Why hadn’t he fought back? Zach wondered as he lengthened his stride to match Sophia’s pace. Desire pumped through his blood like a fire hose had been screwed into his veins, the question drowned out by the rush in his ears, but still… why didn’t he fight?

Because he hadn’t known how.

Asher Stanton’s strength wasn’t the issue. It was more cellular, even granular, a lack of coordination between the parts of Zach’s brain that told him this was absurd and the parts devoted to self-preservation. Civilized people didn’t choke one another. Polite society didn’t involve sisters kicking their brothers to the ground. The violence had shocked him, taken him by surprise, muscles going tense then limp because the electrical impulses handing out orders for coordinated effort all misfired.

It would never happen again.

Zach would see to it.

Sophia had a long stride, but his was faster. They moved through the dark forest, the softly lit path taking them up a large slope, then down a hill to a clearing. He paused, his ribs expanding and contracting, his skin flushed with the simple exertion, wanting more movement. More action. The brush of his leg hair against his slacks, the textured tactile touch of shirt seams against taut tendons, the way his fingers flexed and clenched as he stood there, breathing—it was all too much.

And never enough.

Sophia turned to him, and he moved toward her, grabbing her before she could utter a word, crushing his mouth against hers with a blinding, breathless kiss that left him panting. Every part of her was soft and hard, yielding and immutable, sweet and sharp, a study in contrasts as his hands took her in, his hips ground into hers, one knee parting her legs as she tipped her head up to him, their breath syncing with the drumbeat that drowned out all sound.

“Zach,” she moaned against his mouth, her face glowing in the moonlight, a thin sheen of sweat making her hair curl around her head. Thick eyebrows framed her enormous eyes, her lips full, nose long and elegant, with broad cheekbones that made her face round and earthy. He held her in his arms, his palms flat against her shoulders, sliding down to her waist, the solid heat of her body making him feel grounded at the same time he wanted to fly.

The longer he touched her, the more he wanted her, the strange bloodbeat inside him picking up steam, literally. He felt as if he were boiling from the inside out, overflowing into her bloodstream, the need to relieve the pressure inside him so great, and the only remedy was one that seemed so crass.

To be in her. To fuck her.

To fill her.

Less about love and more about lust, the feeling was so extraordinarily unfamiliar to Zach, an atavistic, predatory emotion that made him recoil inside at the same time he found himself empowered, excited—

Enthralled.

Sex, for Zach, was a joining that came from cherished intimacy. He wasn’t the one-night stand type, the main reason he’d rejected Sophia Stanton that night last year at the Plat. While he was still a guy with needs, those needs were put in proper place in an intellectual and moral context in his neat, orderly life.

For the past twenty-four hours, all he’d become was one big, pulsing need.

A walking cock.

And boy, did it feel good.

Rough fingertips slid under his shirt as Sophia pulled away and frowned. “You’re shifting.”

“I am?” Even he heard the change in his voice, though. He shut her up with another kiss, his pants practically splitting as her warm, wet mouth met his, hormones spiraling and spinning as his body thickened.

“You need—”

“I know what I need.” He picked her up like she was air, the sky, an armful of feathers, and set her down under a tree, her skirt riding up around her waist as if it obeyed his thoughts. She pulled him to her, greedy lips and teeth biting him as if she needed to taste his flesh, tongue flicking against his mouth as he freed himself from his pants, sliding into her in a single go, the shock of her heat making him groan.

Sophia spread her legs and raked his chest, splitting open his shirt with a brutality that turned him on even more, his hair standing on end, every nerve ending lit. In the dim recesses of his polite, good-guy mind, he questioned the unprotected heady plunge straight into her wet pussy, but given the moans coming from her as he thrust hard into Sophia, he told his good-guy self to shut the hell up.

Her neck tasted like cinnamon and sweat, his hips moving hard, curling into her as his ass muscles flexed in an impossible rotation that felt so good, so right, as her legs wrapped around his waist, the angle making her arch and cry out.

“Harder!” she demanded, and as she drew more of the sexual animal inside him out, as if her body extracted his essence, he felt the shift abate, his vision going human again, the aching openness of his pores receding as hormones pushed him to new heights. His fingers tore her dress at the neck to free her breasts, his mouth taking in the pearly pink of her nipple, his bite making her inner walls clench and trap him, the journey in and out of her all the harder, tight and challenging.

He rose to the occasion, hammering home the pure energy of being bigger, stronger, different. His breath was like sandpaper against her skin, her hair like black licorice in the night, the rustle of leaves against the wind grown to waves crashing against a rocky cliff. As they made love with an unrelenting, unchained spirit that drove him to the point of madness, he exploded in her, lost to his own feral side, newly emerging and demanding he relinquish his soul.

Which he did.

Willingly.

Pouring it straight into Sophia, their heartbeats merging as he climaxed, the sound turning him inside out. She clung to him, her own orgasms pulsing through him in time to this exotic rhythm, his mouth against her neck, her hands digging and grabbing him, her body thrashing with pleasure until she began to pant, fast and furious, her throat making small sounds of submission, of satiety.

As Zach pulled himself up to look at her, their eyes met. He saw it.

Felt it.

The craving.

Already he wanted more.

A low, throaty chuckle rumbled under him, Sophia’s dazed look turning to one of amusement. The stars glittered in her eyes, reflecting in wide, dilated pupils so big they looked like black holes.

Which they were, in a way, he mused, joining her laugh. Because he had no control over her gravitational pull.

“Again?” she asked, the question purely rhetorical.

“How did you—how do you—” He cleared his throat, his cock wet and hard inside her, twitching in erratic patterns against her. Sophia tightened and he grunted, the feeling too intense, too much.

All of this was too much, yet not enough.

“I can feel it.”

He clenched, making himself jump against her.

“Not that,” she said in a sardonic tone. Her palm flattened against his heart, buttons from his shirt long lost to the thick brush surrounding them. “That.”

“My heart?”

“You feel it too. Don’t try to tell me you don’t.”

Zach went silent, listening inside himself for the craving. The strange beat. The pulse of connection to her.

And then he jolted and stared at her, sweat on his tense face, jaw tight as he frowned.

Because this conversation?

It had taken place without either of their mouths moving.

* * *

Sophia waited for the response that didn’t come.

He must’ve felt it. He must have heard their heartbeats drumming together. Or had she imagined everything, even their silent conversation?

Lilah had told her about the Beat and hearing Gavin’s thoughts, and Sophia wondered if it was romantic exaggeration, a young woman’s delusion that allowed her to accept the transformations that her life—and body—were going through. Lilah had become a werewolf and now was expecting not one but two babies. Shifter babies. The thought filled Sophia with a nameless craving she was afraid to admit to herself.

Was Sophia foolish to believe in the Beat? For a few moments she and Zach had seemed to share a pulse. Sophia had been a believer in the powers of sex for a long, long time. And LupiNex had proven there were unexplained mysteries of shifter biology they were only beginning to understand. But great sex could do mysterious things to one’s sanity. What was a fantasy, after all, but a vividly satisfying hallucination? Was the idea of carrying a child of her own so oddly tempting that it had distorted her reason?

Zach stroked her thigh, his eyes dazed, hungry, wild. “Sophia, I want you again.”

His raw need amused her. She herself wasn’t much steadier, but she’d had more experience. Her own rocky journey through puberty had become an annoying legend in her family. Her infamy would be even greater if it hadn’t been for her twin, Derry, whose sudden shifts and need for sexual release had been so severe that he’d been sent home from boarding school.

Twice.

In an effort to burn off the excess energy and teach him self-discipline, a distant cousin from Scotland had been flown to Montana to train Derry in boxing. A week later, Derry had shattered the elder werebear’s collarbone—accidentally, because Derry was at his heart a sweet guy—and the cousin had returned to Scotland.

Eventually, with time (and a few eager age-appropriate partners), they’d learned to control their natures without embarrassing the family. Not too badly anyway. Asher still complained, of course, but that was his way of showing he cared.

Asher. She’d promised him she could train Zach, and she would. He didn’t need to know about their slightly, uh, rocky start.

She got to her feet and brushed off leaves and debris. Her luxurious cabin was a short distance away, yet they’d just fucked right here in the dirt. Now that she’d had her physical needs met—somewhat—for the time being, she needed to get a grip on her own urges, already unruly because of the familiar autumn lust that struck before her winter rest. She’d assured Asher and Sam that she could help Zach learn self-discipline during this difficult adjustment. It was time she did that, starting with setting an example.

Fantasies about the Beat were a dangerous distraction.

She looked up at the moon and inhaled deeply. “I’ll bring you back to your cabin,” she said. “You’re still recovering from the tranquilizer.”

He got to his feet. “You’re not serious. The last thing I want right now is a nap.” He moved closer, trailing a fingertip up her arm, her bare shoulder.

Shivering, she nodded. “Nevertheless, you need to recuperate.”

A laugh broke out of him. “I’ve had more than enough of quiet time. I prefer this method of recuperation.” He tunneled his fingers through her hair, tangling at the nape of her neck, and pulled her close to kiss her. “Better than anything I got in Gavin’s clinic, that’s for sure.”

At the mention of her brother’s name, she hardened her resolve. “We’ll repeat our lessons when I say so, not when you’re feeling overwhelmed by pubescent urges.” Without smiling, she grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand out of her hair. “You need to learn control.”

“And you think you can teach me that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“From what I hear, and from what I’ve seen, you’re the last person to teach abstinence,” he said.

“I admit, this went a lot faster than I’d intended,” she said with as much arrogance as she could manage. “But I’m not going to let it go any further tonight.”

“I wasn’t talking about tonight. Or yesterday.” He lifted an eyebrow and held her gaze.

She’d wondered if he remembered the time last year when she’d hit on him. Now she realized he did remember, was probably proud of it, and it embarrassed her.

If he thought he could have her whenever he wanted just because she’d wanted him once in the past, he was mistaken.

“You’ve got a lot to learn.” She stepped away, readjusted her dress, slipped her feet into her shoes, and finger-combed her hair. “Your first lesson begins now. See that path?” She pointed the way they’d come.

“Yes,” he said. “But—”

“Right before you get to the house, take the fork in the path to the right. That leads to the quarters where you’ll be staying during your time here.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Did the serum give you the heightened senses the rest of us have?”

“Yes,” he said again. “But where is your cabin? I want—”

“Even in the dark, if you use your sense of smell, you will be able to retrace your steps to the bedroom Asher has given you. Tomorrow or the next day, perhaps the day after that, we will have another session.”

Frowning, he loomed over her. “Is that what this was? A session? You make it sound like some kind of therapy.” He said the word as if it tasted bad in his mouth.

“Exactly.” She gave him a teasing look, like a naughty schoolmistress. “You even have homework.”

“Homework?”

“Go to your room. Shift.”

“Shift? I thought you were training me on how not to shift!”

“I want you to learn to voluntarily shift. To become your animal self.” Her pink tongue poked out between her lips, licking them. She couldn’t help herself.

“And then shift back to being human. You need to learn, Zach, to do it at will.”

“I’ve never tried.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t have an answer.

“Well,” she said into his silence. “Now you have the time and the safe space to do it.” She paused, considering something. “I won’t sleep with you again until you’ve mastered it.”

“WHAT?”

“I’m here to teach you delayed gratification,” she said. “Delayed. Not denied.”

Moonlight shone on his face, illuminating the corner of his wide, sensual mouth as it curved upward. “Gratification?”

Her heart began pounding harder in her chest, already imagining their reunion. “Yes. Master voluntary shifting, alone, and you’ll receive a gold star.” His eyes raked over her body, his neck tight with barely restrained impulse. She could feel its power, how easily she could be consumed by him.

Wind rustled the branches of the trees over their heads. “Tomorrow,” he said in a low voice. “No later than tomorrow.”

Her toes curled in her shoes, but she only showed him a faint smile. “We’ll see.”