human yet again, body engaged like the human he was.

Had been.

And now he let his mind dissolve into that powerful space where he just was, where he became the new version of himself, the unfamiliar territory exhilarating, letting fear dissolve like sweat evaporating off her breasts, like the flow of her curve turning from swell to hollow, like—

Like this.

His roar welled up inside him until it rushed through his body like he was pushing every molecule of power out of himself and directly into her so that they could become pure energy, the taste of her collarbone a world unto itself, the brush of his hair against her breast its own universe.

She was crying out, his name turning to a feral sound that he knew and acknowledged just as the intensity turned him into pure impulse, instinct taking over as he pushed so hard into her one last time, then came in a burst that left him kissing her senseless, their tongues hard and brutal against each other, as if each were deprived by not being able to be closer, needing more than their best.

And then he became her. They became each other, sound and touch hopelessly combined until Zach couldn’t feel his own edges, finally clinging to her before rolling over the side of the world, coming to in a spinning haze as Sophia’s sweet breath tickled his ear, her panting sounds matched only by the feel of his own breath inside his mouth.

“Sophia,” he said, his lips nearly numb as he licked them, tasting her.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice crackling beneath him. He rested his full weight on top of her and heard the slow sigh that came from her, then felt the stretch under him, her toes curling out, spreading as her arms unwound from his grasp. She stretched like a cat in a beam of sunshine, completely unhampered by his big body on top of her.

“Good, because I’m not quite sure where I just went,” he said, the words sounding like they were on a half-second time delay. Zach needed to glue his universe back together one word at a time. He looked down at their pressed-together bodies, hair on his chest making a tiny nest around one of her nipples, the way her manicured fingertips rested on his ribs. She was a big woman, elegant and regal, bones sturdy and body aggressive in a natural way.

He loved every inch of her.

Sophia reached up with one finger and traced the line of his face, making him pulse inside her, his cock twitching at the intimate gesture. Her eyes met his, full of a postcoital haze and an expansive love he couldn’t quite believe but felt, too.

“That was…” The skin between her eyebrows tightened as she struggled for words.

He slid his hand between them, palm over her heart, feeling it beat in sync with his. “Yes. It was.” Slowly, carefully, he slid out of her and rolled onto his back, staring at the soaring ceiling. “That definitely was.”

“I’ve never begged before,” she confessed, pulling the sheet up lazily, untangling it from Zach’s calves.

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

He loved how vocal she was, her little sounds and breathy noises saying as much as her words.

Her grin was impish, sweet, bold, and fiery all at once. “Once is an anomaly. Twice means you’re skilled.”

“What does a thousand mean?” he asked.

“You tell me, Zach.”

How else could he answer that but with a kiss?

She laughed beneath him, her lips wet and dry, hard and yielding, until they were kissing with a yearning tenderness that made the world stop.

He broke away and spoke his heart. “What are you planning to do with me?” The dread that washed over him came out of nowhere, their easy intimacy shattered by a part of him that let fear and anger intrude.

She lifted the sheet and looked at his cock. “You need about ten more minutes, I’d guess, but—”

His eyes caught hers, and all of Sophia’s joking faded instantly. “Seriously, Sophia. What am I doing here? You and your brothers talked about Mason Webb. They killed him. I’m not allowed to leave this place. Are they planning to kill me, too?”

She didn’t just reel from his words, or recoil. Instead, she yanked herself out of his arms, moving to stand next to the bed, statuesque and severe. “Are you fucking kidding me, Zach? You’re asking me that right after we just – what?” she asked, looking at him as if he were the transgressor as she pulled on a pair of jeans.

“No, Sophia, I’m not kidding,” he answered. While she put on a T-shirt, he moved to stand beside her, looking down with an authority that took a few seconds to sink in, that lingering sense that he was an imposter fading quickly. “Look at this from my position. I spent months in a makeshift hospital because of a lab accident. My body is no longer mine. My life is no longer mine. And then I’m finally free—released! Within minutes I run into you at the Platinum Club and—”

“I SAVED YOU!” she shouted, picking up a small, old-fashioned wooden clock with Roman numerals on it. Reflexes sharper than he’d ever had before kicked in as he dodged left to avoid being nailed between the eyes by the flying object.

“What the fuck, Sophia?” He watched her fingers close over the base of a very nice crystal lamp and dropped to the ground just in time, the glass shattering behind him.

“You—you—you completely ungrateful beast!” she yelled, picking up pillows and throwing them at him. “Asher wanted to—”

“He wanted to kill me,” Zach said, his own calmness preternatural. He stood and walked toward her, realizing two completely different ideas at the same time: she no longer had anything to turn into a weapon within easy reach, and he likely could have taken two direct hits from what she threw and not had a scratch on him.

She turned away, starting to flee, but he had her by the arms from behind before she knew it, his hands hooked into the crooks of her elbows with a grip that clearly shocked her. She pulled.

He held.

He won.

“He never would have! I swear! He’s not like that!”

“You expect me to take your word for it?”

“What?” Her voice nearly broke him. Zach felt the pain, her betrayal like another heartbeat, but he had to stand firm. He had to know. If this was just some insane cat-and-mouse game and in the end he was the mouse, he needed to mount an attack—an escape—a something, now.

Right now.

Before it was too late.

“Cat-and-mouse game?” she cried out, the end of her words going up and down with more emotion. She really could read his thoughts? Holy hell. “You think I’m toying with you?”

“Are you?”

She sagged in his arms. “No.”

“A master manipulator would say that.”

“A master manipulator wouldn’t have begged you just now for what we had. A master manipulator wouldn’t have offered to bring you to the ranch to train you. And a master manipulator wouldn’t fall hopelessly, helplessly in love with you, Zach, to the point of wanting your—” She seemed to cut herself off as if she didn’t want him to know the rest.

He let her arms drop. She staggered forward, gripping the doorjamb, then turned to look at him, tears in her eyes.

“My what?” he choked out, confused.

And with that, Sophia stormed out of her own cabin, the front door slamming, Zach left with her words echoing in his too-sharp ears.