Chapter 34
JESS
It happened again. I rose from our bed and shifted. Cade was asleep. I felt it coming on and I fled into the bathroom. Once it started, it couldn’t be stopped, but I did try to control it. I managed to shape myself into my wolf, furry and panting with the effort. I tried to settle into that more familiar form. But I could feel her, my demon, struggling to get out.
The shift helped relieve some kind of tension in me that no longer seemed to be released by sex. Damn my cousin and his worthless advice. I was having lots of orgasms these days, but they weren't preventing my darkling’s insistence that she be freed to wreak her violence on the world.
I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Ever since the day we’d gone hunting it was as if a fire had been kindled inside me that kept roaring hotter and hotter. Was I going mad? What did she want from me?
But I knew. It wasn’t what she wanted from me. It was what she wanted from him.
She wanted Cade. I wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do with him, but she definitely wanted to get her fangs and claws into him.
What I hadn’t confessed to him about that morning in the meadow was that when she’d burst out of me and shown herself, she’d caught the scent of his blood. It had inspired in her a wild lust that was even stronger than anything my human self was capable of feeling. Which made it pretty damn strong.
A dominatrix superhero. Yeah, no joke. But I didn’t think darklings knew limits or respected safewords. I was afraid she would hurt him badly, maybe without even realizing that she was being rough.
I succeeded in keeping her inside me that time, and, at least, as morning was graying the sky, I was able to shift back to human. I slunk back to bed and as I slipped in beside him, Cade rolled over and wrapped his arm around my waist. “Cade. Are you awake? Put the choker on me.”
“No way,” he said in a sleepy, slurred voice. “No choker.” He’d been refusing to lock that thing around my throat ever since he’d learned my secret. He’d actually come home yesterday with a hand-made leather bondage collar and a pair of matching cuffs that he’d ordered online. “You want to do the kinky, we can use these.”
“Those are cool, but it’s not the same.”
“I know. But you’re not hiding any part of yourself from me anymore, babe. You wanna sleep shift? Bring it on. If you’re into shifting during sex, bring that on, too. I’m up for it. Sounds like fun.”
I loved him for the way he was so willing to welcome any aspect of me, but I was afraid for him nevertheless.
He pulled me closer now, and next thing I knew he had dragged me under him. I don’t think he was even fully awake, but his cock was hard and jutting. As soon as I felt it, I turned wet. “Sleep fuck,” he muttered and proceeded to do just that. I don’t think it took more than a couple of minutes for us both to come, and afterwards, I was able to sleep peacefully.
Maybe Cam was right. Maybe I just needed lots and lots of fucking.
But the next night, it happened again. And this time I couldn’t stop my darkling from emerging. She burst out of me before I could escape to the bathroom, but she was unusually quiet about it. The distinctive shifting sounds that should have awakened Cade did not. He slept on, oblivious, while she—I—stood over the bed, just a few inches away from his exposed throat, my huge wings spread and poised as if to fly..
But she didn't fly. She—I—stared down at the man I had married with a vastness of hunger that my human self could scarcely comprehend.
But she didn’t attack. She didn’t do anything violent. She just stood and watched and yearned.
My own terror of what might happen warred with her desire for nameless things. As Cam had told me, we weren’t ordinary creatures. Our desires were dark. Evil? I didn’t even know. When I was her and she was me, I lost all sense of the difference between darkness and light.
I don’t remember what happened after that. But when I woke up, I was lying on the cold floor beside the bed. I was naked and freezing. It was Cade who found me there. He hustled me into bed and warmed me with the quilts and his body. “You should have put the choker on me,” I said, torn between dread and anger.
“You shifted? I didn’t hear it.”
“Did I hurt you? I don’t remember. I was looking down on you, but then it all faded to black.”
“You didn’t hurt me Jess. I’m fine. Nothing happened. You probably dreamed it.”
“I didn’t dream it. I was standing over you hearing your heartbeat thunder in my ears and wanting to feel it under my tongue. I want to drink your blood, like a fucking vampire.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Oh God, such an alpha. He still didn’t take this seriously. He probably thought that if I ever attacked him, he could defend himself. He probably thought he could win.